Children's attention to rigid and deformable shape in naming and non-naming tasks

In four experiments with three-year-olds (N = 67), we investigate children's understanding of the differential importance of shape for categorization of solid rigid objects with fixed shapes and solid but deformable objects with shapes that can be changed. In a non-naming task we find that young children categorize rigid and deformable things differently and know that material is important for deformable things and shape for rigid things. In two naming tasks, however, children generalize names for both solid and deformable objects by shape similarity and disregard rigidity. To understand this pattern of results we examine a corpus of early-learned nouns and the kinds of rigid and nonrigid things named by nouns in that corpus. The results suggest that names for categories of solid, rigid objects in which instances are similar in shape dominate children's early noun vocabularies. We suggest that children's novel word generalizations for deformable things may be overgeneralizations of this dominant pattern.     

Toward an understanding of academic and nonacademic tasks procrastinated by students: The use of daily logs

For five consecutive days, at either the beginning or the end of a term, college students (30 women, 7 men) listed daily academic and nonacademic tasks they intended to complete and whether they actually completed them. Students reported nonacademic tasks (e.g., household chores, making telephone calls, exercising, and playing sports) as completed most often regardless of the time within the term. Results from 2 (early vs. later sessions) by 2 (completed vs. not completed tasks) by 2 (academic vs. nonacademic tasks) ANOVAs found that procrastinated tasks early in the term were more effortful and anxiety provoking than any other task during the term. Procrastinated academic tasks (e.g., homework, reading assignments, studying) in the early part of a term were rated as unpleasurable, while students reported later in the term that pleasantness of the task did not affect whether it was procrastinated or completed. These results imply that academic and nonacademic tasks should be challenging, yet fun, to heighten the likelihood that they are completed by students. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Thirteen-month-olds rely on shared labels and shape similarity for inductive inferences

This study examined the influence of shape similarity and labels on 13-month-olds' inductive inferences. In 3 experiments, 123 infants were presented with novel target objects with or without a nonvisible property, followed by test objects that varied in shape similarity. When objects were not labeled, infants generalized the nonvisible property to high-similarity objects (Experiment 1). When objects were labeled with the same noun, infants generalized the nonvisible property to high- and low-similarity objects (Experiment 2). Finally, when objects were labeled with different nouns, infants generalized the nonvisible property to high-similarity objects (Experiment 3). Thus, infants who are beginning to acquire productive language rely on shared shape similarity and shared names to guide their inductive inferences.     

Conceptualizing teachers' understanding of students' mathematical learning by using assessment tasks*

The study was designed to support teachers on conceptualizing their understanding of students' learning by the use of assessment tasks. A school-based assessment team consisting of the researcher and four third-grade teachers teaching in the same school was set up as a learning context of supporting teachers in developing assessment tasks integral to instruction. The assessment tasks along with students' responses to the task, classroom observations, interviews, routine weekly meetings, teachers' weekly reflective journals, and students' responses to the assessment tasks were the data collected in the study. The teachers' views of using assessment tasks and the generation of assessment tasks were developed in the course of the study. In the process of generating assessment tasks, teachers improved their awareness of students' various solutions and learning difficulties to a specific problem, their awareness of the importance of developing students' critical thinking, and their awareness of where students need to make a remedial instruction. The research reported in the paper was supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan under Grant NSC 90-2521-S134-003-. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the view of funding agency.     

对CN—MARC 的认识

我国的中文书目数据库要在全国范围或世界范围共享, 书目数据必须规范化、标准化。CN —MARC 格式在数据规范方面为书目数据库的建立和书目数据处理提供参照或依据。为了更好地掌握、使用CN —MARC 格式, 本文从多方面浅谈自已对CN —MARC 的认识.     

《文心雕龙》与英美新批评关于文学性的共同“诗心”

《文心雕龙》和英美新批评在中西文论史上占有相当重要的地位。它们对文学规律的挖掘是比较诗学研究理应重视的问题之一。“新批评”是一种独特的形式主义文论,它对文本形式的关注使之区别干西方传统文论,而这种对传统文论的叛离提醒人们把注意力集中在“文学性”上。《文心雕龙》中的文学观念远比新批评丰富,但就探讨文学性而言,双方看法实有共通之处。     

Effects of incorporating retrieval into learning tasks: The complexity of the tasks matters

In an experiment with N = 192 university students, we examined whether the effects of incorporating retrieval into learning tasks depend on the learning tasks' complexity. The learning tasks consisted of adjunct questions that were provided together with expository texts relating to the domain of chemistry. We varied (a) whether the adjunct questions required the learners to summarize (low complexity) or generate inferences on the basis of provided information (high complexity) and (b) whether the adjunct questions were implemented in a closed-book style that required learners to engage in retrieval or in an open-book style that did not require learners to engage in retrieval while responding to the questions. Afterwards, all learners took either an immediate or a delayed criterion test. We found that the effect of incorporating retrieval depended on the complexity of the adjunct questions; the net benefit of incorporating retrieval was higher for the low complexity ones.     

论绘画与设计的异同

绘画与设计同源异流，相辅相成；二者在创作目的、同社会的关联以及制约性等方面迥然不同。他们各自在人类社会中发挥着不可替代的作用。     

言语行为理解和翻译

言语行为是语用学的理论,它对翻译有很强的指导作用,为翻译研究提供了新的视角,本文作者试着从对Austin言语行为的理解和对Searle的间接言语行为的理解两个角度来探讨翻译行为,希望译文读者在阅读时能够得到与原文读者相似的感受,这就要求译者在翻译的过程中,不仅能理解原文的字面意义,还要能推断出原作者的真正意图。实践表明,Austin的言语行为三分说和Searle的间接言语行为理论在翻译中有着广泛的应用。     

学科课程的合理性理解与变革

学科课程是课程理论和实践的核心,既是课程理论和实践诸多问题的生发点,也是课程改革的立足点。但在当前课程实践中,一些教育工作者逐渐对学科课程存在的必要性产生了怀疑,忽略甚至放弃了对学科课程的深化研究。追寻学科课程发展的历史,澄清关于学科课程的相关争议,理解知识与经验的关系,剖析学科课程面临的现实困境,揭示了学科课程存在的历史必然性与现实合理性,为学科课程的存在给予了一定的理论阐明。     

当前我国职业教育的形势和主要任务

各位理事、同志们: 今天,中国职业技术教育学会第二届理事会第三次会议暨2004年学术年会在这里隆重召开,我代表吴启迪副部长,代表教育部职成教司向大会的召开表示热烈的祝贺.     

徐志摩诗歌与陆机文论的契合

徐志摩的诗作情动于衷,词采华妙,风骨毕现,恰如陆机在《文赋》所提出的“诗缘情而绮靡”而又不乏“质理”。这种貌似偶然实则必然的契合,极大地显示了中国古代文学在中国现代作家的意识与潜意识之中的渗透。     

文学创作与翻译之异同

学创作与翻译，乍看属不同学科，因为两有不同的化、语言背景。但是，创作与再创作之间，则存在着极深的内在联系。本通过介绍学创作与学翻译的异同，主旨在说明只有相互借鉴，才能相得益彰。     

The performance of young deaf children in spatial and temporal number tasks

Deaf children tend to fall behind in mathematics at school. This problem may be a direct result of particular experiences in the classroom; for example, deaf children may find it hard to follow teachers' presentations of basic, but nevertheless quite abstract, mathematical ideas. Another possibility is that the problem starts before school: They may either be worse than hearing children at early, nonlinguistic number representations, they may be behind in learning the culturally transmitted number string, or both. This may result in deaf children failing to develop informal problem-solving strategies, which prepare most children for the more formal learning of number and arithmetic that they will have to do at school. We compared 3- and 4-year-old deaf and hearing children's ability to remember and to reproduce the number of items in a set of objects. In one condition, we presented all the items together in a spatial array; in another, we presented them one at a time in a temporal sequence. Deaf children performed as well as the hearing children in the temporal tasks, but outperformed their hearing counterparts in the spatial task. These results suggest that preschool deaf children's number representation is at least as advanced as that of hearing children, and that they are actually better than hearing children at representing the number of objects in spatial arrays. We conclude that deaf children's difficulties with mathematical learning are not a consequence of a delay in number representation. We also conclude that deaf children should benefit from mathematical instruction that emphasizes spatial representation.     

The limits of narratives in understanding teacher thinking

Researchers have argued that narrative provides insight into teachers' thinking and a model for the storage of knowledge about teaching. Concurrently, however, there are numerous cautions about using narratives as data sources. The present study addresses two problems: the limits of narrative as a data source and the feasibility of productively analyzing narratives. It also addresses the question of whether teachers actually store information as narratives. For the study, 23 deaf or hearing teachers of the Deaf participating in a project on integrating technology into teaching were interviewed about their experiences as teachers in general and in using technology in the classroom in particular. They rarely generated stories spontaneously. Rather, responses were related to the nature of the stimulus question. For example, when asked about their "worst class," teachers did not provide complete narratives but instead gave responses containing problems without resolutions. The study results suggest that teachers do not store information about teaching as narratives, but nonetheless can expertly construct narratives when given the right opportunity.     

The use of language in understanding subject matter

Empirical results show that frequently the meaning of expressions used by students in expressing their understanding of subject matter does not correspond to the meaning of those expressions in the subject matter theory that the students are expected to learn. There is also often a lack of identity of meaning between the same students’ use of the same expression from one use of the expression to another, in very similar contexts. The context gives a specific meaning to any expression. This variation in context and meaning is very central to the phenomena of teaching and learning. In educational research there is a need to differentiate between specific meanings expressed in conceptualizing subject matter, on the one hand, and concepts and meanings seen as parts of cognitive systems and social languages, on the other. The contextual character of the use of language is crucial to the understanding of teaching and learning and needs to be more carefully considered. The article is a discussion of the problem of varying meanings of language expressions in relation to major traditions of research, focusing on meanings and concepts within the field of learning and teaching.