Helping children learn about disabilities: Part II

Cary A. Buzzelli is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Nancy File is a doctoral student in the Department of Child Development and Family Studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.     

Secondary school students' use of computers at home

This article presents the results from a survey of students in Year 9 in secondary schools in England (ie, aged about 14 years) which investigated access to computers at home, frequency and duration of use, the applications used and students' reasons for using a computer at home. Responses showed that the majority of students had access to a computer, although few had one for their sole use. The most widely used applications were games/adventures and word processors. There were significant gender differences in access to computers at home, frequency of using computers and the applications that students spent most time using.     

Primary pupils' use of information and communication technologies at school and home

Based on survey data from 612 pupils in five English primary schools, this paper investigates children's engagement with information and communication technologies (ICTs) inside and outside the school context. Analysis of the data shows pupils' engagements with ICTs to be often perfunctory and unspectacular, especially within the school setting, where the influence of year group and school attended are prominent. Whilst the majority of children felt that ICT use led to gains in learning, the paper discusses how there was a strong sense of educational uses of ICTs being constrained by the nature of the schools within which 'educational' use was largely framed and often situated. The paper concludes by suggesting possible changes to ICT provision in primary schools, most notably relaxing school restrictions regarding Internet access and developing meaningful dialogues with pupils about future forms of educational ICT use.     

How children learn to use language

There have been many theories about how children learn to use language. Professor Narasimhan proposed a theory of child language acquisition based on behavioural pragmatics. In this article we present a simplified version of his theories about how children learn to communicate, to describe, manipulate and explore the world around them from exposure to variety of language utterances and non-verbal inputs such as gestures and pointing. We also discuss the method he used to substantiate his ideas, and briefly present a computational model of the ideas arising from his work. Raman Chandrasekar has been with Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA. since 1998. His current research interests are at the intersection of information retrieval, natural language processing and machine learning. He received his PhD from TIFR, Bombay.     

Children at the Dawn of the Internet: Exploratory research on current and potential use at home and in school

Use of the Internet in Italy is in its early stages. Social representation and public discourse spread by mass media have emphasised the risks for children, at the expense of its opportunities. Such concerns are today largely hypothetical. This paper presents the initial results of an exploratory research project, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches, aimed at investigating the use of the Internet by children in a number of areas, mainly within the family and at school. The study found that children using the Internet as pioneers at home belong to a privileged elite, provided by the family with appropriate instruments and adequate technical and cultural resources. Far from being abandoned to the Internet, such children are supervised and led by parents-indeed often too much, as they are left little room to explore cyberspace independently. The establishment of the Internet in schools is rapid, but faces structural inadequacies while the use made of it is not always in keeping with its particular characteristics. L'emploi d'Internet en Italie se trouve encore dans sa phase initiale. Une analyse menée sur le plan social et le débat public renforcépar les mass media ont révélél'existence de risques pour les enfants au détriment des potentiels offerts par l'Internet. Actuellement nous n'en sommes qu'au stade d'hypothèses. Cet article présente les premiers résultats d'un projet de recherche dont l'objectif est d'étudier l'usage que font les enfants d'Internet, principalement dans les milieux de la famille et de l'école, et ce aussi bien d'un point de vue qualitatif que quantitatif. Cette étude a révéléque les enfants qui naviguent en pionniers sur Internet à la maison, appartiennent à la catégorie des privilégiés dotés, par les familles, d'instruments opportuns mais aussi de ressources techniques et culturelles. En effet ces enfants sont loin d'être abandonnés sur le réseau, mais bien guidés et contrôlés par leurs parents, parfois même d'une façon excessive puisqu'on ne leur laisse guère la possibilitéd'explorer de façon autonome le cyberespace. La diffusion d'Internet dans les écoles est assez rapide malgré le manque de structures, alors que l'usage que l'on en fait ne correspond pas toujours à ses caractéristiques particulières. El uso de Internet en Italia se encuentra actualmente en una fase inicial. El análisis del plano social y el debate público mantenido por los medios de comunicación, han puesto en evidencia posibles riesgos para los niños, en detrimento de las oportunidades que se ofrecen. En la actualidad se trata de preocupaciones hipotéticas. Este artículo presenta los primeros resultados de un proyecto de investigación realizado con el objetivo de estudiar el uso de Internet por parte de los niños principalmente en el ámbito de la familia y de la escuela, utilizando un doble enfoque cualitativo y cuantitativo. El estudio ha puesto en evidencia que los niños que utilizan Internet como pioneros en casa pertenecen a una categoría privilegiada, dotada de instrumentos apropriados asícomo de adecuados recursos técnicos y culturales. A estos niños no sólo no se les deja abandonados en la red, sino que reciben seguimiento y supervisión constante de los padres, a menudo en modo excesivo, en la medida que se les dejan pocas oportunidades para explorar por ellos mismos el ciberespacio. Si bien la difusión de Internet en las escuelas se produce con gran rapidez a pesar de las carencias estructurales, el uso que se hace de Internet no siempre toma en cuenta las posibilidades que éste ofrece. Die Benutzung von Internet in Italien befindet sich in seiner Anfangsphase. Die von den Medien übermittelte soziale Darstellung und öffentliche Auseinandersetzung hat die Risiken für Kinder hervorgehoben, auf Kosten seiner Möglichkeiten. Solche Bedenken sind heutzutage grösstenteils hypothetisch. Diese Studie enthält die ersten Ergebnisse eines untersuchenden Forschungsprojektes, dessen Ziel darin besteht, die Benutzung von Internet durch Kinder auf verschiedenen Gebieten zu untersuchen, hauptsächlich innnerhalb der Familie und in der Schule, mit einem sowie quantitativen als auch qualitativen Ansatz. Diese Untersuchung stellte fest, dass Kinder, die als Pioniere zu Hause Internet benutzt haben, zu einer ausgewählten Elite gehören, die von der Familie durch passende Instrumente und angemessene technische und kulturelle Mitteln unterstützt wurden. Auch wenn sie nicht dem Netz völlig überlassen werden, werden diese Kinder doch zu sehr von ihren Eltern überwacht und geleitet, so dass ihnen wenig Zeit bleibt unabhängig den Cyberspace auf eigene Faust zu erkundigen. Die Verbreitung von Internet in den Schulen geht ziemlich schnell vor sich an, trifft jedoch auf strukturelle Schwierigkeiten wobei sein Gebrauch nicht immer den spezifischen Eigenschaften entspricht.     

Helping students learn ‘how to learn’ from texts: Towards an ITS for developing metacognition

Intelligent tutoring systems have most frequently concentrated on imparting domain knowledge. However, there is another important aspect to learning. This is the meta level knowledge abouthow to learn a domain. Metacognition is a very important feature of learning. It consists of being aware of and regulating one's own cognitions.Good students have full control over their learning and see it as a planful and purposive activity. They reflect on their learning activities, are aware of a variety of strategies, and they oversee and monitor the application of these strategies, i.e. they are proficient in metacognitive activities. This paper describes a computer based system that helps students to learn these important self regulation skills. Students work with the system in pairs, and they can use it with any text from which they wish to learn. Apart from being used as a study aid, the system is being used as a tool to gather data about students learning processes.     

中小学生攻击行为干预研究的回顾与探索

根据攻击行为的两种发展轨迹,并通过总结国内外6～18岁儿童攻击行为的干预研究,本文从矫正和预防两个角度,试图探索适用于我国中小学生攻击行为的干预模式。     

Short-term follow-up of children at risk: comparison of the quality of life of children removed from home and children remaining at home

OBJECTIVE: To follow up the well-being of children at risk after a decision on their removal was made. METHOD: Social workers assessed the quality of life (QOL) of three groups of children (n = 92): children they had decided to keep at home, children whom they had removed to alternative care, and children who remained at home despite the decision to remove them. This is a prospective study, in which assessments were made at two points of time: first when the workers began to consider whether or not to remove the child, and again 6 months later. RESULTS: The findings show that even though the QOL of the children in the three groups was similarly low at the first measure, it differed in the second. The QOL of the children who were removed from home had improved, that of the children who remained at home in accord with the workers' decisions remained roughly the same, and that of the children for whom the decision to remove was not implemented declined. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that children at risk may fare better in terms of QOL in alternative placement than at home, and highlight the high price paid by children for whom a decision to remove them from home is not implemented. Further research, however, is required, taking into consideration the interventions and services that the children and their families received in the different settings.     

Toward implementing distributed scaffolding: Helping students learn science from design

In this article, we present two studies that helped us understand the kinds of support that students need to learn science successfully from design activities. Both were enacted in the context of an approach to learning science from design called learning by design (LBD). In our first study, we designed and integrated a paper‐and‐pencil scaffolding tool, the design diary, into an LBD unit to support students' design‐related activities. We learned two important lessons from the first study. First, we refined our understanding of the processes involved in designing and the ways we might present those processes to students. Second, and more important, we observed that in the dynamic, complex environment of the classroom, not all of the scaffolding could be provided with any one tool or agent. We found that students need multiple forms of support and multiple learning opportunities to learn science successfully from design activities. In our next study, we provided additional support through an organized system of tools and agents. Our analysis of data from the second study leads us to believe that supporting multiple students in a classroom requires us to rethink the notion of scaffolding as it applied to groups of learners in a classroom. We put forth the notion of distributed scaffolding as an approach to supporting hands‐on inquiry learning in a classroom. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 185–217, 2005