Developmental skills of advantaged and disadvantaged children on perceptual tasks

The Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test (BVMGT), Rutgers Drawing Test (RDT), Memory-for-Designs (M-F-D), a visuo-spatial memory test (Bannatyne, 1968), and selected motor tasks (Bannatyne, 1965) were administered to 155 advantaged and disadvantaged children. First- and second-grade advantaged children were superior on all of the visual-motor, visual-motor memory, and visual memory, and visual memory tasks. On the motor tasks, first-grade advantaged children were superior on Gross Rhythm (p < .01), and Throws (p < .01). Second-grade advantaged children were superior on Crosses (p < .01), and Throws (p < .01). Disadvantaged first- and second-graders, however, were superior on Touchings (p < .01). The results are discussed in terms of differential perceptual-motor and motor growth and the need to structure educational experience that will contribute to this growth.     

培养高职卫生院校学生基本实验技能的方法

高职的教学中,应加强实验技能的培养,提高他们的实验能力、实践能力,为培养造就高素质的医护人才打下坚实基础。具体培养学生的实验技能的方法。     

A comparison of social skills in Turkish children with visual impairments,children with intellectual impairments and typically developing children

The purpose of this study was to compare the social skills of five groups of children: children with visual impairments attending inclusive education schools, children with visual impairments attending schools for the blind, children with intellectual impairments attending inclusive education schools, children with intellectual impairments attending segregated special education schools, and typically developing children. A hundred and sixty-nine children aged from 7 to 12 participated in the study. The children's social skills were rated by their teachers on the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) – Turkish Form. The results suggested significant group differences between children attending inclusive education schools and children attending special education schools. Analysis of the findings indicated that children with visual impairments and children with intellectual impairments had poorer social skills than typically developing children; however children with visual impairments and children with intellectual impairments attending inclusive education schools had higher social skills than children attending segregated special education schools. The findings of the study were discussed and suggestions for future research were provided.     

加强医学生机能学基本实验技能的训练及体会

通过对机能学基本实验技能的强化训练和考评,大大提高了医学生的动手操作能力,规范了学生的实验操作技能,对学生的实验研究能力奠定了坚实的基础,有力地保证了相关实验的顺利开展。     

Preparing novice teachers to develop basic reading and spelling skills in children

This study examined the word-structure knowledge of novice teachers and the progress of children tutored by a subgroup of the teachers. Teachers’ word-structure knowledge was assessed using three tasks: graphophonemic segmentation, classification of pseudowords by syllable type, and classification of real words as phonetically regular or irregular. Tutored children were assessed on several measures of basic reading and spelling skills. Novice teachers who received word-structure instruction outperformed a comparison group of teachers in word-structure knowledge at post-test. Tutored children improved significantly from pre-test to post-test on all assessments. Teachers’ post-test knowledge on the graphophonemic segmentation and irregular words tasks correlated significantly with tutored children’s progress in decoding phonetically regular words; error analyses indicated links between teachers’ patterns of word-structure knowledge and children’s patterns of decoding progress. The study suggests that word-structure knowledge is important to effective teaching of word decoding and underscores the need to include this information in teacher preparation.     

略谈史学工作者的两个基本任务

在新千年到来之际,史学工作者面临着更高的要求和更新的挑战.但求真与实现史学的社会效益仍是他们的基本任务.     

浅谈水粉画的基本功

水粉画作为色彩画的一种形式,为广大的艺术爱好者和绘画学习者所采用,并创造了许多优秀的作品。同时,由于水粉画工具简便、易于携带、便于修改的特性,许多高职院校及美术院校把水粉画作为色彩训练和入学考试的主要内容之一。学好水粉画必须要有扎实的素描功底、基本技法理论以及长期、反复的实践练习。     

Relations between home numeracy experiences and basic calculation skills of children with and without specific language impairment

The present study examined the relations between home numeracy experiences (i.e., parent–child numeracy activities and parents’ numeracy expectations) and basic calculation skills (i.e., addition and subtraction) of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and their peers with Normal Language Achievement (NLA), while taking into account their cognitive and linguistic capacities. Fifty children with SLI and 100 children with NLA were tested on cognitive, linguistic, and basic calculation skills, and their parents filled in questionnaires on home numeracy activities and numeracy expectations. The results showed parents of children with SLI report engaging in fewer numeracy-related activities and have lower numeracy expectations for their children than parents of children with NLA. Furthermore, parent–child numeracy activities were more strongly associated with addition and subtraction for children with SLI. It is thus especially important that parents of children with SLI are made aware of their important role in the development of their child's basic calculation skills.     

The acquisition of basic multiplication skills

Children learning the basic multiplications, use knowledge which they acquired in former stages. Certain additions, for instance the doubles, known by heart, can support the learning process for multiplication. It makes a great difference in cognitive achievement whether children know multiplication facts by heart or whether they are able to figure out basic multiplications. If education supports the development of informal thinking strategies, children become so skilled at this, that the border between figuring out and knowing by heart will gradually disappear. By using informal strategies children will acquire a flexible mental structure of multiplication facts instead of a collection of rules.     

Verbal skills in children with ADHD

The present study examined whether ADHD children exhibit low verbal IQ (VIQ) and distinguishable test profile on the Verbal comprehension (VC) and Freedom from distractibility (FFD) factors, and whether gender influences their verbal abilities. At the Laboratory of Neuropsychology of the Department of Special Education, University of Thessaly, WISC‐III verbal scales were administered to 69 ADHD children (50 boys and 19 girls) and controls who were matched for age and sex. Mean scores for all WISC‐III verbal scales, VIQ, VC and FFD of ADHD children were significantly lower than controls. FFD was found lower than VC and it correlated statistically significantly with VC in ADHD children. No gender differences were found among ADHD children.     

新“双基”论

基本知识和基本技能是决定人发展的重要基础,而"爱心"和良好的习惯却是决定人发展的根本因素。"爱心"的形成既受自身遗传物质因素的影响,也受着家庭、社会、学校等多方面因素的影响,但教育的影响却是具有主导的作用。良好习惯的培养是一个复杂的过程,既需要充分认识到其重要性,又必须坚持不懈,直到成功。     

Long-term retention of basic mathematical knowledge and skills with engineering students

This study focuses on the long-term retention of basic mathematical techniques in a first-year calculus course, involving a sample group of engineering students at the University of Pretoria. The study investigates which and how much of the basic mathematical knowledge and rote skills acquired in the first year of study is retained after a further two years of study. A quantitative and qualitative investigations show that, in general, there is a significant decline in performance over a two-year period. There are, however, areas in which students still performed reasonably well after the elapsed period or even showed improvement. The research is of diagnostic value in that it assists course designers in determining what basic mathematical skills and knowledge are retained after a period of two years in their teaching approach to and emphasis of different topics.     

Teacher efficacy of English teachers in urban and suburban schools

To investigate the context-related teacher efficacy (TE) of experienced teachers in Taiwan, this study examined elementary English teachers more than a decade after a major educational reform to determine whether their TE levels were affected by school location (e.g. urban vs. suburban). The 438 responses to the adapted Teacher Efficacy Scale revealed stronger efficacy regarding the teachers’ personal ability to teach less-motivated students and less confidence regarding the management of school- and government-related concerns. However, school settings did not show a significant effect on the efficacy levels of experienced English teachers. Although caution must be practiced in interpreting results related to school settings and TE, the findings from the current study are generalizable to contexts in which English is spoken as a foreign language. The results also urge much caution when making interpretation on results relating to school settings and TE.     

Impaired performance of children with dyslexia on a range of cerebellar tasks

It is now thought that the cerebellum is involved in the acquisition of “language dexterity” in addition to its established role in motor skill acquisition and execution. Mild cerebellar impairment, therefore, provides a possible explanation of a range of problems shown by children with dyslexia. The authors have established suggestive evidence in support of this hypothesis in tests of balance and of time estimation. In a further test of the hypothesis, a battery of clinical tests for cerebellar impairment, including tests of muscle tone and of coordination, was administered to matched groups of children with dyslexia and control children aged 10, 14, and 18 years (55 subjects in all). The children with dyslexia showed highly significant impairments on all the cerebellar tests, and significant impairment compared even with reading age controls on 11 of the 14 tasks. Deficits on the majority of tests were among the largest found in our research program. The findings, therefore, provide further intriguing evidence of cerebellar impairment in dyslexia. We speculate that the well-established phonological deficits in dyslexia may arise initially from inefficient articulatory control attributable to cerebellar impairment.     

The mathematics skills of children with reading difficulties

Although many children with reading difficulty (RD) are reported to struggle with mathematics, little research has empirically investigated whether this is the case for different types of RD. This study examined the mathematics skills of third graders with one of two types of RD: dyslexia (n = 18) or specific reading comprehension difficulty (n = 22), as contrasted to a comparison group (n = 247). Children's performance on arithmetic fact fluency, operations, and applied problems was assessed using standardized measures. The results indicated that children with dyslexia experienced particular difficulty with arithmetic fact fluency and operations: they were 5.60 times and 8.54 times more likely than other children to experience deficits in fact fluency and operations, respectively. Our findings related to arithmetic fact fluency were more consistent with domain-general explanations of the co-morbidity between RD and mathematics difficulty, whereas our findings related to operations were more consistent with domain-specific accounts.