Authoring Data Stories in a Media Makerspace: Adolescents Developing Critical Data Literacies

This article centers sociocultural and sociopolitical considerations of how young people understand, represent, and use data by presenting findings from a social design research study about how students in a public urban high school authored “data stories” using personal data they curated, collected, and visualized. The study contributes to theoretical understandings of critical data literacies by considering the experiences and practices of adolescents enrolled in a required media arts class as they produced data visualizations drawn from their everyday lives. Findings center on two aspects of critical data literacies youth developed—understanding themselves as people capable of using data for multiple purposes and understanding data as socially situated resources for meaning-making. This study foregrounds the importance of positioning youth as authors and architects of data, making central youth perspectives in understanding the role of data in young people’s digitally connected lives and highlighting the importance of expanding what “counts” as data. It also suggests the importance of creating infrastructure to support the development of culturally relevant data practices that highlight the social, cultural, and political uses of data and its racialized dimensions.     

Second and fourth graders' copying ability: from graphical to linguistic processing

Particularly in primary school, good performance on copy tasks is an important working technique. With respect to writing skills, copying is a very basic process on which more complex writing abilities are based. We studied the copying ability of second and fourth graders across four types of symbols which vary with respect to their semantic and phonological characteristics: arbitrary graphical objects, unpronounceable consonant strings, numerals and meaningful text. Results show, in terms of average copying speed, significant effects of both factors: fourth graders performed generally faster than second graders, and for both class levels, the number of copied characters per time decreased from meaningful text to graphical objects, all pair-wise contrasts between symbol types being statistically significant. Moreover, a significant interaction shows that fourth graders improved more when copying symbols that form pronounceable chunks, namely meaningful text and numerical strings. This indicates an increasing role of phonological (and probably also semantic) processes involved in copying across primary school.     

Ways in which Governing Bodies Contribute to School Improvement: Findings from a pilot project

ABSTRACT

Legislation over the last 10 years has increased considerably the responsibilities of school governors but there has been little research into their role in bringing about school improvement. This paper reports upon a pilot project designed to set the parameters and criteria for a more detailed and extensive study into this area. Based upon the data gathered, it is possible to suggest some ways in which governing bodies can enhance the conditions for improvement.     

Living in a world different from the one in which we think

ABSTRACT

The rise of populist nationalism in many parts of the world poses urgent challenges for higher education institutions. Normally zones of liberal values and reasoned argument as well as sources of expert information, constructive criticism and useful advice for societies, universities face increasing uncertainty as a result of political and popular attack in a wide range of countries. Doing nothing is probably not an option. The challenge facing higher education broadly is to understand and to respond effectively to a geopolitical and social reality that is qualitatively new and threatening. Effective response will require a degree of self-examination, a re-articulation of purpose and a reconfiguration of action across multiple domains of university life.     

Teaching approaches which support inclusive education: a connective pedagogy

In this article, Jenny Corbett, a Reader in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, considers the factors which can help to support effective inclusive learning. She uses her reading of the growing body of literature on inclusion in order to reflect upon her own enquiries into practice at an inclusive primary school in London. Drawing upon the three key elements in the Index for Inclusion , she presents findings about school culture, school policy and school practice. Her conclusions will help policy-makers and practitioners to reflect upon the relationships between effectiveness and inclusivity.     

人类中心主义:一个不可超越的价值命题

从实践唯物主义观点看,"人类中心主义"是基于人类本性的一种本能的实践态度,是人类实践活动所固有的一种价值趋向,是从哲学价值论的层面断言人类是自己所建构起来的那个应然的价值世界的中心,人类在这个世界中处于主体地位。传统人类中心主义是一种非科学形态的价值现,必须重新加以扬弃和解构;批判地继承其合理成分,建构科学形态的"现代人类中心主义",具有重大的理论和实践意义。     

Teachers as researchers in a major research project: Experience of input and output

Teachers have long participated in collaborative research. However, they have generally had direct stakes in the outcomes. Teachers in the Early Professional Learning (EPL) Project used their insider status to gather data not directly related to their own practice. Lessons for integrating a group of teacher–researchers into a major project are discussed. Some of these are practical, but also cover their unexpectedly experienced initial isolation within the project team, that has relevance for both forming and theorising communities of enquiry. An outline for a new concept of teacher–researcher begins to emerge that may influence the direction of educational research.     

The use of a model to derive interventions which might reduce drop-out from distance education courses

The starting point for this paper is a model of student progress and drop-out from distance education courses. The model includes components of background characteristics, motivation, academic environment, and the family, work and social environment. The model allows for the interaction of variables and the influence of one component of the model on another. The author then derives from the model a series of recommendations as to the ways in which distance education courses might be formatted so as to reduce student drop-out. Ways of enhancing intrinsic motivation are discussed. A case is put for focussing learning skills initiatives towards reorientating student conceptions of knowledge. Strategies for improving collective affiliation are described, and the employment of local support staff is advocated.     

"村农分开"农村管理体制设想

村级组织的职能二重性和目标多元化违背了市场经济内在要求,成为我国农业生产经营中诸多困扰的根源。"村农分开"是根据农业市场化要求而设计的、将村级组织的公共事务管理职能和集体财产所有者代表职能分开行使的新型农村管理体制。     

The effects of first programming language on college students’ computing attitude and achievement: a comparison of graphical and textual languages

Background and Context: The relationship between novices’ first programming language and their future achievement has drawn increasing interest owing to recent efforts to expand K–12 computing education. This article contributes to this topic by analyzing data from a retrospective study of more than 10,000 undergraduates enrolled in introductory computer science courses at 118 U.S. institutions of higher education.

Objective: We explored the relationship between students’ first programming languages and both their final grades in an introductory computer science course and their attitudes about programming.

Method: Multiple matching techniques compared those whose first language was graphical (e.g., Scratch), textual (e.g., Java), or absent prior to college.

Findings: Having any prior programming experience had positive effects on both attitudes about programming and grades in introductory computer science courses. Importantly, students whose first language was graphical had higher grades than did students whose first language was textual, when the languages were introduced in or before early adolescent years.

Implications: Learning any computer language is better than learning none. If programming is to be taught to students before early adolescence, it is advised to start with a graphical language. Future work should investigate the transition between different types of programming languages.     

The Effect of a Package of Some Curricular Strategies on the Study Habits of Rural Primary School Students: a year long study

An investigation was undertaken to study the composite effect of a package of certain curricular strategies on some cognitive and non‐cognitive characteristics of rural primary school students. The present article lists the results pertaining to one variable, i.e. study habits. The sample consisted of three groups of class V students. One group was taught using the package programme while the other two were given instruction through their regular teachers found to teach without the effective use of selected curricular strategies. The results indicated that the experimental group exhibited a significantly increased level of study habits in comparison to control group I and control group II while the two control groups exhibited an equal level of study habits. Further, the experimental and control group I exhibited a significantly increased level of study habits at the end of the academic session as compared to the beginning of the session whereas there was no significant change in the level of study habits of control group II.     

Psychometric Properties of the Full and Short Versions of the Quality of Life Instrument Package: Results from the Ontario province-wide study

Results that bear upon the psychometric properties of the Quality of Life Instrument Package are presented. The reliability and validity of quality of life data from a probability sample of 500 persons with developmental disabilities in Ontario were assessed. The data indicate that most of the instruments found in the package met acceptable psychometric standards. In some cases, specific domain scores need to be interpreted with caution. The Full Version of the instrument seems appropriate for ongoing practical program planning with clients. The Short Version seems especially appropriate for evaluation and monitoring purposes.     

Discourse communities: A framework from which to consider professional development for rural teachers of science and mathematics

This paper explores aspects of professional development for teachers of science and mathematics in schools in rural Australia. The study identified a range of issues including tensions between government, school and individual professional learning priorities and their respective responsibilities; the shaping of professional development by rurality; and issues of generic versus subject-specific professional learning. The paper will focus on the needs of teachers, particularly secondary teachers, for subject-specific professional development and the capacity of different professional development approaches for satisfying these needs. The notion of discourse communities is proposed as a framework for considering this issue.     

Effectiveness of computerised spelling training in children with language impairments: a comparison of modified and unmodified speech input

This study evaluated a computerised program for training spelling in 8‐ to 13‐year‐olds with receptive language impairments. The training program involved children typing words corresponding to pictured items whose names were spoken. If the child made an error or requested help, the program gave phonological and orthographic cues to build up the word's spelling. Eleven children received this training with ordinary speech, and eleven had the same program but with speech modified to lengthen and amplify dynamic portions of the signal. Nine children were in an untrained control group. Trained children completed between 6 and 29 training sessions each of 15 minutes, at a rate of 3 to 5 sessions per week, with an average of over 1000 trials. Children were assessed before and after training. Trained children learned an average of 1.4 novel spellings per session. The trend was for children presented with modified speech to do less well than those trained with ordinary speech, regardless of whether they had auditory temporal processing impairments. Trained groups did not differ from the untrained control group in terms of gains made on standardised tests of spelling or word and nonword reading. This study confirms the difficulty of training literacy skills in children with severe language impairments. Individual words may be learned, but more general knowledge of rule‐based phonological skills is harder to acquire.     

Unpredicted food produces a mode of behavior that affects rats’ subsequent reactions to a conditioned stimulus: A behavior-system approach to “context blocking”

The present experiments explored the relation between a mode of behavior produced by unpredicted presentations of an unconditioned stimulus (US) and subsequent interference with responding to a conditioned stimulus (CS) (the context-blocking effect). The US was food, the CS was a moving ball bearing, and the subjects were rats. The typical response to a moving bearing that predicts food is predatory interaction, and the behaviors that developed under unpredicted US presentations involved focused search and waiting oriented to the food tray. Experiment 1 manipulated the number of unpredicted food presentations and showed that the reduction in subsequent bearing contacts was more clearly related to the occurrence of initial food-tray behavior than to the number of prior food presentations. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated the conditioning of food-tray behavior while holding constant the number of prior food presentations, and again showed a strong inverse relationship between initial food-tray behavior and ball-bearing contact. The latter experiments also indicated that the locus of interference with bearing-directed behavior was neither primarily central (associative or attentional) nor peripheral (motor interference), but resulted from the incompatibility of two modes of food-getting behavior, a more general predatory search mode versus a mode of focal search and waiting. A behavior-system account of these results does not preclude an associative basis for context-blocking effects, but it argues that such effects may occur at several levels and must function within appetitive structures underlying the animal’s food-getting behavior.     

旁路节流调速实验曲线下凹的原因分析

本从理论上分析了在QCS003B液压实验台上所进行的旁路节流调速实验曲线下凹的原因,实践证明分析是正确的,其结论具有实际意义。     

Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of linguistic input support to a prelingually deaf child with cued speech: A case study

This paper studies the linguistic input attended by a deaf child exposed to cued speech (CS) in the final part of her prelinguistic period (18-24 months). Subjects are the child, her mother, and her therapist. Analyses have provided data about the quantity of input directed to the child (oral input, more than 1,000 words per half-an-hour session; cued ratio, more than 60% of oral input; and attended ratio, more than 55% of oral input), its linguistic quality (lexical variety, grammatical complexity, etc.), and other properties of interaction (child attention and use of spontaneous gestures). Results show that both adults provided a rich linguistic input to the child and that the child attended most of the input that the adults cued. These results might explain the positive linguistic development of children exposed early to CS.