Play and learning for the special child

Marcy Guddemi teaches Early Childhood Education at the University of South Florida, College of Education, Tampa, FL.     

婚恋主题的南戏及其爱情观

南戏又名“戏文”,是在说唱文艺和民间歌舞的影响下,逐渐形成的一种戏曲形式。在南戏的题材内容中,反映婚恋内容的剧本数量颇多,主要有反映书生负心而造成悲剧婚姻和反映追求爱情婚姻自由两种类型。同时在南戏婚姻爱情剧中,人们已从传统的婚姻爱情现中逐步解脱出来,对婚姻爱情有了一种全新的爱情观。     

Play and gender in Ontario kindergarten classrooms: implications for literacy learning

Research has highlighted the importance of early literacy development. In light of this, there has been a growing concern around boys’ underachievement on language and literacy assessments. Given the recent mandate for play-based learning in Ontario kindergartens, this paper examines children's literacy integration during play from a gender perspective. An analysis of 380 minutes of children's play revealed that girls and boys often played separately across the 12 kindergarten classrooms in this study. Importantly, the centres at which girls and boys played offered different literacy support. Our findings showed that gender played a salient role in children's play choices affecting the types of academic skills children practiced in their play. In this paper, we shed light on the need for gender awareness and sensitivity in policy mandates and teacher practice.     

Investigating agentive urban learning: an assembly of situated experiences for sustainable futures

ABSTRACT

In this article we explore the dynamic between the pedagogical and the urban, attending to ‘agentive urban learning’. By this we mean processes by which young people build agency in the urban context, in using the resources of the city to develop their own agency, and of developing agency to act within the city. By agency, we refer to the capacity to imagine and act to create individual and collective futures. Our interest is how young people develop such agentive urban learning themselves and how it might be enhanced pedagogically at school and university. Three case studies explore different facets—the first how young people themselves develop this agency in situated settings and the tools that they use to reflect upon the future; the second how digital tools might be used to enhance students’ understanding of the city as a site of change, in this instance, climate change; and the third how such agency might be developed collectively in partnership with other city dwellers. We conclude that a diversity of students’ engagement in urban contexts of learning offers ways from which to further investigate how identity, setting, and stakeholder relationships matter as part of potentially sustainable agentive learning futures.     

Assessing collaborative learning: big data,analytics and university futures

Assessment in higher education has focused on the performance of individual students. This focus has been a practical as well as an epistemic one: methods of assessment are constrained by the technology of the day, and in the past they required the completion by individuals under controlled conditions of set-piece academic exercises. Recent advances in learning analytics, drawing upon vast sets of digitally stored student activity data, open new practical and epistemic possibilities for assessment, and carry the potential to transform higher education. It is becoming practicable to assess the individual and collective performance of team members working on complex projects that closely simulate the professional contexts that graduates will encounter. In addition to academic knowledge, this authentic assessment can include a diverse range of personal qualities and dispositions that are key to the computer-supported cooperative working of professionals in the knowledge economy. This paper explores the implications of such opportunities for the purpose and practices of assessment in higher education, as universities adapt their institutional missions to address twenty-first century needs. The paper concludes with a strong recommendation for university leaders to deploy analytics to support and evaluate the collaborative learning of students working in realistic contexts.     

The interrupted learner: How distractions during live and video lectures influence learning outcomes

New instructional technologies have been increasingly incorporated into the medical school learning environment, including lecture video recordings as a substitute for live lecture attendance. The literature presents varying conclusions regarding how this alternative experience impacts students' academic success. Previously, a multi‐year study of the first‐year medical histology component at the University of Michigan found that live lecture attendance was positively correlated with learning success, while lecture video use was negatively correlated. Here, three cohorts of first‐year medical students (N = 439 respondents, 86.6% response rate) were surveyed in greater detail regarding lecture attendance and video usage, focusing on study behaviors that may influence histology learning outcomes. Students who reported always attending lectures or viewing lecture videos had higher average histology scores than students who employed an inconsistent strategy (i.e., mixing live attendance and video lectures). Several behaviors were negatively associated with histology performance. Students who engaged in “non‐lecture activities” (e.g., social media use), students who reported being interrupted while watching the lecture video, or feeling sleepy/losing focus had lower scores than their counterparts not engaging in these behaviors. This study suggests that interruptions and distractions during medical learning activities—whether live or recorded—can have an important impact on learning outcomes. Anat Sci Educ 11: 366–376. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

Shared learning: the developing practice of integration for children with severe learning difficulties

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the development of partial integration for children with severe learning difficulties as part of their development and preparation for societal integration. It considers the needs of all children for education for citizenship and, as such, the time needed for meaningful attitudinal development in mainstream pupils towards children with disabilities. This, it is suggested, is best achieved through carefully planned, positive shared learning experiences, designed to facilitate interaction and collaborative learning between children with SLD and their mainstream peers. The article considers how in the UK the National Curriculum can contribute to this process.     

Play,pictures, and repetition: Mediators in aural prose learning

This study assessed the effects of imposed (picture) and induced (play) imagery on the aural language comprehension of kindergarten children. Eighty children were randomly assigned to two treatment and two control conditions. A one-way analysis of variance indicated no significant differences in recall. It was concluded that further study of mediating conditions was needed across a wide range of skills, abilities, and individual differences. This research was funded in part by a grant from the Auburn University School of Education Research Assistance Program. Drawings included in the article were prepared by John Anglim.     

Play behavior of hearing impaired children: integrated and segregated settings

The free-play behavior of young hearing impaired children in integrated and segregated settings was compared using a multielement baseline design. Two children, aged 3 and 5, were observed using momentary time sampling of their play as they alternated from one setting to the other. Data were collected in ech setting for various categories of play behavior. The categories were derived from the classic play categories of Parten and Smilansky. Results indicate that the children engaged in more socially advanced play in the integrated setting.     

Thematic Fantasy Play: Effects on the perspective-taking ability of preschool children

This study primarily examined the effects of thematic fantasy play on the perspective-taking ability of preschool children. A secondary investigation addressed the effects of play on the spontaneous play behaviour of young children. Based on the pretest-posttest control group design, 54 children (mean age=5.0 years) from two intact classes (n=27) of a private kindergarten were administered measures representing three areas of perceptual, cognitive and affective perspective-taking. Results of analysis of covariance indicated that subjects in the thematic fantasy play condition performed significantly better than the control group on total and perceptual perspective-taking measures (p<.05). In addition, chi-square analysis indicated that changes in spontaneous play was significant for the experimental group (p<.05) Findings were discussed in terms of their practical implications for curriculum design and teacher training, and further research to ascertain the permanency of play effects was recommended.     

Australian Play School: viewing and post-viewing behaviours in young children

Australian Play School is a children’s television programme developed in collaboration with early childhood educators. It is screened free to air across Australia. Two hundred and twenty-four adult carers of young children aged 1–8?years completed an online survey via a link on the Play School website. The survey addressed child behaviours during and after viewing, and adult perceptions about which programme segments were most engaging to the child. Play School elicited a large number and variety of behavioural responses from children during and after viewing. The types of responses elicited suggest that viewing the programme may be beneficial for children’s development and learning. Results were tempered by the age of the child and this, as well as the impact of carer attitudes and carer input during and after viewing, needs to be explored further before results are translated into recommendations for programming and optimal viewing strategies.     

守望生命守望爱——基诺族巴什悲情与巴什情歌

由于生存环境和文化习俗的影响,基诺族社会中存在许多同氏族恋人——“巴什”。为了种族的繁衍,基诺社会形成了“同氏族禁止成婚”的习惯法,由此导致许多巴什悲情。大量的巴什情歌反映的正是这种悲情。通过对巴什情歌的考察,可以看到,在理想与现实的冲突面前,在情与“法”的较量中,在生存与死亡的张力之间,基诺族巴什们选择的是守望生命守望爱,以一种有别于其他民族的方式,凸显民族文化特征和民族精神。     

Pedagogical and technological augmentation of mobile learning for young children interactive learning environments

The ubiquity and educational potential of mobile applications are well acknowledged. This paper proposes six theory-based, pedagogical strategies to guide interaction design of mobile apps for young children. Also, to augment the capabilities of mobile devices, we used a humanoid robot integrated with a smartphone and developed an English-learning app that applied the design strategies to this environment. Our observations of children's one-on-one use support the promise of the strategies and the combined use of robots and mobile devices to be a viable option to help optimize mobile learning.