Developmental Changes in Infant Spatial Categorization: When More Is Best and When Less Is Enough

Two experiments examined infants' ability to form a spatial category when habituated to few (only 2) or many (6) exemplars of a spatial relation. Sixty‐four infants of 10 months and 64 infants of 14 months were habituated to dynamic events in which a toy was placed in a consistent spatial relation (in or on) to a referent object. At 10 months, infants formed a spatial category (looking longer at an unfamiliar than familiarized spatial relation) only when habituated to 6 exemplars. At 14 months, infants formed the spatial category regardless of the number of habituation exemplars. The results highlight developmental changes in infant spatial categorization and show that increasing exemplar number facilitates this ability in infants of 10 months.     

Item Discrimination: When More Is Worse

High item discrimination can be a symptom o f a special kind of measurement disturbance introduced by an item that gives persons o f high ability a special advantage over and above their higher abilities. This type o f disturbance, which can be interpreted as a form o f item "bias," can be encouraged by methods that routinely interpret highly discriminating items as the "best" items on a test and may be compounded by procedures that weight items by their discrimination. The type of measurement disturbance described and illustrated in this paper occurs when an item is sensitive to individual differences on a second, undesired dimension that is positively correlated with the variable intended to be measured. Possible secondary influences o f this type include opportunity to learn, opportunity to answer, and test wiseness     

When Less is More: Cultivating a Community in Relationship with God

Abstract

What does it look like to cultivate a community in right relationship with God? In taking the focus off individual members and placing it on the community itself, we recognize that the whole of a university is greater than the sum of its parts, and that individual parts are repeatedly and continually shaped and defined by the whole. Being in right relationship with God begins with acknowledging our longings to be loved, to be known, and to belong in ways encouraging us to put ourselves intentionally and consistently in God’s gaze of love. Coming before God empty-handed and agenda-less, rather than starting another discipleship program or Bible Study, helps us lean into God’s love already at work—common grace. Gratitude flows from opening our eyes to the wonder of God’s sustaining love active around us. As we gaze at God, who is gazing at us, we are transformed—saved from envy, pettiness, selfishness, and sense of entitlement. Transformation begins with grace, where the response is a gratitude that moves back to God and is expressed in love of neighbor—love of all created things, both seen and unseen, held together by Christ. This movement of God in our college communities is cultivated by a shared identity as a Christian community, by seeing and knowing each other, being seen and known, using chapel as a Holy Place, and turning our love outward.     

When Fewer Is More: Small Groups in Early Childhood Classrooms

Small group instruction is important yet it is one of the most underused strategies in early childhood classrooms. This paper presents guidelines based on research-based best practices for using small groups in early childhood. In addition, the benefits of small group instruction for both children and teachers are described. Specific suggestions for managing small groups in classrooms are presented.     

Supporting Student Learning through Instructional Videos in Business Statistics

While statistics is an essential topic for business students, many students experience barriers to successful learning due to anxiety, motivation, or difficulty with quantitative understanding. This research examines the use of online videos with an effort to explore the relationship between student characteristics, video usage, and course performance measures. In addition, the study examines student perceptions of the supplemental resources in an effort to examine the efficacy related to student learning and performance. This study seeks to confirm previous research regarding the benefit of supplemental video resources and extend the knowledge base by understanding the impact for various types of students (e.g., level of course, level of previous academic performance, etc.). The study found that the use of the video resources varies based on students’ previous math performance and the difficulty of the material. Student ratings indicate that the videos were helpful in learning the content and that they provided an important resource when students needed additional tools to master the material. Analysis of the results provides implications for understanding how different students use online videos and offers recommendations for educators and researchers about how to enhance student success in difficult statistics coursework.     

Considerations When Using Videos in Lamaze Classes

There are enough worthwhile videos available today so that a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator could literally teach an entire class series using only videos and feedback discussion. In this column, the author explores considerations in choosing videos for adult learners in Lamaze birth classes. Some things to consider when using videos should be the adult learner’s attention span, whether the video increases fear of birth or empowers the learner, and if the video is appropriate for the culture of the class participants. Finally, the author provides a list of some of the many wonderful videos available to Lamaze birth educators.     

xMOOCs中的教学视频设计要点：基于案例的视频分析研究

大规模开放网络课程（MOOCs）的发展得到了国际社会的广泛关注。在主流的两类MOOCs（cMOOCs与xMOOCs）中,xMOOCs是目前发展速度最快,受众面最广的一类。而教学视频是xMOOCs最核心的课程资源。 xMOOCs中的教学视频设计应该把握哪些要点？为解决这一问题,特意分析了国内外四个主流课程平台的20门xMOOCs课程中的视频,参考《网络课程评价规范》形成视频分析框架,结合网络课程设计理论从界面设计、课程内容、教学设计三个方面对xMOOCs视频进行分析。根据视频分析结果,总结了xMOOCs教学视频在易识别性、课程说明、内容分块、学习目标、教学策略、学习者控制、内容交互性、信息呈现、练习与反馈九个方面的设计要点,并辅之以案例说明。希望对未来xMOOCs教学视频的设计有一定的参考与借鉴作用。     

高中物理教学设计的研究

何为教学设计?如何进行学科教学设计?本文根据笔者两年多来对<依据不同教学目标类型的高中物理课堂多媒体教学设计及实践>课题的研究结合自身对教学设计理论的理解,对以上两个问题进行了阐述,并提出要根据学科特点进行教学设计的指导思想和便于操作的教学设计施行方案.     

What Men Do When a Baby Cries: Increasing Testosterone May Lead to Less Nurturant Care but More Environmental Vigilance

SYNOPSIS

Infants’ crying modulates parental behaviors, which in turn, ideally, lead to calming the infant. The mutually beneficial reciprocity between infants’ and parents’ behaviors is conserved across mammalian species. Although some studies highlight similarities in responses to infant cries across gender, other studies report differences in their behaviors and brain activity. Zeifman and colleagues in this Special Issue found that high levels of infant crying can trigger increases in testosterone in men, which is accompanied by less sensitive caregiving. Some interpret males’ lack of sensitive caregiving as neglectful, but these results could be considered as evolutionarily adaptive. Specifically, increases in testosterone levels from intense infant cries could lead to increased vigilance and alertness toward external stimuli, and thus allow males to be better equipped to protect their young.     

农村中学物理教学视频的开发与创新

课题<农村中学教师有效使用教育技术提高教学质量的实践研究>是由福州教育学院申报,于2007年3月经中央电教馆审批,做为"十一五"重点课题正式立项开题的.该课题由六所实验校组成:福州金砂中学、福州城门中学、福州海云中学、连江二中、连江黄如论中学和马尾进修校.     

A More or Less Happy Relationship: Industry-University Cooperation in Denmark

This paper describes and discusses three aspects of cooperation between industry and engineering schools in Denmark: The practical training of undergraduates, cooperation in research and development and industry's possible help to the university with the renewal of its equipment. The last few years have brought important changes in these fields. The new Project Office of the Technical University may prove to be particularly important.     

Lights,Camera, Action: Facilitating the Design and Production of Effective Instructional Videos

This paper outlines a rudimentary process intended to guide faculty in K-12 and higher education through the steps involved to produce video for their classes. The process comprises four steps: planning, development, delivery and reflection. Each step is infused with instructional design information intended to support the collaboration between instructional support staff and faculty to produce video that will be meaningful to students and support their success in a class. In outlining this approach, the paper also explores technological and pedagogical considerations related to each of these steps that can help faculty and staff determine how best to incorporate video into online classes. Finally, supported by research on best video practices and with examples from our own experiences as instructional designers and instructors, the paper outlines how these steps relate to four broad categories of video: introduce, model, explain/inform and feedback.     

Less Stress,More Rewarding: Parenting Children With Down Syndrome

Objective. We argue that, compared to other children with disabilities, parents of children with Down syndrome may experience less stress and more rewards. Design. After reviewing changes in studies examining parenting children with disabilities, we note how specific genetic disorders predispose children to different, etiology-related behaviors, which in turn predispose their parents to particular reactions. We then survey studies of both stress and rewardingness in parents of children with Down syndrome versus children with other disabilities. Results. Parents of children with Down syndrome report less stress and more child-related rewards than parents of children with other disabilities; indeed, parents of children with Down syndrome may feel equally rewarded compared to parents of same-aged typical children. Conclusions. By comparing feelings of parents of children with Down syndrome versus children with other disabilities, we begin to understand which child behaviors bring about which parental reactions. Such information provides both theoretical and practical benefits to professionals interested in parenting.     

Change in Family Income-to-Needs Matters More for Children with Less

Hierarchical linear modeling was used to model the dynamics of family income-to-needs for participants of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care (N = 1,364) from the time that children were 1 through 36 months of age. Associations between change in income-to-needs and 36-month child outcomes (i.e., school readiness, receptive language, expressive language, positive social behavior, and behavior problems) were examined. Although change in income-to-needs proved to be of little importance for children from nonpoor families, it proved to be of great importance for children from poor families. For children in poverty, decreases in income-to-needs were associated with worse outcomes and increases were associated with better outcomes. In fact, when children from poor families experienced increases in income-to-needs that were at least 1 SD above the mean change for poor families, they displayed outcomes similar to their nonpoor peers. The practical importance and policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Write More,Grade Less: Five Practices for Effectively Grading Writing

This article describes five practices for effectively grading writing that demystify the grading process and focus on students, writing more and faculty grading less.     

高校运用有限摄编媒体资源实现多机位摄制高质量教学影片探析

摄制高质量的教学影片是各高校追求的重要目标,部分题材的影片摄制要实现高质量,必须以多台摄影机、多景别、多视角拍摄来实现,然而,部分高校由于经费的原因,不具备这样的条件,这是个矛盾。本文以摄、编、导等多个环节较为详细的阐述了运用有限的摄编媒体资源来实现多机位(15机位)摄制高质量教学影片的思路、方法与技巧,并以实例佐证,以求与同行们切磋。     

网络游戏:未来有多远?

Online games, the latest craze for the rapidly expanding video-game industry, still face a series of growing pains. Despite a growing base of players, a host of questions have given companies pause when it comes to online games, ranging from bandwidth (带宽) issues to the high cost of developing games to determining how much     

When Helping Hurts: Children Think Groups That Receive Help Are Less Smart

Helping has many positive consequences for both helpers and recipients. However, in the present research, we considered a possible downside to receiving help: that it signals a deficiency. We investigated whether young children make inferences about intelligence from observing some groups of people receive help and other groups not. In a novel group paradigm, we show that children (4–6 years) think groups that receive help are less smart (n = 44) but not less nice (n = 45). Children also generalized their inferences about relative intelligence to new group members (n = 55; forced-choice-method). These results have implications for understanding how children develop stereotypes about intelligence as well as for educational practices that group children according to their ability.     

基于网络环境的高中物理教学模式的研究和实践

一、问题的提出 当前以多媒体与网络技术为核心的现代教育技术的迅速兴起与蓬勃发展,正猛烈地冲击着高中各学科尤其是高中物理的教学.传统的"以教师为中心,靠老师讲、学生听"的教学模式,已不能适应网络时代的要求.这种传统的教学模式的最大的缺点是:(一)作为认知主体的学生在教学过程中自始至终处于受灌输的被动地位,其主动性、积极性难以发挥,很不利于培养学生的创造性思维.(二)学生缺乏主动探索、主动发现的学习环境,并且与社会上、国际上的信息资源几乎隔绝,学生对信息的筛选、鉴别、获取、加工和处理的能力难以培养,无法满足信息社会对人才素质的需求.     

Less Hope,More Paint: On the Political War Being Waged in Urban Contexts

Abstract

In this response to the call for transformative models of teaching students in urban contexts, the author presents his own experiences in becoming a critical pedagogue, the path that led him there, and three models of classrooms that he sees in such contexts. He emphasizes the need to reject an apolitical stance in urban education, and provides a brief example of such a classroom learning environment.