The use of visual media in the service of enriching mental thought processes

Visual media of communication are not just convenient and indifferent technologies for the transmission of knowledge but also, and perhaps mainly, different languages for gathering, packaging and conveying knowledge. The real differences among the media are not so much in the kinds of knowledge they can convey, but rather in the languages, that is — the symbol systems — they uniquely employ. The experienced horrors of Clockwork Orange, or the possible better understanding of group processes after viewing Twelve Angry Men are greatly due to the visual mode and the unique languages of such films, not just the content (which can be read in a book).Media's different and often unique symbol systems have been studied in recent years. It has been found, for example, that different symbol systems call upon different kinds of mental skills and convey different meanings. But above all, media's unique symbol systems cultivate unique mental skills by either activating or overtly supplanting them. By doing so, these symbol systems offer new ways for internal, cognitive, representation. Thus, they can be seen as potentially serving as cultivators of mental abilities.This paper was presented at the IW APP Festival 1980, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 1980.     

Introducing micro-computers to micro-learners through play

Computers, once available exclusively to wealthy industries, are now rapidly becoming as familiar in preschool and kindergarten classrooms as block and crayons. Articles making claims such as Learning by Computers at Age 4 and Computers Preparing Preschoolers for Kindergarten now permeate the news media. Increasing numbers of child care centers, attempting to maximize public interest in computers, now readily advertise Computer Tutor in their literature. Computer Tutor is often even listed above other important qualifications such as certified teachers and professional affiliations of centers.Theresa Rubens has had extensive experience working with children in both family day homes and child care centers. Jennifer Poole is the Nursery Director at the First United Methodist Church in Carrollton, TX. James L. Hoot is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at North Texas State University in Denton, Texas.     

Self-teaching in normal and disabled readers

This study set out to investigate the self-teaching of good and poor readers in pointed Hebrew – a highly regular orthography. Four groups of children (three groups in Grades 4 to 6, and one group in Grade 2) were included in this study; poor readers with large discrepancies between IQ and reading (dyslexics), IQ-nondiscrepant poor readers (non-dyslexic or garden-variety poor readers), chronological-age matched normal readers, and a group of younger normal readers matched to the older garden-variety group on both reading and mental age. It was hypothesized that primary deficits in phonological recoding (decoding) would impair the identification of novel target words (fictitious names of fruits/towns/stars/coins, etc.) appearing in text, which, in turn, would lead to deficient orthographic memory for target spellings. Alternative predictions were derived with regard to the degree of orthographic deficiency. According to the compensatory processing hypothesis, orthographic learning was expected to be relatively less impaired among disabled readers compared to normal readers. The alternative dissociation hypothesis, on the other hand, predicts that disabled readers orthographic learning would be significantly more impaired than that of normal readers. Neither hypothesis was supported. Impaired orthographic learning, commensurate with levels of target decoding success, was evident in the post-test spelling and orthographic choices of both groups of poor readers. Indeed, a close link was observed between levels of target word decoding and the acquisition of orthographic information among all three older groups of children. No qualitative differences between dyslexics and garden-variety poor readers emerged in patterns of self-teaching. While the data from the three older groups supported a model of developmental delay rather than deviance, findings from the younger reading-age/mental-age controls revealed startling qualitative divergence in orthographic learning. No statistically reliable evidence was obtained for orthographic learning in these younger beginning readers who displayed an essentially surface pattern of non-lexical reading. A hybrid orthographic sensitivity hypothesis was proposed to account for these data, according to which an initially surface-style of word reading engendered by a highly regular orthography gives way to a highly specialized print-specific (orthographic) processing advantage that develops in the course of the second school year as an outgrowth of a critical volume of print experience.     

Reliability and validity in qualitative research within education in Africa

This article discusses the problems of validity and reliability in qualitative research within education and relates this discussion to Africa. A main concern is the posing of the right research questions. The article attempts to bring into focus the voice of Africans, showing that the African researcher knows his/her environment better than any expatriate and will be more likely to ask the right questions provided that s/he is allowed to ask them and is not forced to work with questions of concern to Western donors, and provided that s/he trusts her/his own experiences and uses those to form concepts instead of merely transferring concepts formed in the West and based on experiences in the northern hemisphere. It argues for the need of secondary research to reanalyze from an Afro-centric viewpoint many of the accounts written by Western travellers and anthropologists. It further argues for the use of an autobiographical approach to secure data of high ecological validity. Validity is looked at as a more important concept than reliability and a mixing of qualitative and quantitative methods argued for.

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Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel befaßt sich mit Problemen der Gültigkeit und zuverlässigkeit der Qualitativen Forschung innerhalb der Bildung in Bezug auf Afrika. Ein Hauptanliegen ist die richtige Fragestellung hinsichtlich der Forschung. Der Artikel versucht die Stimme der Afrikaner in den Vordergrund zu stellen und zeigt damit, daß afrikanische ForscherInnen ihr Umfeld besser als irgendein Außenstehender kennen und somit mit größerer Wahrscheinlichkeit die richtigen Fragen stellen. Dies setzt voraus, daß sie die richtigen Fragen stellen dürfen und nicht gezwungen sind, für westliche Geldgeber richtig erscheinende Fragen zu stellen. Eine weitere Voraussetzung ist, daß sie ihren eigenen Erfahrungen trauen können und sie für die Ausarbeitung von Konzepten nutzen, anstatt im Westen erstellte und auf Erfahrung in der nördlichen Hemisphäre basierende Konzepte weiterzugeben. Der Artikel befürwortet die Notwendigkeit einer zweiten Untersuchung, um vom afrikanischen Standpunkt aus die zahlreichen Berichte neu zu analysieren, die von westlichen Reisenden und Anthropologen geschrieben wurden. Weiterhin wird für die Sicherstellung von Daten hochwertiger ökologischer Gültigkeit die Anwendung eines autobiographischen Ansatzes empfohlen. Gültigkeit wird gegenüber der Zuverlässigkeit als wichtigeres Konzept angesehen und sowohl qualitative als auch quantitative Methoden gemeinsam befürwortet.

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Resumen Este artículo se ocupa de los problemas de la validez y fiabilidad del estudio cualitativo dentro de la educación y relaciona esta discusión con Africa. Uno de los temas principales es el planteamiento de los interrogantes de investigación correctos. El artículo pone su énfasis central en la voz de los africanos, mostrando que el/la investigador/a africano/a conoce mejor su entorno que cualquier otro extranjero o expatriado, y que es más probable que formule las preguntas correctas, siempre que esté autorizado/a a hacerlo y que no se vea obligado/a a trabajar con asuntos que conciernen a los donantes occidentales, y siempre que él o ella confíe en sus propias costumbres y experiencias para formar los conceptos, en lugar de transferir meramente conceptos formados en el mundo occidental y basados en experiencias del hemisferio norte. Aboga por la necesidad de la investigación secundaria a efectos de analizar desde un punto de vista afrocéntrico muchos de los informes escritos por viajeros y antropólogos occidentales. Además, sostiene la aplicación de un enfoque autobiográfico para asegurar datos de alto valor ecológico. El trabajo considera que la validez es un concepto más importante que la fiabilidad, y aboga por la mezcla de métodos cualitativos y cuantitativos.

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Résumé Cet article aborde les problèmes soulevés par la validité et la fiabilité de la recherche qualitative en éducation et remplace la question dans le contexte du continent africain. Un point important concerne la juste formulation des questions qui feront l'objet de recherches. L'auteur tente de faire entendre l'opinion africaine en exposant que le personnel de recherche africain connaît mieux son environnement que toute personne expatriée et qu'il sera plus susceptible de poser les questions appropriées, à la condition qu'on lui permette de les poser et qu'il ne soit pas obligé de travailler sur des questions qui importent aux commanditaires occidentaux, à la condition aussi qu'il se fie à ses propres expériences et les mette á profit pour former des concepts, au lieu de se borner à transférer ceux établis par l'Occident, et qui se fondent sur des expériences vécues dans l'hémisphère nord. Il démontre donc la nécessité d'une recherche secondaire pour procéder à une nouvelle analyse d'un point de vue africain de nombre de récits écrits par des voyageurs ou anthropologues occidentaux. Il plaide également pour le choix d'une approache autobiographique pour protèger des données d'une importante validité écologique. La validité est posée comme concept plus important que celui de la fiabilité, et il est conseillé d'appliquer conjointement des méthodes qualitatives et quantitatives.

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Language factor: Does it affect children's performance on word problems?

48 children from primary 4 in private and public schools (24 from each) were asked to solve 10 arithmetic word problems (involving more or less as the cue word) presented in English and in their native language. Retrospective clinical interviews were also conducted to find out how each child analyzed the meaning of each problem, before deciding which operation to use to solve it. The results revealed that both public and private school children performed better both in skills and in strategies when problems were presented in their native language than when presented in English, but only public school had the result to be significant (P<.025). Also data obtained from the interviews are in accord with psycholinguistic theories concerning the polarized comparative pair of less and more.     

Collective Identity and the Burden of “Acting White” in Black History,Community, and Education

After more than 15 years of comparative study of minority education, I concluded that I would have to study two additional factors, namely collective identity and cultural frame of reference to more fully explain the variability in minority school performance. In 1986, I published an article with Signithia Fordham on how oppositional collective identity and cultural frame of reference or oppositional culture contributed to Black students' school performance. Many critics have misinterpreted the joint article and even constructed a different thesis of oppositional culture than the one we proposed in the joint article. The thesis is that Black students do not aspire to or strive to get good grades because it is perceived as acting White. Furthermore, they have translated my cultural–ecological theory into an oppositional culture theory. I am writing this paper to correct the misinterpretations of the joint article in order to advance scholarship on the subject. I begin by explaining the meaning of collective identity and distinguishing it from other concepts of identity. Specifically, I summarize the evolution of oppositional collective identity and cultural frame of reference or oppositional culture among Black Americans and discuss the Black experience with the burden of acting White in the contemporary United States. Finally, I suggest some continuity between Black historical and community experiences with the burden of acting White, as experienced by Black students.     

The ‘automatic’ use of context in children's reading

The present investigation examined developmental changes in the automatic use of context in single word recognition. A modified Stroop procedure was used in which children were asked to name the color of the ink of target words. The target was preceded either by a semantically related or by an unrelated word. Results suggested that, in contrast to attentional context effects (Pring and Snowling 1986), the older readers showed significantly more influence from the semantic context than the younger, less-proficient readers. The results are discussed with reference to the connections between a novice reading system and a child's rapidly growing semantic memory system.     

Torsten Husén: A case of ethnocentrism in U.S. educational research?

This paper documents and discusses the lack of reference by U.S. educational researchers to the work of noted Swedish social scientist and educational researcher, Torsten Husén. The paucity of U.S. textbook or journal citations of Husén's writings and research is interpreted as an example of cultural ethnocentrism and academic imperialism in U.S. educational and psychological research. Crosscultural perspectives, interdisciplinary analyses, and global learning are proposed as methods of overcoming the methodological parochialism, overspecialization, and international fragmentation Husén describes as characteristic of much educational and social scientific research.     

Strategies for enhancing learning in the “blow-off” course

Lower division courses are typically perceived by students as blow-off courses. We can overcome this image. This paper contrasts active and passivelearning environments, and describes efforts to create an active, critical learning environment in both Introduction to Sociology and The Family System-typical lower division courses in Sociology. A review of grade distributions, quantitative course evaluations, qualitative course evaluations, and a survey asking students to subjectively compare the active learning course structure to the typical multiple choice format provide evaluation data. Finally, the paper discusses problems in using these innovations.Randy Stoecker recently received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota, and has been exploring alternative pedagogies since 1982. He has published in the areas of social theory and social movements. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Midwest Sociological Society Annual Meetings, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1988. Many thanks for insightful comments by Tuck Green, Ron Berger, and an anonymousInnovative Higher Education referee.     

A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach: The DIT and Schema Theory

Macromorality concerns the formal structure of society, as defined by institutions, rules, and roles. Micromorality concerns the particular face-to-face relations that people have in everyday life. Kohlbergian theories are most useful for issues of macromorality. The Defining Issues Test (DIT) derives from Kohlberg's approach but makes several departures, including defining cognitive structures in terms of schemas instead of stages, reformulating the definition of postconventional moral thinking, and using different research strategies. The validity of the DIT is based on seven criteria (briefly discussed), and hundreds of studies have produced significant trends. Recent research derived from schema theory produces novel phenomena that link our theory of moral schemas more closely with information processing and decision making.     

Urban schools and the changing metropolitan labor market

Industrial change and the resultant restructuring of employment opportunity ongoing in the nation's largest cities are seriously weakening traditional ladders of urban social advancement. Jobs at the high end of the skill spectrum are growing far more rapidly in these cities than those held by persons lacking a high school degree. Education remains one of the most important policy levers for redressing the growing mismatch between available jobs and the skills of resident workers. The problem is compounded, however, because so many who lack essential skills are concentrated in the least prosperous cities in which entry-level jobs are in relative decline and resources with which to fund school improvements are in short supply. The upskilling of jobs must be met by the upschooling of the labor force. This objective will require a concerted effort to bring the public schools and institutions of higher education together into new forms of metropolitan partnership.     

Fairy-tale Retellings between Art and Pedagogy

In this article, it is shown how authors of fairy-tale retellings have incorporated ideas of feminist literary criticism into a fictional form. As such, these retellings display the tension between the pedagogic and aesthetic aspects of all childrens literature. Jane Yolens Sleeping Ugly is chosen as a case study: although it can be argued that the book serves as a mouthpiece for the ideology of the emancipation movement formulated in Marcia Liebermans key text Some Day My Prince Will Come, it is suggested that Sleeping Ugly teaches children to read against a texts authority and as such undermines its own didactic potential.Vanessa Joosen (1977) has a Masters degree in English and German Literature from the University of Antwerp, and an MA in Childrens Literature from the University of Surrey Roehampton. In 2003, she received an FWO scholarship to fund her PhD at the University of Antwerp. She researches the interaction between fairy-tale retellings and criticism on fairy tales in the period from 1970 to 2000. Recent publications include Translating Dutch into Dutch in Signal 100, and an article on Belgian childrens books in Peter Hunts International Companion to Childrens Literature.     

Foop is still floop: A six year follow-up of phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia

A six year follow-up of a previously documented case of developmental phonological dyslexia, is reported. Overal reading and spelling levels have risen significantly, but the qualitative nature of the performance has remained unchanged: impaired non-word reading; morphological and visuo-semantic paralexias; and function word substitutions in text. Rhyming skills also remain impaired. A higher proportion of errors are paralexias and within these a higher proportion are visuo-semantic or morphological. The error pattern of phonological dylexia is thus more pronounced than before. In spelling, only a minority of errors are phonologically plausible. There is no evidence of the mastery of the alphabetic stage of reading or the alphabetic stage of spelling. It is argued that A.H. is reading orthographically not logographically and that current reading models, which require passage through an alphabetic stage before attaining an orthographic stage, do not adequately account for individual variation in the acquisition of literacy skills.This work was supported by a research award from the Wolfson Foundation. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. Christine Temple, The Neuropsychology Unit, Radcliffe Infirmary, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HE, United Kingdom.     

Image processing for teaching

The Image Processing for Teaching (IPT) project provides a powerful medium to excite students about science and mathematics, especially children from minority groups and others whose needs have not been met by traditional coded ways of teaching these subjects. Using professional-quality software on microcomputers, students explore a variety of scientific data sets, including biomedical imaging, Earth remote sensing and meteorology data, and planetary exploration images. They also learn about the many mathematical concepts that underlie image processing, such as coordinate systems, slope and intercept, pixels, binary arithmetic, along with many others. We have developed curriculum materials in all areas of mathematics and science for the upper elementary and secondary levels, allowing this tool to be used across a variety of grade levels and student interests. Preliminary indications show image processing to be an effective and fun way to study the application of science and mathematics to real world applications, as represented by digital imagery. The use of image processing is also an effective method with which to engage students in inquiry and discovery learning.     

A positive approach to discipline in an early childhood setting

Sit Down! shouts Judy, with more than a trace of frustration in her voice. She is trying to maintain control of a group of preschoolers who are none too interested in the lesson she has worked so hard to prepare. Jonathan, if you won't join the circle you'll have to sit in the time-out chair, she states with determination.Marianne Modica is Program Coordinator for the Calvary Christian Academy and Happy Day Child Care Center in Wayne, NJ.     

Using problem solving teaching styles to prepare candidates for the CXC basic proficiency examinations

Two Grade 10 classes in an urban Jamaican High School were taught over a period of one academic year in two problem solving styles: an Explicit Style derived from Charles, and an Implicit Style derived from Isaacs. At the end of the academic year there was no significant difference in their performance on a problem solving test, or on the Problem Solving Profile of the Caribbean Examinations Council's Basic Proficiency papers. The two classes performed much better than the population who sat the Basic papers on the tasks measuring Recall and Algorithmic Thinking but only moderately better than the population on tasks measuring Problem Solving.The teaching project described in this paper was supported in part by grants from the Research and Publications Fund Committee of the University of the West Indies (Mona), and the Wolmers Trust, Kingston. The author wishes to thank the Registrar and the Pro-Registrar of the Caribbean Examinations Council for permission to use the CXC papers and data in this study. A modified version of this paper was presented at the 63rd Annual Conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics held in San Antonio, Texas in 1985.     

Classroom control: Some cybernetic comments on the possible and the impossible

The application of basic cybernetic laws and information processing principles to the classroom situation suggests that traditional and modern teaching methods, regarded as control systems, are equivalent in terms of efficiency. As control structures, they embody different principles and are not decomposable. Examination of these principles reveals that the two methods are radically incompatible, in the sense that techniques developed in the one cannot be transferred to the other without dislocation of the system as a whole. Attempts to modernize the traditional method, or to formalize the modern method are ill-conceived. Such mixed methods violate basic laws of information and control, and cannot work. It is suggested that many of the problems underlying the Great Education Debate are a consequence of the impossible state of affairs created by the widespread introduction of mixed methods.     

Solving problems in newtonian mechanics

The reading and solution phases of problem-solving are partially interleaved. Solution may proceed by backward inference, forward inference, or a form of meta-level inference termed planstacking.This article suggests three information processing mechanisms to account for the mixture of reading and solving behaviour, and examines four competing explanations of search control during problem solution.     

Print and reading: What do preschoolers know?

John Downing, an eminent reading researcher at Canada's University of Victoria, says that many children come to school in a state of cognitive confusion about the functions of reading and the terms we use when we start to teach them to read formally. Adults take for granted that young children know what they mean when they talk about a word, a letter, a sound, and other print-related terms. In his studies done in England and in Canada, Downing (1970; 1973–74) has found that many children, especially those who have not been read to regularly, simply don't understand the conventions of print and really don't understand what reading is all about.Joan T. Feeley is Professor of Reading and Language Arts at William Paterson College in Wayne, New Jersey.     

Literacy,myths, and legacies: Lessons from the past/thoughts for the future

Sketching broadly to suggest the power of the past in shaping how we think about, use, and even abuse the skills of literacy, Literacy: Myths and Lessons draws practical and theoretical instruction from the history of literacy. Its goal is to suggest new perspectives on literacy and literacies today and tomorrow in part by probing the connections tying past to present and both to possible futures.