Picturing global educational inclusion? Looking and thinking across students’ photographs from the UK,Zambia and Indonesia

Over the last few years we have engaged children and young people in participatory photography projects in a diverse range of international contexts. The projects, diverse as they are, have been school-based and primarily focused on students' experiences of educational inclusion/exclusion. Photographs taken by students can stimulate conversations in which different perspectives are shared and considered. Whilst this process is meaningful within a local context, it is also compelling to reflect more widely on what children and young people's photographs and commentary (and through these their interpretations of their educational experiences) have to tell and, indeed, show us about educational inclusion globally. In this paper, we begin by explaining what we mean by the term 'educational inclusion', and consider what methodological relevance the participatory photography has for engaging in research with children and young people about their educational experiences. We then briefly describe the contexts of the projects this paper draws on, which took place in the UK, Zambia and Indonesia. In the main body of the paper, we will look across these international projects and consider a selection of students' photographs and interpretations in relation to several broad themes about educational inclusion which they suggest.     

Readiness, Instruction, and Learning to be a Kindergartner

As children enter school they learn to take on the role of student. This qualitative study describes how the children in one classroom learned what it meant to be a kindergartner in the context of a community meaning of readiness for school. Analysis of classroom observations and parent, teacher, and student interviews indicate that this school community held a coherent meaning of readiness. This meaning provided the framework for instructional activities and served to help parents understand their children as students. Finally, it helped to frame students' interpretations of their first public school experience through their involvement in classroom tasks.     

我国幼儿园主题式教育组合课程实践模式研究

目前我国幼儿园主题课程存在的问题有:幼儿园课程设计等同于集体教学活动设计,集体教学活动与区域活动、生活活动等环节脱节,整合课程即五大领域课程拼奏,课程决策个人化,各子主题活动缺少沟通与晕化,不利于儿童学习品质发展等。主题式教育组合理念及课程实践模式能够支持幼儿进行主动的、一致的和连续的学习,有助于幼儿学习品质发展,优化幼儿园课程结构,提高主题式课程实施品质,促进幼儿园课程内涵建设和教师专业发展。     

Structure sense: The relationship between algebraic and numerical contexts

Several researchers suggest that students' difficulties with the algebraic structure are in part due to their lack of understanding of structural notions in arithmetic. They assume that the algebraic system used by students inherits structural properties associated with the number system with which students are familiar. This study explored this assumption. In an attempt to discover whether wrong interpretations of the algebraic structure found in an algebraic context occur in a purely numerical one, we interviewed 53 sixth-graders individually. The assessment confirms the assumption: students' difficulties with the algebraic structure were found in purely numerical contexts. However, the study also confirms two, seemingly, contradictory observations. On the one hand, the students' interpretations of the structures of the expressions were very consistent; that is, the same tendencies were found in many students' answers. In this sense the students' behaviour was consistent. On the other hand, it was clearly observed that the same student may give an incorrect answer in one context and a correct answer in another. In this sense, it often seemed that the students were inconsistent.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The use of repair strategies: bilingual deaf children using sign language and spoken language

The language effects on repair strategies employed by 7 bilingual deaf children (native signers who also used spoken language) was examined. During two sessions--one conducted in sign language and the other in spoken language--each child described a picture. The examiner stopped the child twice to request clarification. The children's responses to the requests were coded into seven repair strategies. Results indicated that language mode significantly influenced repair strategy behavior: In sign language, the children used a greater frequency, variety, and level of strategies. The position of the clarification request also had an effect: Later in the sequence, the children used more advanced strategies. It was assumed that these native signers evidenced a higher language level in sign, which allowed them to use more advanced communicational strategies in sign than in spoken language. This performance gap should be considered in intervention.     

Reading? ... pah! (I got it!). Innovative Reading Technique For Successful Deaf Readers

A reading program utilizing five components--a shortcut to phonemic awareness, Adapted Dolch words, Bridge lists and the Bridging process, reading comprehension, and American Sign Language development/language experience stories--was administered to 48 elementary school students at a residential school for the deaf. Data analyses reveal dramatic gains in students' reading levels and academic behavior, teachers' growth in reflective sign skills, and students' and teachers' overall growth in ASL skills, resulting in a more organized, consistent approach to linguistic input and usage.     

Does deafness lead to enhancement of visual spatial cognition in children? Negative evidence from deaf nonsigners

This study investigated whether deafness contributes to enhancement of visual spatial cognition independent of knowledge of a sign language. Congenitally deaf school children in India who were born to hearing parents and were not exposed to any sign language, and matched hearing controls, were given a test of digit span and five tests that measured visual spatial skills. The deaf group showed shorter digit span than the hearing group, consistent with previous studies. Deaf and hearing children did not differ in their performance on the visual spatial skills test, suggesting that deafness per se may not be a sufficient factor for enhancement of visual spatial cognition. Early exposure to a sign language and fluent sign skills may be the critical factors that lead to differential development of visual spatial skills in deaf people.     

Semantic and pragmatic factors influencing deaf and hearing students' comprehension of english sentences containing numeral quantifiers

This research contrasted deaf and hearing students' interpretive knowledge of English sentences containing numeral quantifier phrases and indefinite noun phrases. A multiple-interpretation picture task methodology was used to assess 305 participants' judgments of the compatibility of sentence meanings with depicted discourse contexts. Participants' performance was assessed on the basis of hearing level (deaf, hearing) and grade level (middle school, high school, college). The deaf students were predicted to have differential access to specific sentence interpretations in accordance with the relative derivational complexity of the targeted sentence types. Hypotheses based on the pressures of derivational economy on acquisition were largely supported. The results also revealed that the deaf participants tended to overactivate pragmatic processes that yielded principled, though non-target, sentence interpretations. Collectively, the results not only contribute to the understanding of English acquisition under conditions of restricted access to spoken language input, they also suggest that pragmatic factors may play a broad role in influencing, and compromising, deaf students' reading comprehension and written expression.     

聋生自然手语的研究与思考

本文从聋生自然手语与文法手语的关系入手,从与《中国手语》不同的自然手语、聋生自创的《中国手语》中没有的自然手语及表示短语和句子的自然手语等方面,通过对一些常用词语及短语、句子的比较与分析,初步探究学生自然手语的特点和规律,并由此得到一些启示与思考。     

Creating Participatory Discourse for Teaching and Research in Early Childhood Science

This paper presents the results of a study conducted with second grade students and pre-service teachers. This study examined the possibilities for engaging children in critical discourse about their classroom science experiences. At the heart of this discussion lies the desire to provide a space for teachers and children to develop relationships and to explore the learning of science together. Themes that emerged include: (1) on-going, focused, critical dialogue between children and teachers supported children in developing agency in the classroom, and (2) on-going conversations created the opportunity for children to reveal their ways of knowing and developing interpretations of the practice of science.     

Coenrollment for students who are deaf or hard of hearing: friendship patterns and social interactions

Third- and fourth-grade students in two separate classrooms--one a classroom with only hearing students and the other a coenrolled classroom with hearing, hard of hearing, and deaf students--were assessed to determine friendship patterns, attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions about sign language and deafness. Sociograms, interviews, and videotape analysis of the students' responses were done. Results suggest that hearing students in the coenrolled classroom had better sign language skills, a more positive attitude toward deafness, and an improved awareness of certain aspects of hearing loss (such as speech and amplification). Deaf and hard of hearing students' social acceptance was similar to that of their hearing peers.     

Relating Self-Conception to Curriculum Development

Abstract

Fifty-five poverty-area children at the completion of a full-year pre-kindergarten program were compared with forty - seven same-aged children from a similar socio-economic area who had no pre-kindergarten experience. The children with preschooling scored significantly higher on the Stanford-Binet (P equals .001) and on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (P equals .05). Virtually all of this difference, however, was accounted for by the girls with pre-kindergarten schooling who scored significantly higher (P equals .001) than boys with the same schooling. These boys scored only slightly higher than those with no schooling and at about the same level as girls with no school experience.     

Fundamental remarks on so‐called reaction equations

Summaries

English

The author develops the premise that the emergence of interdisciplinary relations between different fields of learning requires terminological conventions to be made consonant. He explores this issue with reference to two themes from the field of chemistry where strong relations exist with mathematics: the use of the equals sign and the (double) reaction sign, and the notions of reaction equation and reaction symbol.     

关于大学生权利意识的探讨

大学生的权利意识可以分解为权利主体意识、权利认知意识、权利实现意识、权利救济意识、权利要求意识五个方面。通过对大学生权利意识的现状进行调查分析,认为培养大学生权利意识要努力改进法律教育,发挥管理者和教师尊重权利的示范效应,让学生参与权利维护实践和讨论,支持建立校内学生权利维护团体。     

From their ‘own’ to ‘both’ interpretations: children’s understanding of ambiguity / De ‘su’ interpretación a ‘ambas’: la comprensión de la ambigüedad en los niños

Abstract

The present study aimed to analyse whether young children’s failure in succeeding ambiguity tasks is related to a bias in favour of maintaining their initial interpretation or one in favour of showing conformity to the interpretation of another person. Two experiments were conducted with ambiguous figures and ambiguous sentences. After giving their own interpretation of the stimulus, children of different ages (from 3–8 years of age) were confronted with the alternative interpretation. In general, the results of the two experiments found an accentuated ‘own’ bias, meaning that young children usually persisted in their own interpretation and did not show conformity to the ‘other’ interpretation. Only after the second grade were children able to understand that both interpretations (their own and the alternative) were equally valid for the same stimulus. The results also revealed that the ability to show informed reversal does not necessarily imply the ability to overcome the ‘own’ interpretation bias and, consequently, does not require the achievement of a real understanding of ambiguity. The present study showed an age-related development of ambiguity understanding, from an egocentric interpretation to the acceptance of two interpretations as equally valid.     

The relationship between teacher sign skills and student evaluations of teacher capability

This study examines the extent to which deaf students' perceptions of their teachers' effectiveness and ease of communication in the classroom are related to the teachers' sign skills. Thirty-three faculty, teaching a variety of courses at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), were rated on "teaching effectiveness" and "communication ease" by their students over a 2-year period. Faculty sign proficiency was evaluated independently using the Sign Communication Proficiency Interview (SCPI). Results indicate a moderate relation between students' perceptions of communication ease and teaching effectiveness, and a weak relation of these two variables to the teachers' assessed level of sign skill. The data also show that the students could clearly differentiate three levels of teacher sign skill in the classroom. Results are discussed in relation to the component parts of effective communication from the perspective of students in the classroom.     

Do chimpanzees reason logically?

Psychologists disagree about the development of logical concepts such as or and not. While some theorists argue that infants reason logically, others maintain that logical inference is contingent on linguistic abilities and emerges around age 4. In this Registered Report, we conducted five experiments on logical reasoning in chimpanzees. Subjects (N = 16; 10 females; M = 24 years) participated in the same setup that has been administered to children: the two-, three-, and four-cup-task. Chimpanzees performed above chance in the two-cup-, but not in the three-cup-task. Furthermore, chimpanzees selected the logically correct option more often in the test than the control condition of the four-cup-task. We discuss possible interpretations of these findings and conclude that our results are most consistent with non-deductive accounts.     

Generalized achievement goals and situational coping in inquiry learning

This study examined situation-specific coping strategies of students with different achievement goals as they take part in inquiry learning. A case study was conducted in a Finnish elementary school. 21 ten-year-old students participated in the study. Two types of data were collected: (1) Students self-reported questionnaires on achievement goals, (2) Video data on the students' learning processes and social interaction. The results revealed the importance of a situative perspective in instructional design, since the students not only differed in their coping attempts regarding their initial goals but also according to their individual situational interpretations that mediated their active coping attempts. Some of the non-learning-focused students had difficulties engaging in the working procedures. A lack of teacher's concrete and precise guidance in both cognitive and motivational sense appeared to explain this phenomenon.     

A Domain-Referenced Approach to Diagnostic Testing Using Generalizability Theory

This paper describes a four-step approach to constructing diagnostic test profiles that provide precise but practical information on students' instructional needs. The approach is based on the specification and analysis of a domain and uses generalizability theory to determine which skills within the domain need to be assessed to diagnose gaps in students' skills and to estimate score profiles. A 64-item test of pronoun use was constructed to represent 32 categories of usage defined by different combinations of five factors in the domain. Generalizability analyses were conducted to determine the optimal number of categories to be included in students' profiles and the number of items needed for each category, and to produce univariate and multivariate estimates of students' universe scores. Multivariate profiles of universe scores were the most accurate and differed substantially from observed score and univariate universe score profiles.