Statement-Pie: a strategy to improve the paragraph writing skills of adolescents with learning disabilities

This study investigated the effects of teaching a metacognitive text structure strategy upon the paragraph writing skills of eighth-grade students with learning disabilities. The technique, called Statement-Pie (Hanau, 1974), teaches students to understand the relationship of supporting details to a main idea. Four students were taught to use an outline as a paragraph planning guide, which they then used to convert information into written expository paragraphs. All subjects reached instructional outcome criterion on the writing of comparison/contrast and sequence paragraphs. One week after reaching mastery in the special education classroom, students generalized their paragraph writing skills to other teachers and to different classrooms. The results of this investigation indicate that when provided with direct, intensive instruction in a text structure strategy, adolescents with learning disabilities can improve their skills in paragraph writing.     

Stability of Intelligence from Preschool to Adolescence: The Influence of Social and Family Risk Factors

Intelligence scores of children in a longitudinal study were assessed at 4 and 13 years and related to social and family risk factors. A multiple environmental risk score was calculated for each child by counting the number of high-risk conditions from 10 risk factors: mother's behavior, mother's developmental beliefs, mother's anxiety, mother's mental health, mother's educational attainment, family social support, family size, major stressful life events, occupation of head of household, and disadvantaged minority status. Multiple risk scores explained one-third to one-half of IQ variance at 4 and 13 years. The stability between 4- and 13-year environmental risk scores ( r = .77) was not less than the stability between 4- and 13-year IQ scores ( r = .72). Effects remained after SES and race, or maternal IQ, were partialled; multiple risk was important in longitudinal prediction, even after prior measurement of child IQ was accounted for; the pattern of risk was less important than the total amount of risk present in the child's context.     

An Assessment of the Perception of Learning Gains of Freshmen Students in an Introductory Course in Nutrition and Food Science

ABSTRACT: The assessment of learning gains of students in science and other disciplines is becoming a reality following the gradual shift from the traditional style of teaching to a curriculum-based assessment of learning outcomes. The degree to which students perceive to have obtained the outcomes of a course can be measured through an assessment of students' learning gains. This study evaluated the perceived learning gains of freshmen students in an introductory class FSC 110-Introduction to Human Nutrition and Food Science (FSC 110)-over a 4-semester period. Students used the Assessment of Learning Gains Survey Instrument, developed by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, to assess the level of their perceived learning gains. The data collected indicated that, overall, students favorably perceived their learning gains in the course. Through the instrument, students identified areas of the course that they perceived to have contributed positively to their learning experiences and those they perceived to have not contributed in any meaningful way to their learning experiences. The students' perception of their learning gains could be useful to the instructor because it offers opportunities to revise the course with respect to delivery method, assessment methods and tools, and course resources, and to improve individual support given to students to enhance their learning experience. Such alterations in pedagogy could lead to significant improvements in course quality, which could be archived and transferred to subsequent classes.     

Middle Schools: the heart of schools in crisis

This paper is about middle schools and the effects of recent policies on the curricula organisation of six of them. We begin by establishing some general links between middle school origins, brief history and development, and wider economic and political forces for change. Drawing on four years of research with a group of schools in one local authority, we describe some of the directions of change which followed the Great Debate. We highlight recent changes as these schools came under increasing bureaucratic control, with the emphasis on the organisation of pupil selection and changes from mixed ability grouping, to setting, and back to mixed ability groups. We conclude with some theoretical discussion related to the work of Habermas.     

Improving Professional Practice through Practice-Based Research: V<Emphasis Type="Italic">a</Emphasis>KE (Values <Emphasis Type="Italic">and</Emphasis> Knowledge Education) in University-Based Teacher Education

Evidence suggests that in the professional education of teachers the moral goals are currently a neglected topic in favor of the subject matter and knowledge. The constructivist instructional approach VaKE (Values and Knowledge Education) addresses this problem by combining the moral and epistemic goals through the discussion of moral dilemmas. The main research question of this practice-based study was whether teacher educators can improve their instructional practice by using VaKE. We describe an empirical study of a teacher educator who used VaKE in order to (i) facilitate pre-service teachers to solve moral conflicts which they are faced with in their workplace learning and to (ii) increase the moral climate in his course. 58 pre-service teachers who formed two classes participated in the study. The study consisted of three research phases: In the first research phase the types of the pre-service teachers’ moral conflicts were examined. In the second research phase the most frequent types of moral conflicts were used as a basis for an explorative quasi-experimental pre-posttest study. This study investigated the effects of VaKE compared to a traditional case-analysis approach with regard to the pre-service teachers’ application of discourse-oriented actions for conflict resolution. In the third phase, a case study method was used comprising a random sample of seven pre-service teachers chosen from each class to investigate the perceived learning climate during the intervention. The results indicate that VaKE provides the possibility to combine the moral and epistemic goals of the professional education of teachers.     

Computer-managed instruction in Naval technical training

Based on the success reported by the behaviorally oriented programmed instruction movement in the 1960s, the Navy in the late 1960s and early 1970s began to individualize and self-pace a number of their high student throughput apprentice training courses. To facilitate self-pacing the Navy set up a centralized computer-managed instruction (CMI) system to manage self-paced courses. This paper describes the evolution of that CMI system, reviews a number of studies done on the system over 10 years (many of which were published as internal technical reports with restricted distribution), describes the demise of the system, and discusses future directions of self-paced and individualized instruction.     

我为何而活

三种简单却极其强烈的情感主宰着我的生活:对爱的渴望、对知识的追求、对人类痛苦的难以承受的怜悯之心.这三种情感,像一阵阵飓风一样,任意地将我吹的飘来荡去,越过痛苦的海洋,抵达绝望的彼岸.