4. FOREIGN/COMPARATIVE MEDIA SYSTEMS

James Duncan Jr.'s American Radio: Spring '77 Report (Gilmore Advertising, 200 Michigan Bldg., Kalamazoo, Mich. 49006—$37.00 with a university rate of $28.00, paper)

F. Earle Barcus' Commercial Children's Television on Weekends and Weekday Afternoons (Action for Children's Television, 46 Austin Street, Newtonville, Mass. 02160— $25.00, paper)

Elmo I. Ellis' Opportunities in Broadcasting (Skokie, Ill.: National Textbook Co., 1977—$5.50/3.95)     

General Film History

Jack C. Ellis' A History of Film (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978---$11.95, paper)

John L. Fell's A History of Films (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1978---price not given, paper)

Anthony Slide's Aspects of American Film History Prior to 1920 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1978---$7.50). In the short (173 pages)

Two recent additions to the Ungar Film Library (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1978---at prices shown)     

Collaborative learning in the Scottish curriculum for excellence: the challenges of assessment and potential of multi-touch technology

Scottish educational policy advocates the benefits of collaborative learning as a way of developing critical life skills, across the primary curriculum. In this paper, the rationale for collaborative learning, and specifically the Critical Skills (CS) approach, is considered along with an account of the perspectives of primary teachers implementing the methodology in their classroom. Based on the results of semi-structured interviews and an electronic survey, this article considers teachers’ opinion on the effectiveness of the CS approach, and highlights challenges relating to attaining, effectively retaining and analysing the evidence of impact gained via collaborative learning. It concludes that the latest technologies, including multi-touch technology, present scope to ease the challenge of assessing the collaborative process.     

A Taxonomy for Categorizing Generalizations: Generalizing Actions and Reflection Generalizations

This article presents a cohesive, empirically grounded categorization system differentiating the types of generalizations students constructed when reasoning mathematically. The generalization taxonomy developed out of an empirical study conducted during a 3-week teaching experiment and a series of individual interviews. Qualitative analysis of data from teaching sessions with 7 seventh-graders and individual interviews with 7 eighth-graders resulted in a taxonomy that distinguishes between students' activity as they generalize, or generalizing actions, and students' final statements of generalization, or reflection generalizations. The three major generalizing action categories that emerged from analysis are (a) relating, in which one forms an association between two or more problems or objects, (b) searching, in which one repeats an action to locate an element of similarity, and (c) extending, in which one expands a pattern or relation into a more general structure. Reflection generalizations took the form of identifications or statements, definitions, and the influence of prior ideas or strategies. By locating generalization within the learner's viewpoint, the taxonomy moves beyond casting it as an activity at which students either fail or succeed to allow researchers to identify what students see as general, and how they engage in the act of generalizing.     

Teaching Soft Skills Employers Need

This study identifies the soft skills community colleges teach in an office technology course and determines whether the skills taught are congruent with the soft skills employers require in today's entry-level office work. A qualitative content analysis of a community college office technology soft skills course was performed using 23 soft skills employers require for entry-level office work. Nine of the 16 colleges in the South Carolina Technical College System were teaching an office technology soft skills course in 2007–2008, and they provided course content for analysis. Data determined that the skills taught in the office technology soft skills course are by vast majority congruent with the soft skills employers require in today's entry-level office work.     

Drama as an Experiential Technique in Learning How to Cope with Dying Patients and their Families

This paper discusses a teaching experiment in which participation and observation of a drama helped first year nursing students to consider ways of dealing with death and dying. Workshops included dramatised scenarios of critical incidents demonstrating different peoples' experiences of the death of a fictional patient in hospital. Two nurse teachers performed a two-part drama about the experiences of a patient just diagnosed with terminal cancer. Live performances were presented to large groups of students and followed by small group discussions. Drama as a teaching method was well received, and the combination of drama and group discussion was considered very effective by students, who requested more similar sessions. Drama appears highly satisfactory for achieving learning in the affective domain, and can be added to teaching methods for improving communication skills and coping strategies with nursing students who will be caring for the dying. However, further research is necessary.     

Correction to: Neglected Elements of a High-Quality Early Childhood Workforce: Whole Teacher Well-Being and Working Conditions

Early Childhood Education Journal - The original version of this article unfortunately contains some typo in Table 1.