Early Education for Spatial Intelligence: Why,What, and How

Spatial representation and thinking have evolutionary importance for any mobile organism. In addition, they help reasoning in domains that are not obviously spatial, for example, through the use of graphs and diagrams. This article reviews the literature suggesting that mental spatial transformation abilities, while present in some precursory form in infants, toddlers, and preschool children, also undergo considerable development and show important individual differences, which are malleable. These findings provide the basis for thinking about how to promote spatial thinking in preschools, at home, and in children's play. Integrating spatial content into formal and informal instruction could not only improve spatial functioning in general but also reduce differences related to gender and socioeconomic status that may impede full participation in a technological society.     

Early Effects of North Carolina’s Comprehensive Articulation Agreement on Credit Accumulation Among Community College Transfer Students

Research in Higher Education - Community college transfer pathways, whereby students begin their postsecondary enrollment at a 2-year institution, are an increasingly popular option for students...     

Always Articulating: Theorizing on Mobile and Wireless Technologies

Through this article we theorize on the nature and effects of articulation work relative to the take-up and use of information and communications technologies (ICT). Articulation work is “work that enables other work”: that which links people, processes, and technologies within organizations. Articulation work in organizations is both common and too often invisible from a managerial or budgetary perspective. Drawing on data from a study of the introduction and implementation of mobile computing technologies into criminal justice organizations, we highlight two findings: (1) There exist ongoing but unmet articulation needs present in any organization or work system. (2) Articulation is cumulative. We find, that as work becomes more complex (such as adding new work tasks and using new technologies), there is more articulation needed. These findings raise issues with assessing the costs of articulation on individuals, and making arrangements to accommodate explicit and implicit articulation in organizational work, particularly around the take-up and ongoing use of ICT-based systems.     

Depressive symptoms in young adults: the influences of the early home environment and early educational child care

The relationship between depressive symptoms in young adults, the quality of the early home environment, and early educational child care was investigated in young adults randomly assigned to receive early childhood intervention in the Abecedarian study. Of the original 111 infants enrolled (98% African American), 104 participated in an age-21 follow-up. Those who had early treatment reported fewer depressive symptoms. The protective effects of the early childhood program were further supported by a significant home environment by treatment interaction. Negative effects of lower quality home environments on young adult depressive symptoms were almost entirely offset by preschool treatment, whereas depressive symptoms increased as the quality of the early home environment decreased for those in the control group.     

Examining the Effectiveness of Systematically-Designed Web-Based Instruction

The present study examines the effectiveness of using a Web interface for delivering multi-cultural education at a distance. More specifically, this study examines the pedagogical effectiveness of one unit of Web-based instruction on Examining Prejudice. Two research questions guided the investigators: (1) Are there significant gains between the pretest and the posttest for all subjects participating in the study? and (2) Are there significant differences between the mean scores of subjects approaching the information individually and of those working collaboratively?     

Acceptance,motivations, and usage of social media as a marketing communications tool amongst employees of sport national governing bodies

National governing bodies (NGB) of sport are not-for-profit organisations that typically receive less mainstream media coverage and have much smaller marketing budgets than mainstream professional sports. Therefore, they must seek alternative methods from mainstream media and traditional marketing in order to increase brand awareness and reach fans and stakeholders. While all sport organisations stand poised to benefit from social media, NGBs seem to be a segment of the sport industry uniquely positioned to capitalise on social media's benefits. Because there is currently no known literature on NGBs’ use of social media, this study examined the role that social media plays within NGBs in the United States including employees’ acceptance of social media, motivations to use social media, and the organisation's current usage of social media. An online survey was distributed to NGB employees in the spring of 2012, and results revealed that contrary to studies on other sport organisations, NGB employees reported high levels of acceptance and motivation to use social media regardless of demographic factors. Additionally, NGBs seemed to use social media as a communications tool to a greater degree than as a marketing tool. Implications for international and niche sport organisations are presented in the conclusion.     

Does training matter? Comparing the behaviour management strategies of pre-service teachers in a four-year program and those in a one-year program

Survey-based research was conducted with Australian pre-service teachers to identify the classroom management strategies that they would employ, their confidence in employing them, and the effectiveness of the strategies. Furthermore, the study aimed to identify significant differences in these variables between pre-service teachers in the final year of a four-year teacher training course and pre-service teachers undertaking a one-year, stand-alone teaching program. The results of this study indicate that the most frequently reported strategies by all the Australian pre-service primary teachers surveyed were rewards and initial corrections. The pre-service teachers were selective in the type of corrective strategies they would employ, with a preference for relatively less intrusive reactive strategies. All of the pre-service teachers here found rewards and preventative strategies to be the most effective. The only significant differences found between the four-year trained and one-year trained pre-service teachers were around preventative strategies. Specifically, four-year trained pre-service teachers employ preventative strategies significantly more often than pre-service teachers in the one-year teaching course. Similarly, four-year trained pre-service teachers are significantly more confident in using preventative strategies than those in the one-year course. The implications of the results for teacher education programs are considered.     

Exploring how children with reading difficulties respond to instructional supports in literacy games and the role of prior knowledge

Digital literacy games can be beneficial for children with reading difficulties as a supplement to classroom instruction and an important feature of these games are the instructional supports, such as feedback. To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge. However, there is limited research around the relationship between prior knowledge, instruction and feedback in the context of learning games. This paper presents an empirical study exploring the influence of prior knowledge on response to feedback, in two conditions: with or without instruction. Thirty-six primary children (age 8–11) with reading difficulties participated: each child was assessed for their prior knowledge of two suffix types—noun and adjective suffixes. They subsequently received additional instruction for one suffix type and then played two rounds of a literacy game—one round for each suffix type. Our analysis shows that prior knowledge predicted initial success rates and performance after a verbal hint differently, depending on whether instruction was provided. These results are discussed with regards to learning game feedback design and the impact on different types of knowledge involved in gameplay, as well as other game design elements that might support knowledge building during gameplay.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Instructional supports, such as elaborative feedback, are a key feature of learning games.
• To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge.
• Prior knowledge is an important moderator to consider in the context of elaborative feedback.

What this paper adds

• Providing additional instruction (eg, pre-training) may act as a knowledge enhancer building on children's existing disciplinary expertise, whereas the inclusion of elaborative feedback (eg, a hint) could be seen as a knowledge equaliser enabling children regardless of their prior knowledge to use the pre-training within their gameplay.
• Highlights the importance of children's preferred learning strategies within the design of pre-training and feedback to ensure children are able to use the instructional support provided within the game.
• Possible implications for pre-training and feedback design within literacy games, as well as highlighting areas for further research.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Pre-training for literacy games should highlight key features of the learning content and explicitly make connections with the target learning objective as well as elaborative feedback.
• Pre-training should be combined with different types of in-game feedback for different types of learners (eg, level of prior knowledge) or depending on the type of knowledge that designers want to build (eg, metalinguistic vs. epilinguistic).
• Modality, content and timing of the feedback should be considered carefully to match the specific needs of the intended target audience and the interaction between them given the primary goal of the game.