Maturation of consonant perception,but not vowel perception,predicts lexical skills at 12 months

Consonants and vowels differentially contribute to lexical acquisition. From 8 months on, infants' preferential reliance on consonants has been shown to predict their lexical outcome. Here, the predictive value of German-learning infants' (n = 58, 29 girls, 29 boys) trajectories of consonant and vowel perception, indicated by the electrophysiological mismatch response, across 2, 6, and 10 months for later lexical acquisition was studied. The consonant-perception trajectory from 2 to 6 months (β = −2.95) and 6 to 10 months (β = −.91), but not the vowel-perception trajectory, significantly predicted receptive vocabulary at 12 months. These results reveal an earlier predictive value of consonant perception for word learning than previously found, and a particular role of the longitudinal maturation of this skill in lexical acquisition.     

游戏与学习研究新进展

随着计算机游戏在图形、复杂性、交互和描述等方面越来越复杂,多种类型的游戏已经在市场上占有重要地位,计算机游戏正成为文化的一部分。游戏与学习的关系成为越来越多的研究者关注的重点。本研究综述的目的是提供关于计算机游戏产业、市场和文化等现状的一个概述;对游戏与教育相关性研究的主要进展提供概览,并对该领域的相关文献进行概述;为教育研究共同体和游戏开发商等就如何在学习资源设计中使用游戏技术进行交流提供基础;为教育共同体在教育环境中使用数字游戏的讨论提供基础。同时本研究还以恰如其分的语气承认,在现有的教育体制和学习模式下,应用游戏的一些障碍和挑战。不仅如此,在这篇研究综述中,作者还为设计者、研究者和政策制定者提出了如何将游戏的一些本质特点融入学习资源和学习环境设计中的一些方法,而不仅仅是像今天教育游戏给学生提供的似乎像糖衣的"趣味性",只是使学生完全沉浸其中。     

Development,Dissemination, and Assessment of a Food Safety Systems Management Curriculum for Agribusiness Students in Armenia

This study addresses the development, dissemination, and assessment of a Food Safety System Management (FSSM) curriculum offered to college‐aged, agribusiness students in Yerevan, Armenia. Prior to beginning the program, demographic data were collected and a paper‐based pretest was administered to access the food safety knowledge, behavior, and attitude of participants (n = 29). For assessment of a skill, participants’ handwashing techniques were videotaped and scored before the program commenced. Immediately after completion of the entire curriculum, a paper‐based post‐test with identical questions for food safety knowledge, behavior, and attitude was administered and handwashing skills were assessed. ANOVA with repeated measures was used to evaluate significant differences (α = 0.05) for food safety knowledge using a pretest, post‐test, and a 3‐mo follow‐up. A paired t‐test was used to evaluate handwashing skills before and after the curriculum was presented. The pretest score (44.93%, ± 2.87) for food safety knowledge (n = 29) differed significantly (P <0.0001) when compared with the post‐test score (73.21%, ± 3.28) and the 3‐mo follow‐up (n = 23) score (67.76%, ± 3.93). Participants’ (n = 9) handwashing skills prior to delivery of the FSSM curriculum differed significantly (P <0.0001), when compared to handwashing skills after completion of the curriculum. Students’ food safety attitudes and behavior assessed using a five‐point Likert scale, also improved significantly as a result of the FSSM program. The 3‐mo follow‐up survey on food safety attitude and behavior was consistent with the post‐test survey results. The information from this project may be of interest to education experts, Extension professionals, food industry personnel, or regulatory agencies, in the development and dissemination of an international food safety program.     

Teaching social work students against the grain: negotiating the constraints and possibilities

Students who have followed routes to Western universities other than the ‘traditional’ one – that is, an uninterrupted path from school to university – face greater challenges to their democratic participation in higher education than their ‘traditional’ counterparts. Until recently, universities have predominantly expected students with diverse entry points to assimilate into existing curricula and academic modes of operating. Such expectation, when combined with reductionist managerial accountability, has largely marginalised non-traditional students. This paper reports on a project which aimed to reverse this marginalisation in an Australian Bachelor of Social Work degree. It is argued that students from diverse linguistic, cultural and educational backgrounds, having greater challenges in negotiating privileged academic and discipline literacies, are better served pedagogically by curriculum design that resonates with their lifeworlds and makes tacit assumptions in university literacies explicit. Using practitioner action research in a partnership between a social work and an academic language and learning academic, pedagogies that utilised students’ literacy practices as assets for learning were enacted over two research cycles. The possibilities and constraints that emerged to support student learning and more equitable participation were examined. The findings suggest that it is possible, even under current preoccupations with measurements and budget constraints, to signal key points of negotiation for pedagogic change to respond more inclusively and equitably to contemporary university students.     

Should great lakes city build a new power plant? How youth navigate socioscientific issues

There is a growing consensus that simply learning enough science to decipher public debates on socioscientific issues will not make citizens better equipped to handle the complex and ill‐structured problems these controversial issues present. This study highlights the interaction and complex interplay between youth authored and appropriated frames for making sense of socioscientific issues. To do so, we analyze how two middle‐school aged youth, in an after‐school program focused on green energy technologies, made sense of and took a stance on whether their city should build a new hybrid power plant over the course of a 13‐week unit. Using critical sociocultural perspectives on learning and qualitative case study, we examined how the two youth navigated the issue and the resources, scientific and otherwise, they leveraged in defining the problem spaces involved in whether their city should build a new power plant. Our findings indicate that the scientific knowledge youth brought with them and acquired over the course of the investigation influenced how they made sense of the issue, but their knowledge was deeply connected to a range of personal and public discourses that influenced how they defined the issue and why it mattered to them. In particular, it was through how they framed their range of knowledge and experiences that they were able to recognize the multi‐dimensional nature of the problem and propose complex solutions resonant with the science they understood. Our study offers conceptual tools for teaching and learning socioscientific issues. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 541–567, 2012