A good measure of safety

Each year, fifteen thousand children die from accidents—more than from cancer, congenital malformations, pneumonia, heart disease, meningitis, and homicide combined. As a day care center provider or a parent, you are responsible for the safety and well-being of children in your care. You need to know how to make your home safe for children and how to prevent accidents. Young children view things as interesting to taste or touch—not as safe or dangerous. Children do not even begin to understand the concept of danger until the age of two. Protecting them is your job. Annette Lubchenco is the principal writer for the Spoonful of Lovin'video series and its Manual for Day Care Providers.This article is excerpted from the Manualthat can be obtained from the Agency for Instructional Television, Box A, Bloomington, IN 47402.     

Preservice Teachers' Knowledge of Difficulties in Decimal Numeration

In this study we investigated preservice elementary school teachers' content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge of decimal numeration. The preservice teachers completed a decimal comparison test, marked items they thought would be difficult for students, and explained why. Only about 80 percent of the sample tested as experts, indicating that a significant proportion of preservice teachers have inadequate content knowledge of decimals. Confusion about the size of decimals in relation to zero was a significant and unexpected difficulty, leading to concerns about the fragmentary nature of the preservice teachers' knowledge. Most preservice teachers were aware of longer-is-larger misconceptions in students, but had little awareness of shorter-is-larger misconceptions. Preservice teachers' explanations for the reasons students might have difficulty demonstrated that many are good at identifying features that make comparisons difficult but less able to explain why these cause trouble. Results point to the need for teacher education to emphasise content knowledge that integrates different aspects of number knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge that includes a thorough understanding of common difficulties. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Profiles of change in motivation for teaching in higher education at an American research university

The current study employed an emergent theoretical model of teaching role identity and motivation to investigate the change in conception of and motivation for teaching in higher education of research graduate students who teach in the United States. Fifteen participants took a graduate-level seminar as part of a two-course teaching professional development (PD) program. Qualitative content analysis of the participants’ pre-seminar and post-seminar reflective essays focused on change in the theoretical model’s components – participants’ goals, self-perceptions, epistemological beliefs, and action possibilities – and their alignment. The findings suggested four kinds of change in each component, ranging from dramatic change to reversed change, as well as three general profiles of change labeled ‘Transformation,’ ‘Elaboration’, and ‘Stagnation’. The model proved useful in conceptualizing the change in participants’ teaching-related conceptions and motivation and could provide a guide for future research on teaching motivation and for designing and evaluating teaching PD in higher education.     

On the association between serial naming speed for letters and digits and word‐reading skill: towards a developmental account

The current study examined several alternative explanations of the association between serial naming speed within fourth‐grade children by determining the extent to which the association between word reading and naming speed for letters and numbers is mediated by global processing speed, alphanumeric symbol processing efficiency and phonological processing ability. Children were given multiple measures of key constructs, i.e. word‐level reading, serial naming of both alphanumeric and non‐alphanumeric items, phonological processing ability, articulation rate and global processing speed. The robust association between alphanumeric naming speed and reading within fourth‐grade children was largely mediated by phonological processing ability. Markedly different patterns of results were observed for naming speed for letters and digits and naming speed for colours and pictures in children of this age. Relative to the latter, alphanumeric naming speed better assesses an underlying phonological processing ability that is common to word‐reading ability. We argue that item identification processes contribute little to individual differences in alphanumeric naming speed within relatively proficient readers and that the extent to which alphanumeric naming speed primarily reflects phonological processing is likely to vary with the level of overlearning of letters and numbers and their names.     

Naturalistic Language Recordings Reveal “Hypervocal” Infants at High Familial Risk for Autism

Children's early language environments are related to later development. Little is known about this association in siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who often experience language delays or have ASD. Fifty‐nine 9‐month‐old infants at high or low familial risk for ASD contributed full‐day in‐home language recordings. High‐risk infants produced more vocalizations than low‐risk peers; conversational turns and adult words did not differ by group. Vocalization differences were driven by a subgroup of “hypervocal” infants. Despite more vocalizations overall, these infants engaged in less social babbling during a standardized clinic assessment, and they experienced fewer conversational turns relative to their rate of vocalizations. Two ways in which these individual and environmental differences may relate to subsequent development are discussed.     

Letter‐space: Typographic Translations of Urban Place

This article discusses a Bachelor of Design honours year typography project in the medium of letterpress. The Letter‐space project positioned letterpress as a textual, spatial and structural visual language, through which the experiences and meanings of a local urban place were translated, mapped and given form through typographic design. We outline and contextualise the pedagogical approach we took in this project. In Letter‐space a pedagogy based on the principles of situated and reflective learning drew urban place and letterpress into a theorised practice. Metaphorical frameworks advanced in urban theory offered new insights into the ways in which urban place could be understood. These metaphors provided departure points for specific place‐based investigation and interpretation. The subject of urban place and the medium of letterpress interacted through their shared language of structure and compositional order, facilitating the processes of mapping and translation. Examples of the student work produced in the project are discussed and show how theory and practice interacted through conceptual and metaphorical structures. The Letter‐space project advanced the students’ structural understanding of the principles and practices of typographic design, while at the same time deepened an awareness of the complex relationships which form and order familiar urban places     

Exclusion Expected? Cardiac Slowing Upon Peer Exclusion Links Preschool Parent Representations to School-Age Peer Relationships

Attachment theory proposes that children’s representations of interactions with caregivers guide information-processing about others, bridging interpersonal domains. In a longitudinal study (N = 165), preschoolers (M_age = 5.19 years) completed the MacArthur Story Stem Battery to assess parent representations. At school-age (M_age = 8.42 years), children played a virtual ballgame with peers who eventually excluded them to track event-related cardiac slowing, a physiological correlate of rejection, especially when unexpected. At both ages, parents and teachers reported on peer and emotional problems. During exclusion versus inclusion-related events, cardiac slowing was associated with greater positive parent representations and fewer emerging peer problems. Cardiac slowing served as a mediator between positive parent representations and peer problems, supporting a potential psychophysiological mechanism underlying the generalization of attachment-related representations to peer relationships.     

Pre-service Biology Teachers’ Responses to First-Hand Anomalous Data During Modelling Processes

Research in Science Education - In this research project we investigate the role of responses to anomalous data during modelling processes. Modelling is seen as a comprehensive practice that...