Language Use Among Singaporean Pre-School Children

This paper highlights the findings pertaining to the receptive and expressive language competencies of young children. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relative sensitivity of five different language measures as a means for assessing pre-schoolers' oral language proficiency. The results show few significant differences in language scores as a function of age, sex or SES. There was a complex pattern of intercorrelations among the language measures used. Results of a home environment questionnaire administered to parents revealed homogeneity in home environments for stimulating child learning and cognitive development across socioeconomic groups. The findings are discussed in relation to the utility of these measures in assessing pre-schoolers' linguistic competencies.     

Calling all students!!!

'Dissertations into Practice' is a new regular feature in the Health Information and Libraries Journal, which aims to encourage students to write for publication. The idea is that students will write an extended abstract of their health-related dissertations, outlining the methods used and commenting on the implications for practice. Co-written with their dissertation or workplace supervisor, this feature will provide a safe environment for students to see their writing in print, possibly for the first time, while ensuring that invaluable research reaches a wider audience than might otherwise be the case.     

A comparison of curricular effects on the integration of arithmetic and algebraic schemata in pre-algebra students

This research examines students’ ability to integrate algebraic variables with arithmetic operations and symbols as a result of the type of instruction they received, and places their work on scales that illustrate its location on the continuum from arithmetic to algebraic reasoning. It presents data from pre and post instruction clinical interviews administered to a sample of middle school students experiencing their first exposure to formal pre-algebra. Roughly half of the sample (n = 15) was taught with a standards-based curriculum emphasizing representation skills, while a comparable group (n = 12) of students received traditional instruction. Analysis of the pre and post interviews indicated that participants receiving a standards-based curriculum demonstrated more frequent and sophisticated usage of variables when writing equations to model word problems of varying complexity. This advantage was attenuated on problems that provided more representational support in which a diagram with a variable was presented with the request that an expression be written to represent the perimeter and area. Differences in strategies used by the two groups suggest that the traditional curriculum encouraged students to continue using arithmetic conventions, such as focusing on finding specific values, when asked to model relations with algebraic notation.

Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory-based assessment with deaf and hard of hearing children in the school setting

The general purpose of the present article is to emphasize contemporary research-based and theory-based assessment, specifically Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory-based assessment (Carroll, 1993, 1997; Horn & Noll, 1997), in work with deaf and hard of hearing students in the school setting. The article focuses on the history of cognitive ability theory and test development and interpretation, as well as contemporary perspectives, including recent applications of CHC-based assessment useful with deaf and hard of hearing students in school-based evaluations. Implications for future research and educational practice are discussed.