Interactive Homework: A Tool for Fostering Parent–Child Interactions and Improving Learning Outcomes for At-risk Young Children

The notion that parent involvement impacts student learning outcomes for children who are at risk for failing academically has been supported by prominent early childhood education experts. Recent attention has been given to specific ways parents can help increase student learning through their interactions with children as they complete home learning activities. It is important to note that the term parent is used interchangeably with the terms adult, guardian and family member. The term “at-risk reader” refers to readers who are at risk of failing school because of reading deficiencies. This report will examine whether parent training to increase parent–child interactions during the completion of second grade Interactive Homework Assignments (IHA) can facilitate increases in a student’s ability to draw inferences from reading selections, a skill closely aligned with proficiency in reading acquisition. The second grade level was chosen because these children were those whose teachers were concerned with preparing them to take the third grade SAT9. Third grade level was not selected because many of their professional development activities were prescribed due to their immediate concern with preparing students to take the SAT9. IHA, for the scope of this study, is homework designed to increase parent involvement and student achievement. The results indicate that specific parent training during a brief period of time, approximately four weeks, has the potential for improving academic performance for academically at-risk students.     

永远爱你

"I" II love you for always.I' II like you for ever,as long as you' re living"这是母亲对儿子的爱语,也是后来儿子对母亲的回敬。by Abby"yabs"Bailey,Victoria,Australia.     

Playing Social Chess: Children's play and social intelligence

Humans live in complex social environments. By the time they reach adulthood, most people have developed highly sophisticated social skills, including the ability to infer the 'invisible' mental states in others, and to act upon those inferences; they have become experts at 'social chess'. This paper draws upon research from developmental and evolutionary psychology, primatology, as well as studies of autistic children, to explore the processes by which children acquire the complex skills underpinning social interaction. It also examines obstacles to social skill acquisition. In light of ethological studies of social play in humans and other primates, it is argued that play is a fundamental medium for acquiring social skills.     

Differences between vertical transfers and native students in four-year institutions

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 were drawn to compare those who transfer from two-year colleges and those who enroll in four-year institutions immediately after high school. The comparisons were made on background variables, individual characteristics, and financial aid status. Results indicated that transfers came from lower SES families, and had lower academic ability, high school achievement, and educational aspiration than native students. Transfers were less likely than native students to receive scholarships, fellowships, or grants, and they showed lower achievement in the year after transfer. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Gender differences in research areas,methods and topics: Can people and thing orientations explain the results?

Although the gender gap in academia has narrowed, females are underrepresented within some fields in the USA. Prior research suggests that the imbalances between science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields may be partly due to greater male interest in things and greater female interest in people, or to off-putting masculine cultures in some disciplines. To seek more detailed insights across all subjects, this article compares practising US male and female researchers between and within 285 narrow Scopus fields inside 26 broad fields from their first-authored articles published in 2017. The comparison is based on publishing fields and the words used in article titles, abstracts, and keywords. The results cannot be fully explained by the people/thing dimensions. Exceptions include greater female interest in veterinary science and cell biology and greater male interest in abstraction, patients, and power/control fields, such as politics and law. These may be due to other factors, such as the ability of a career to provide status or social impact or the availability of alternative careers. As a possible side effect of the partial people/thing relationship, females are more likely to use exploratory and qualitative methods and males are more likely to use quantitative methods. The results suggest that the necessary steps of eliminating explicit and implicit gender bias in academia are insufficient and might be complemented by measures to make fields more attractive to minority genders.     

Survey development to assess parental satisfaction with adapted physical education teachers' abilities working with children with autism

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to systematically develop and validate an instrument to assess parental perceptions toward adapted physical education (APE) teachers, who work with children with autism.

Methods: Participants included two expert panels and parents of children and youth with autism. The survey used a Likert-scale design where parents rated their level of satisfaction regarding communication with, qualifications of, and rapport with the APE teachers.

Results: Based on α coefficients for each of the three subscales, it was concluded that the survey had high internal validity. Split-half reliability determined by the Spearman Brown Prophecy coefficient indicated high reliability.

Conclusion: Preliminary evidence demonstrated that the survey may be a useful tool in assessing parental perceptions of their child's APE teacher.     

Body learning: examining the processes of skill learning in dance

This paper was stimulated by the authors' attempt to understand the process of skill learning in dance. Its stimulus was a period of fieldwork based at the Royal Ballet School in London, and subsequent discussions with the school's teachers and with academic colleagues about how it was that the young dancers developed their characteristic set of skills. The paper's focus and method is philosophical, although it draws on empirical data (albeit sparingly) where it is relevant to the discussion.

Many accounts of skill learning are premised on the presumption that learners come to know about their environment by representing it in the mind and that such representation is a result of a computational process involving information received through the senses. This is the dominant position of researchers in the field. In this paper, we discuss weaknesses in this information processing theory, and explore the elements of a more satisfactory approach. The account offered here locates dance skills within the context of development, in which skills are incorporated in learners through practice and training in dance environments. Dreyfus' theory of expertise and Bourdieu's theory of practice offer insights into the practical mastery young dancers carry in their bodies, which cannot be accurately formulated in terms of a system of representations. Dancers, from this perspective, do not passively follow instructions, but actively engage in tasks involving characteristic ways of moving that are situated in the nexus of relations between people and the distinctive contexts of dance. The paper suggests that skill learning in dance (or indeed any domain) is not a matter of processing information, but is imminent in the active, perceptual engagement of learner and context.