Collaborative Teaching of Motor Skills for Preschoolers with Developmental Delays

The purpose of this paper is to describe collaborative teaching between preschool teachers, adapted physical educators, physical therapists, and occupational therapists of motor skills for preschoolers with developmental delays. The motor domain is typically taught by the classroom teacher who may have little to no knowledge of how to initiate a motor program. For this reason, a collaborative approach in teaching the motor domain facilitates developing preschool readiness skills such as motor imitation, bilateral coordination and sequencing, and spatial awareness—all while taking the child’s special needs into consideration. The team also collaborates on teaching strategies, behavioral supports, and how they will keep the activities fun to facilitate active participation. The team members work in synchrony for common goals, providing input from their individual areas of expertise, so the children can learn and generalize skills across all environments.     

College student perceptions of teaching and learning quality

Numerous instructional design models have been proposed over the past several decades. Instead of focusing on the design process (means), this study investigated how learners perceived the quality of instruction they experienced (ends). An electronic survey instrument containing nine a priori scales was developed. Students responded from 89 different undergraduate and graduate courses at multiple institutions (n = 140). Data analysis indicated strong correlations between student self-reports on academic learning time, how much they learned, First Principles of Instruction, their satisfaction with the course, perceptions of their mastery of course objectives, and global course ratings. Most importantly, these scales measure principles with which instructional developers and teachers can evaluate their products and courses, regardless of design processes used: provide authentic tasks for students to do; activate prior learning; demonstrate what is to be learned; provide repeated opportunities for students to successfully complete authentic tasks with coaching and feedback; and help students integrate what they have learned into their personal lives.

The Heart Rate Response to Nintendo Wii Boxing in Young Adults

Purpose

To determine if 30 minutes of Nintendo Wii Sports boxing provides cardiorespiratory benefits and contributes to the daily exercise recommendations for healthy young adults.

Methods

Twenty healthy 23- to 27-year-olds participated in two sessions to measure maximum heart rate (HR_max) via a treadmill test and heart rate (HR) response to 30 minutes of Wii Sports boxing. Heart rate in beats per minute (bpm) was measured continuously, and exercise intensity during each minute of play was stratified as a percentage of HR_max. Mixed designs analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Pearson product moment correlations were used to analyze the data.

Results

Mean (SD) HR response to boxing was 143 (15) bpm or 77.5% (10.0%) of HR_max. The mean HR response for experienced participants was significantly lower than inexperienced participants, P = .007. The ANOVA revealed a significant interaction between experience and time spent at various intensities, P = .009. Experienced participants spent more time in light to vigorous intensities, inexperienced participants in moderate to very hard intensities. Fitness was not correlated with mean HR response to boxing, P = .49.

Conclusion

Thirty minutes of Nintendo Wii Sports boxing provides a moderate to vigorous aerobic response in healthy young adults and can contribute to daily recommendations for physical activity.Key Words: exergaming, cardiorespiratory training, active video games     

Examining Science Teachers’ Argumentation in a Teacher Workshop on Earthquake Engineering

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the quality of science teachers’ argumentation as a result of their engagement in a teacher workshop on earthquake engineering emphasizing distributed learning approaches, which included concept mapping, collaborative game playing, and group lesson planning. The participants were ten high school science teachers from US high schools who elected to attend the workshop. To begin and end the teacher workshop, teachers in small groups engaged in concept mapping exercises with other teachers. Researchers audio-recorded individual teachers’ argumentative statements about the inclusion of earthquake engineering concepts in their concept maps, which were then analyzed to reveal the quality of teachers’ argumentation. Toulmin’s argumentation model formed the framework for designing a classification schema to analyze the quality of participants’ argumentative statements. While the analysis of differences in pre- and post-workshop concept mapping exercises revealed that the number of argumentative statements did not change significantly, the quality of participants’ argumentation did increase significantly. As these differences occurred concurrently with distributed learning approaches used throughout the workshop, these results provide evidence to support distributed learning approaches in professional development workshop activities to increase the quality of science teachers’ argumentation. Additionally, these results support the use of concept mapping as a cognitive scaffold to organize participants’ knowledge, facilitate the presentation of argumentation, and as a research tool for providing evidence of teachers’ argumentation skills.     

Race and gender influences on adjustment in early adolescence: investigation of an integrative model

This research investigated an integrative model of race- and gender-related influences on adjustment during early adolescence using a sample of 350 Black and White youth. In the proposed model, prejudice/discrimination events, as well as race and gender daily hassles, contribute to a general stress context. The stress context, in turn, influences levels of emotional and behavioral problems in adjustment, with these associations mediated (in part) by intervening effects on self-esteem. Racial and gender identity similarly have positive effects on adjustment via their intermediary linkages with self-esteem. Structural equation modeling analyses provided support for all of these aspects of the model. Findings also revealed theoretically predicted differences in model parameters across race by gender subgroups. These include a direct effect of prejudice/discrimination events on emotional problems specific to Black youth and an effect of gender identity on self-esteem specific to girls. Black girls appeared to be most vulnerable to exhibiting significant adjustment difficulties as a result of the processes under investigation.