‘It's The Catcher in the Rye… He said it was the kind of book you made your own': Finding Holden in Contemporary YA Literature

Published in 1951,The Catcher in the Rye encapsulated teenage angst. Some time ago David Belbin mused about the influence of Catcher on the proliferation and popularity of YA literature. Salinger's recent death has sparked a renewed interest in his work and more attention on Holden and his inheritors. This article discusses how five recent adolescent novels, with male protagonists, mirror Holden's adolescent paralysis. They exist in a liminal state between childhood and adulthood, attempting to understand the phonies around them. These protagonists help define the nature of the ‘lost’ adolescent in the current golden age of YA literature.     

Neuroanatomy Learning: Augmented Reality vs. Cross-Sections

Neuroanatomy education is a challenging field which could benefit from modern innovations, such as augmented reality (AR) applications. This study investigates the differences on test scores, cognitive load, and motivation after neuroanatomy learning using AR applications or using cross-sections of the brain. Prior to two practical assignments, a pretest (extended matching questions, double-choice questions and a test on cross-sectional anatomy) and a mental rotation test (MRT) were completed. Sex and MRT scores were used to stratify students over the two groups. The two practical assignments were designed to study (1) general brain anatomy and (2) subcortical structures. Subsequently, participants completed a posttest similar to the pretest and a motivational questionnaire. Finally, a focus group interview was conducted to appraise participants’ perceptions. Medical and biomedical students (n = 31); 19 males (61.3%) and 12 females (38.7%), mean age 19.2 ± 1.7 years participated in this experiment. Students who worked with cross-sections (n = 16) showed significantly more improvement on test scores than students who worked with GreyMapp-AR (P = 0.035) (n = 15). Further analysis showed that this difference was primarily caused by significant improvement on the cross-sectional questions. Students in the cross-section group, moreover, experienced a significantly higher germane (P = 0.009) and extraneous cognitive load (P = 0.016) than students in the GreyMapp-AR group. No significant differences were found in motivational scores. To conclude, this study suggests that AR applications can play a role in future anatomy education as an add-on educational tool, especially in learning three-dimensional relations of anatomical structures.     

Pedagogically bereft! Improving learning outcomes for children with foetal alcohol spectrum disorders

Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is the most common non‐genetic cause of learning disability, affecting around 1% of live births in Europe, and costing an estimated $2.9 million per individual across their lifespan. In adulthood, non‐reversible brain damage is often compounded by secondary disabilities in adulthood, such as mental health problems and drug addiction. The challenge for today's educators is: ‘How do we teach children with FASD?’ Their unusual style of learning and their extreme challenging behaviour is out of the experience of many teachers. This article, written by Professor Barry Carpenter, OBE, National Director of the Specialist Schools & Academies Trust Complex Learning Difficulties and Disabilities Research Project, considers the status of FASD in the UK, and provides an overview of the author's recent research into effective educational strategies within the framework of Every Child Matters. Only government‐led approaches can lead to improvements in the quality of teaching and learning for children with FASD and their future life chances.     

Orthographic-Phonological Mapping and the Emergence of Visual Expertise for Print: A Developmental Event-Related Potential Study

The N1 effect is an electrophysiological marker of visual specialization for print. The phonological mapping hypothesis (Maurer & McCandliss, 2007) posits that the left-lateralized effect reflects grapheme-phoneme integration. In this event-related potential study, first (age = 7.06 years, N = 32) and third-grade readers (age = 9.29 years, N = 28) were presented with pairs of pseudowords and Armenian character strings in a novel implicit same-different paradigm. To test the phonological mapping hypothesis, stimuli were presented in visual-only and audiovisual conditions. The results demonstrated that tuning for print already emerges in first grade. Moreover, the parallel presentation of auditory stimuli enhanced the N1 effect suggesting a role of orthographic-phonological mapping in the development of specialization for print.     

Blended learning in higher education: professional development in a Hong Kong university

ABSTRACT

Online learning has become a ubiquitous part of the educational landscape and how teachers are supported in developing approaches to teaching online is a fundamental aspect of the students’ learning experience. Based on the implementation of a professional development course on becoming an online teacher offered in a blended learning mode at one university in Hong Kong, this article proposes that offering this type of professional development in a blended mode is very effective in facilitating enhanced usage of the university’s learning management system. In a blended mode, teachers are actively engaged with blended learning and were found to make more extensive use of features/tools in Blackboard after they attended the professional development course. Results support that offering professional development in a blended mode provides teachers with an authentic student perspective, at the same time as they take guided steps in the teacher’s role in blended learning.     

School Education Through the Eyes of Parents

Data from surveys of parents of students in Russian schools of various types in the years 2006 to 2011 show a high level of desire to invest in their children's education. There has been a high degree of stability in aspirations and investment in spite of the economic problems caused by global recession.