Family Science Talk in Museums: Predicting Children's Engagement From Variations in Talk and Activity

Children's developing reasoning skills are better understood within the context of their social and cultural lives. As part of a research–museum partnership, this article reports a study exploring science‐relevant conversations of 82 families, with children between 3 and 11 years, while visiting a children's museum exhibit about mammoth bones, and in a focused one‐on‐one exploration of a “mystery object.” Parents' use of a variety of types of science talk predicted children's conceptual engagement in the exhibit, but interestingly, different types of parent talk predicted children's engagement depending on the order of the two activities. The findings illustrate the importance of studying children's thinking in real‐world contexts and inform creation of effective real‐world science experiences for children and families.     

Identifying the Macro-Level Drivers of Adolescent Fertility Rate in Latin America: The Role of School-Based Sexuality Education

This study seeks to explain macrolevel drivers of adolescent fertility rate using a panel data set derived from 17 Latin American countries over a period of 16 years (1997–2012). While many studies of adolescent fertility have focused on individual-level explanations, this study explores whether adolescent fertility rate is correlated to country-level determinants, specifically legislation adoption that guarantees access to school-based sexuality education, emergency contraception, and abortion. After controlling for other country-level factors, we find that countries that have adopted legislation on school-based sexuality education and those with legal access to abortion (under one or more restrictions) have lower adolescent fertility rates.     

Contents Volume 48 2002

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 48 2002     

Content accessibility of special education organisations' Web sites

Professional organisations play a central role in efforts to make public and private facilities and resources accessible. Hundreds of organisations have formed to support the development and maintenance of services to individuals with disabilities. The World Wide Web (WWW) has become a valuable resource for individuals with disabilities, but on-line barriers create significant limitations in content accessibility. This study evaluated the content accessibility of professional organisation home pages. One hundred and eighty-seven home pages were evaluated for content accessibility. The results indicated that 72% of them had significant accessibility problems that severely affect their usability by people with disabilities. The types of accessibility problems are presented, as well as methods for validating and areas for improving Web sites.     

Matters of HEARTS: health,experience of abuse,resilience, technology use,and safety of older adults

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to assess the HEARTS (Health, Experience of Abuse, Resilience, Technology use, and Safety) of older adults (OAs). More particularly, we aimed to assess three components of the HEARTS (health, experience of abuse, and resilience) of OAs and explore the relationships among health, resilience, the experience of abuse, and other demographic variables. Forty-two male and female OAs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA participated in the study. A correlational design was used in this study. The variables correlated were health, the experience of abuse, and the resilience of OAs. We used a community-engaged research approach in that participants were more than research volunteers but stakeholders in the research project. Findings showed that the means for more positive health features (physical function, and social roles) increased with increases in education, while more negative health features (anxiety, depression, fatigue, sleep disturbance, pain interference, and pain intensity) decreased with higher levels of education. Regression models indicated that above and beyond demographic features, resilience had a significant prediction of anxiety and depression. None of the other health outcomes were significantly predicted by either resilience or older adults’ abuse suspicion.

Adding health to years in older adults is a collaborative effort with healthcare providers, healthcare systems, families, and communities. This study has identified three components of HEARTS (Health, Experience of Abuse, and Resilience) that blend with successful aging and provide data and possible prevention and intervention strategies, and family and community education programs that could add health to years in older adults.     

The potential for lifelong learning in dementia: a post-humanist exploration

Numbers of people with dementia are projected to grow to 682 million globally by 2050. However, despite this escalation, the widely-promoted positive vision of lifelong learning throughout all ages does not extend to people with dementia. Constructions of learning for those with dementia are predominantly limited to the management of symptoms. The focus on retrieval of memory does not seem to allow for the emergence of the learner as a ‘new beginner’ or as a teacher. This paper focuses on a recent study, Beyond Words to challenge dominant assumptions about dementia and learning. Using a post-humanist theoretical framework, this longitudinal qualitative study explores the benefits of community music for those who face problems communicating with words: such as those with dementias, autism, learning difficulties and brain damage. Rather than characterising them as ‘non-verbal’ it positions them as ‘post-verbal’ and able to communicate in different ways. Moving away from discussions of ‘selfhood’, the paper uses a post-humanist approach to explore an agentic assemblage including one person with dementia from the study and also explores how another participant teaches important lessons about materiality and time. It demonstrates that learning and ‘new beginnings’ and ‘becomings’ can and do take place at advanced stages of dementia, challenging the assumption that dementia is a wasteland for learning. It also shows how people with dementia have much to teach researchers about living and learning.     

“Let’s not leave this problem”: exploring inclusive education in rural South Africa

Inclusive education represents a new agenda for educational reform that spans a wide range of socio-political, cultural, ethical, personal and interpersonal dimensions. Working towards educational inclusion demands commitments, responsibilities and initiatives on the part of all parties to take into consideration the meanings and purpose of education and social justice, to engage and take collective actions in their struggle to combat the diverse forms of educational and social exclusion. This paper presents an educational initiative to implement inclusive education in rural KwaZulu-Natal, an area of South Africa that is most seriously affected by the pandemic of HIV and AIDS. Through the implementation of participatory video-making projects in two schools, the authors seek to empower the voices and actions of teachers in an effort to cope with the problems of poverty and marginalization facing many children. The outcomes of this type of participatory work with teachers have implications for the policy-making process, which in turn, could change the ways educational policy research is structured and implemented.

Global estimates of the implications of COVID-19-related preprimary school closures for children’s instructional access,development, learning,and economic wellbeing

Observational data collected prior to the pandemic (between 2004 and 2019) were used to simulate the potential consequences of early childhood care and education (ECCE) service closures on the estimated 167 million preprimary-age children in 196 countries who lost ECCE access between March 2020 and February 2021. COVID-19-related ECCE disruptions were estimated to result in 19.01 billion person-days of ECCE instruction lost, 10.75 million additional children falling “off track” in their early development, 14.18 million grades of learning lost by adolescence, and a present discounted value of USD 308.02 billion of earnings lost in adulthood. Further burdens associated with ongoing closures were also forecasted. Projected developmental and learning losses were concentrated in low- and lower middle-income countries, likely exacerbating long-standing global inequities.     

Using a Professional Development Program for Enhancing Chilean Biology Teachers’ Understanding of Nature of Science (NOS) and Their Perceptions About Using History of Science to Teach NOS

A number of authors have recognized the importance of understanding the nature of science (NOS) for scientific literacy. Different instructional strategies such as decontextualized, hands-on inquiry, and history of science (HOS) activities have been proposed for teaching NOS. This article seeks to understand the contribution of HOS in enhancing biology teachers’ understanding of NOS, and their perceptions about using HOS to teach NOS. These teachers (N = 8), enrolled in a professional development program in Chile are, according to the national curriculum, expected to teach NOS, but have no specific NOS and HOS training. Teachers’ views of NOS were assessed using the VNOS-D+ questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of two modules about science instruction and NOS. Both the pre- and the post-test were accompanied by interviews, and in the second session we collected information about teachers’ perceptions of which interventions had been more significant in changing their views on NOS. Finally, the teachers also had to prepare a lesson plan for teaching NOS that included HOS. Some of the most important study results were: significant improvements were observed in teachers’ understanding of NOS, although they assigned different levels of importance to HOS in these improvements; and although the teachers improved their understanding of NOS, most had difficulties in planning lessons about NOS and articulating historical episodes that incorporated NOS. The relationship between teachers’ improved understanding of NOS and their instructional NOS skills is also discussed.     

Seeing for ourselves: when teachers make documentary films. Rebel Goulash and Over the Rainbow

To begin … a moral tale for anthropologists, a fantasy in which an anthropological cinema exists—not documentaries about ‘anthropological’ subjects but films designated by anthropologists to communicate anthropological insights. It is a well‐articulated genre distinct from the conceptual limitations of realist documentary and broadcast journalism. It borrows conventions and techniques from the whole of cinema—fiction, documentary, animation and experimental … this fantasy is more like science fiction than anything else. It is not remotely close to being realized. But it is an ideal worth pursuing (Ruby, 2000 Ruby J 2000 Picturing culture: explorations of film and anthropology (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press)  [Google Scholar], pp. 1–2).