Children's skill in making predictions and their understanding of what predicting means: A developmental study

The purpose of this study was to describe the development of elementary students' skill in making predictions and of their understanding of what predicting means. The study involved observing and assessing the performance of 167 children on the Physical Manipulation Test (PMT), a test involving the manipulation of science materials and equipment. Children were interviewed about what they understand predicting to mean, how they use it at school and at home, and why they think it is important. For each of the seven topics tested, even the youngest children were able to offer predictions. Accuracy varied with the topic, increasing between Grades 1 and 4 and leveling off after that. The increase in skill involved children's growing ability to attend to patterns discerned through their own observations. Four levels in the development of predicting skill, as it relates to particular topics, are described. Children's understanding of predicting showed steady improvement through Grade 6. Children's awareness of their use of predicting at school and at home, and their ability to explain the importance of predicting, also increased through Grades 1 to 6, with a spurt at Grade 4. Children understood predicting to be an internal process in which one uses knowledge to anticipate a future event; they regarded predicting as an important way of being intellectually involved with the world.     

Three Supervision Modalities for Training Marital and Family Counselors

Three supervision modalities (live, delayed review, and verbal reports) in training marital and family counselors are discussed with attention given to goals, supervisory considerations, advantages, and disadvantages of each modality.     

大学生体育与健康教育的现状与对策

采用文献资料法、问卷调查法和数理统计等方法,针对大学生体育与健康教育问题,进行了健康教育知识、健康行为、体育与健康的关系等方面的调查研究,提出了高等院校体育教育中健康教育的必要性及对策与建议.     

关于中学体育创新教育的调查与思考

通过对中学体育创新教育现状的调查,发现中学体育教学过程较重视体育对人的生物学改造,而忽视体育教学深层次的、内在的创新问题.结合调查,分别就中学体育教学内容与教学方法的创新问题以及体育教学培养创新思维与学生体育学习考核评价的创新问题提出见解.     

Children are not Meant to be Studied …

The project of studying children in order to understand them, which lies at the heart of contemporary thinking about children and their education, is misconceived. It rests, jrst of all, upon a false belief that we can only come to know something properly by deliberately and systematically pursuing knowledge of it. Secondly, it offers a paradigm of knowing children which justifies parents and teachers in not giving themselves to children. By re-interpreting the problems that adults experience with children as technical, as arising from lack of information about them, it ignores the personal and moral dimension of adults' relations with children and thus further alienates them from one another.