Enjoying A Good Story: Why We Use Children’s Literature When Teaching Adults

Early childhood teacher educators frequently enhance their teaching by reading children’s books to their adult students. It is not unusual for faculty outside of early childhood to question devoting precious class time to read-alouds which they may consider a curious, if not frivolous, instructional strategy. Quality children’s literature can, however, enhance students’ experiences in the college classroom, contribute to their understanding of course content, promote their personal growth and self-understanding, increase their appreciation for quality children’s literature, and enhance their ability to integrate storybooks into their own teaching. Children’s books often capture a child’s point of view. They have the potential to provide historical or cultural perspectives on children and families. They also can lead to the examination of universal truths and can facilitate the discussion of sensitive or emotional issues A list of books with suggested uses is included.     

Neuroscience,Early Childhood Education and Play: We are Doing it Right!

This editorial examines neuroscience and its impact on the field of education. Starting with a narrative between two young children, the author intertwines research with basic principles of learning, using the interaction between two 4-year-olds to illustrate the precepts. The four principles are: (1) the brain is uniquely organized; (2) the brain is continually growing; (3) a “brain-compatible” classroom enables connection of learning to positive emotions; and (4) children’s brains need to be immersed in real-life, hands-on, and meaningful learning experiences. The editorial concludes with an illustration of how the brain works while two children are playing at the small animal center in their classroom.     

Informal learning: Student achievement and motivation in science through museum-based learning

This study examined changes in student motivation and achievement in science during a visit to a university children’s science museum. The study was based on the pretest–posttest control comparison group design with four treatment groups: control, exhibit, lesson and exhibit/lesson. The sample consisted of 228 sixth-grade students from a Louisiana public school who were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental groups. Pretest, posttest and delayed posttest measures of intrinsic motivation and achievement in science were obtained using the Children’s Academic Intrinsic Motivation Inventory and an achievement test written to measure areas of science incorporated in the museum exhibits. The data were analysed using a one-way ANOVA, dependent t tests and Pearson r. Significant differences were found within groups for (1) the lesson group in motivation and (2) the exhibit group in achievement from pretest to posttest and from posttest to delayed posttest. A significant relationship between level of motivation and science achievement was revealed for the exhibit group on the delayed posttest. There were no other significant findings to support that the treatment led to any long-term effects on motivation or achievement within any of the four experimental groups.     

Statistical learning of action: The role of conditional probability

Identification of distinct units within a continuous flow of human action is fundamental to action processing. Such segmentation may rest in part on statistical learning. In a series of four experiments, we examined what types of statistics people can use to segment a continuous stream involving many brief, goal-directed action elements. The results of Experiment 1 showed no evidence for sensitivity to conditional probability, whereas Experiment 2 displayed learning based on joint probability. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that additional exposure to the input failed to engender sensitivity to conditional probability. However, the results of Experiment 4 showed that a subset of adults—namely, those more successful at identifying actions that had been seen more frequently than comparison sequences—were also successful at learning conditional-probability statistics. These experiments help to clarify the mechanisms subserving processing of intentional action, and they highlight important differences from, as well as similarities to, prior studies of statistical learning in other domains, including language.     

Some determinants of second-order conditioning

In a Pavlovian conditioning situation, an initially neutral stimulus may be made excitatory by nonreinforced presentations in compound with an established conditioned excitor [i.e., second-order conditioning (SOC)]. The established excitor may be either a punctate cue or the training context. In four conditioned suppression experiments using rats, we investigated whether SOC phenomena parallel other cue interaction effects. In Experiment 1, we found that the response potential of a target stimulus was directly related to the intertrial interval when SOC was mediated by a punctate cue, and inversely related to the intertrial interval when SOC was mediated by the training context. Experiment 2 demonstrated that punctate- and context-mediated SOC are oppositely affected by posttraining context extinction, and Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that context- and punctate-mediated SOC are differentially affected by conditioned stimulus (Experiment 3) and unconditioned stimulus (Experiment 4) preexposure treatments. These findings parallel phenomena in conditioned inhibition and cue competition situations.     

Technology enhanced feedback tools as a knowledge management mechanism for supporting professional growth and school reform

Attempts at school reform and improvement have experienced difficulty creating and implementing feedback systems that energize and sustain change efforts. If the call for reform at all levels of education is to be met, attention must be given to establishing effective feedback mechanisms in educational institutions as they embark on improvement efforts. The purpose of this article is to describe application of an educational design metaphor to create a Knowledge Management System that provides teachers with timely and constructive feedback about their professional practice. This system includes the way in which a corpus of professional knowledge about differentiated content and instruction, classroom grouping, evidence-based practice and classroom management can be embedded in a set of tools that provides multiple stakeholders (teachers, students, administrators) the opportunity to generate feedback about instructional practice. Use of the approach is discussed within the broader context of Knowledge Management as a vehicle to extend the role of feedback in school reform and improvement within a long term pilot application in one school.     

Between eclecticism and orthodoxy in instructional design

This paper presents the concept of critical flexibility as an alternative to eclecticism in instructional design. Eclecticism is often viewed as a persuasive alternative to theoretical orthodoxy (i.e., rigid use of a single perspective or process) due to the openness and flexibility it purports to offer. In contrast, the authors argue that eclecticism ignores or discourages critical reflection regarding background understanding (e.g., implicit assumptions and values) and perpetuates the lack of openness and flexibility commonly associated with orthodoxy. Critical flexibility, as an alternative to eclecticism, emphasizes an awareness of background understanding, but construes it as capable of being explicated, critically examined, adjusted in specific contexts, and refined or developed over time to facilitate increasingly flexible and effective design practices. The authors clarify the nature of critical flexibility as a general way of being involved in the design process, suggest how it helps overcome the traditional theory–practice split, and discuss several of its implications for scholarship and training.