Technology, math, and the early learner: Models for learning

As today’s preschoolers become the school-age children of tomorrow, early learning educators are faced with a unique and exciting challenge of integrating technology into mathematics instruction. This article examines theory, standards, guidelines, and rationale that supports technology in the preschool environment. Examining practices at 12 diverse preschool sites, four designs emerge as the “typical” models that enable early learners to engage and experience technology within a developmentally appropriate learning environment. The designs outlined are viewed through the lens of preschool mathematics instruction and provide early learning educators as well as parents with models for replication.     

Language and culture learning in higher education via telecollaboration

This article focuses on the ways of researching the process of designing, developing, and using telecollaboration (also known as online intercultural exchange) to facilitate the learning of both linguistic and intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in higher education courses in different educational contexts in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Although telecollaboration would intuitively seem to be an ideal medium for learning another language and about another culture, extensive research has shown that this learning process takes years and faces many challenges. This paper situates the research on language and culture learning within the broader scope of language and intercultural education (see Pedagogies, 8(2), for a report of an interview with Michael Byram, one of the originators of the concept of ICC). A multinational example of the integration of telecollaborative networks in European university language classes collaborating online, the INTENT project, is described. In addition, a telling case, the Cultura model, implemented in the United States, Europe, and Asia, demonstrates a successful approach (with accompanying research) to telecollaboration for language and culture learning. However, there are also invisible factors and unanticipated challenges that teachers and learners need to understand in order to benefit from these telecollaborative environments; these are examined at the end of the article.     

Discovering ethnic root behavior patterns: Towards an applied Canadian ethnic studies

This paper reports a method used with six groups of either students or community professionals, since 1977, to experiment with inductive ways of identifying “ethnic root” behavior patterns. Such patterns are hypothesized to develop beyond the immigrant generation as ethno-culturat patterns and are passed on in the context of socialization. An acculturative framework is proposed to denote benchmarks in the cultural accomodation of individuals and families, through several generations. Along with this framework, the evolution of an ethnic behavior pattern is graphically depicted.A method is developed to identify the pattern beyond the level of conscious remembrance; (it is assumed that adult immigrants will remember the patterns from the country of origin). Although the method is interesting as an avenue of investigation in its own right, it was developed primarily as a conceptual tool to assist community professionals to understand ethnic-related material in their daily work. Three uses of the framework are outlined. First, it draws attention, in the counselling situation, to the level of integration into Canadian society that the client displays. Second, by getting in touch with the personal ethnic pattern that they own, the practitioner him/herself begins to understand the nature of ethno-culture, and thereby appreciate the presence of it in others. Third, the method permits the practitioner to identify personal values of an ethno-cultural sort that can interfere with practice.