The Nature and Effectiveness of Learning Disability Services for College Students

This article summarizes the research literature that describes the nature and effectiveness of services that are provided to college students with learning disabilities. Six categories of services are described: assistive technologies and programs, program modifications, therapy and counseling, strategy training, direct academic assistance, and interventions designed to strengthen weak academic skills. Nearly all of the literature that was examined fell within the first 5 categories, with only 3 studies describing efforts to directly improve the academic performance that identified a student's learning disability. In addition, there is almost a total lack of evidence showing that any of the first 5 categories of services resulted in improved academic performance. There was, however, evidence that attempts at improving academic skills resulted in improved academic performance. The article concludes with a discussion of the role that learning disability services should play in a college environment.     

Factors associated with staff perceptions towards inclusive education in Singapore

In this study, we sought to examine the perceptions of teachers and other school professionals towards the inclusion of secondary school students with special educational needs (SEN), and the associated factors. The Sentiments, Attitudes and Concerns about Inclusive Education Revised scale (SACIE-R) was completed by 131 teachers and school professionals from two mainstream secondary schools in Singapore. The findings revealed an overall neutral attitude towards inclusion. Together, confidence in teaching students with SEN, the level of training SEN support, as well as experience teaching students with SEN account for a large proportion of the variance in ratings of inclusive perceptions. Further analyses revealed that confidence in teaching or supporting students with SEN was found to be a significant predictor of inclusive perceptions. The findings suggest that schools seeking to engage in inclusive practices should focus on ways to develop the confidence of personnel to support students with SEN. Professional development and mentorship were suggested as possible avenues.     

Analysis of 175 newborn babies who died in an orphan age

175 newborns who were admitted to an orphanage in the year 1975–1976 and subsequently died are analysed. Illegitimacy was the major cause for abandoning the babies. 46% of the babies were born in hospitals. 5 babies had congenital anomalies and 11 babies had marks of external injury. 58.8% of the babies abandoned were girls, 82.7% of the babies weighed less than 2.5 kgs. and had some degree of intrauterine growth retardation. The major cause of death was infections which accounted for 79.3% of deaths, of which gastroenteritis (43.4%) was the main killer. Septicemia and bronchopneumonia were the two other major infections that contributed to the deaths. Infections were more common in the low weight babies. Gastroenteritis was probably acquired after introduction of top feeds, due to poor hygiene and occured in all age groups. Majority of babies died of septicemia within 7 days of admission suggesting antenatal and natal infections. Chances of survival increased with increasing weight of the baby.     

Educational Psychology Early Career Award Winners: How Did They Do It?

Educational Psychology Review -     

Conversations with Five Highly Successful Female Educational Psychologists: Patricia Alexander,Carol Dweck,Jacquelynne Eccles,Mareike Kunter,and Tamara van Gog

Educational Psychology Review - Previous studies have investigated the characteristics, influencing factors, and working strategies of highly successful educational psychologists. These studies,...     

Ethical gaps in studies of the digital divide

There are many reports about the digital divideand many discrepant interpretations of what thereports indicate. This pattern of competinganalyses, often in relation to identical datasets, has endured for a good part of the lastdecade. It is argued here that a major problemwith much of the digital divide research is afailure to include ethical concerns as anexplicit part of analyzing and interpretingdigital divide gaps. If researchers includemore recognition of ethics with their findingsabout divide gaps, it is likely that they willproduce better research and findings as well asmore defensible linkages between study reportsand policy deliberations.     

Nonlinear stochastic position and attitude filter on the Special Euclidean Group 3

This paper formulates the pose (attitude and position) estimation problem as nonlinear stochastic filter kinematics evolved directly on the Special Euclidean Group 3 ($\mathbb{SE}\left(3\right)$). This work proposes an alternate way of potential function selection and handles the problem as a stochastic filtering problem. The problem is mapped from $\mathbb{SE}\left(3\right)$ to vector form, using the Rodriguez vector and the position vector, and then followed by the definition of the pose problem in the sense of Stratonovich. The proposed filter guarantees that the errors present in position and Rodriguez vector estimates are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded (SGUUB) in mean square, and that they converge to small neighborhood of the origin in probability. Simulation results show the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed filter in presence of high levels of noise and bias associated with the velocity vector as well as body-frame measurements.