Creativity in a cooperative group setting

This study was to determine whether cooperative small groups would stimulate creativity of fith and sixth grade students more than an individualized learning environment. Student aptitudes for creative and academic work were assessed on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Verbal Form A), analysis of student created electrical circuit diagrams, and a batteries and bulbs prediction test. A measure of student perceptions was also used to indicate any changes in attitudes toward the science activity and learning environment. A posttest control group design was used with 11 I fifth and sixth grade students. Half of the population worked by themselves, while the other half (experimental) worked in a student-structured environment on the same science activity which involved creating as many different types of electrical circuits from a given set of batteries and bulbs as possible. An overall conclusion is that fifth and sixth grade students working within small cooperative groups can be more creative as measured by a figural creativity test with electrical circuits than students working alone. The implication of this study is that small cooperative groups as well as individualized groups should be used in elementary science classes when creativity is one of the instructional objectives.     

Learning disabilities and vocational rehabilitation.

Students with learning disabilities have received services in special education programs for many years. Unfortunately, many of these students continue to need services after they exit high schools. Vocational rehabilitation has begun to provide services for young adults with learning disabilities; however, there continues to be a discrepancy between the number of adults with learning disabilities who need vocational rehabilitation services and those who are receiving them. This article describes the definitions and eligibility criteria used by vocational rehabilitation agencies to serve adults with learning disabilities. By understanding the vocational rehabilitation system, teachers, it is hoped, will be better able to access these services for their students with learning disabilities.     

A reading policy for a comprehensive school (11–16)

Redefield School is a seven-form entry secondary modern that is in the process of developing into a senior comprehensive school. Situated on the outskirts of Oxford it serves a large council estate with a population of 10,000, half of whom are under 20. The English department consists of a team of eight specialists; English is taught in mixed-ability classes.Children's literature in education invited the Head of Department, John L Foster, who has been teaching at Redefield for six years, to describe a reading policy for a comprehensive school.     

“We Need to Come Together and Raise Our Kids and Our Communities Right”: Black Males Rewriting Social Representations

This article excavates the voices of urban black males as they speak their name (Belton, 1996) in a society that denies them this right. Based on data gathered in a large-scale ethnographic interview study of urban America, the authors traverse the spoken lives of these men, as they weave stories about neighborhood and state violence, opportunities denied and missed, and the current power of black men's groups in the church. Through their day-to-day lives urban black men challenge social representations about them in racist America, constructing an alternative hegemonic masculinity revolving around relationships, fatherhood, and dignity.Professor of Sociology of Education at the State University of New York at BuffaloCompleted her Ph.D. at the State University of New York at Buffalo and is now a practicing psychologist at Claremont CollegesCurrent graduate student at CUNY     

Lessons from team work: towards a systematic scheme for course development

Differences in practice and culture between distance and face to face universities are examined in the light of course design and production. This paper then proposes that a team approach which has been developed and refined for the production of distance teaching courses, and more particularly for the management of the production process, be used as a starting point for the development of a systematic scheme capable of being used in a conventional university setting not only by teams but also by individuals. Examples of ways in which this scheme might be used are given, and the benefits pointed out; these include improvements in the efficacy of course production and in the integration and cohesiveness of the resulting courses. There are also indirect gains to be made, in educational development and in increased professionalism, as well as in the enrichment of academic life.     

Counseling Vietnamese refugees: the new challenge

In working with Vietnamese American refugees the mental health worker needs to be knowledgable of and sensitive to several areas: (1) the cultural history and history of the migration experience of the group; (2) the group's mental health dispositions; (3) cultural and systemic biases affecting counseling; and (4) the role of paraprofessionals.Some of the cultural factors affecting the utilization of mental health services are saving face, stoicism, respect for authority and discrimination which may cause them to seek help only at advanced stages of illness.Mental health counseling in the United States has run into some difficulty in serving the refugees as it has been mainly a white middle class profession that has focused on the individual which can be considered culturally biased when dealing with family centered Vietnamese Americans.For the reasons previously stated, in addition to language difficulties and cultural differences, many agencies employ indigenous paraprofessionals. While it is beneficial there are also problems to be considered.Recommendations for addressing these problems include: (1) the development of a community education and prevention program by actively involving ethnic community leaders in the planning process; (2) supporting ethnic community leaders; (3) training indigenous paraprofessionals about the mental health care system; (4) providing mental health services through medical care facilities; and (5) focusing on family therapy as oppossed to individual therapy.Prepared for presentation at the International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 15–19, 1985.     

Children of an Earth to Come: Speculative Fiction,Geophilosophy and Climate Change Education Research

Over the last 3 years, the Climate Change and Me project has mapped children and young people's affective, creative, and ontological relationships with climate change through an emergent and child-framed research methodology. The project has involved working with 135 children and young people from across Northern NSW, Australia, as coresearchers responding to the rapidly changing material conditions of the Anthropocene epoch. In this article, we position speculative fiction as a mode of creative research that enabled the young researchers to inhabit possible climate change futures. This node of the Climate Change and Me research was initiated by coauthor Jasmyne, who at the time was a year 7 student at a local high school. Through an ongoing series of visual and textual posts on the project web site, Jasmyne created an alternate world in which children develop mutant forces and bodily augmentations that enable them to resist social and environmental injustices. Drawing on these visual and textual entries in dialogue with Deleuze and Guattari's geophilosophy, we consider ways that speculative fiction might offer new conceptual tools for a viral strain of climate change education that proliferates through aesthetic modes of expression.