Developing a Preschool Play-based Curriculum

The importance of play on a young child's development cannot be understated. Play gives children opportunities to understand the world, interact with others, express and control emotions, develop symbolic capabilities, attempt novel or challenging tasks, solve problems, and practice skills. Play may contribute to the development of posture, movement, and self-sufficiency. There also appears to be a positive relationships between the frequency and complexity of young children's play and IQ, problem-solving, creativity, language and literacy, and social competence. This paper provides a review of the literature and describes the development of a preschool play-based curriculum for children with disabilities.     

Evaluating Peer Review in an Introductory Instructional Design Course

A peer review process, in which students reviewed other students' projects in a graduate introductory instructional design course, was evaluated. Peer review was experienced by these students as a learning activity about the process of instructional design (ID). The role of traditional ID models in representing ID as overly procedural‐ized was mitigated, and the value, inter‐personal processes, and affective aspects of formative evaluation were recognized. The effectiveness of peer review was influenced by the culture of the course in which it was embedded and by the structure of the process itself. Peer review is proposed as an authentic and efficient means to introduce graduate students to the strategic knowledge needed to apply ID skills. Recommendations are made to increase the effectiveness of peer review.     

The precision of data obtained in large-scale science assessments: An investigation of bootstrapping and half-sample replication methods

Powerful computational procedures are now available to better determine the accuracy of statistical estimates derived from data that have unknown distributions or do not meet parametric requirements. These techniques are generally called resampling plans and include the recently developed bootstrap. Science educators often face the problem of nonnormal distributions especially when conducting large-scale assessments or evaluating national curriculum projects that require complex sampling plans. Resampling techniques permit the researcher to make inferences without the strong distributional assumptions needed for more traditional parametric approaches. In this study, the bootstrap and a simplified version of a half-sample replication are used to examine the precision of science test scores obtained in a large-scale evaluation of Scope, Sequence, and Coordination, a national science curriculum project. The resampling plans are described in some detail and the results are compared with those obtained from parametric methods. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 697–704, 1998.     

The effect of track geometry on 200- and 400-m sprint running performance

This study looked at how the geometry of the running track affects performances in the 200- and 400 m sprint running events. Although an athletics track must be designed with two parallel straights and two curved bends, the lengths of the straights and bends are not fixed and may vary within an approved set of limits. The bend can be semi-circular or a double-curve consisting of arcs of two different radii. A mathematical model was used to calculate the effect of track geometry on race times for six different track designs; three with semi-circular bends (encompassing the extremes of the permitted designs), and the three permitted double-curve designs. The calculations revealed substantial differences among the track designs. The time difference (in the inside lane) between the fastest and slowest tracks is about 0.1 s in the 200-m race and 0.2 s in the 400-m race. The time differential between the outside and inside lanes for a double-curve track can be up to 0.08 s greater than for a standard track with semi-circular bends.     

The Culture of Mexican-Americans: Its Importance for Early Childhood Educators

This paper provides an introduction to the Mexican-American culture, describing (1) cultural diversity and linguistic policies in the United States; (2) cultural and linguistic studies that have examined the backgrounds of Mexican-American individuals; (3) the characteristics of this population; (4) issues on discrimination and human relations; (5) the socioeconomic factors that Mexican-American individuals encountered due to their lack of education; and (6) the predominance of poorly paid and undereducated unskilled workers. Although many Mexican Americans have moved up the social ladder to the middle class, others have not. However, they have a richness of language and culture to share with the school.     

The influence of carbohydrate and protein ingestion during recovery from prolonged exercise on subsequent endurance performance

Ingesting carbohydrate plus protein following prolonged exercise may restore exercise capacity more effectively than ingestion of carbohydrate alone. The objective of the present study was to determine whether this potential benefit is a consequence of the protein fraction per se or simply due to the additional energy it provides. Six active males participated in three trials, each involving a 90-min treadmill run at 70% maximal oxygen uptake (run 1) followed by a 4-h recovery. At 30-min intervals during recovery, participants ingested solutions containing: (1) 0.8 g carbohydrate x kg body mass (BM)(-1) h(-1) plus 0.3 g kg(-1) h(-1) of whey protein isolate (CHO-PRO); (2) 0.8 g carbohydrate x kg BM(-1) h(-1) (CHO); or (3) 1.1 g carbohydrate x kg BM(-1) h(-1) (CHO-CHO). The latter two solutions matched the CHO-PRO solution for carbohydrate and for energy, respectively. Following recovery, participants ran to exhaustion at 70% maximal oxygen uptake (run 2). Exercise capacity during run 2 was greater following ingestion of CHO-PRO and CHO-CHO than following ingestion of CHO (P< or = 0.05) with no significant difference between the CHO-PRO and CHO-CHO treatments. In conclusion, increasing the energy content of these recovery solutions extended run time to exhaustion, irrespective of whether the additional energy originated from sucrose or whey protein isolate.