A Role for Music Therapy in Special Education

Music therapy is the planned use of music to achieve therapeutic aims. This article outlines the role and application of music therapy in special education with reference to findings documented in recent research and practice literature. Music therapy in Australia is practised in medical contexts (e.g., nursing homes, hospice care, hospitals) and education contexts (e.g., special schools, regular schools, and special education development units). Music therapists also work in private practice or in community programs.     

New Technology and Educational Television

The first part of the article provides a historical account of the broad phases of development that educational television has passed through as a result of social and technological influences:

• its beginnings in broadcasting in the fifties and sixties;

• its development through the video age in the seventies and eighties, with widening scope and opportunity as a result of developments in production and reception/recording equipment and an expansion of communication channels;

• its present potential, at the dawn of the interactive age, as a result of the influences of new technology.

The article then examines the problems of integrating new television‐related technologies into the educational system and draws attention to:

• the frequent past failures of the educational system to fully exploit new technologies, resulting in superficial integration and ineffectual use;

• the current tensions between the traditional educational technology approach and the drives behind much new technology;

• the need for appropriate systems and structures to ensure that the evaluation of such new technologies is properly resourced and effectively carried out.

     

Factors associated with one-year retention in a community college

This study sought to evaluate preenrollment variables as predictors of one-year retention of first-time students in a community college. The purpose was to use information that is typically available when a student begins his or her college program and determine if this information can help identify students who are more likely to drop out within their first year. Based on a logistic regression model to select predictors of retention, the lower the high school GPA, the greater the chance the student will drop out. Over and above this, additional risk is associated with the age range 20–24, attending part-time, and being an ethnic minority other than Asian. When all or some of these are operating, it may be necessary to enhance these students' chances with special programs or services.     

Inference making ability and its relation to comprehension failure in young children

Young children's reading comprehension skill is associated with their ability to draw inferences (Oakhill 1982, 1984). An experiment was conducted to investigate the direction of this relation and to explore possible sources of inferential failure. Three groups of children participated: Same-age skilled and less skilled comprehenders, and a comprehension-age match group. The pattern of performance indicated that the ability to make inferences was not a by-product of good reading comprehension, rather that good inference skills are a plausible cause of good reading comprehension ability. Failure to make inferences could not be attributed to lack of relevant general knowledge. Instead, the pattern of errors indicated that differences in reading strategy were the most likely source of these group differences.     

Tracking New Directions in the Evaluation of Postgraduate Supervision

This article focuses on the evaluation of thesis supervision and highlights the vast range of problem areas presently documented as significant areas of concern for both graduate students and their supervisors. Additionally, the authors report on a study completed in 1995, which surveyed all Australian universities about current evaluative practices in postgraduate supervision. The conclusion of this study was that the conduct of such evaluations appears to be minimal and is primarily designed to obtain an indicator of the general health of a university's postgraduate supervision rather than to foster improved supervisory practices. As part of the same study, the authors conducted University faculty-based student and supervisor focus groups. Key issues emerging from these focus groups were: (1) the importance of relational aspects of supervision as the student communicates over the long term with one or more supervisors; (2) the importance of systematic feedback, monitoring, and evaluation to the supervisory process; and (3) the lack of strategies to facilitate this evaluative feedback process. On the basis of these findings, the authors designed evaluative strategies to facilitate regular ongoing feedback between students and supervisors.     

Family patterns and child abuse in a nationally representative American sample

Data on 1, 146 families with a child age 3 through 17 at home are presented. Child abuse information was obtained for a randomly selected child in each family. Child abuse was defined as an attack by a parent involving punching, kicking, biting, hitting with an object, “beating up,” or using a knife or gun. Over 14 out of every 100 American children 3–17 are subjected to abusive violence each year. These figures are at least 26 times greater than those of the National Center For Child Abuse and Neglect. Even so, for reasons outlined in the paper, they are underestimates. Families in which child abuse occurred are compared with other families. The results suggest that child abuse is brought about by the very nature of the society and its family system. This has profound implications for the prevention and treatment of child abuse. Although psychotherapy may be appropriate in some cases, a more fundamental approach lies in such things as a more equal sharing of the burdens of child care, replacement of physical punishment with non-violent methods of child care and training, eliminating the stresses and insecurity which now characterize our economic system, and strengthening the ties of individual families to the extended family and the community.     

Insights into inclusive education through a small Finnish case study of an inclusive school context

This study seeks to present data and discussion arising from a case study of a school in Finland renowned for its practice in the inclusion of learners with additional support requirements due to cognitive and physical disabilities. It aims to establish how the school staff understand their practice with inclusion through day-to-day professional experiences. The process of reflexive dialogue has enabled authors to reconceptualise our understanding of inclusive education through gaining deep contextual insight. The case study emerges as an inspiring effort to reduce exclusion and isolation through skilful manipulation of physical, institutional and communicative contexts, from which we may draw valuable lessons. The case study demonstrated high levels of personal motivation in teachers and assistants, used as a force for participation in inclusive education – bottom-up, via dialogue, consultation, voluntary involvement and transformation by exposure. This democratic approach was evident in and supported through leadership and management, teaching and learning, and the involvement of the wider community.     

Potentiation and overshadowing between landmarks and environmental geometric cues

Rats were required in three experiments to find one of two submerged platforms that were situated in the same pair of diagonally opposite corners of a rectangular grey swimming pool. The experimental groups were trained with landmarks, comprising A4 cards attached to the walls, located in the corners containing the platforms. For the control groups, the landmarks were situated in the corners containing the platforms for half of the trials, and in the other corners for the remaining trials. Learning about the positions of the platforms with reference to the shape of the pool was overshadowed in the experimental groups when the landmarks were white, and enhanced when the landmarks were black. A fourth experiment assessed whether geometric cues influenced the control acquired by the landmarks. As in the previous experiments, the presence of the geometric cues overshadowed learning about the landmarks when they were white, but enhanced learning when the landmarks were black.