What Provision for Pupils with Challenging Behaviour?A report of a survey of provision and curriculum provided for pupils with learning difficulties and challenging behaviour

Jill Porter and Penny Lacey, lecturers in special education in the School of Education, University of Birmingham, describe a survey of the provision made by schools for pupils with learning difficulties and challenging behaviour, which focused on in-class support; curriculum access; and additional facilities and resources for such pupils.     

Exploring the Association Between Integrated Therapy and Inclusive Education

Sue Mackey (Lecturer and Course Co-ordinator, Child Health Therapy Programme) and Jill McQueen (Lecturer and Research Fellow, Rehabilitation Research Unit) at the University of Southampton, consider the terms 'integrated therapy' and 'inclusive education' (as indicators of emerging philosophies in education and therapy), explore the links between them, and assess the extent of their success in practice.     

Developing Motivation and Cognitive Learning Strategies Through an Undergraduate Learning Community

This study describes the effects on student motivation and cognitive learning strategies of an approach involving an undergraduate learner-centered community of learners approach to instruction. Six learning communities were created using the following objectives: integrated courses, active and collaborative learning, and opportunities for learning through information technology and library resources. Instructors attended ten workshops designed to assist them in developing the learning communities according to the objectives of the program. Results indicate significant changes in motivation and cognitive strategy use by the end of participation in the learning community. Within the motivation subscales, students in the learning communities reported significantly higher levels of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, more internal control of their learning, and self-efficacy, along with significantly lower levels of test anxiety and task value. Within the learning strategies subscales, students reported increases in their use of rehearsal strategies, organization strategies, critical thinking, time management, and the use of peer learning and help-seeking behaviors.     

Judging Words by Their Covers and the Company They Keep: Probabilistic Cues Support Word Learning

Statistical learning may be central to lexical and grammatical development. The phonological and distributional properties of words provide probabilistic cues to their grammatical and semantic properties. Infants can capitalize on such probabilistic cues to learn grammatical patterns in listening tasks. However, infants often struggle to learn labels when performance requires attending to less obvious cues, raising the question of whether probabilistic cues support word learning. The current experiment presented 22‐month‐olds with an artificial language containing probabilistic correlations between words' statistical and semantic properties. Only infants with higher levels of grammatical development capitalized on statistical cues to support learning word‐referent mappings. These findings suggest that infants' sensitivity to correlations between sounds and meanings may support both word learning and grammatical development.     

How neighborhoods influence child maltreatment: a review of the literature and alternative pathways

OBJECTIVE: To review the literature on the relationships between neighborhoods and child maltreatment and identify future directions for research in this area. METHOD: A search of electronic databases and a survey of experts yielded a list of 25 studies on the influence of geographically defined neighborhoods on child maltreatment. These studies were then critically reviewed by an interdisciplinary research team. RESULTS: Numerous studies demonstrate that child maltreatment cases are concentrated in disadvantaged areas. A number of socio-economic characteristics of neighborhoods have been shown to correlate with child maltreatment rates as measured by official reports to child protective service agencies. Only a few studies examine direct measures of parenting behaviors associated with maltreatment, and these show a weaker relationship with neighborhood disadvantage. Moreover, the processes that link neighborhood conditions to either maltreatment reports or parenting behaviors are not yet confirmed by the research literature. Selection bias, neighborhood definitions and spatial influences are largely uncontrolled in the existing research. CONCLUSIONS: We propose a framework for pursuing further study of neighborhoods and child maltreatment that addresses the gaps in the current literature. Neighborhood-based strategies to prevent and reduce child maltreatment will be enhanced by research that provides a better understanding of how neighborhood conditions act as stressors or supports for families at risk of child maltreatment.     

Waiting to Use a Symbol: The Effects of Delay on Children's Use of Models

To use a symbol to solve a problem, children must achieve representational insight; they must realize that the symbol stands for its referent. Moreover, they must keep this relation in mind as they attempt to use the symbol. The present studies investigated the achievement and maintenance of representational insight. 3-year-olds were asked to use a scale model of a room to find a toy hidden in the room. In Study 1a, children first watched as a small toy was hidden in the model. They then waited either 20 sec, 2 min, or 5 min before attempting to find a similar, larger toy that was hidden in the corresponding place in the room. All children experienced all delay intervals; three groups experienced the delays in different orders. There was a dramatic effect of delay order. The children who experienced the 20-sec delay on their first trial generally performed well throughout the 6 trials, but the children who experienced a 5-min delay first almost always failed to find the toy in the room, even on subsequent trials with shorter delays. Additional studies revealed that the negative effects of the initial long delay could be overcome by providing reminders of the model and its relevance (Studies 2 and 3) or by giving children prior experience in using the model (Study 4). The results indicate that keeping a symbol-referent relation in mind can be difficult for 3.0-year-old children. This research is discussed in terms of the importance of maintaining representational insight.     

Lights,camera, active! appreciation of active learning predicts positive attitudes towards lecture capture

Higher Education - Much has been written about instructor attitudes towards lecture capture, particularly concerning political issues such as opt-out policies and the use of recordings by...     

Using student feedback about the learning environment as a starting point for co-construction

Learning Environments Research - The context in which learning takes place, or learning environment, is pivotal to a positive learning experience for students. Although numerous studies have...