Electronic portfolios in grades one,two and three: a cautionary tale

Some electronic portfolios (EPs) developers are proposing that EPs are suitable for implementation in primary education (i.e. kindergarten to grade three). Yet, empirical research evaluating the implementation and efficacy of EPs used in primary school settings at both the teacher and the student level is scarce. In this research, the authors attempted to implement EPs in grades one, two and three (approximate ages 6 through 8). EPs were reviewed to make the EP selection and in-depth collaborative planning with the teachers ensued. The main challenges for teachers and students were at the user interface level. Results from this cautionary tale suggest that implementation of EPs in primary education may be premature. While much potential exists in EPs, it has yet to be realised. Recommendations for improving EPs are suggested.     

Principles for archival information services in the public domain

In 2010, in response to the Australian Government’s November 2009 apology to Forgotten Australians and former child migrants, a scoping study was undertaken by the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) to assess the options for a national ‘Find and Connect’ service to allow people to locate and access relevant records and have recourse to support services. The scoping study noted that Pathways, a web-based public knowledge space and a product of the Victorian ‘Who Am I?’ research project, was a community-based information resource without equal in the out-of-home care sector in Australia or indeed internationally. The scoping team made the observation that Pathways, due to its quality of content and coherent structure, appeared to be based on a set of principles and wondered what they were. In response the research team set about articulating the principles that underpinned their approach to archival documentation and the use of digital technologies – principles that had emerged through more than two decades of public domain, archive-focussed projects. This paper presents those ten principles and discusses them within the context of Pathways and the ‘Who Am I?’ project. The principles played a key role in FaCHSIA adopting Pathways as the model for the national Find and Connect database and web resource, launched on 15 November 2011. The principles underpin community knowledge building in the fourth or pluralised dimension of the Records Continuum. The paper ultimately argues that all stakeholders (all people and organisations connected with records) should have the ability to contribute to the utilisation of those records through the improvement of documentation and that some archival systems do have a duty of care to ensure they can inter-operate with community-generated knowledge.     

Enhancing responses to television advertisements via the transfer of residual arousal from prior programming

Viewers rated television commercials seen two and one‐half to four minutes after highly arousing film segments as significantly more effective and enjoyable than the same commercials seen after less arousing programming.     

A Qualitative Exploration of Autonomy and Engagement for Young Women of Color in Community College

Given the nationwide concern about college persistence and graduation rates, this article reviews pertinent literature related to autonomous learning as well as social and academic engagement. It also presents findings of a qualitative study of young community college women of color, an understudied population. The article, part of a larger research project that explores the obstacles faced by young women of color, describes their experiences related to academic and social engagement and self-determination in the community-college setting. Data were collected from 15 focus groups with a total of 61 Latina, Black, and Asian women between the ages of 18 and 24 on three community college campuses in a large northeastern city in the United States. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that young women of color demonstrate a compelling determination to complete college autonomously and, to a lesser degree, are willing to engage socially and academically. The findings prompt the suggestion that academic and student affairs professionals create opportunities to develop autonomous learning strategies that can be nested within academic and social engagement activities.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Women students are one of the fastest growing populations on today's community college campuses and universities. Because of the number of female undergraduates over 25 continues to grow it is important for community colleges to become aware of the various reasons women participate in various stages of their lives. It is imperative that educators address the characteristics of women learners who participate and what programs and/or courses will best meet the needs of the women learners. By recognizing the appropriate programs for adult women students the community college will continue to be the leader of meeting and assisting women in their educational goals.     

Speech and Language Difficulties in Children With and Without a Family History of Dyslexia

According to recent psychological theories of situation model construction, readers routinely and quickly construct inferences that elaborate causal antecedents of explicit events in the text, but not inferences about causal consequences. The process of forecasting lengthy causal chains into the future is taxing on working memory, so these inferences are either not constructed or their construction consumes a comparatively large amount of reading time. This study collected self-paced sentence reading times from younger and older adults who read expository texts on scientific and technological mechanisms. Readers were also measured on working memory span, general world knowledge, reasoning ability, and reading frequency. Multiple regression analyses on the reading times revealed that (a) causal consequence inferences were more time consuming than causal antecedent inferences and (b) noncausal elaborative inferences were not constructed. The pattern of beta weights for inference variables was remarkably similar for younger and older adults and was unaffected by other measures of individual differences. The process of constructing causal inferences is therefore stable and predictable across different groups of readers.     

Probabilistic Cues to Grammatical Category in English Orthography and Their Influence During Reading

We investigated probabilistic cues to grammatical category (noun vs. verb) in English orthography. These cues are located in both the beginnings and endings of words—as identified in our large-scale corpus analysis. Experiment 1 tested participants' sensitivity to beginning and ending cues while making speeded grammatical classifications. Experiment 2 tested sensitivity to these cues during lexical decisions. For both tasks, words with consistent ending cues (with respect to grammatical category) were processed more quickly and with lower error rates than words with inconsistent ending cues. However, for beginnings, consistent cues resulted in lower errors but no differences in response times. The data reported here point to the multifaceted nature of grammatical category representation and indicate that probabilistic orthographic cues relating to grammatical category have a clear influence on lexical processing particularly when these cues are located at the end of the word.     

Física para simples mortales

La comprensión de las relaciones y leyes físicas depende, como se analiza en este artículo, del modo en que se represente éstas el alumno. El predominio de sistemas matemáticos de explicación e intuición de las leyes físicas—la vía cuantitativa—parece producir una visión opaca de esas leyes y lleva a errores graves de comprensión, pese a la correcta, pero inestable aplicación puntual de fórmulas.

En este artículo se exponen nuevos métodos de enseñanza de la física por ordenador que presentan entornos interactivos cuasi-reales—micromundos—y que se basan en sistemas visuales—vía cualitativa—haciendo así transparentes los procesos físicos tradicionalmente ocultos tras el ropaje notacional de los operadores matemáticos.     

Effect of Guided Practice on Overhand-Throw Ball Velocities of Kindergarten Children

Abstract

Forty-five children from two intact kindergartens in one school were randomly assigned by sex to (a) an experimental group which received a movement program that included 120 min of guided practice in the overhand throw; or (b) a control group which received the same movement program but no exposure to the throw. A third group (N = 24), randomly selected by sex from a comparable school, received no movement program. Before and after the eight-week instructional period, ten trials of each child's overhand throw for force were filmed. Horizontal ball velocities were simultaneously recorded. ANOVAs on pre- and posttest ball velocities for each sex within each treatment group revealed no significant practice effect over ten trials (p > .05); thus, the trial mean was used as each subject's score. Two-way ANOVAs (treatment X sex) on the pre- and posttest data indicated no significant velocity differences (p > .05) between groups either before or after instruction. Boys had significantly greater velocities than girls (p < .05). Eight weeks of instruction that included 120 min of guided practice in the overarm throw did not significantly change the ball velocities of kindergarten children when compared to two groups with no formal throwing experience.