Multi‐sensory storytelling: a tool for teaching or an intervention technique?

This article reports on research undertaken to investigate how multi‐sensory storytelling (MSST) was being used within schools for students with profound and multiple learning difficulties and other special educational needs. Semi‐structured interviews (n = 27) and observations (n = 18) were undertaken in five schools in the East Midlands and south‐east of England. The study identified that MSST was considered to contribute to the curriculum access, assessment, learning and socialisation of students across a wide range of special educational needs. Key opportunities, applications and barriers to use were identified. Findings from this study indicated that the way these teachers used MSST differed from extant research in this area with regard to both design and delivery. It is suggested that the desire to develop a quantitative evidence base may present unnecessary restrictions which inhibit the recognition of pedagogic issues; and that a more fluid conceptualisation of MSST would be reflective of real‐world practice.     

Development of the Biology Card Sorting Task to Measure Conceptual Expertise in Biology

There are widespread aspirations to focus undergraduate biology education on teaching students to think conceptually like biologists; however, there is a dearth of assessment tools designed to measure progress from novice to expert biological conceptual thinking. We present the development of a novel assessment tool, the Biology Card Sorting Task, designed to probe how individuals organize their conceptual knowledge of biology. While modeled on tasks from cognitive psychology, this task is unique in its design to test two hypothesized conceptual frameworks for the organization of biological knowledge: 1) a surface feature organization focused on organism type and 2) a deep feature organization focused on fundamental biological concepts. In this initial investigation of the Biology Card Sorting Task, each of six analytical measures showed statistically significant differences when used to compare the card sorting results of putative biological experts (biology faculty) and novices (non–biology major undergraduates). Consistently, biology faculty appeared to sort based on hypothesized deep features, while non–biology majors appeared to sort based on either surface features or nonhypothesized organizational frameworks. Results suggest that this novel task is robust in distinguishing populations of biology experts and biology novices and may be an adaptable tool for tracking emerging biology conceptual expertise.     

Properties of the maximal correlation function

Sarmanov introduces the idea of maximal correlation function and applies it to his investigation of stationary Markov processes (1,2,3). We demonstrate some additional properties of the maximal correlation function as a measure of the dependence structure of stationary processes and present some applications of the maximal correlation function in generalizing applications of the usual correlation function to, for example, equivalent rectangular bandwidth and quadratic mean ergodicity.     

Epistemic Beliefs in Science—A Systematic Integration of Evidence From Multiple Studies

Educational Psychology Review - Recent research has integrated developmental and dimensional perspectives on epistemic beliefs by implementing an approach in which profiles of learners’...     

Evaluation of the Feasibility and Perceived Value of Integrating Learn the Signs. Act Early. Developmental Monitoring Resources in Early Head Start

Early Childhood Education Journal - Many children with developmental disabilities are not identified before age 3 years of age, preventing them from being able to fully benefit from early...