Educating students with FASD: linking policy,research and practice

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD ) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disability with significant implications for learning and behaviour. International research suggests that the prevalence of FASD in school‐aged children is 2.3–6.3%. In this paper, we address the questions: (1) what is FASD ; (2) what is the prevalence of FASD in schools; (3) what is the impact of FASD ; and (4) why develop special FASD education strategies and programmes? We summarise the 18‐year history of W innipeg S chool D ivision's development of its FASD P rogramme of services, describe the specialised FASD classrooms and then present the results from a consensus‐generating workshop comprised of 36 FASD education professionals, with over 209 years of collective FASD education programme experience, who were asked to identify and reach consensus on best strategies and lessons learned in FASD education programmes. We then suggest that effectively educating children with FASD is critical to get right if positive educational outcomes are to be realised.     

Citing as a sourcing practice: students’ citing self-selected online sources in their essays (Las citas como práctica del uso de las fuentes: las citas de fuentes en línea seleccionados por los estudiantes en sus trabajos)

ABSTRACT

This study examined upper secondary school students’ citations of self-selected online sources in their essays. Students (n = 140) conducted online inquiry about either effects of social media on people’s quality of life (SM) or allowance of genetic manipulation of organisms (GMO). Students, working either individually or in pairs, explored online sources with the help of a graphic organizer, after which they composed their essays. To capture the quality of citations identified in the essays, they were evaluated in terms of accuracy and richness of source features. Further, regression analysis was used to examine the effect of topic, grade level and work mode on the number and quality of citations. Results showed that students seldom cited sources in their essays, and when they did, citations were mostly accurate but less often rich in source features. When writing about SM, students most frequently cited media sources, while sources with ideological, political or religious motives were frequently cited in GMO essays. Students’ grades and work modes predicted the number of citations and number of accurate citations.     

Directed forgetting effects in pigeons: Remember cues initiate rehearsal

Pigeons were trained in a two-choice delayed matching-to-sample task with red and green hues. A brief postsample cue (a vertical or horizontal line) signaled whether the comparison stimuli would be presented or omitted on each trial. Comparison stimuli were always presented following the remember-cue (R-cue) trial, but never following the forget-cue (F-cue) and no-cue trials. In Experiment 1, matching accuracy on F-cue and no-cue trials was equivalent and was considerably inferior to accuracy on R-cue trials. In Experiment 2, the placement of the postsample cue was manipulated. Matching accuracy decreased as the R cue was delayed in the retention interval, but performance in the F-cue condition was not affected. These data indicate that the no-cue condition can function as an implicit F cue and that the R cue can function to initiate and maintain rehearsal.     

Rubrics: Design and Use in Science Teacher Education

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Correlates of Attachment at School Age: Maternal Reported Stress, Mother-Child Interaction, and Behavior Problems

The contribution of attachment, maternal reported stress, and mother-child interaction to the prediction of teacher-reported behavior problems was examined for a French-Canadian sample of 121 school-age children. Attachment classifications were assigned on the basis of reunion behavior with mother when the children were between 5 and 7 years of age. Maternal reported stress and mother-child interaction patterns were assessed concurrent to the attachment measure, whereas behavior problems were evaluated both at ages 5 to 7 and 7 to 9 years. Security of attachment significantly predicted the likelihood of school-age behavior problems: Controlling/other children were most at risk for both externalizing and internalizing problems across both age periods. Younger ambivalent children presented clinical cut-off levels of externalizing problems, and older avoidant boys had higher internalizing scores. Patterns of maternal-reported stress and mother-child interaction differed across attachment groups and contributed to prediction of school-age behavior problems, partially mediating the relation between attachment and adaptation. Results support the importance of attachment in explaining school-age adaptation and validity of attachment coding for children of this age.     

The relationship between syntactic awareness and reading performance

This study was designed to examine the relationship between syntactic awareness and reading performance. A major concern was to provide an estimate of the effect of syntactic training that was not confounded with training that focused on semantic features of words. The training exercises used in the study focused on all levels of syntactic awareness in order that the effect of such training could be assessed on students’ performance on tasks that tapped each of the levels. Results of this study showed that syntactic awareness could be improved through training. The effect was stable, being apparent at the two post-test times. However, no evidence was found for a systematic effect of improved syntactic awareness on reading ability. Moreover, syntactic training did not show any greater effect than no treatment or semantic training on children’s grammatic comprehension, their ability to use fix-up strategies, or on their general reading ability score. Training had a different impact on the accuracy of oral reading for the syntactic and semantic training groups. Thus, in terms of the developmental sequence of syntactic awareness proposed by Gombert (1992), children trained in the cloze procedure improved at the two highest levels, whilst showing neither a corresponding change in the lower levels of awareness, nor improved functional reading performance.