Channel One Revisited: Prospective Teachers and the Role of American Higher Education

This study examined perceptions of college of education students and their experiences with Channel One, a privately-owned news service used in public education. Given that about one-third of middle and high schoolers in the US view the broadcast every school day, the authors surveyed 172 freshmen to discern their views and attitudes toward Channel One programming and commercials and the role colleges and universities might play in relation to this media service. While most studies on Channel One have been conducted from a K-12 point of view, the goal of this study was to reconsider the topic from the perspective of prospective teachers and post-secondary education. A. J. Angulo  is Assistant Professor of Social Foundations, Winthrop University. He received an Ed.D. and Ed.M. from Harvard University. His research interests include history of education, technology and education, and student rights. Susan K. Green  is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, Winthrop University. She received a Ph.D. in social psychology from Loyola University, Chicago and a Ph.D. in educational psychology and research from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Her interests include classroom assessment, motivational and instructional strategies to promote learning, and multicultural issues in education.     

Joint rate control and scheduling for wireless uplink video streaming

INTRODUCTION Video streaming is becoming one of the major driving forces of next generation wireless networks. For the currently deployed cellular networks, the practical data rates are not enough to support full rate, high quality video applications. As a result, many research efforts have been devoted to adapting video content to reconcile the conflict between the high demand of video quality and the limited wireless communication resources among users. A large body of literature utiliz…     

Psychosocial correlates of child abuse potential in multiply disadvantaged adolescent mothers

OBJECTIVE: This study had two aims: First to examine psychosocial correlates of child maltreatment risk, and second to assess the validity of the CAP Inventory (Milner, 1986) with multiply disadvantaged teenage mothers. METHOD: Participants were 75 adolescent mothers who were wards of the Illinois child protection system. Mothers (aged 14-18) and infants participated in home-based psychosocial assessment of personal and parenting functioning. Group comparisons examined differences for mothers with elevated versus normal versus invalid CAP scores due to faking good. RESULTS: Findings indicated that abuse risk groups differed on emotional distress, social support satisfaction, reading achievement, and years of education, but not on parenting beliefs or quality of child stimulation. Differences favored the normal over the elevated risk group in all significant comparisons, whereas mothers with elevated faking good differed from normals only in lower reading achievement. Multiple regression analysis highlighted emotional distress, support dissatisfaction, and low achievement as significant predictors of greater abuse risk. CONCLUSIONS: Despite sharing multiple disadvantages, adolescent wards are a heterogeneous group who show different levels of psychosocial functioning corresponding to levels of child maltreatment risk. The findings provide support for the concurrent validity and clinical applicability of the CAP Inventory with disadvantaged teenage mothers.     

The development of an effective response to the abuse of children in out-of-home care

The placement of children in foster or residential care does not ensure that children will be safe from abuse or neglect. The incidence of out-of-home maltreatment, especially sexual exploitation and abuse, has given rise to new community expectations and legislation which has placed the protection of children in alternate care squarely in the hands of the child protective system. These investigations differ in purpose and scope from familial investigations, and the current protective system is without adequate preparation, policy, and procedures to perform them. This paper discusses the differences in familial and out-of-home care investigations in relation to identification and reporting, assessing risk factors in the initial report, evidence gathering, essential components of the investigation, levels of culpability and corrective action approaches. The authors suggest that specialized investigation units may be more suited to these investigations than traditional child protective services.     

Facilitating Understanding of Movements in Dynamic Visualizations: an Embodied Perspective

Learners studying mechanical or technical processes via dynamic visualizations often fail to build an accurate mental representation of the system’s movements. Based on embodied theories of cognition assuming that action, perception, and cognition are closely intertwined, this paper proposes that the learning effectiveness of dynamic visualizations could be enhanced by grounding the movements of the presentation in people’s own bodily experiences during learning. We discuss recent research on embodied cognition and provide specific strategies for how the body can be used to ground movements during the learning process: (1) making or observing gestures, (2) manipulating and interacting with objects, (3) using body metaphors, and (4) using eye movements as retrieval cues. Implications for the design of dynamic visualizations as well as directions for future research are presented.     

The Importance of Teaching and Learning Nature of Science in the Early Childhood Years

Though research has shown that students do not have adequate understandings of nature of science (NOS) by the time they exit high school, there is also evidence that they have not received NOS instruction that would enable them to develop such understandings. How early is “too early” to teach and learn NOS? Are students, particularly young students, not capable of learning NOS due to developmental unreadiness? Or would young children be capable of learning about NOS through appropriate instruction? Young children (Kindergarten through third grade) were interviewed and taught about NOS in a variety of contexts (informal, suburban, and urban) using similar teaching strategies that have been found effective at teaching about NOS with older students. These teaching strategies included explicit decontextualized and contextualized NOS instruction, through the use of children’s literature, debriefings of science lessons, embedded written NOS assessments, and guided inquiries. In each context the researchers interviewed students prior to and after instruction, videotaped science instruction and maintained researcher logs and field notes, collected lesson plans, and copies of student work. The researchers found that in each setting young children did improve their understandings of NOS. Across contexts there were similar understandings of NOS aspects prior to instruction, as well as after instruction. There were also several differences evident across contexts, and across grade levels. However, it is clear that students as young as kindergarten are developmentally capable of conceptualizing NOS when it is taught to them. The authors make recommendations for teaching NOS to young children, and for future studies that explore learning progressions of NOS aspects as students proceed through school.     

Incorporating Service-Learning, Technology, and Research Supportive Teaching Techniques into the University Chemistry Classroom

Technology was integrated into service-learning activities to create an interactive teaching method for undergraduate students at a large research institution. Chemistry students at the University of Central Florida partnered with high school students at Crooms Academy of Information Technology in interactive service learning projects. The projects allowed UCF students to teach newly acquired content knowledge and build upon course lecture and lab exercises. Activities utilized the web-conferencing tool Adobe Connect Pro to enable interaction with high school students, many of whom have limited access to supplemental educational opportunities due to low socioeconomic status. Seventy chemistry I students created lessons to clarify high school students’ misconceptions through the use of refutational texts. In addition, 21 UCF students enrolled in the chemistry II laboratory course acted as virtual lab partners with Crooms students in an interactive guided inquiry experiment focused on chemical kinetics. An overview of project’s design, implementation, and assessments are detailed in the case study and serve as a model for future community partnerships. Emerging technologies are emphasized as well as a suggested set of best practices for future projects.