Learning to Collaborate: General and Special Educators in Teacher Education

One of the foremost challenges for K–12 teachers is to provide relevant learning experiences in an environment of increasing accountability and student diversity. This balance is particularly consequential for students with disabilities who rely on special and general education teachers to ensure access to and success within the general curriculum. Teacher collaboration has been viewed as a critical part of the equation to help meet the needs of those learners. In this article, we present a case study from a course codeveloped and cotaught by secondary and special education faculty working in a teacher preparation program. Findings indicate that the teacher candidates with whom we worked showed a more complex sense of collaboration and recognition of critical elements of successful collaborative partnerships at the conclusion of the course.     

Collisionless tool orientation smoothing above blade stream surface using NURBS envelope

In five-axis machining,tool orientation above a blade stream surface may lead to tool collision and a decrease in workpiece rigidity.Hence,collisionless tool orientation smoothing(TOS)becomes an important issue.On the basis of a constant scallop height tool path,the triangular facets in the faces,vertices format are constructed from cutter contact(CC)using the Voronoi incremental algorithm.The cutter location(CL)points candidate set is represented by an oblique elliptic cone whose vertex lies at CC using NURBS envelope.Whether the CL point is above its CC is judged by the dot product between the normal vector and the point on triangulation nearest to the CL point.The curvatures at CC are obtained by fitting a moving least square(MLS) quadratic patch to the local neighborhood of a vertex and calculating eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix.Triangular surface elastic energy is employed as the weight in selection from the NURBS envelope.The collision is judged by NURBS surface intersection.TOS can then be expressed by selecting a CL point for each CC point and converted into a numerical control(NC)code automatically according to the postprocessor type of the machine center.The proposed method is verified by finishing of a cryogenic turboexpander impeller of air separation equipment.     

World War II — Survey of Recent Literature

We Make the Road by Walking by Myles Horton and Paolo Freire. Edited by Brenda Bell, John Gaventa, and John Peters. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990, 248 pp., hardcover. (ISBN 0-8722-771-3)

The Color of Strangers, The Color of Friends: The Play of Ethnicity in School and Community by Alan Peshkin. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991, 304 pp., softcover. (ISBN 0-226-66201-2)

In the Mind's Eye by Thomas G. West, Buffalo. New York: Prometheus Books, 1991, 359 pp., hardcover. (ISBN 0-87975-646-2)     

Mobile Phone Use in AA Networks: An Exploratory Study

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of mobile phone use for mutual support within social networks of Alcoholic Anonymous (AA). A sample of mobile phone owners and non-owners in AA was surveyed to assess their perceptions and uses of this technology. Mobile phone owners reported very positive perceptions of the technology as a resource for recovery and heavy use of the mobile phone for this purpose. Non-owners also reported positive perceptions of the mobile phone as a resource for recovery and that expense was the primary reason for not using a mobile phone in their recovery efforts. Heuristic, theoretical, and practical implications of the study are included in the discussion.     

Bullying in schools: why it happens,how it makes young people feel and what we can do about it

In spite of decades of research and more recent guidance by Government, bullying in schools remains a serious concern to young people and to educational practitioners. This two year qualitative study explored the meanings eight teenagers gave to bullying they had experienced, and related this to an analysis of previous research and school policies about bullying. The findings from the study revealed that bullying affected the subjectivity of young people, including how they positioned themselves and believed themselves to be positioned by others. It also found previous research and school policies focused on the behavioural aspects of bullying, neglecting the subjective meanings that it had for those who experienced it. The research findings suggested that a more open approach by adults to what bullying means to individuals, and clearer guidance to teachers on how to work with them about subjective meanings, may provide a new direction in supporting young people who have been bullied.     

Care taker blogs in caregiver fabricated illness in a child: A window on the caretaker's thinking?

Three recently diagnosed cases of caregiver-fabricated illness in a child at Seattle Children's Hospital shed light on a new manifestation of their caretakers’ attention seeking. The patients’ mothers were actively blogging about their children's reputed illnesses. Although it is not uncommon for parents of chronically ill children to blog about their child's medical course, specific themes in these blogs of parents suspected of medically abusing their children were noted. In particular, gross distortions of the information parents had received from medical providers were presented online, describing an escalation of the severity of their children's illnesses. The mothers reported contacting palliative care teams and Wish organizations, independently from their medical providers’ recommendations. They sought on-line donations for their children's health needs. We believe these blogs provide additional direct evidence of the suspected caregivers’ fabrications. Although we have not performed formal content analysis, blogs might also provide insight into the caretakers’ motivations. Protective Services and/or police investigators could consider querying the internet for blogs related to children at risk for caregiver-fabricated illness in a child. These blogs, if viewed in parallel with the children's medical records, could assist medical diagnosis and legal documentation of medical fabrication and assist in protective planning for the affected children.     

儿童民族认同的形成与发展

民族认同是儿童自我概念发展的重要内容,尤其对少数民族更为重要。国外研究发现,儿童在5岁后就能产生民族分类意识,并产生内群偏爱,在10岁会出现民族内隐态度和外显态度的分离现象;民族认同与民族刻板印象、偏见和歧视有重要联系;影响民族认同发展的因素有儿童认知发展水平、父母与同伴的种族（族群）态度、家庭社会化、群际接触等。国内研究者应该开展本土化的研究,发现我国儿童民族认同形成与发展的规律,对于促进族际互动、构建和谐的民族关系具有重要的理论和现实意义。     

Development of student–teacher relationships in rural early elementary classrooms

An increasing body of literature documents associations between student–teacher relationships, children's academic success, and children's social competence in school. Less is known about characteristics and processes involved in the quality of relationships between students and teachers, and little research has examined these issues with populations of young students and teachers living in rural communities. The current study examined the relationships between rural kindergarten and first-grade students and their teachers in spring of the school year, predicted by child demographic factors, child process factors, and teacher characteristics. Using a multi-level model to account for clustering of children in classrooms, children's behavior and literacy skills were examined as contributors to the teachers’ perceptions of the developing teacher–student relationship, focusing on their potential to mediate associations between more distal characteristics and teacher–student relationships. Controlling for relationship conflict in fall, boys and African American students were more likely to have relationships with teachers that were higher in conflict in spring. When behavior and literacy skills measures were added to the model, children's behavior mediated the effect of gender, such that behavior problems accounted for much of the variance in student–teacher conflict associated with gender. However, neither behavior problems nor literacy skills mediated the effects of minority status on conflict; African American students had poorer relationships with teachers regardless of behavior or literacy skills.     

Reading and cognitive abilities: Longitudinal studies of brain and behavior changes in young children

This paper focuses on methods useful for identifying differences in the development of language reading abilities in children that rely on measures of brain responses and behavioral assessments. Findings from longitudinal and cross-sectional studies using brain and behavior measures are described, along with findings from research designed to influence changes in brain and behavioral responses through training. The findings show differences in event-related potentials (ERP) responses recorded at birth that are related to a child’s later performance on language and reading tasks. Such findings point to a strong biological influence on the development of language and reading skills. However, other findings show that the influence of biological factors on brain processing can be modified through learning. In fact, several studies show that even brief periods of stimulation and opportunities for learning can produce changes in the brain’s ERP repsonses. Such findings suggest that new approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of interventions might change the rate and likelihood of developmental changes.