Cognitive processing of Chinese characters,words, sentences and Japanese kanji and kana: An introduction

Reading and Writing -     

Understanding Environmental Education in the People's Republic of China: a national policy,locally interpreted

Since 1979 China has been attempting to reform its rather poorly functioning command economy, which suffered from a poor allocation of resources, a lack of incentives, irrational and arbitrary pricing, great waste of resources and a rigid and stultifying bureaucracy. At the same time there has been considerable acknowledgment for some time at the highest levels of Chinese government of the need to ensure environmental sustainability and this has been most recently confirmed in the form of ‘ten great changes’ needed in Chinese environmental thinking. This paper describes the processes whereby environmental policies are created and disseminated in China and points to some of the issues facing western educators who wish to work with Chinese colleagues in advancing global sustainability. It concludes that the problems facing environmental education in China may not be so very different to those elsewhere in the world.     

Children’s Appraisals of Gender Nonconformity: Developmental Pattern and Intervention

Gender-nonconforming (GN) children are often perceived less positively, which may harm their well-being. We examined the development of such perceptions and an intervention to modify them. Chinese children’s appraisals were assessed using multiple measures (verbal responses, sharing, and rank order task) after viewing vignettes of gender-conforming (GC) and GN hypothetical peers. In Study 1, children (N = 210; 4-, 5-, 8-, and 9-year-olds) were less positive toward GN than GC peers, especially if they were older or if the peers were boys. In Study 2 (N = 211, 8- and 9-year-olds), showing children exemplars of GN peers who displayed positive and GC characteristics subsequently reduced bias against gender nonconformity. These findings inform strategies aimed at reducing bias against gender nonconformity.     

Exploring reading-spelling connection as locus of dyslexia in Chinese

This paper advances the argument that in learning to read/spell Chinese characters and words, it is important for learners to understand the role of the component parts. These constituents consist of phonetic and semantic radicals, or bujians, made up of clusters of strokes in their proper sequence. Beginning readers/spellers need to be sensitive to the positional hierarchy and internal structure of these constituent parts. Those Chinese children diagnosed with developmental dyslexia tend to have more difficulties in spelling Chinese characters and in writing to dictation than in reading. A lexical decision study with two groups of tertiary students differing in their Chinese language ability was carried out to test their efficiency in processing real and pseudo characters as a function of printed frequency of the characters, and the consistency of their component semantic radicals. There is some evidence that even for adult readers differing in their Chinese language ability, lexicality, frequency of characters and the consistency of the semantic radicals affect accurate and rapid character identification. Suggestions for research and teaching approaches are made to enhance the analysis and synthesis of the phonetic and semantic radicals to promote efficient reading and spelling in Chinese.     

Psychometric Properties of the Caregiver Assessment of Movement Participation Scale for Screening Children with Development Coordination Disorders

Using Rasch analysis, the psychometric properties of a newly developed 35‐item parent‐proxy instrument, the Caregiver Assessment of Movement Participation (CAMP), designed to measure movement participation problems in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder, were examined. The CAMP was administered to 465 school children aged 5–10 years. Thirty of the 35 items were retained as they had acceptable infit and outfit statistics. Item separation (7.48) and child separation (3.16) were good; moreover, the CAMP had excellent reliability (Reliability Index for item = 0.98; Person = 0.91). Principal components analysis of item residuals confirmed the unidimensionality of the instrument. Based on category probability statistics, the original five‐point scale was collapsed into a four‐point scale. The item threshold calibration of the CAMP with the Movement Assessment Battery for Children Test was computed. The results indicated that a CAMP total score of 75 is the optimal cut‐off point for identifying children at risk of movement problems.     

Mapping Curriculum Innovation in STEM Schools to Assessment Requirements: Tensions and Dilemmas

Specialized science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) schools create niche areas in an attempt to attract the best students, establish the school status, and justify their privilege to valuable resources. One Singapore STEM school does this in applied science learning to differentiate its curriculum from the national prescribed curriculum. Reflecting on the issues of curriculum innovation from the perspective of a teacher and head of department in this school, the second author discusses the constraints in curriculum innovation in a specialized school context embedded within a larger system of the national curriculum. We reflect on her experiences in designing, planning, writing, and implementing applied science courses and the challenges in having to simultaneously address the standardized assessment guidelines.     

Using TPACK as a framework to study the influence of college faculty’s beliefs on online teaching

The purpose of this multiple case study was to understand how the beliefs of college of education faculty members about their students and teaching online influenced their online teaching. The study focused specifically on beliefs regarding student digital literacy and preparedness. The study used the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework as a lens for looking at online teaching. Results indicate that participants’ beliefs about students did in fact influence their online teaching in a variety of ways and with differing teaching outcomes. The results of this study have implications for those who teach online as well as those who support them.     

题目：利用稻壳灰和人工砂的轻质油棕壳混凝土力学性能的提高

目的：探索稻壳灰和人工砂在轻质油棕壳混凝土中部分替换水泥和细骨料对混凝土力学性能的影响,期望得到力学性能较高的轻质混凝土。方法：1.将不同比例的稻壳灰（5%,10%,15%和20%）替换水泥和100%的人工砂或石粉替换沙子,研究它们对混凝土抗压强度的影响;2.研究不同替换比例的稻壳灰（0和15%）和人工砂（0,50%和100%）对混凝土力学性能的综合影响。结论：1.在15%的稻壳灰替换水泥和100%人工砂替换沙子的情况下,最大抗压强度为51.49 MPa;2.替换比例为15%稻壳灰和100%人工砂的组合表现出最好的力学性能,包括抗压强度、抗拉强度、抗弯强度和杨氏模量。