Gone viral: Content characteristics and relative quality of highly shared school psychology‐related content on Pinterest

Educational professionals, including school psychologists, are utilizing extant social media platforms to gather ideas, strategies, and resources to serve students with a variety of needs. The concern about the quality of resources remains a consistent reservation by proponents of adherence to best practices and evidence‐based programs. The present study examined a sample (n = 444) of the most highly shared pins in a random sample of content from followers of the National Association of School Psychologists Pinterest account. The research team conducted content‐coding for tool type, content type, the original source of the materials, and functionality and user‐friendliness. Results indicated that there was a high representation of social‐emotional, autism‐related, and intervention‐related material. Allied professionals (such as teachers) disseminated much of the content that was highly shared. Inferential analysis revealed that there were differential patterns of utility, functionality and content types across various original sources from the internet.     

How Two- and Four-Year-Old Children Interpret Adjectives and Count Nouns

We examined the role of object kind familiarity (i.e., knowledge of a count noun for an object) on preschoolers' sensitivity to the relation between a novel word's form class (adjective or count noun) and its reference (to a material kind-property or to an object kind). We used a forced-choice match-to-target task, in which children learned a word for one object (e.g., a metal cup), and then chose between 2 other objects. One was from the same object kind but a different material kind (with different related properties, such as color and texture; e.g., a white plastic cup); the other was from a different object kind but the same material kind (with the same related properties; e.g., a metal spoon). In Experiment 1, children learned either a count noun (e.g., "This is a zav") or an adjective (e.g., "This is a zav one"). Within each form class, we crossed the familiarity of the referent object kind (familiar and unfamiliar) with the age of the children (2- and 4-year-olds). The principal finding was that in interpreting an adjective, 4-year-olds were more likely to choose the object sharing material kind with the target if the target was familiar than if it was unfamiliar. No such familiarity effect was evident among 2-year-olds. In Experiment 2, we employed a more unambiguously adjectival frame (e.g., "This is a very zav-ish one"), and replicated the results of Experiment 1. We interpret the results in terms of 2 proposed word learning biases: one that learners initially expect any word applied to an unfamiliar object to refer to a (basic-level) kind of object, and a second that learners prefer words to contrast in meaning. We consider several interpretations of the observed age difference.     

MEDIA STUDIES AND THE ROLE OF EDUCATIONAL BROADCASTING

Broadcast material in areas of media studies has now been available to schools since the 1960's. The author describes the history of media education at secondary level in Britain, the potential influence of educational broadcasters in the field, and recent developments in media studies output by the broadcasting organisations.     

An investigation of ambiguous-cue learning in pigeons

Two experiments demonstrated that pigeons can solve a simultaneous discrimination in which on half the trials the positive and an ambiguous cue (A) are presented and on half the trials choice is between A and the negative stimulus. In Experiment 1, where a relatively nondistinctive A cue was used, performance on the former type of trial was superior to that shown on the latter. In Experiment 2, where a distinctive A cue was provided, this pattern of results was reversed. These findings are interpreted in terms of an approach-avoidance explanation first proposed by Leary (1958). Experiment 3 tested and confirmed a central prediction of this explanation by showing that in an orthodox simultaneous discrimination, occasional reinforcements of the negative stimulus produce less accurate performance than do nonreinforcements of the positive.     

The uncertainty and fragility of learning to teach: a Britzmanian lens on a student teacher story

This paper turns the kaleidoscopic lens of Professor Deborah Britzman’s writings on a student teacher story of learning to teach. It begins by briefly setting the context for the research. It then explains the study’s ontological and epistemological focus on experience and how student teacher and researchers create expressions of experience through an interpretative process. This leads to the design for interpretation in this study and to an explanation of why the work of Britzman became part of the interpretative layering for understanding student teacher Ciara’s texts. It continues by explicating Britzman’s concept of ‘struggle for voice’ as a metaphor for learning to teach and briefly makes comparison with the work of Bakhtin and his concept of the dialogical imagination. It then presents the layered interpretation in the form of indicative excerpts in a chronological story. Finally it focuses on the salient and pervading theme of affect and offers a brief commentary on its significance in initial teacher education and the need for developing an understanding for the feeling world of learning to teach.     

Differential effects of a retention interval on latent inhibition and the habituation of an orienting response

In Experiment 1, rats experienced presentations of a discrete visual stimulus (Stage 1) until habituation of the orienting response (OR) occurred. On a test session given after an interval of 16 days (Stage 2) the OR reappeared. For control subjects that received no Stage 1 training but presentations of the light in Stage 2, habituation persisted during the test. All subjects then received conditioning trials on which the light preceded the delivery of food. They showed latent inhibition, acquiring the conditioned response less readily than control subjects that had not previously experienced the light. Experiment 2 confirmed that the latent inhibition effect survived the retention interval for subjects that received no habituation test session. This pattern of results implies that habituation of the OR and latent inhibition are determined by different mechanisms.     

Emerging: An Art Field Placement’s Impact on Practice

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study examined the experiences of 9 stakeholders in an art gallery field placement during their social work education. The study sought to understand how the nontraditional field placement prepared students for practice. In addition, personality traits of students that best fit the placement was examined. Findings suggest that students had been prepared to engage in a variety of practice behaviors, work independently, and be more creative. However, they also felt that the field placement setting did not give them enough direct practice opportunities. The two most salient personality traits were being flexible and an initiator.     

Teachers as metacognitive role models

This paper draws on data collected during a longitudinal collaborative project with teachers in England from schools and further education colleges. The project investigated ‘Learning to Learn’ in partnership with teacher–researchers with a focus on how metacognitive awareness can be improved by enquiring into creative combinations of pedagogy, environment and learners’ dispositions. The paper is an attempt to make clear the theoretical underpinnings of our belief that the project teachers were enacting something different, something metacognitive. We present a pragmatic model of metacognition development based on ideas collaboratively produced across the project. The five cycles of development are exemplified from the pedagogic and the professional learning perspective with quotes, vignettes and case study excerpts. We show a catalytic relationship between the pedagogies used by the teachers to develop their students’ metacognition and the teachers’ own learning and metacognitive knowledge and skilfulness.     

Conservation concepts in elementary chemistry

Conservation of chemical identity, composition, and mass are essential to the basic understanding of chemistry. In an investigation carried out with 11 to 12 year old children, using techniques analogous to those of Piaget, it is shown that, even after the completion of an introductory course in chemistry over a nine month period, conservation had not been attained in a considerable proportion of subjects. The frequencies of non-conservation responses were in the order composition > identity > mass. It is concluded that re-examination of introductory courses with a view to facilitating attainment of conservation may be called for.