Fostering Analogical Reasoning Through Creating Robotic Models of Biological Systems

This article considers student analogical reasoning associated with learning practice in creating bio-inspired robots. The study was in the framework of an outreach course for middle school students. Fifty eighth and ninth graders performed inquiries into behavior and locomotion of snakes and designed robotic models using the BIOLOID robot construction kit. We analyzed the interdomain analogies between biological and robotic systems elaborated by the students and evaluated the contribution of the analogies to the integrated learning of biology and robotics. The analogies expressed by the students at different stages of the course were collected and categorized, and their use in knowledge construction was traced. The study indicated that students’ reasoning evolved with learning, towards an increased share of deeper analogies at the end of the course. We found that analogical reasoning helped students to construct knowledge and guided their inquiry and design activities. In the proposed framework, the students learn to inquire into biological systems, generate analogies, and use them for developing and improving robotic systems.

     

Domain-specific Self-concept and Achievement Motivation in the Transition from Primary to Low Middle School

A longitudinal study was carried out to investigate changes in specific aspects of self-concept, motivation and school achievement, and to explore the influence of specific aspects of self-concept on other facets of the self-system after the transition from the fifth grade of primary school to the first year of lower middle school. Ninety-two pupils participated to the study. Each child was required to complete questionnaires to assess domain-specific self-concepts and motivational orientation. Results show areas of both stability and change in the transition from primary to lower middle school. A dynamic model explains relationships among domainspecific self-concepts, motivation and school grades: after the transition the role of competence self-concept increases in importance on influencing the other components of self-system.     

Establishing word-object relations: a first step

This work explores how infants in the early phases of acquiring language come to establish an initial mapping between objects and their labels. If infants are biased to attend more to objects in the presence of language, that could help them to note word-object object pairings. To test this, a first study compared how long 18 10-14-month-old infants looked at unfamiliar toys when labeling phrases accompanied their presentation, versus when no labeling phrases were provided. As predicted, labeling the toys increased infants' attention to them. A second study examined whether the presence of labeling phrases increased infants' attention to objects over and above what pointing, a powerful nonlinguistic method for directing infants' attention, could accomplish on its own. 22 infants from 2 age groups (10-14- and 17-20-month-olds) were shown pairs of unfamiliar toys in 2 situations: (a) in a pointing alone condition, where the experimenter pointed a number of times at one of the toys, and (b) in a labeling + pointing condition, where the experimenter labeled the target toy while pointing to it. While the pointing occurred, infants looked just as long at the target toy whether or not it was labeled. During a subsequent play period in which no labels were uttered, however, infants gazed longer at the target toys that had been labeled than at those that had not. Thus language can increase infants' attention to objects beyond the time that labeling actually occurs. These studies do not pinpoint which aspects of labeling behavior contribute to the attentional facilitation effect that was observed. In any case, however, this tendency for language to sustain infants' attention to objects may help them learn the mappings between words and objects.     

Assessment in child abuse: An account of a system operated in the metropolitan borough of Barnsley by the N.S.P.C.C. special unit

During the course of the Special Unit's operation it became apparent that in many cases there was a demonstrable need for assessment; for a period of involvement with the family by one worker who could not only explore the background information, from parents and agencies alike, but also engage the whole family in an interventive schedule which explores their positive development by the use of a number of treatment modalities, the effectiveness of which could be evaluated in operation. Time-tabled case conferences on a weekly basis with a standing membership at the core reflecting the membership of the policy-making Area Review Committee, supplemented by other workers also involved in each case, provide the regular and consistent forum from which assessment cases are referred and for which assessment reports are prepared. The assessment process is the beginning of a long-term interventive schedule in which the clients and workers both participate. The system is, in essence and practise, a simple one but its effects have been felt not only in terms of ongoing casework with families but also at the level of policy-making in reappraisal of our traditional agency attitudes to child abuse.