Errors of programming and ownership of the robot concept made by trainee kindergarten teachers during an induction training

Education and Information Technologies - Computational thinking in the educational environment has awaken a rising interest, having been included as part of the curricula from the very beginnings...     

Are there radiological changes in the brains of individuals with dyslexia?

Summary CT scans of a group of patients with developmental dyslexia have shown statistically a difference of mass distribution in the cerebral hemispheres from that seen in control patients studied during the same period. They have also shown an increased incidence of unusual ventricular asymmetries from that commonly occurring in normal individuals. The findings suggest there may be an increased incidence of early slight morphological changes in the brains of individuals with dyslexia but the changes are not diagnostic of dyslexia.     

Nancy Akhavan. The Title I Teacher's Guide to Teaching Reading,K-3

Early childhood educators are increasingly being called upon to deal with emotionally charged topics, which include natural and manmade disasters, war, terror, death, and other traumatic events. At our teachers college, we prepare students to deal with a challenging issue, memory of the Holocaust, through a series of activities and workshops spread over 3 years. In this study, we examined the students' emerging pedagogical paradigms for dealing with the Holocaust in the early childhood classroom in Israel. The results of this research shed light on development of pedagogic content knowledge (PCK) related to emotionally laden topics among preservice teachers.     

The Role of Teacher Training in Cognitive Strategy Instruction to Improve Math Problem Solving

The purpose of this article is to offer teacher training and professional development recommendations in mathematics based on the findings of a federally funded 3‐year intervention study that improved the problem solving of middle school students with a focus on students with learning disabilities. Over the 3‐year project, 29 seventh and eighth grade teachers implemented a problem‐solving intervention based on cognitive strategy instruction. Though the intervention was successful in improving students’ problem‐solving performance, several issues related to teaching effectiveness and teacher training came to light. The article will: (1) describe the intervention and its implementation, (2) present the findings of the study, and (3) discuss the issues of effectiveness and possible solutions via teacher education and professional development.     

The Big-fish–little-pond-effect Stands Up to Critical Scrutiny: Implications for Theory, Methodology, and Future Research

The big-fish–little-pond effect (BFLPE) predicts that equally able students have lower academic self-concepts (ASCs) when attending schools where the average ability levels of classmates is high, and higher ASCs when attending schools where the school-average ability is low. BFLPE findings are remarkably robust, generalizing over a wide variety of different individual student and contextual level characteristics, settings, countries, long-term follow-ups, and research designs. Because of the importance of ASC in predicting future achievement, coursework selection, and educational attainment, the results have important implications for the way in which schools are organized (e.g., tracking, ability grouping, academically selective schools, and gifted education programs). In response to Dai and Rinn (Educ. Psychol. Rev., 2008), we summarize the theoretical model underlying the BFLPE, minimal conditions for testing the BFLPE, support for its robust generalizability, its relation to social comparison theory, and recent research extending previous implications, demonstrating that the BFLPE stands up to scrutiny. Quotations (associated page numbers) to the Dai and Rinn (2008) article are based on a prepublication version of the article available to the authors of this article that may have changed during the final preparation for publication. The authors would also like to express thanks to David Dai and Anne Rinn for their encouragement and assistance to us in preparation of our article, whilst still acknowledging that they might not agree will all the views expressed here.     

The exact-display approach for online catalog subject searching

When public catalog users enter queries that exactly match the catalog's controlled vocabulary, online systems should respond with browsing lists of alphabetically arranged subject headings, because such displays guide users to retrievals based on the assignment of the matched subject headings to bibliographic records. Unfortunately, studies of online catalog searching demonstrate that alphabetical displays are no longer capable of managing large numbers of subdivided forms of subject headings, because searchers exhibit low levels of perseverance when faced with large numbers of retrievals. This paper introduces a new approach to displaying retrieved subject headings in subject searching—the exact-display approach—designed to encourage users to browse bibliographic information. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of the exact-display approach by showing how many user queries would be candidates for this approach, demonstrate an implementation of the exact-display approach in an experimental online catalog, and feature end-user experiences with this approach as implemented in the experimental catalog. End-user experiences gave the authors the opportunity to make several recommendations for enhancing the original design of the exact-display approach so that future implementations of this approach in operational online catalogs are responsive to the needs of online catalog users.