Parent Reading Belief Inventory: Reliability and Validity With a Sample of Mexican American Mothers

Research Findings: The purpose of the current study was to (a) evaluate the internal consistency of the 7 scales of the Parent Reading Belief Inventory (PRBI), (b) assess the factor structure, and (c) examine concurrent validity in a sample of Mexican American mothers from low-income homes.

Two hundred and seventy-four mothers of preschool children completed the PRBI and the Home Literacy Activities Questionnaire.

Five of the seven scales demonstrated adequate internal consistency. Principal component and parallel analyses revealed that one component provided the best summary of the observed variables. Preliminary evidence of concurrent validity was revealed. Practice or Policy: Future qualitative research is needed to explore mothers' interpretations of the items and to examine modifications to the PRBI.     

Narrative Development in Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Preschool Children

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to describe differences in the narratives produced by 3-, 4-, and 5- year old Spanish-speaking (SS) children. Narrative productions of 104 typically developing children were collected using a story-retelling task and coded using the Index of Narrative Complexity. The results of this study indicate that 3-year-old SS children produced stories containing characters and actions. Four-year-old SS children’s stories were characterized by the use of characters, actions, and internal responses. Five-year-old SS children retold stories containing characters, settings, initiating events, actions, internal responses, formulaic markers, temporal markers, and knowledge of dialogue. Practice: Developmental information to assist educators working with SS children.     

Document,documentation, and the Document Academy: introduction

A series of efforts starting in the late nineteenth century to manage the increase in documents came to be knows as “documentation.” Leaders included Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet. The concern was with access to evidence and the meaning of “document” was broadened to include any sign preserved to represent phenomena. Legal deposit, when extended to new modern media, required new techniques and led to a new program in documentation at the University of Tromsø, Norway, in 1996. Niels Lund, Michael Buckland, and others collaborated in forming the Document Academy and organized a series of conferences.     

Perception of gated, highly familiar spoken monosyllabic nouns by children with and without learning disabilities

A forward-gating procedure employing highly familiar monosyllabic words was used in auditory testing of age- and gender-matched children with learning disabilities and normally achieving children aged 8 to 11 years. The portion of the word presented, or "gate," was longer on each successive trial. Nondisabled children identified an average of one more word than the children with learning disabilities, but the mean duration required for word identification did not differ between groups. Better receptive vocabulary scores were associated with identification of words at shorter durations only among the children with learning disabilities. The two groups of children had similar numbers of different meaningful-word and different non-word incorrect responses. The children with learning disabilities exhibited poorer fine-grained auditory discrimination than a control group of nondisabled children. The study concluded that auditory closure skills for the gating task were as good among children with learning disabilities as among nondisabled children, but that sensory discrimination problems may contribute significantly to the learning difficulties of the former group.     

Review and Discussion of Children’s Conceptions of Computers

Today’s children grow up surrounded by computers. They observe them, interact with them and, as a consequence, start forming conceptions of how they work and what they can do. Any constructivist approach to learning requires that we gain an understanding of such preconceived ideas and beliefs in order to use computers as learning tools in an effective and informed manner. In this paper, we present five such conceptions that children reportedly form about computers, based on an interdisciplinary literature review. We then evaluate how persistent these conceptions appear to be over time and in light of new technological developments. Finally, we discuss the relevance and implications of our findings for education in the contexts of conceptual pluralism and conceptual categorisation.     

A framework to foster problem-solving in STEM and computing education

ABSTRACT

Background: Recent developments in STEM and computer science education put a strong emphasis on twenty-first-century skills, such as solving authentic problems. These skills typically transcend single disciplines. Thus, problem-solving must be seen as a multidisciplinary challenge, and the corresponding practices and processes need to be described using an integrated framework.

Purpose: We present a fine-grained, integrated, and interdisciplinary framework of problem-solving for education in STEM and computer science by cumulatively including ways of problem-solving from all of these domains. Thus, the framework serves as a tool box with a variety of options that are described by steps and processes for students to choose from. The framework can be used to develop competences in problem-solving.

Sources of evidence: The framework was developed on the basis of a literature review. We included all prominent ways of domain-specific problem-solving in STEM and computer science, consisting mainly of empirically orientated approaches, such as inquiry in science, and solely theory-orientated approaches, such as proofs in mathematics.

Main argument: Since there is an increasing demand for integrated STEM and computer science education when working on natural phenomena and authentic problems, a problem-solving framework exclusively covering the natural sciences or other single domains falls short.

Conclusions: Our framework can support both practice and research by providing a common background that relates the ways, steps, processes, and activities of problem-solving in the different domains to one single common reference. In doing so, it can support teachers in explaining the multiple ways in which science problems can be solved and in constructing problems that reflect these numerous ways. STEM and computer science educational research can use the framework to develop competences of problem-solving at a fine-grained level, to construct corresponding assessment tools, and to investigate under what conditions learning progressions can be achieved.     

Exercise during the childbearing year

Many women wish to continue to pursue an active lifestyle during pregnancy, while the pregnancy itself may provide the motivation for other more sedentary women to begin an exercise program for the sake of improved health/fitness. Also, female competitive athletes, upon becoming pregnant, may wish to continue sports performance and require careful monitoring to assure maternal-fetal safety. This review is designed to assist the perinatal educator who is in the position to advise the pregnant patient on the risks and benefits of physical activity during the childbearing year and provide suggestions for developing individualized exercise programs.     

Gender and intercultural competence: analysis of intercultural competence among upper secondary school students in Denmark and Norway

Abstract

The pluralisation of European societies has produced national and cultural diversification, increasing the need for communication and understanding to support recognition, equality, justice, self-determination and identification with others. This paper responds to the social and political challenges accompanying immigration by focusing on gender differences in intercultural competence among a selection of Danish and Norwegian secondary school students. Data came from questionnaires given to 895 students from four schools—two Danish and two Norwegian. One major finding was gender differences in intercultural competence, which is discussed using inclusive citizenship theory, gender socialization theory and feminist standpoint theory. For the control variables, cultural capital theory and intergroup contact theory were used to analyse students’ experiences of school diversity and their intercultural competence. School diversity contributed moderately to greater intercultural competence while moderate differences arose between national samples. Finally, teaching implications are discussed.