孟买的圣诞节

We arrived in Bombay early in December, all agog to see the wonders of one of India principal cities and looking ahead to visiting Delhi, Agra and the Taj Mahal, even the Khyber Pass, Afghanistan and Karachi. We accomplished only the first of these. After one night in Bombay we awoke to the news that India and Pakistan were at war.     

The Unexpected for the Expecting Parent: Effects of Disruptive Early Interactions on Mother–Infant Relationship

SYNOPSIS

High-quality parental caregiving promotes children’s development from their day of birth or even earlier. Whether there are ways to predict, and ultimately enhance, parental caregiving quality during the prenatal stages of development has been less well understood. This circumstance is even truer when things do not go according “to plan.” In this commentary, we explore two possible scenarios, perhaps unexpected for expectant parents, that can affect children’s development: (1) postpartum parental displays of atypical behaviors and parental caregiving strategies (i.e., maternal/paternal depression) and (2) postpartum child displays of atypical behaviors (i.e., autism spectrum disorder).     

Effects of learning styles on learners’ collaborative patterns in a mobile-assisted,Chinese character-forming game based on a flexible grouping approach

This paper reports a novel, mobile-assisted, game-based learning design for Chinese character learning. In playing the ‘Chinese-PP’ game in a 1:1 (one-device-per-student) setting, each of the 31 target students in Primary 3 (9 years old) is assigned a Chinese character component. A student may make use of his/her own and peers’ character components to form a legitimate Chinese character, and invite the peers with matching components to join his/her group. The intention is to assist the students in developing general orthographic awareness (understanding the structures of Chinese characters) through social negotiation. In this paper, the students’ collaborative learning processes in three game sessions were analysed. The relationships between students with varied learning styles and their game behaviours and learning gains were unveiled as a result. Through the Chinese-PP learning activities that stimulated active peer coaching and social learning, we found that all the target students became active learning participants and achieved high learning gains in the last game session. Recommendations for the future development of such a novel learning approach will also be given.     

Transformative Learning Through an Online Global Class Project in Teacher Education

This exploratory research study aimed to understand teacher candidates' experiences and perspectives in a global class project and to explore a way to develop global understanding in a teacher education program, by means of technology rather than study abroad. Using a qualitative approach, seven U.S. education majors were given opportunities to communicate online with teacher candidates in South Korea, while creating and discussing a concept map and movie presentation about “good teaching” on the Learning Management System. Results showed how the preservice teachers' global perspectives of education were developed through the project, and confirmed the significance of instrumental and communicative learning in transformative learning as well as direct communication and comparison with people from a different context using a carefully designed task-based course and immersive learning environment.     

Tutor Versus Peer Group Assessment of Student Performance in a Simulation Training Exercise

The performance of a group of third‐year higher diploma students from the Department of Hotel & Tourism in a simulation training exercise was assessed separately by the tutor and peer group, using an identical checklist. Ninety‐six pairs of tutor and peer group assessment marks were obtained and compared. Results showed that there was some degree of agreement between tutor and peer group markings, although the level of congruence was somewhat less than reported in earlier studies. However, when the tutor and peer group average marks were converted to grades, agreement was found in only 46.9% of the cases and the level of agreement between the two gradings was not statistically significant. Significant differences were also found in the variability of tutor and peer group markings. Furthermore, there were indications that peer group markings tended to be more stringent than tutor markings in the higher mark range, but relatively more lenient in the lower mark range. This trend was particularly obvious when the tutor and peer group marks were converted into grades. Implications of the findings are also discussed.     

从英汉互译实例浅析"功能对等"翻译标准

近年来,美国语言学家兼翻译家Nidar的“功能对等”理论成为翻译理论领域的主流。该理论现已被广泛采纳并应用于社会生活各个领域的翻译,它对从事翻译工作的人士或第二语言学习者具有重要的指导意义。分别以词汇、语句和语篇为基本翻译单位,通过对比英汉两种语言在形式、语义和语用等方面的异同和两种语言人们的审美和情感倾向性的异同,来探讨翻译中如何运用“功能对等”这一翻译标准。     

Memory for everyday information in students with learning disabilities

This study compared students with and without learning disabilities (LD) on their recall of academic information and information encountered in the students' everyday lives. The academic recall measures included a sentence listening span test, a rhyming words working memory test, and a visual matrix working memory task. Students' cued recall of all the tasks was also measured. The everyday working memory tasks included a dance episode event recall test; a library procedure recall test; and recall tests of commonly found objects, such as a coin, a telephone, and a McDonald's sign. Compared to students without LD, students with LD performed poorly on both the academic recall tasks and the everyday recall tasks. These results support the notion that some students with LD may have working memory problems that affect their performance on tasks other than reading. The results of the cued recall showed that the availability of cues significantly decreased the ability group differences on many of the academic and everyday tasks. This result replicates prior research findings that students with LD do not use retrieval strategies effectively and that some students with LD may have a production deficiency that affects their retrieval of previously encoded information.     

Differential effects of three professional development models on teacher knowledge and student achievement in elementary science

To identify links among professional development, teacher knowledge, practice, and student achievement, researchers have called for study designs that allow causal inferences and that examine relationships among features of interventions and multiple outcomes. In a randomized experiment implemented in six states with over 270 elementary teachers and 7,000 students, this project compared three related but systematically varied teacher interventions—Teaching Cases, Looking at Student Work, and Metacognitive Analysis—along with no‐treatment controls. The three courses contained identical science content components, but differed in the ways they incorporated analysis of learner thinking and of teaching, making it possible to measure effects of these features on teacher and student outcomes. Interventions were delivered by staff developers trained to lead the teacher courses in their regions. Each course improved teachers' and students' scores on selected‐response science tests well beyond those of controls, and effects were maintained a year later. Student achievement also improved significantly for English language learners in both the study year and follow‐up, and treatment effects did not differ based on sex or race/ethnicity. However, only Teaching Cases and Looking at Student Work courses improved the accuracy and completeness of students' written justifications of test answers in the follow‐up, and only Teaching Cases had sustained effects on teachers' written justifications. Thus, the content component in common across the three courses had powerful effects on teachers' and students' ability to choose correct test answers, but their ability to explain why answers were correct only improved when the professional development incorporated analysis of student conceptual understandings and implications for instruction; metacognitive analysis of teachers' own learning did not improve student justifications either year. Findings suggest investing in professional development that integrates content learning with analysis of student learning and teaching rather than advanced content or teacher metacognition alone. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 333–362, 2012