Learning Disabilities in Guatemala and Spain: A Cross‐National Study of the Prevalence and Cognitive Processes Associated with Reading and Spelling Disabilities

The main purposes of this research were twofold. We examined the samenesses about learning disabilities (LD) in Guatemala and Spain, two countries with the same language but cultural, political, and educational differences, first analyzing data about the prevalence of reading and spelling disabilities in Guatemala City and the Spanish region of the Canary Islands. The focus of the second study was to determine whether there are cross‐national patterns of significant differences in cognitive processes associated with reading and spelling disabilities from a developmental approach in these two cultural contexts. We found some differences in the prevalence of specific LD in reading between both countries but we did not find significant differences between Guatemalan and Spanish reading‐disabled children in cognitive processes that are involved in reading and spelling acquisition in spite of the cultural and educational differences between the two countries.     

学习科学：推动教育的深层变革

当前教育信息化蓬勃发展,在备受赞赏的同时也屡被质疑。至于原因,恐怕还是“人究竟是怎么学习的,怎样才能促进有效学习？”这一根本性问题依然未得到彻底解决。该文从教育信息化的发展现状谈起,剖析目前存在的问题及解决方法,然后仔细梳理了学习科学的发生、发展和研究现状,指出脑科学与学习、基于大数据的学习分析和技术增强的学习等学习科学研究将有助于推动教育从更深的层面发生变革。     

Language and theory of mind: a study of deaf children

Theory-of-mind (ToM) abilities were studied in 176 deaf children aged 3 years 11 months to 8 years 3 months who use either American Sign Language (ASL) or oral English, with hearing parents or deaf parents. A battery of tasks tapping understanding of false belief and knowledge state and language skills, ASL or English, was given to each child. There was a significant delay on ToM tasks in deaf children of hearing parents, who typically demonstrate language delays, regardless of whether they used spoken English or ASL. In contrast, deaf children from deaf families performed identically to same-aged hearing controls (N=42). Both vocabulary and understanding syntactic complements were significant independent predictors of success on verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks.     

Les principales tendances de la sociologie de l'education en France

Sans résumé     

Structuring collaboration in mixed-ability groups to promote verbal interaction,learning, and motivation of average-ability students

Average-ability students often do not take full advantage of learning in mixed-ability groups because they hardly engage in the group interaction. This study examined whether structuring collaboration by group roles and ground rules for helping behavior might help overcome this participatory inequality. In a plant biology course, heterogeneously grouped fourth-grade boys (n=164) were randomly assigned to a structured collaboration condition or an unconstrained comparison condition. Results indicated positive effects of structured collaboration on average-ability students’ achievement, motivation, and contribution to the group interaction. Another positive result was that structuring collaboration did not lower the scores of the high and low-ability students on these measures.     

Facilitating Understanding of Movements in Dynamic Visualizations: an Embodied Perspective

Learners studying mechanical or technical processes via dynamic visualizations often fail to build an accurate mental representation of the system’s movements. Based on embodied theories of cognition assuming that action, perception, and cognition are closely intertwined, this paper proposes that the learning effectiveness of dynamic visualizations could be enhanced by grounding the movements of the presentation in people’s own bodily experiences during learning. We discuss recent research on embodied cognition and provide specific strategies for how the body can be used to ground movements during the learning process: (1) making or observing gestures, (2) manipulating and interacting with objects, (3) using body metaphors, and (4) using eye movements as retrieval cues. Implications for the design of dynamic visualizations as well as directions for future research are presented.