通过小组活动发展幼儿元认知的个案研究

元认知是指主体能够反思自己的思想,能为完成某一目标对自己的思维进行自觉监控。个案研究发现,小组合作解决问题的方式有助于幼儿元认知的发展。为幼儿提供适当的任务以及与他人合作解决问题的机会,不仅有利于幼儿积极运用已有的元认知技能,也有利于幼儿获得他人的反馈,同时反思自己,以便构建新的有效的问题解决策略,舍弃无效的策略,最终促进幼儿元认知的迅速发展。     

Twenty years of adult education in Southern Africa

The paper's starting point is to consider adult education as embedded in the political, social, cultural and economic processes of society. The writers believe that it is necessary to develop an understanding of these contexts in order to understand the role of adult education in Southern Africa in the last 20 years. The paper then looks at adult education in the Southern African context in terms of three themes. These are: adult education for survival; for economic development and for political and cultural development. Finally the paper considers the shift from adult education to lifelong learning.     

Socially mediated metacognition and learning to write

Writing can be viewed as a recursive process involving both cognitive and metacognitive processes. Task, environment, individual cognition and affective processes all impact on producing written text. Recent research on the development of metacognition in young children has highlighted social constructivist and socio-cultural factors. Metacognition is seen as facilitated through collaborative tasks and through talk. This study investigated the peer construction of metacognition in 5-7-year-old children engaged on collaborative writing tasks. Six year 1 and year 2 classes were involved in the project (n = 172). 25 h of video observation data, teacher and researcher reflections and structured field notes were analysed qualitatively using ATLAS ti software. The written texts produced in these sessions were analysed using a qualitative content analysis, looking specifically for evidence of the process of text construction and metacognition. The findings provide evidence of young children's ability to engage in metacognitive talk and to use metacognition intentionally in the co-construction of written texts. The relationships between children and their talk partners mediated the effect of pre-determined ability in literacy. Teachers’ direct questioning aimed at reflection on the writing process did not always support metacognitive dialogues. Drawing on recent models of metacognition and writing the paper highlights the role of social factors in developing metacognition and illustrates the ways in which young children negotiate task demands during shared writing tasks.     

Early Childhood Education as Development: Critique of the Metaphor

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the recent call for developmentally appropriate practices from the perspective of the sociology of the curriculum. A brief examination of this orientation toward curriculum studies is presented in the first section of this paper. Next, a discussion of curriculum theory as metaphor is presented and used to evaluate early childhood education as development on the basis of ethics, as well as disclosure value. Finally, two alternative metaphors are suggested as possible lenses for viewing the content of the early childhood curriculum: early childhood education as caring and early childhood education as schooling for democracy. Early childhood educators are urged to consider the potential of these two metaphors as ways of orientating discourse about what should be taught in early childhood and primary school classrooms.     

DEVELOPING CURRICULA FOR GRANDPARENTS IN JAPAN

The purpose of this study was to determine how three generations view the contribution and needs of grandparents in Japan. A sample consisting of 239 grandparents, 266 parents, and 274 grandchildren from, urban and rural areas completed the Grandparent Strengths and Needs Inventory (Strom & Strom, 1993). Grandparents reported more satisfaction, success, and involvement in teaching than was observed by parents or grandchildren. Grandparents experienced greater difficulty as well as frustration and saw themselves as less informed about their role than was reported by younger people. Significant main effects were generation, grandchild gender, grandchild age, generations living together, frequency of grandchild care by the grandparent, and amount of time the generations spent together. Implications for building curricula and guidelines for program development are identified.     

Single-sex school boys’ perceptions of coeducational classroom learning environments

Reviews in many countries have found little evidence of consistent advantages in either single-sex education or coeducation. Over the last three decades, coeducation has been introduced into many single-sex schools, but there is a dearth of evidence from the student perspective of the impact of such changes on the classroom learning environment. The Individualised Classroom Environment Questionnaire (ICEQ) was administered to 309 elementary and secondary boys from a single-sex school over 3 years prior to (T1), during (T2) and after (T3) the introduction of coeducation. Overall, boys perceived coeducational classrooms to be significantly more Personalised at T2, particularly at the secondary level, while Personalisation increased significantly from T2 to T3 at the elementary level. No significant changes were evident for the Participation, Independence, Investigation and Differentiation scales at either T2 or T3. These findings have implications for the ongoing single-sex/coeducation debate.     

Health and wellbeing: a policy context for physical education in Scotland

The ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ (CfE) guidelines and associated learning experiences and outcomes have been developed following a national debate on the purposes of education in Scotland. The recent development shifts physical education's (PE) role in Scottish education, changing from contributing to the ‘Expressive Arts’ area of the curriculum, to one central to the newly created curriculum area of ‘Health and wellbeing’ in the CfE. This paper provides an analysis of the broader policy context at national and global levels examining the policy developments for PE in Scotland situating them within a globalised discourse emphasising concerns about ill-health and obesity within society. Drawing on the work of Bowe et al., the paper examines the context of production and the context of influence that has contributed to the recent development of ‘Health and wellbeing’ within the CfE. It is argued that the role for PE and the focus on schools promoting daily physical activity within the CfE masks the complexity of addressing the issues of health and well-being. In conclusion it is highlighted that in the interpretation and implementation of policy there will be further issues for PE and as yet unknown consequences for the context of practice and pupils' experiences of PE in Scotland.