Collateral Learning in Science: Students’ responses to a cross‐cultural unit of work

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of students’ responses to a cross‐cultural science unit entitled “Maintaining health.” The unit was designed to help students to build bridges between their traditional practices and beliefs and western science concepts. This paper reports students’ responses to a pre‐test and post‐test, and their reflections on their learning. The responses were analysed using the collateral learning model. There was evidence of parallel, dependent, and secured collateral learning. The implications for science teaching and for assessing science learning are discussed.     

Pragmatic language in deaf and hard of hearing students: correlation with success in general education

Deaf and hard of hearing children have shown delays and difficulties in pragmatic behaviors due to insufficient exposure to common daily discourse and underlying impoverishment in all components of language development. In a study in a school district in a southeastern U.S. state, the researchers investigated the relationship between sociolinguistic pragmatic competence in 81 deaf and hard of hearing students and these students' degree of hearing loss, communication mode, and degree of success in general education. Two measures, one devised by the state's department of education and one developed within the local school system, were used: the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (Georgia Department of Education, 2000) and the Socio-Pragmatic Skills Checklist for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students (Cobb County School District, 1997). The researchers found that whether the students used spoken language or signed language, socio-pragmatic language had a high, positive correlation with academic outcomes.     

Immigrant perpetrators in the news: A terror management approach to resultant hostility,perceived vulnerability,and immigration issue judgment

This study found that mortality salience in TV news activated more hostile attitude toward the perpetrators and negative judgment on the immigration issue. Social group difference influenced news viewers’ immigration issue judgment, but did not affect their resultant hostility and perceived vulnerability. More negative attitudes emerged toward the immigration issue when immigrant perpetrators were portrayed negatively in the news. News viewers with exposure to mortality salience in TV news reported more negative toward immigrants. Exposure to mortality-related elements in TV news could lead to social conflicts that were viewed as a severe threat by U.S. government and policymakers.     

Toddlers' Attachment Security to Child-Care Providers: The Safe and Secure Scale

Attachment relationships of toddlers (N = 45) to their child-care providers were investigated. Children's behaviors with their mothers were observed at home at 24 months and with their child-care providers at 26 months. Attachment Q-Sort procedures were used at home (90 items) and in child care (78 items); the latter yielded a 15-item Safe and Secure Scale describing the safe haven and secure base functions of attachment relationships in child care—being able to (a) seek and receive positive attention, (b) feel safe and protected, (c) receive support for exploration, (d) receive consolation when distressed, and (e) seek and accept assistance. Independent observational measures of child-care quality also were obtained at 24 months. As hypothesized, the Safe and Secure Scale was related to proximal rather than distal indicators of child-care quality, and it was a stronger measure than the child-caregiver Q-security score that was based on all 78 items. Child-mother and child-caregiver security were significantly related.     

Does training make a difference to quality in family child care?

The purpose of this study was to determine which family child care providers seek training, which providers drop out of training, and the effects of training on the quality of care offered by providers. One-hundred thirty family child care providers in three communities who enrolled in Family-to-Family training participated in the study. A comparison group consisted of 112 regulated providers in those same communities who were not involved in the training program under investigation. Each provider was observed for 3 hrs, was interviewed, and completed questionnaires. Providers in training were observed prior to training and 6 months afterwards. Results revealed that providers who sought training were very similar to typical regulated providers. Providers who dropped out of training were less experienced and used fewer business and safety practices than providers who completed it. Training increased global quality in two out of three sites, but did not affect process quality. Of 95 providers, 18 made observable (as opposed to statistically significant) improvements in quality following training, and 9 decreased in quality. These data are interpreted with respect to family child care training policies and practices.     

Assisting Performance in Teaching and Learning

Although Vygotskian principles involving the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) are hailed as tenets undergirding teaching and learning within a constructivist setting, these principals have not been implemented widely within school classrooms. Tharp and Gallimore, building on the notion that learning can be maximized when a teacher has a heightened awareness of a student's ZPD and stimulates new learning based upon this understanding, argue that true teaching is a matter of “assisting performance”. This study examines the efforts of one university instructor to assist the performance of her graduate students as they learned to teach, scaffold and support struggling readers. The findings suggest that the university instructor successfully assisted her students by providing supportive feedback, extending their learning and providing appropriate resources through ongoing Email correspondence and face‐to‐face meetings and tutoring sessions. Success was attributed to the instructor's extensive knowledge of supporting struggling readers, awareness of her students' ZPD's in relation to the context of their learning and her efforts to consistently provide appropriate and specific feedback through iterative dialogue.     

Teachers’ Workplace Learning and the Learning Portfolio

During the years 1994‐1996 the Federal Government of Australia conducted the National Professional Development Program (NPDP) for teachers. This paper reports on a project concerned with investigating the views of significant stakeholders about the issue of accreditation of teacher learning in NPDP projects and developing a means by which such accreditation could take place. The project was carried out in the final year of the NPDP and sought to provide a vehicle for teachers to gain university credit for their workplace learning in many of the projects conducted during the three years of the NPDP.     

Personal Beliefs and National Stories: Theater in Museums as a Tool for Exploring Historical Memory

How does what we remember about history relate to true historical understanding, and how can the museum become a location for these conversations? During the summer of 2011, the National Museum of American History challenged audiences to consider issues of historical memory and national history through the performance of an interactive museum theater program, The Time Trial of John Brown. Using the Time Trial approach as a case study, this article reveals that interactive theater in museums can provide a platform from which audiences assert their own historical understanding while learning firsthand about their role in creating a shared knowledge of American history. As the role of museums evolves in the twenty‐first century, new attention must be paid to this personal process of examining and creating history and memory through performance. It is through performance and participation that history and memory are both examined and created by the audience.     

Ubiquitous Computing in the Library:Indiana State University Library s Experience

1 Introduction New technologies and other developments haye changedthe information seeking behaviors of the academic communityand the general public.Nowhere is this more evident than inthe exponential growth of the World Wide Web and cellularphone usage.Responding to these user needs and newtechnologies,libraries are moving from being InformationWarehouses to becoming Information Portals.Full-text