Using Typical Infant Development to Inform Music Therapy with Children with Disabilities

This article illustrates some ways in which observations of typically-developing infants can inform music therapy and other work with children with disabilities. The research project that is described examines typical infant development with special attention to musical relatedness and communication. Videotapes of sessions centering on musical play with typically-developing infants and of music therapy sessions of children with multiple severe disabilities are examined in light of developmental issues, conceptual frameworks, and relationships between typical development and developmental issues of children with disabilities. Greenspan’s model of psychosocial development is used as a basis for analyzing observations. This research was conducted over a period of several years. Portions of what is reported here were presented at the European Music Therapy Congress, Naples, Italy (Wheeler and Stultz 2001) and the 10th World Congress of Music Therapy, Oxford, UK (Wheeler and Stultz 2002). Thanks to Elizabeth Rightmyer for very helpful feedback on the article.     

Differences in College Access and Choice Among Racial/Ethnic Groups: Identifying Continuing Barriers

This study focuses on the college application behaviors of students from various racial/ethnic groups in order to understand differences in access and college choice. Student characteristics, predispositions, academic abilities, and income levels were taken into account in our analyses. We analyzed data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) and the Beginning Postsecondary Student Longitudinal Study (BPS) and found significant group differences in preparation behaviors, college application behavior (number of colleges to which students applied), and attendance at their first choice of institution. The results of this study call attention to the need for campuses to evaluate the potential effects of policy decisions that may impact student choice for different populations of students.     

Interthinking: Young Children Using Language to Think Collectively During Interactive Read-alouds

Mercer, N. (1995) coined the term interthinking to link the cognitive and social functions of group talk. Essentially, interthinking means using talk to think collectively, to engage with others’ ideas through oral language. In this article I share four excerpts from small group interactive read-aloud sessions that were conducted with Grade 1 children, and examine the nature of the interthinking that occurred during these discussions of picture books with Radical Change characteristics (Dresang, E. 1999). I examine the types of discourse that occurred during these read-aloud sessions and some of the techniques I used to guide the children in their construction of knowledge of these contemporary picture books.     

The preparation of pre-service student teachers’ competence to work in schools

Competence to work in schools is an important dimension of professional competence, although it is often a neglected dimension of teacher development. This article reports a qualitative study that examined student teachers’ learning experiences in initial teacher education (ITE) in relation to competence to work in schools. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 student teachers on an undergraduate ITE programme in Hong Kong. The findings of the study show that competence to work in schools is characterised by student teachers’ deep contextualised learning. In addition, it offers a deeper understanding of this competence in the ITE context by identifying its three facets, namely understanding of the micro-political realities of schools, social capital building and social strategies. The study provides insights for ITE and schools to support student teachers’ development of their competence to work in schools, including the design of ITE curricula, ITE processes and co-curricular activities in undergraduate studies. Moreover, it suggests the importance of developing schools as growth-fostering and positive micro-political sites for ITE fieldwork and teacher induction.     

The Effect of Group Orientated Classroom Management Procedures on Individual Pupils

Summary This study was designed to test the hypothesis that group orientated classroom management procedures may achieve their apparent success merely by raising still further the on‐task behaviour of non‐troublesome pupils. To this end, 1812‐13 year old pupils in a secondary school remedial class were observed and their individual levels of on‐task behaviour recorded. The class teacher's use of approval and disapproval was also noted.

Following the collection of baseline data, a modified, simple ‘rules, praise and ignoring’ intervention strategy was implemented, followed by a partial reversal to baseline conditions. Mean class on‐task behaviour was clearly shown to increase from 77% at baseline to 91% during intervention and this was maintained during the partial reversal. Moreover, it was shown that every pupil's on‐task behaviour increased, these increases varying between 3 and 33%, the pupils with the lowest baseline levels making the biggest gains.     

Exploring the Metafictive in Elementary Students' Writing

Although some researchers have examined students' literary understandings of and responses to books with metafictive characteristics, few have explored how elementary students incorporate metafictive devices into their writing. In this article I analyse the stories and books created by a class of Grade 5 students and discuss the metafictive devices evident in their work. In addition to considering how the literature students read and how the classroom interpretive community influenced the students' stories/books, I discuss some broader issues about the significance of students reading and writing metafictive texts.     

Play-based Occupational Therapy

In this paper, we will provide an overview of how occupational therapists view play, illustrate how occupational therapists' view of play has evolved, generating a shift in focus for intervention, introduce a model of play as occupation to illustrate how children's ability to play may be influenced by developmental disabilities, outline occupational therapy assessment and treatment using play as the basis for intervention, and finally, identify aspects of best practice. The term developmental disabilities refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders. It is not within the scope of this paper to provide detailed discussion of play-based occupational therapy intervention for all the children who comprise this group. Therefore, we have chosen to illustrate various points made with examples of different types of children with various types of disability.