Innovative programs for improvement in reading through cognitive enhancement: a remediation study of Canadian First Nations children

Forty-five Grade 3 students from a reservation school in Western Canada were divided into two remedial groups and a no-risk control group. One remedial group was given a classroom-administered cognitive enhancement program (COGENT) throughout the school year. The second group received COGENT for the first half of the year followed by a pull-out cognitive-based reading enhancement program (PREP). Children were assessed across phonological awareness, rapid naming, reading, and cognitive ability at the beginning of the year, mid-term, and at the end of the school year. MANOVA results showed a significant interaction for reading measures, with students receiving classroom intervention over the school year making the greatest gains. Results are discussed in terms of group, remediation program, and individual participant improvements.     

Pictures are necessary but not sufficient: Using a range of visual methods to engage users about school design

It has been argued by both educationalists and social researchers that visual methods are particularly appropriate for the investigation of people’s experiences of the school environment. The current and expected building work taking place in British schools provides an opportunity for exploration of methods, as well as a need to establish ways to achieve this involvement of a range of school users, including students. This article describes a consultation that was undertaken in a UK secondary school as part of a participatory design process centred on the rebuilding of the school. A range of visual methods, based on photographs and maps, was used to investigate the views of a diverse sample of school users, including students, teachers, technical and support staff and the wider community. Reported here is the experience of using these tools, considering the success of different visually-based methods in engaging a broad cross section of the school community and revealing useful information. Using a range of visual methods allows a complex, but coherent, understanding of the particular school environment to be constructed and developed. It is further argued that such a range of visual and spatial methods is needed to develop appropriate understanding. The study, therefore, contributes to knowledge about specific visual research methods, appreciation of the relationship between tools, and a general methodological understanding of visual methods’ utility for developing understanding of the learning environment.     

Making Art,Teaching Art,Learning Art: Exploring the Concept of the Artist Teacher

The article explores the concept of the artist teacher, drawing upon an overview of relevant literature and two related pieces of research: the first investigated practices within the Artist Teacher Scheme (ATS); the second sought to understand the perceptions of practice‐based coursework in an MA Art Education programme at Roehampton University in London. Commonalities and differences between the perceptions and understandings of artist teachers (including masters' students), their tutors and gallery educators were explored. The data for each piece of research were collected through unstructured, open‐ended interviews. A significant reflexive and autobiographical dimension for the research was motivated by my own identity as an artist teacher, and by the exploration of reflective practice as a potential framework for realising and sustaining an artist teacher identity and practice. The research concluded that connections between art practice and teaching are complex, diverse, difficult to articulate, challenging to implement and do not easily lend themselves to simple impact measurement. The ATS operates in a context that includes languages, cultures and identities from frameworks in education and art that can be both complementary and oppositional. Artist teachers need to develop skills of negotiation through which they can articulate and continuously reappraise their art practice and, at an appropriate stage, use that practice to inform their teaching.     

Teaching students about information: Information literacy and cognitive authority

Scholarship has not undergone a paradigm shift in terms of argument and research with the introduction of the Web-based information world. Searching, on the other hand, has undergone a significant shift. In teaching students to find, use, and evaluate information, librarians and instructors need a useful model of the information world that enables them to teach students about information. A practical example of how this may be accomplished is presented.¹     

Expanded Koppitz scoring system of the bender gestalt visual-motor test for adolescents: A pilot study

The current research represented a pilot study to assess the use of the Bender Gestalt Visual-Motor Test with school-age adolescents over 11 years of age. Research regarding the accuracy of the hypothesis that visual-motor integration functioning is normally intact by age 11 was presented. In addition, initial data to extend the Koppitz scoring system of the Bender for ages 11 years, 6 months through 15 years, 11 months was proposed. Mean error scores from the pilot study suggested that visual-motor development is not maturationally complete by age 11 years, 11 months. Additional research focusing on extending the normative sample or developing a new scoring system for adolescents is suggested.     

Overshadowing not potentiation of illness-based contextual conditioning by a novel taste

In four experiments using rat subjects, we investigated the effects of presenting a novel flavor cue at the time of pairing an environmental context with illness. In each experiment, the subjects were allowed to spend time in a distinctive cage before receiving an injection of LiCl. For some, plain water was made available on these conditioning trials; for others, a novel taste (HCl) was presented. We measured the strength of the context aversion by assessing the ability of the contextual cues to block the acquisition of an aversion to sucrose in a further phase of training. We found that initial training with HCl present made the context less effective as a blocking cue and concluded that the HCl had overshadowed learning about the context. We suggest that this blocking procedure provides a more accurate assessment of contextual aversion than does the consumption test that has more usually been used and that taste-context overshadowing may be a more robust phenomenon than has thus far been thought.     

Confronting Islamophobia in a Rural Appalachian Classroom

A research study in West Virginia in which a series of lessons were created to address the issues of Islamophobia, American exceptionalism, and nativism within a seventh-grade Ancient Civilizations classroom. The lessons spotlighted the Middle East, and students were presented with a more realistic view of Islamic cultures and were able to interact with Muslim individuals. Lessons focused on achieving authentic human interaction, seeing through multiple perspectives, and appreciating the differences in other cultures. Students were confronted with experiences and content that allowed them to challenge their xenophobic sentiments. These experiences had profound effects on students' negative and xenophobic dispositions.