Changing practices for a global society: voices of students,teachers, principals and university teacher educators on active learning

In responding to globalisation, Irish curricula advocate active learning and cooperative groupwork methods in second-level schools but there are many difficulties in implementing them. This paper explores the experiences and perspectives of teachers, students, principals and university teacher educators and is based on a recent qualitative study. All respondents reported that there are major constraints to the use of these methods. Implementation of active learning methods requires an exploration, within a context of continuous professional development, of teacher values and motivation, of goals and contrasting paradigms in education, and of ways of building democratic structures and relationships within schools.     

Young Children’s Thinking About Decomposition: Early Modeling Entrees to Complex Ideas in Science

This study was part of a multi-year project on the development of elementary students’ modeling approaches to understanding the life sciences. Twenty-three first grade students conducted a series of coordinated observations and investigations on decomposition, a topic that is rarely addressed in the early grades. The instruction included in-class observations of different types of soil and soil profiling, visits to the school’s compost bin, structured observations of decaying organic matter of various kinds, study of organisms that live in the soil, and models of environmental conditions that affect rates of decomposition. Both before and after instruction, students completed a written performance assessment that asked them to reason about the process of decomposition. Additional information was gathered through one-on-one interviews with six focus students who represented variability of performance across the class. During instruction, researchers collected video of classroom activity, student science journal entries, and charts and illustrations produced by the teacher. After instruction, the first-grade students showed a more nuanced understanding of the composition and variability of soils, the role of visible organisms in decomposition, and environmental factors that influence rates of decomposition. Through a variety of representational devices, including drawings, narrative records, and physical models, students came to regard decomposition as a process, rather than simply as an end state that does not require explanation.     

The Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters Program's Relationship with Mother and School Outcomes

Research Findings: This study investigated the relationship of the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program to mothers' involvement in education at home and school, student school readiness in kindergarten, and student academic outcomes at 3rd grade. HIPPY serves a mostly minority, low-income family population and employs home visitors that are mostly female and Spanish speaking. Using a within-group analysis, we found that HIPPY mothers increased educational activities in their home with their children after 1 year of home-based intervention. The majority (84.8%) of HIPPY kindergartners were rated as “ready for school” by their kindergarten teachers according to a within-group analysis. In addition, between-group analyses showed that HIPPY kindergartners had higher attendance rates, higher prekindergarten enrollment, and higher promotion to 1st grade compared to other kindergartners in the school district. HIPPY 3rd graders scored significantly higher on a state-mandated math achievement test than their matched peers. Practice or Policy: The results suggest that HIPPY had a positive relationship with families and schools through improved parent involvement and student school outcomes.     

PART III: KINANTHROPOMETRY

Whole-body bone mineral density and bone mineral mass in young adult rugby union players.     

Legal protection and merchandise licensing of titles,characters and slogans

Conclusion  Protecting a merchandising program by the given means of Law means safeguarding substantial investment for obtaining a certain Merchandising Property. Therefore protection should be found at a very early stage and has to be maintained with great care to avoid later conflicts and loss of money. Before starting a merchandising program four steps should be resolved:

The control of keypecks during automaintenance by prekeypeck omission training

Measures of pigeons’ prekeypecking (pecking in front of the response key) during automaintenance sessions with keypeck omission contingencies indicate that prekeypecks occur frequently and are often followed by grain delivery. When the omission procedure is extended to prevent food delivery following any trial on which prekeypecks occur within 2 in. of the response key, keypecking is not maintained. These results are taken to suggest that the automaintenance keypeck is part of a sequence of approach behaviors, including prekeypecks. The persistence of keypecking during automaintenance schedules appears to result from the adventitious reinforcement of prekeypecks close to the response key, and the effectiveness of the omission procedure seems to depend upon the extent of the approach behaviors which result in omission.     

Cognitive and metacognitive components of learning: Search for the locus of retarded perfomance

The introduction to this article gives a short overview of the main theoretical ideas which have been advanced to explain the low cognitive perfomances of retarded persons in learning and problem solving. The question of how retarded learners organize and control their problem solving activities led the authors to conduct a series of single case studies investigating qualitative and dynamic aspects of retarded learning. Metacognitive training research, socio-cognitive theories and a schema-theoretical top-down/bottom-up model of information processing constitute the theoretical background. In a tutorial setting mentally retarded and learning disabled subjects were presented tasks which consist of connecting amorphous clouds of dots in order to reproduce geometrical model figures. Verbal and behavioral data were collected to precisely describe the subjects problem solving activities. Post-hoc a two-dimensional category system listing 28 different problem solving components was developed. The first dimension introduces a distinction between explorative, elaborative, planning and control components, the second dimension specifies whether the components are initiated topdown or bottom-up. This category system is presented in detail followed by a few examples of analyzed problem solving sequences. Finally, the proposed model and inherent methodological problems are discussed.     

Growing up female and Muslim in the UK: an empirical enquiry into the distinctive religious and social values of young Muslims

Abstract

What does it mean to be a Muslim young woman in Britain today and with which religious and social values do these young women identify? This paper tests the thesis that Muslim identity predicts distinctive values of public and social significance among female adolescents (13- to 15- years of age) who participated in a survey conducted across the four nations of the United Kingdom. From the 11,809 participants in the survey, the present analyses compares the responses of 177 female students who self-identified as Muslim with the responses of 1183 female students who self-identified as religiously unaffiliated. Comparisons are drawn across two domains defined as religiosity and as social values. The data demonstrated that for these female adolescents self-identification as Muslim encased a distinctive profile in terms both of religiosity and social values.