Learning environment and students’ classroom behavior differences between effective,average, and ineffective urban elementary schools for Hispanic students

Educational Research for Policy and Practice - This study examined whether there are significant differences between effective, average, and ineffective urban schools with regard to (a)...     

Inclusion of Children with Disabilities: The Philippines Experience

In striving to educate as many children as possible and with limited funds to build a separate special education infrastructure to cater to the needs of children with disabilities, inclusive education was officially adopted in 1997 by the Department of Education in the Philippines as a viable educational alternative. This article reports on the current state of affairs for including children with disabilities within regular schools in the Philippines. The ‘Silahis Centres’ (‘school within the school’ concept) is presented as a feasible model for implementing and promoting the inclusion of children with disabilities within regular schools throughout the Philippines. Other aspects related to inclusive education such as teacher education, policies as well as lessons learned so far from inclusion efforts and future challenges are also described.     

Graphicacy in biology textbooks: analysis of activities with images / Alfabetización gráfica en libros de texto de biología: análisis de las actividades con imágenes

The aim of this study is to analyse how graphicacy is promoted through activities with images of the human body in third to sixth year primary school textbooks from three different publishers. The analysis was based on categories related to type of image, type of task, procedures, cognitive processing level required and whether there are explicit instructions on how to use the image. The results show that illustrations and visual diagrams are the most frequent images. The main task is image interpretation, whereas production tasks are scarce. Moreover, the tasks are not evenly distributed among the different procedures. The processing level required is low and requires superficial processing of the images, resulting in a learning process based on copy and repetition. There is some evidence of activities being sequenced according to educational level. We conclude that the kind of graphicacy found in the textbook activities is insufficient for acquiring competence in the use of images.     

The introduction of text conventions and its impact on teaching literacy

The introduction of text conventions, such as word separation, the separation of letter and background and the lower‐case letter are appraised with respect to their contribution to literacy instruction. The change in the visual appearance of the graphic word over time led to the assignment of secondary status to spelling and low appreciation of the role of phonology, due to the disappearance of audible speech in skilled reading. Since the two major literacy programmes, whole language and phonics, are based on two different stages of reading, both programmes complement each other. Whole language represents the skilled stage of reading, given its reliance on the graphic word, whereas phonics represents the unskilled stage, owing to its emphasis on the intermediatory role of phonological processing in word recognition. Neither literacy programme offers instruction in the integration of letters in a verbally recoded form with the explicit goal of the creation of word gestalts in the course of literacy acquisition.     

Educational Resilience at Risk? The Challenges of Attending an Early College High School

The Urban Review - This study sought to explain student success at an Early College High School. Guided by previous research on Early College High Schools as well as by the construct of educational...     

Análisis del desarrollo fonológico en sujetos malagueños

Resumen

El presente estudio intenta analizar, desde una perspectiva psicolinguistica, el desarrollo fonológico de niños castellanoparlantes de la ciudad de Málaga, en función de variables como el sexo, el nivel sociocultural y edad de los sujetos, atendiendo, por otra parte, a la influencia de características dialectales del habla andaluza.

Tras la elaboración y administración de una prueba de screening, en condiciones de imitación, se registraron las producciones correctas y distintos procesos de simplificación del habla (sustitución, relativos a la estructura de la sílaba y asimilatorios), no encontrándose diferencias significativas con respecto al sexo, aunque sí en cuanto al nivel sociocultural y a la edad de los sujetos.

Cabe destacar que la influencia del modelo lingüístico andaluz podría enmascarar los patrones evolutivos del desarrollo fonológico infantil. Sin embargo, el hecho de que los sujetos malagueños presenten porcentajes bajos en pronunciación correcta en edades avanzadas, en algunas categorías de fonemas, es debido a la influencia de variantes dialectales, más a que presenten patrones evolutivos más tardíos en cuanto a su capacidad de representación fonológica.