Jamaican Deaf Children Interacting with Written Language: Support for Bilingual Instruction?

The interrelationship among language components is the main conceptual framework for this study which examined the written language performance of Jamaican children with severe to profound hearing loss. Twelve subjects aged 15 to 16 years completed text level tasks in writing, reading and sign language. Hearing children aged 13 to 14 years completed writing and reading tasks. Multilevel analyses were undertaken. Differences and parity in performances were observed within and between groups at the word, sentence and text levels. Deaf children's ability to express complex ideas in sign language in the Jamaican education system indicated a need for nontraditional approaches in the teaching of written language. Suggestions are outlined for developing an instructional model to enhance written language using a bilingual approach.     

Developing Research Skills for Civil Engineers: A Library Contribution

A cowse‐integrated programme of library instruction has been developed for the School of Civil Engineering at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia; library instruction being one of the means selected to improve the research efforts of fourth year project students. The programme has been developed through consultation between the Civil Engineering Research Project Coordinator and the Civil Engineering Reference Librarian. Its aims are derived from those established for the fourth year research projects. Attention is focussed on the nature of the programme and the impact of instruction on fourth year research project students. Students who had received extended library instruction were compared with students from the previous year. Evidence suggests that the instruction has improved the information seeking behaviour of the students and their literature reviews.     

Various ways to determine rational number size: an exploration across primary and secondary education

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Understanding rational numbers is a complex task for primary and secondary school students. Previous research has shown that a possible reason is...     

Reading Comprehension of Dutch Deaf Children

In this study, the reading comprehension of deaf children and adolescents in the Netherlands is examined along with their word identification. The reading comprehension of 464 deaf students and the word identification of 504 deaf students between 6 and 20 years of age was examined. The results show the reading comprehension scores of deaf children to be far below the scores of hearing children. On average, the deaf subjects scored at a level equivalent to a hearing child in the first grade. The word identification scores of the deaf children, however, were almost equivalent to the scores of hearing children. Although reading comprehension and word identification appear to be related, this relation does not completely explain the comprehension difficulties encountered by deaf children. Additional factors are required to explain deaf children’s difficulties with reading comprehension.     

Instructing adolescents with learning disabilities: converting a meta-analysis to practice

A previous meta-analysis indicated that eight instructional factors--Questioning, Sequencing and Segmentation, Skill Modeling, Organization and Explicit Practice, Small-Group Setting, Indirect Teacher Activities (e.g., homework), Technology, and Scaffolding-captured the majority of successful intervention programs for adolescents with learning disabilities (LD). Most important was the Organization/Explicit factor, which contributed significant variance (16%) to effect size. This factor included two important instructional components: advance organization and explicit practice. In this article, we convert these findings into practical guidelines to direct instructional practice.     

Picking the winners by consensus: Grant-giving practice in the Netherlands

The Netherlands form a consensus democracy. In such a society the legitimacy of decisions is of great concern to all. An elaborate system of checks and balances tends to exist and the pressure to join an emerging consensus at meetings is both subtle and tremendously powerful. In the Dutch system of higher education and research the manifestations of the consensus ideal are numerous. This paper highlights them where appropriate. It reviews the Dutch research effort in an international perspective and concludes that R&D expenditure in the Netherlands, measured as a proportion of GDP, is declining. Fairly radical changes in science policy orientation since the 1960s are reviewed and the current frameworks for policy formulation, academic foresight and the organisation of support are sketched. After discussing NWO's different funding instruments, the practices of picking the winners are described in some detail. Three different peer review models are then discussed with special attention to their strengths and weaknesses. The paper's final section is focussed on the evaluation practices in force.     

‘You want us to teach outdoor education where?’ Reflections on teaching outdoor education online

This article reports on the experiences of two lecturers working at the University of Tasmania required to teach outdoor and sustainability education (O&SE) courses online. Using an (auto)ethonographic case-study approach, the lecturers were interviewed with a view to exploring their perceptions, challenges, ethical dilemmas, tensions, opportunities and experiences in this space. A number of themes emerged, including commitment to quality teaching and learning, the role of experience, and experiential learning, in the online space, the challenge of fostering a connection to place, difficulties faced when trying to develop a learning community, and the role of professional learning and support in terms of pedagogy and technology in the online space. These themes, and their implications for teaching and learning in higher education both generally, and specifically in O&SE, are discussed in light of what is a mounting body of literature exploring the move to online delivery in higher education.