Bilingual Infants Demonstrate Advantages in Learning Words in a Third Language

Prior research suggests that bilingualism may endow infants with greater phonological flexibility. This study investigated whether this flexibility facilitates word learning in additional languages (n = 96). Experiment 1 compared 18‐ to 20‐month‐old monolingual (English) and bilingual (English/Mandarin) infants on their ability to learn words distinguished by click consonants from a Southern African language, Ndebele. English–Mandarin bilingual infants were sensitive to Ndebele click contrasts, but monolingual English infants were not. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we investigated whether enhanced bilingual sensitivity extended to analogous nonlinguistic labels: hand claps and finger snaps. Although discriminated by infants, neither group distinguished words labeled by hand claps and finger snaps. Results suggest that bilingual infants' sustained openness to non native contrast may facilitate the uptake of words in distant languages.     

Liberalism,Parental Rights,Pupils’ Autonomy and Education

Liberals, from Mill to Rawls see personal autonomy as paramount in civil society. They see human dignity to consist essentially in personal autonomy, that is, ‘in the ability of each person to determine for himself or herself a view of the good life’ (Taylor, C. (1992) p. 27). Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition” p. 57 (Princeton, Princeton University Press). This emphasis on personal autonomy underlies much of liberal emphasis on freedom of conscience, justice, rights and fairness. Its core thesis is that a just society seeks not to promote any particular view of the good life, but enables its citizens to pursue their own ends consistent with a similar liberty for all others. Yet, when some citizens in America attempted to pursue their own view of the good life, they came up against head‐on conflict with the liberal state. These groups saw civic education with its emphasis on individual choice, on reflecting and weighing of alternative viewpoints and on personal autonomy, as threatening to their way of life and to their fundamental religious beliefs, and consequently they challenged the state in the courts. What ensued raised profound educational problems for educating children, parental rights, and the right of the State in a liberal democratic society, which are discussed in this paper.     

Novel Word Learning in Bilingual and Monolingual Infants: Evidence for a Bilingual Advantage

Previous studies revealing that monolingual and bilingual infants learn similar sounding words with comparable success are largely based on prior investigations involving single‐feature changes in the onset consonant of a word. There have been no investigations of bilingual infants' abilities to learn similar sounding words differentiated by vowels. In the current study, 18‐month‐old bilingual and monolingual infants (n = 90) were compared on their sensitivity to a vowel change when learning the meanings of words. Bilingual infants learned similar sounding words differing by a vowel contrast, whereas monolingual English‐ and Mandarin‐learning infants did not. Findings are discussed in terms of early constraints on novel word learning in bilingual and monolingual infants.     

How to Teach and to Ensure a Good,Sound Religious Education through a Multi‐faith Approach at the Primary School Level

If Religious Education is to have an effective place in education and is not objectionable to younger pupils, there would appear to be a case for laying a foundation of knowledge, while the attitude to the subject is favourable and learning is thus easier to achieve. Then pupils are more likely to be in a well‐informed position to discuss religion at the top of the school, than if teaching has already begun at an age when, although they were intellectually ready and able to undertake open debate, prejudice had already closed teenagers’ eyes to the whole matter (Attfield, 1974)

The school should be a community within which children should learn to live the ‘good life’... By example at first hand children can learn to love and care for others, to be generous, kind and courageous. Good experiences in personal relationships in early life will make a most important contribution to an understanding of spiritual and moral values when children are older. (The Plowden Report, 1967, Vol. 1, p. 206, para. 568)     

Quality Assurance in Open and Distance, Education： a Case Study of Kota Open University

After a brief analysis of the concept of quality in open and distance education, information technology for quality assurance and Indian initiative for quality improvement, the paper examines the quality assurance measures at Kota Open University under the following areas ： planning academic programmes ; developing academic programmes ; producing learning materials ; implementing programmes ; reviewing courses/programmes ; and ing human resources.     

Back to Basics: A Bilingual Advantage in Infant Visual Habituation

Comparisons of cognitive processing in monolinguals and bilinguals have revealed a bilingual advantage in inhibitory control. Recent studies have demonstrated advantages associated with exposure to two languages in infancy. However, the domain specificity and scope of the infant bilingual advantage in infancy remains unclear. In the present study, 114 monolingual and bilingual infants were compared in a very basic task of information processing—visual habituation—at 6 months of age. Bilingual infants demonstrated greater efficiency in stimulus encoding as well as in improved recognition memory for familiar stimuli as compared to monolinguals. Findings reveal a generalized cognitive advantage in bilingual infants that is broad in scope, early to emerge, and not specific to language.     

How Many Ways Can We Define Online Learning? A Systematic Literature Review of Definitions of Online Learning (1988-2018)

ABSTRACT

Online learning as a concept and as a keyword has consistently been a focus of education research for over two decades. In this paper, we present results from a systematic literature review for the definitions of online learning because the concept of online learning, though often defined, has a range of meanings attached to it. Authors and scholars use the term to mean very distinct, if not contradictory concepts. We conducted systematic literature for over the last 30 years (1988 to 2018) to investigate the number and content of definitions of online learning. We collected 46 definitions from 37 resources and conducted a content analysis on these sets of definitions. Content analysis of the collected definitions led to an understanding of the core elements for defining online learning, the confusion surrounding the terms and the synonyms used for online learning. An evolution of the definition of the concept of online learning was also mapped to the evolution of technology in the last three decades.     

Tolerant Inclusion: racialised experiences of Asian Australian pre‐service teachers

In this paper we examine the educational experiences of Asian Australian women enrolled in a Faculty of Education in an urban university. We argue that the everyday social relations of pre‐service teacher education are constituted by discourses of liberal tolerance which call for a celebration of difference and diversity. This celebratory discourse suppresses, and thereby denies, the unequal power relations between the Anglo‐Celtic majority and ethnic, racialised minority groups. Discourses of liberal tolerance position the Anglo‐Celtic majority to be either tolerant or intolerant of its ethnicised and racialised Other(s). However, social interactions cannot be simply analysed in terms of a binary logic of tolerance or intolerance of the Other. Social interactions between members of majority and minority groups are complex; inherently contradictory and ambivalent. In this paper we explore these complex dynamics in the everyday experiences of Asian Australian women enrolled in a teacher‐education course