Parents’ Perspectives on Surf Therapy for Children with Disabilities

This qualitative study was designed to understand parents’ perceptions of their children’s participation in an inclusive surf therapy programme in the United States. Ten parents and one caregiver were interviewed about theirs and their children’s experience in the surf programme. Parent discussions centred on the child, parent/caregiver, instructor and challenges of parenting. Results indicate that parents perceive surf therapy to positively impact their child physically, socially and behaviourally. Findings also suggest cost, an inclusive, family-centred approach and opportunities for socialisation with other families were important to parents’ satisfaction.     

Implementing Engineering in Diverse Upper Elementary and Middle School Science Classrooms: Student Learning and Attitudes

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Recent reforms in education call for science teachers to incorporate STEM concepts into their curricula. This study explores the association among...     

International developments: The North Carolina foreign language center: A public library service

The North Carolina Foreign Language Center is a centralized multilingual public library which serves all residents of North Carolina. Local library patrons have direct access to its materials and services. Residents elsewhere can borrow materials and use its reference capabilities via InterLibrary Loan. The NCFLC is funded by the North Carolina State Library using L.S.C.A. funds. The NCFLC can serve as a model for other states with a low population density of non‐English or limited‐English speaking people. By making foreign language resources available through one library, North Carolina provides a wide selection of such materials and can afford the services of a full‐time librarian to manage the collection.     

Situated Learning with Online Portfolios, Classroom Websites and Facebook

In this article we describe the evolution of an elective course designed specifically for undergraduate students in our pre-service teacher education program. This course is intended to prepare these undergraduate students as future teachers—helping them to make effective and creative uses of technology in learning settings. This course emphasizes learning to learn with and about technology, in the ever-changing context of educational technology. Generally speaking, we outline and describe three key goals of teaching young teachers to thoughtfully integrate technology into a real-world classroom. First, the course emphasizes learning to explore and learn proactively by engaging in learning by design activities. Second, students are given an opportunity to try a wide variety of innovative technologies through explorations of their own choosing. Finally, we attempt to leverage the power of online community building for learning by harnessing the ubiquity and convenience of tools like Facebook. We look into the future with great hope and enthusiasm that our preservice teachers will lead the way in integrating new technologies into their teaching in ways that will benefit their students, colleagues, and the greater education community.     

“Don’t rock the boat”: conflicting mentor and pre-service teacher narratives of professional experience

This article examines conflicting mentor (school-based supervising teacher) and pre-service teacher narratives of professional experience in schools. It draws on a small narrative inquiry about the mentoring relationship in teacher education. Interview conversations were analysed using “writing as a method of inquiry”, allowing for a recursive understanding of the competing discourses that emerged, and highlighting the tensions in the mentoring relationship. While the pre-service teachers interviewed for this study expected professional experience to provide opportunities for innovation and collaboration, mentors tended to view the relationship as assimilation into the profession. Two points of challenge are identified where disruption to the tensions that arise from these competing narratives is needed if changes to educational equity are to occur.     

Exploring the Relation Between Prenatal and Neonatal Complications and Later Autistic-Like Features in a Representative Community Sample of Twins

Prenatal and neonatal events were reported by parents of 13,690 eighteen-month-old twins enrolled in the Twins Early Development Study, a representative community sample born in England and Wales. At ages 7–8, parents and teachers completed questionnaires on social and nonsocial autistic-like features and parents completed the Childhood Asperger Syndrome Test. Correlations between prenatal and neonatal events and autistic-like features were weak, both in the whole sample ( r  = .00–.07) and at the 5% quantitative extreme (phenotypic group correlations = .01–.11), after controlling for socioeconomic status and cognitive ability. Neonatal problems showed modest heritability (13%–14%) and significant shared and nonshared environmental influences (55%–59% and 28%–31%, respectively). Differences in identical twins' neonatal problems correlated weakly with their difference scores on autistic-like features ( r  = .01–.06).     

Isabel, a clinical decision support system

A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is an interactive tool designed to assist clinicians in making decisions, such as determining a diagnosis. The Isabel Database is a CDSS featuring a clinical checklist and topic-specific knowledge components. This column contains an overview of the database, provides searching tips, and places Isabel within the context of the CDSS field.