Development of the International Ocean Literacy Survey: measuring knowledge across the world.

The Ocean Literacy movement began in the U.S. in the early 2000s, and has recently become an international effort. The focus on marine environmental issues and marine education is increasing, and yet it has been difficult to show progress of the ocean literacy movement, in part, because no widely adopted measurement tool exists. The International Ocean Literacy Survey (IOLS) aims to serve as a community-based measurement tool that allows the comparison of levels of ocean knowledge across time and location. The IOLS has already been subjected to two rounds of field testing. The results from the second testing, presented in this paper, provide evidence that the IOLS is psychometrically valid and reliable, and has a single factor structure across 17 languages and 24 countries. The analyses have also guided the construction of a third improved version that will be further tested in 2018.     

Teaching Plan‐Do‐Study‐Act (PDSA) in a Supply Chain Context: A Paper Football In‐Class Activity

We develop a single‐class period learning game for the Plan‐Do‐Study‐Act (PDSA) improvement cycle. The experiential activity walks teams through the PDSA problem‐solving process as they create paper American footballs and improve their performance using each step of the cycle. The game is one of the first to focus on PDSA. Key benefits include increased student attention, engagement, and learning. Empirical tests show that participant pre‐ and post‐test scores regarding their understanding of each phase of PDSA improved 21.2% after completing the game. Additionally, the treatment group performed 16.6% higher than the control group. In participant perception questions, 85% of participants felt the game was more effective than lecture or reading, 93% felt the game was fun, 95% felt the game improved their understanding of PDSA, and 98% felt the game was engaging.     

Post-traumatic stress disorder: a reaction to state-supported child abuse and neglect

The policy of apartheid not only fosters conditions conducive to child abuse and neglect, but is in itself abusive. Apartheid policies have led to civil unrest and high levels of violence in South Africa's black townships. Many youth are thus exposed to multiple trauma including witnessing death, being arrested, being beaten, being in exile, and being separated from family and friends. This had led many to develop Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) although this term is a misnomer in the South African context as traumatic stress is not historic but is current. Treatment programs have thus to be modified to accommodate the impossibility of guaranteeing even the physical safety of patients. They have also to be modified to accommodate the fact that most black youth are totally unfamiliar with the notion of the "talking cure." This paper describes a modified treatment program for PTSD which was developed in working with a group of 60 township refugees. Systematic follow up studies of its effectiveness were impossible as many of those treated have gone into hiding to escape the continuing violence in their communities, a violence facilitated by the ultimate guardian of the child, the State. However there are indications that the program was successful in providing immediate relief.     

Biological constraints on instrumental and classical conditioning: Retrospect and prospect

The adequacy of traditional approaches to the study of animal learning to account fully for learning phenomena has been seriously questioned during the past decade. Critics of traditional analyses advocated a biological orientation to the interpretation of associative processes and introduced a variety of concepts intended to provide a new framework for the study of animal learning. This promise of a reorientation of the field has not been realized. The concepts of biological constraints, adaptive specializations, and situation specificity of learning have had a less profound influence on the general process approach to instrumental and classical conditioning than anticipated. The present paper makes explicit the conceptual bases of the original biological approaches to learning, identifies reasons why they failed to change fundamentally the study of instrumental and classical conditioning, and proposes an alternative approach to the use of ecological and evolutionary principles in studies of conditioning. We suggest a renewed comparative approach to the study of learning phenomena that avoids many of the difficulties inherent in earlier formulations by providing (1) a strategy for the discovery of adaptive specializations in learning, (2) an ecological framework for the discussion of these adaptive specializations, and (3) a renewed emphasis on the study of species differences in learning.     

The process of supervision in the turkish educational system: purpose, structure, operation

The aim of this study is to provide information on the purposes, structure and operation of the process of supervision in the Turkish educational system. In this paper, the historical development of supervision services in the Turkish educational system, as well as the purposes and principles of educational supervision in Turkey and the structure of supervision in the Turkish educational system are defined. Moreover, the organization of sub-systems of the Ministry of National Education and that of supervision at elementary schools, hiring supervisors, their training, duties and responsibilities as well as working principles are presented. In addition, a detailed analysis of the supervision of institutions and teachers by supervisors is included.     

Reading disabilities and the effects of colored filters

The efficacy of a controversial treatment, using colored filters to remediate reading disabilities, was measured empirically, with colored overlays placed over reading material on white paper. Irlen's (1983) method is to prescribe specific tinted filters as lenses that she claims filter specific light frequencies and remove a range of perceptual disorders that adversely affect reading and related learning performance. Irlen calls this condition "scotopic sensitivity" and claims it is a significant factor in a high percentage of people with learning disabilities. Ninety-two children with significant reading disabilities were classified as either scotopic or nonscotopic using the Irlen Differential Perceptual Schedule, and were randomly assigned to one of six treatment groups using colored or clear overlays. Reading performance (rate, accuracy, and comprehension) as measured by the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (Neale, 1987) and the Formal Reading Inventory (Wiederholt, 1986) improved significantly when the scotopic children read with the preferred colored overlay filter compared to clear or different-colored overlay filters. Nonscotopic children showed no change.     

Statement-Pie: a strategy to improve the paragraph writing skills of adolescents with learning disabilities

This study investigated the effects of teaching a metacognitive text structure strategy upon the paragraph writing skills of eighth-grade students with learning disabilities. The technique, called Statement-Pie (Hanau, 1974), teaches students to understand the relationship of supporting details to a main idea. Four students were taught to use an outline as a paragraph planning guide, which they then used to convert information into written expository paragraphs. All subjects reached instructional outcome criterion on the writing of comparison/contrast and sequence paragraphs. One week after reaching mastery in the special education classroom, students generalized their paragraph writing skills to other teachers and to different classrooms. The results of this investigation indicate that when provided with direct, intensive instruction in a text structure strategy, adolescents with learning disabilities can improve their skills in paragraph writing.