The Science and Politics of Gifted Students With Learning Disabilities: A Social Inequality Perspective

Researchers and advocates who argue for increased recognition of gifted students with learning disabilities (G/LD students) often frame their arguments in terms of the need to increase the diversity and inclusiveness of gifted education. However, the criteria used to identify G/LD students are sufficiently vague and fluid that the G/LD category can serve as a vehicle for the very elitism and social class reproduction that the category's advocates abhor. Empirical research suggests that G/LD students often fail to satisfy traditional criteria for either aspect of their label, while the incentives of the classification are nonetheless evident to knowledgeable parents and school personnel. Implications of these findings for practice are discussed.     

Social Activism in Elementary Science Education: A science,technology, and society approach to teach global warming

As part of a large‐scale instructional intervention research, this study examined elementary students’ science knowledge and awareness of social activism with regard to an increased greenhouse effect and global warming. The study involved fifth‐grade students from five elementary schools of varying demographic makeup in a large urban school district in the United States. The study was based on the analysis of students’ responses to a writing prompt addressing an increased greenhouse effect and global warming at the beginning of and at the completion of instruction over the school year. The results indicate that students with adequate science knowledge tended to express activism more frequently, and that their expression of activism increased as they gained better science knowledge after the instruction. The results highlight the importance of effective instruction of this contemporary and controversial issue with K‐12 students, so that they come to be aware of this societal problem, take action in solving the problem, and become socially responsible youth and adults.     

Reconstructing Readability: Recent Developments and Recommendations in the Analysis of Text Difficulty

Largely due to technological advances, methods for analyzing readability have increased significantly in recent years. While past researchers designed hundreds of formulas to estimate the difficulty of texts for readers, controversy has surrounded their use for decades, with criticism stemming largely from their application in creating new texts as well as their utilization of surface-level indicators as proxies for complex cognitive processes that take place when reading a text. This review focuses on examining developments in the field of readability during the past two decades with the goal of informing both current and future research and providing recommendations for present use. The fields of education, linguistics, cognitive science, psychology, discourse processing, and computer science have all made recent strides in developing new methods for predicting the difficulty of texts for various populations. However, there is a need for further development of these methods if they are to become widely available.     

‘What can I do to help?’: Postsecondary students with learning disabilities' perceptions of instructors' classroom accommodations

This qualitative research report adopts a critical pedagogy perspective to examine the provision of classroom accommodations for postsecondary students with learning disabilities. Although instructors in the United States are bound to abide by disability rights laws, we also believe instructors can act in ways that allow students to feel comfortable in disclosing their disabilities and in requesting and accessing accommodations for these disabilities. We engaged the voices of 10 university students living with learning disabilities through a series of semi‐structured interviews. These students offered a variety of statements on the ways that their disabilities were accommodated or not by their instructors. We classified these perceptions into three kinds of accommodation perceived by university students with learning disabilities: non‐accommodation, formal accommodation and accommodation for all students. We discuss the implications that these types of accommodations have for pedagogy and offer recommendations for effective techniques for accommodating for all. We hope the voices of these students will serve to enhance communication between students with learning disabilities and their professors.     

A review of models of vertical, leg, and knee stiffness in adults for running, jumping or hopping tasks

Abstract The 'stiffness' concept originates from Hooke's law which states that the force required to deform an object is related to a spring constant and the distance that object is deformed. Research into stiffness in the human body is undergoing unprecedented popularity; possibly because stiffness has been associated with sporting performance and some lower limb injuries. However, some inconsistencies surrounding stiffness measurement exists bringing into question the integrity of some research related to stiffness. The aim of this study was to review literature which describes how vertical, leg and knee stiffness has been measured in adult populations while running, jumping or hopping. A search of the entire MEDLINE, PubMed and SPORTDiscus databases and an iterative reference check was performed. Sixty-seven articles were retrieved; 21 measured vertical stiffness, 51 measured leg stiffness, and 22 measured knee stiffness. Thus, some studies measured several 'types' of stiffness. Vertical stiffness was typically the quotient of ground reaction force and centre of mass displacement. For leg stiffness it was and change in leg length, and for the knee it was the quotient of knee joint moments and change in joint angle. Sample size issues and measurement techniques were identified as limitations to current research.     

Vertical stiffness and muscle strain in professional Australian football

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to establish if vertical stiffness was greater in professional Australian rules footballers who sustained a lower limb skeletal muscle strain compared to those who did not, and to establish if a relationship between age, or training history, and vertical stiffness existed. Thirty-one participants underwent weekly rebound jump testing on a force platform over two seasons. Vertical stiffness was calculated for injured players and the uninjured cohort 1 and 3 weeks prior to sustaining an injury and at the end of preseason. Eighteen athletes were in the “uninjured” cohort and 13 in the “injured” cohort. No significant difference in vertical stiffness was observed between groups (P = 0.18 for absolute stiffness; P = 0.08 for stiffness relative to body mass), within groups (P = 0.83 and P = 0.88, respectively) or for a time*cohort interaction (P = 0.77 and P = 0.80, respectively). No relationship between age and vertical stiffness existed (r = ?0.06 for absolute and relative stiffness), or training history and vertical stiffness (r = ?0.01 and 0.00 for absolute and relative stiffness, respectively) existed. These results and others lend to suggest that vertical stiffness is not related to lower limb muscle strain injury.     

Educational administration and supervision in Japan

The administration and supervision of education represents one of the most controversial issues in post-war Japanese education. The basic issue is one of centralization or decentralization. The left wing teachers union favours local control, the conservative government, central control. The American Occupation established a system of local school boards which, as a result of political lobbying, were largely controlled by teachers union sympathisers. In 1956, four years after the end of the Occupation, the Japanese government eliminated the election of board members and replaced voluntary compliance with compulsory compliance with Ministry of Education objectives. This compulsory compliance was most clearly demonstrated in the central authorization of textbooks and in the implementation of theshunin system, which, the teachers union claims, introduces too many administrative positions into schools and further bureaucratized education. The Ministry claims that theshunin positions serve a guidance rather than an administrative function; the union on the other hand foresees the disruption of the unity of its rank and file members as a result of the insertion of a middle management wedge. Theshunin controversy clearly demonstrates how the administration of Japanese education has become enmeshed in partisan politics and Japanese history and tradition.