民歌之王:文化英雄传奇影响生活历史的初步探索

近年来,中国某些民歌手经常部分地因为赢得地区性或全国性民歌比赛而获得"歌王"称号.探究了歌手的生活故事如何有助于强化他们的歌王个性,以及不同的描述歌手生活故事的书籍、文章和纪录片如何显示当代歌王与过去的传奇歌手英雄具有某些类似的要素.以当代歌王王向荣为案例,研究发现,从特定主题中归纳出的相关性似乎在构建当代民间英雄的个性时显现出格外的重要性,共有的倾向包括:云游四方,以歌表达对权威人物的反抗,因反抗受到惩罚,终于成"王".由此,"经久不衰的履历神话"能够影响生活故事的叙述方式,并表明社会视何种事件为妥当.     

Handwriting fluency and visuospatial generativity at primary school

Handwriting is a complex activity that involves continuous interaction between lowerlevel perceptual-motor and higher-level cognitive processes. All handwriting models describe involvement of executive functions (EF) in handwriting development. Particular EF domains associated with handwriting include maintenance of information in working memory, inhibition of prepotent responses, and shifting and sustaining of attention. Generativity, an EF domain that has not been extensively studied, may play a role in the acquisition and automation of handwriting. We hypothesized that neuropsychological performances and handwriting fluency would be mutually associated, and that visuospatial generativity could have a specific role in handwriting speed. We enrolled 96 children who completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. The study found that handwriting speed was associated with visuospatial fluency, which involves behavioural execution and initiation. In learning and performing handwriting, there is an inherent non-exclusive role of fine motor skills.     

Approaches to Curriculum: The Journey from Preservice Training to Novice Teacher

In this longitudinal study, carried out over a period of 6 years, the curriculum approach of student-teachers in the fields of Jewish Studies was examined, from their 1st year of studies until their 6th year when they took their places as full-fledged teachers in schools. This article focuses on the student-teachers’ approaches to curriculum and the differences in their attitudes toward two formal study programs, that differ in character and essence. The major argument in this article is that the character and essence of a formal syllabus has great influence on curriculum approaches of students preparing to become teachers, and their place in developing their own teaching program.     

Helping students with LD to succeed: the role of teachers’ hope,sense of coherence and specific self-efficacy

Teachers play a critical role in facilitating the academic achievements of students with learning disabilities (LD). The personal resources of teachers, such as sense of coherence (SOC) and hopeful thinking, may predict self-perception of the competency and efficacy they possess to help students with LD acquire needed learning skills. Several studies have shown the importance of SOC and hope to the success of students with LD, but research has not focused on how the hope of their teachers may help these students succeed in inclusive classrooms. The goal of the current study was to identify profiles of teachers, based on their personal resources of SOC and hope, and to examine their self-efficacy (SE) in helping students with LD acquire learning skills. The sample consisted of 624 teachers (567 females and 57 males) from inclusive classes; 143 teachers in this sample had special education training. Using cluster analysis four distinct clusters were identified suggesting that both SOC, as a global personality measure, and hope, as a measure of future expectations, contributed to the SE of teachers: their belief in their ability to help the students with LD acquire learning skills. In each cluster, teachers with special education training had higher levels of hope and SE. The results highlight the important role of teachers’ personal resources in predicting their belief in their professional ability to help students with LD.     

Alternative education programmes and middle school dropout in Honduras

Honduras has made steady progress in expanding post-primary school coverage in recent years, but many rural communities still do not provide a middle (lower secondary) school. As a result, Honduras has implemented a number of middle school alternative programmes designed to meet the needs of at-risk populations throughout the country. This article analyses dropout in three of the four main alternative lower secondary school programmes in Honduras over a three-year period for a cohort of roughly 5,500 students. The results show that these programmes are indeed reaching a vulnerable population in the country, but dropout rates are generally very high – upwards of 50 per cent in some cases – between Grades 7 and 9. Furthermore, even in the control school comparison samples made up of formal lower secondary schools, about 25 per cent of children leave school between Grades 7 and 9. The authors’ analysis includes propensity score matching (PSM) methods that make more focused comparisons between students in alternative programmes and control samples. These results show that dropout rates in alternative programmes are not much different than in control schools, and only significant in one programme comparison, when taking into account family background characteristics like socioeconomic status (SES). Multivariate analysis within alternative programme samples finds that attrition is lower in those learning centres which have adopted key features of formal schools, such as university-educated teachers. The results highlight the tremendous variation in the alternative middle school sector in terms of programme features, school quality and student outcomes, as well as the challenges of expanding this sector to meet the growing demand for lower secondary schooling in Honduras.