African-American and Euro-American Preschoolers with Intellectual Disabilities: Patterns of Play with Toys

The patterns of cognitive play of 28 African-American and Euro-American preschool children with intellectual disabilities are reported. Fourteen children representing each group, matched on developmental age and family variables, were observed playing independently at home. Categorical and sequential play behaviors were coded from videotapes using a 15-second partial interval coding procedure. The pattern of African-American children's play was more reflective of their developmental age than the pattern of Euro-American children's play for their developmental age. Between group effects emerged for only 1 of 15 dependent variables included in the analyses: length of single scheme sequence. The results highlight children's strengths and challenge commonly held stereotypes. Recommendations for future research are provided.     

Considerations in Assessment of Children with Severe Disabilities including Deaf‐Blindness and Autism

This paper will discuss the difficulties in assessment of autistic and deaf‐blind children with such severe difficulties in communication that they are often labelled as untestable and subsequently misdiagnosed as severely to profoundly mentally retarded. It will go on to make the case for nonintrusive assessment and appropriate intervention as the most relevant procedures for helping this population advance educationally and in life skills. While this paper will focus on children, the points made apply to individuals of all ages.     

An Assessment of Environmental Literacy and Analysis of Predictors of Responsible Environmental Behaviour Held by Secondary Teachers in the Hualien Area of Taiwan

This study assessed teachers' environmental literacy and analysed predictors of teachers' responsible environmental behaviour (REB). A nine page instrument was administered by mailed questionnaire to 300 randomly selected secondary teachers in the Hualien area of Taiwan with a 52.3% effective response rate. As a result of stepwise multiple regression analyses, the most parsimonious set of predictors of REB for all teachers included: perceived knowledge of environmental action strategies (KNOW), intention to act, area of residence and perceived skill in using environmental action strategies (SKILL, total r² = 0.3867). For urban teachers, the most parsimonious set of predictors included: intention to act, SKILL, major sources of environmental information and membership in environmental organisations (total r² = 0.4711). For rural teachers, the most parsimonious set of predictors included: KNOW, intention to act and perceived knowledge of environmental problems and issues (total r² = 0.3200). Implications for programme development and instructional practice are presented. Recommendations for further research are also provided.     

Critical Literacy Strategies for Environmental Educators

This paper seeks to extend the range of critical literacy strategies that environmental educators might use in their engagement with curriculum policies. The paper focuses on a recent curriculum and professional development project from Australia as the context to illuminate and explicate particular critical reading strategies. Specifically, the paper introduces several critical reading strategies by applying them to an evaluation of the Global Education Project's review of global perspectives in curriculum policies from around Australia.     

The Unification of Post-Compulsory Education: Towards a Conceptual Framework

The drive to 'unify'post-compulsory education and training systems is one of the most important current developments in education policy. However the concept of 'unification' lacks clarity, is not widely recognised, and is pursued through different measures in different countries. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework with which to analyse the different meanings of and debates about unification. Using England and Scotland as examples, we show how the framework may be used to analyse existing systems, reform strategies, and processes and pressures for change. The framework is exploratory and will need to be tested and developed in relation to a wider variety of education systems.     

From Green to Red Tomatoes or Is there a Shortcut by which to Change the Conceptions of Teaching and Learning of College Teachers?

No general shift from a teaching to a learning paradigm in higher education is possible without a parallel change in the conceptions that college and university teachers have of teaching and learning‐‐from teaching, conceived as transmission and reception of knowledge, to teaching as facilitation of student learning. Staff development and action research can play a useful role in “defreezing” the existing conceptions and attitudes. But for a substantial change in teaching practices in the direction of learning of high quality to occur, more substantial changes in organization, curricula, funding, staff recruitment, and professional development policies are needed. The international academic community can play an important role in this paradigm shift by presenting models of good practice as well as exchanges of experiences and incentives. Such assistance is especially important for small countries in transition, like Slovenia.     

Parental Expectations of Early Childhood Services for Preschool Children: The case of policy change in Greece

This study aimed to investigate parental expectations of early childhood education and care services for young children. A total of 582 parents participated in the research and answered a range of questions relating to their expectations of the social and educational role of early childhood education services in Greece. The findings of the research confirmed that the administrative division between the types of preschool establishments are related with parental expectations for care provision (p < 0.001) and support for their needs (p < 0.05) during their absence from home to work. Also there was strong evidence that parents had high expectations for their collaboration with teachers of early childhood education about (a) solving their personal problems with their child at home (p < 0.001) (b) ensuring the best care provision for their child (p< 0.001) in the early childhood setting and (c) keeping their child happy at the preschool institution with fun activities when they have to go to work (p <0.001).     

Context effects and the processing of spoken homophones

This study examined the role of context effects in the processing of homophones in Chinese and Chinese-English bilingual speech. In Experiment 1, Chinese speakers were presented with successively gated portions of a homophone in a sentence context, and they identified the homophone on the basis of its increasing acoustic information. In Experiment 2, Chinese-English bilinguals were presented with a cross-language homophone in a sentence context, and they named a visual probe that had or did not have phonological overlaps with the homophone. Results indicate that prior sentence context has an early effect on the disambiguation of various homophone meanings, shortly after the acoustic onset of the word, in both monolingual and bilingual situations. The results are accounted for by interactive activation models of lexical processing, in which the recognition of a homophone is a result of the interactions among phonological, lexical, and contextual information at an early stage.