Adolescents With Disabilities: The Need for Occupational Social Skills Training

In this article, occupational social skills are defined and their importance is highlighted. The lack of occupational social skills has been estimated to be responsible for almost 90% of job loss. Although a number of commercial social skills instructional programs are available, none address social skills as they relate to specific occupations. We offer 4 different ways to develop appropriate occupational social skills training.     

Researching teaching for understanding: the students’ perspective

Abstract

This paper explores high school students’ perspectives of their learning in ascience unit which was taught using a Children's Science approach. Through the use of a questionnaire and interviews, this research examines how the students understood and responded to the changed demands on their learning as a result of the change in teaching style. Although the students appeared to be actively involved, interested and self‐directed in their learning, they were not convinced that this was an appropriate way forthem to approach their learning in future. It appears as though the time and effort associated with accepting more responsibility for learning is not matched by the value received from doing so in schools.     

Cognitive and Neural Development of Individuated Self-Representation in Children

Processing the self-relevance of information facilitates recall. Similarly, processing close-other-related information facilitates recall to a lesser degree than processing self-relevant information. This memory advantage may be viewed as an index of the degree to which the representation of self is differentiated from representations of close others. To test developmental hypotheses concerning the self, this study examined the relation of memory for self- and mother-referentially processed information in participants age 7–13 years (Experiment 1: N  = 37; Experiment 2: N  = 14). Memory for words encoded with reference to oneself increases with age, relative to memory for words encoded with reference to one's mother. When used as an individual difference measure, the difference in self versus mother memory correlates with regions of the rostral anterior cingulate associated with affective salience.     

Lifelong education for subjective well-being: how do engagement and active citizenship contribute?

This article addresses the question: how can lifelong education contribute to subjective well-being by engaging learners and fostering active citizenship? The question arises due to the fact that governments in the western world have identified well-being as an important policy driver. Well-being research suggests that subjective well-being, student engagement and active citizenship are interconnected—that engagement and active citizenship contribute to subjective well-being. The paper discusses three emerging views about how lifelong education can engage learners in active citizenship. One conforms to mainstream views that lifelong education must prepare learners for success in a globalized world as global citizens. Another holds that lifelong education must be reformed to create global citizens who contribute to social well-being. A third view aligns with social critical perspectives that lifelong education must advance well-being through social justice. The paper concludes by discussing how conforming, reforming and radical views about lifelong education can enhance active citizenship, engagement and well-being.     

The effect of learning style on preference for web‐based courses and learning outcomes

As the number of courses offered online increases rapidly, it is important for teachers and institutions to identify specific learner characteristics of successful online students. This paper reports on a study that compared an online group of freshmen computer science majors with an equivalent on‐campus group to find if their individual learning styles play a role in the selection of course delivery mode (online or face to face) and in their academic achievement. No significant statistical differences were detected in learning styles and learning performance between the two groups. Implications for teaching practice and design of learning activities that resulted from this study are discussed.     

Shirt tales: how adults adopted the replica football kit

ABSTRACT

This study seeks to identify when the replica football shirt transitioned from children’s sportswear to adult leisurewear, and explain why this occurred. Four distinct facets of this process are examined – the production of adult sizes by manufacturers, the promotion of replica shirts by clubs and retailers, purchasing by adults, and the ‘parading’, i.e. wearing of shirts at matches. Data collected from manufacturer’s catalogues, magazine adverts, match programmes and over 900 crowd photos indicates that replica shirt adoption by adult males as match-day clothing was not initially driven by an existing industry, but began as a fan-inspired process with roots in big-match fancy dress traditions, changes in wider social dress codes, and youth subcultures. Replica football shirts were adopted by adult males in distinct phases, each involving different sub-groups of fans, with the coincidental removal of barriers to wearing replica shirts more influential than manufacturer strategies or promotions. Moreover, the specific timings and drivers of each stage reflect the dramatic changes in English football culture over the last two decades of the twentieth century more accurately than the established but simplistic pre- and post-1990 World Cup or pre- and post-Premier League narratives.     

An Investigation of User Comments on Facebook Pages of Trinidad and Tobago’s Indian Music Format Radio Stations

Starting in the 1990s, the Caribbean two-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago witnessed the establishment of several Indian-music format radio stations, most of which now stream their content on the World Wide Web or otherwise make their content available beyond the range of their terrestrial radio transmitters. The convergence of traditional terrestrial radio with audio streaming technology combined with the spread of high speed broadband connections has expanded the audience of a typical radio station from a few kilometers to a globally dispersed set of listeners who often include those physically displaced from their native cultural programming. The present investigation examines the Facebook comments of domestic and foreign listeners to Indian-music format radio stations from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.