The sand/water table as a learning center

The sand/water table, an old standby in nursery and day care classrooms, has long been popular with children. It has remained a fixture despite the nuisance of sand on the floor as teachers acknowledge its social benefits and the calming influence it can have on children who are upset or unhappy.Judith Dighe is a teacher specialist, Head Start, Montgomery County Public Schools, Rockville, MD.     

The dance of advocacy

A childbirth educator asks how she can continue to use best evidence and prepare women adequately for birth within the constraints of a hospital practice that pressures educators not to "rock the boat." This column discusses the challenge of advocating for normal birth and the dangers inherent in the advocacy role. Advocacy requires the childbirth educator to "dance" with many partners, including physicians and hospitals. Strategies for inviting colleagues and class participants onto the dance floor and teaching them the steps of the dance are explored. Guidelines for reducing risk and engaging women are discussed.     

Defense department payments for ‘company-financed’ R&D

The US Department of Defense funds a significant fraction of the in-house R&D of its defense contractors through its Independent Research and Development (IR&D) program. These IR&D funds, however, are reported as company-financed R&D in statistics compiled by the National Science Foundation. The program is most important in the aircraft industry, where we estimate that IR&D payments were 20% of the R&D reported as company-financed in 1973. Because special regulations govern the IR&D program, it would be more appropriate for most purposes to treat IR&D as part of federally-financed, not company-financed, R&D.     

Healthcare needs of older adults: in their own words

Community-based health and human services professionals can play an important role in bolstering wellness through offering education to elderly residents and healthcare providers on how to address the unique needs of this population. The purpose of this study was to examine the healthcare needs of the elderly living in two metropolitan counties in Georgia that have experienced an increase in the number of elderly residents. Utilizing qualitative data garnered through focus groups, two main themes were identified: the role of exercise as a means of personal power and feelings of powerlessness. Participants’ narratives reflected opportunities and situations fostering good health through exerting their personal power to alter or improve individual health. On the other hand, negative pathways leading away from optimal health were realized when participants felt powerless to change their health status. For health and human services professionals working with the elderly, these findings should be considered as population, personal well-being, and power changes overtime.     

Teacher Professional Development, Technology, and Communities of Practice: Are We Putting the Cart Before the Horse?

Over the past decade, education reform and teacher training projects have spent a great deal of effort to create and support sustainable, scalable online communities of education professionals. For the most part, those communities have been created in isolation from the existing local professional communities within which the teachers practice. We argue that focusing on online technology solely as a mechanism to deliver training and/or create online networks places the cart before the horse by ignoring the Internet's even greater potential to help support and strengthen local communities of practice within which teachers work. In this article we seek guideposts to help education technologists understand the nature of local K-12 education communities of practice--specifically their reciprocal relationship with teacher professional development and instructional improvement interventions--as a prerequisite to designing online sociotechnical infrastructure that supports the professional growth of education professionals.     

Designing computer software for problem-solving instruction

The purpose of this article is to identify factors that might influence the effectiveness of computer software designed to teach problem solving. Problem solving is defined and the research literature related to the acquisition of problem-solving abilities and the capabilities of computers for delivering problem-solving instruction are reviewed. The factors critical to the acquisition of problem-solving abilities and the attributes of computers that make them potential tools in problem-solving instruction are identified. These items are synthesized into a list of factors that are expected to influence the effectiveness of computer software designed to teach problem solving.