Gifted education programs Kent state university

The author presents many ideas for spicing up the foreign language classroom and challenging learners with advanced abilities.     

A Cultural Comparison of Trust in eLearning Artifacts

A significant body of literature focuses on learning mediated by technology (eLearning). We conceptually develop and empirically test a model of trust antecedents with online undergraduate students. Contributing to the student eLearning success literature, we posit that eLearning students require the support of technologies and trust in those technologies to feel satisfied with their learning and perceive that they will have a positive learning outcome. This study considers the effect of culture by comparing the trust and satisfaction of American and Latin American students in eLearning technologies. By conducting this study in two countries that differ in terms of national culture power distance and individualism, we learned that culture directly and significantly impacts trust in learning technologies. Culture also significantly changes the strength of the relation between trust and satisfaction. Future research directions and implications for researchers and higher education instructors are discussed.     

The mathematical strengths and weaknesses of children with dyslexia

This paper reports the findings of two related studies that examined the mathematical strengths and weaknesses of children with dyslexia. In study one, dyslexic children were compared to children without special educational needs on tests that assessed arithmetic fact recall, place value understanding and counting speed. Study two used the same methodology, but matched the dyslexic children with the non‐dyslexic children on a number of factors, including intellectual ability. This excluded the possibility that confounding variables accounted for the differences between the groups in study one. Both studies indicated that the dyslexic children had slower and less accurate number fact recall than the non‐dyslexic children, but had unimpaired place value understanding. The results for counting speed were more equivocal, but there was a trend for the dyslexic children to be slower counters. The results suggest that dyslexia is not normally associated with a general mathematical impairment, but rather an uneven profile of skills. This profile can be explained in terms of the phonological processing weaknesses associated with dyslexia. The finding that dyslexic children have a specific difficulty recalling arithmetic facts suggests that a teaching programme that emphasises mental methods may disadvantage them.     

Uncovering the link between governance as an innovation process and socio-economic regime transition in cities

A major proportion of the world’s population will be located in cities by 2030. With cities globally facing challenges due to the social exclusion of significant proportions of their populace, new thinking is needed on ways to correlate the competing socio-economic goals of various actors. This study sought to uncover the link between governance in cities as an innovation process and socio-economic regime transition towards a more equitable urban society. To do so, we draw on transition management thinking to consider urban regime transitions evolving in a temporal and incremental manner and in a multi-level context. We sought expansion from a delimited focus on socio-technical regimes in transition management literature to incorporate the notion of urban socio-economic regimes. This involved integrating aspects of reflexive governance and politics in a city context with a basic ontology of complex social systems and their evolutionary dynamics that underlies transition management approaches. Our focus is on learning by doing and experimentation as well as participation of citizens with other key city actors in a radically new process of mutual learning that creates social inclusion. The juxtaposition of national, city and community level interactions and their impact on socio-economic regime transition brings into sharp relief the issue of spatial scale and a lack of consideration in transition approaches generally. The study findings reveal a spatial orientation for creating new urban forms of reflexive governance as an innovation process taking place in transition arenas that can trigger new pathways to socio-economic change.