The evolution of a hybrid classroom: Introducing online learning to educators in American samoa

TechTrends - This case study suggests that the process of designing and facilitating hybrid courses in the island community of American Samoa required continuous negotiation with respect to the...     

The perception of time relations in auditory tempo discrimination

European starlings (Sturnuis vulgaris) were trained to discriminate between pulses of sound presented at rates (tempos), for different birds, of 4/sec and 8/sec or 8/sec and 16/sec in a two-alternative choice task. Once the discrimination was learned, psychometric functions and bisection points were determined for tempos between the standards. Then the starlings were transferred to a new discrimination, which either maintained or changed the relationship between response keys and tempo (relational or nonrelational transfer). The results showed that the starlings generated psychometric functions for tempo with properties much like those found for discrimination of single time intervals. Also, the starlings transferred the tempo discrimination faster under the relational than the nonrelational condition. In general, starlings-like human and other nonhuman animals-perceive temporal structures as invariant over proportional changes in the duration of structural elements.     

Before Head Start: Income and Ethnicity, Family Characteristics, Child Care Experiences, and Child Development

The present study describes the early life histories of a large sample of three-year-old children from different ethnic backgrounds living in three levels of family income—poverty, near-poverty, and above-poverty. The study examined the developmental characteristics of children in the three groups and related them to family characteristics and experiences in child care. To no one's surprise, significant differences associated with income were found for most of the family measures. Poverty and near-poverty families were more likely to have mothers with lower education, less sensitivity, more depression, and lower HOME scores. Correlatively, for the child development measures, there was an upward progression associated with income. Poverty children consistently showed the greatest deviation from established norms for cognitive and social behavior. A striking finding, however, was the considerable variability found on all the measures—a pattern not sufficiently stressed in related research. This finding has major implications for curriculum planning in Head Start programs. The analysis also showed that child care experience cannot be disregarded as a significant aspect of the history of a prospective enrollee in Head Start or other intervention programs geared to low-income children. Fewer of these children are likely to have a child care history, as families that used at least 10 hours of child care per week were less likely to be either poor or near-poor and thus eligible for enrollment. While this may reflect selection factors associated with child care usage, it also indicates that availability of child care is essential for borderline families that try to stay out of poverty. Number of hours of care per week and age of enrollment did not predict developmental level when the full income sample was considered. However, when only poor and near-poor children in care for at least 20 hours a week were used in the analysis, higher quality of care was associated with more favorable developmental outcomes in the children.     

Does amount of time spent in child care predict socioemotional adjustment during the transition to kindergarten?

To examine relations between time in nonmaternal care through the first 4.5 years of life and children's socioemotional adjustment, data on social competence and problem behavior were examined when children participating in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care were 4.5 years of age and when in kindergarten. The more time children spent in any of a variety of nonmaternal care arrangements across the first 4.5 years of life, the more externalizing problems and conflict with adults they manifested at 54 months of age and in kindergarten, as reported by mothers, caregivers, and teachers. These effects remained, for the most part, even when quality, type, and instability of child care were controlled, and when maternal sensitivity and other family background factors were taken into account. The magnitude of quantity of care effects were modest and smaller than those of maternal sensitivity and indicators of family socioeconomic status, though typically greater than those of other features of child care, maternal depression, and infant temperament. There was no apparent threshold for quantity effects. More time in care not only predicted problem behavior measured on a continuous scale in a dose-response pattern but also predicted at-risk (though not clinical) levels of problem behavior, as well as assertiveness, disobedience, and aggression.     

Music and Music People

Jay Caress Hank Willimns: Country Musics Tragic King (Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.; Stein & Day, 1979—S10.95)

Dave Marsh Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen. Story (Garden City r. N.Y.: Doubleday/Dolphin Books, l979—$7.75,paper.)

The Music Makera (New York: Harry N. Abrams, l979-$35.00)

Yehudi Menuhin and Curtis W. Davis. The Music of Man (Toronto and New York: Methuen, 1979 —$24,95)

Gregory Allen Munford Munford's Simple Guide to Classical Music (Chicago: Chicago Review Press (215 Ohio St., 60610), . 1979– - $4.95, paper)

John Storm Roberts The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin America Music on the United States (New York: Oxford University Press,.1979–$12.95)     

General Communication

James Hartley, ed. The Psychology of Written Communication (New York: Nichols Publishing/ London: Kogan Page, 1980— E12.00/$30.00)

Michael Emery and Ted Curtis Smythe, eds. Readings in Mass Communication (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1980—price not given, paper)

Benjamin M. Compaine's A New Framework for the Media Arena: Content, Process and Format (address above—$23.40)

Rick D. Pullen's Mass Media Law in California (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1979 —$9.50, paper)

Marshall McLuhan, Kathryn Hutchon and Eric McLuhan's Media, Messages and Language: The World as Your Classroom (Skokie, Ill.: National Textbook Co., l980—price not given, paper)

Mieke Ceulemans and Guido Fauconnier's Mass Media: The Image, Role and Social Conditions of Women–A Collection and Analysis of Research Materials (Paris: Unesco/New York: Unipub, 1979—price not given, paper)

Managers' Entertainers' and Agents' Book by Walter E. Hurst (revised ed. of No. 6 in the series, 92 pp.)

How to Be a Music Publisher by Walter E. Hurst (revised ed. of No. 11 in the series, 74 pp.)

Copyright Registration Forms PA and SR by Walter E. Hurst (this is a new title, No. 16 in the series, 73 pp.)

How to Sell Your Song by Walter E. Hurst and Don Rico (this is another revision , No. 18 in the series, 95 pp.)     

News and notes from the state associations

An account of some active audiences and unusual situations confronting public speakers in Missouri's early years.     

Programming Templates: Professional Programmer Knowledge Needed By the Novice

Students first learning to program in any procedural language face the often difficult task of translating solution processes, which they are familiar with, into a form that is bug‐free from a computer standpoint. One element of the differences between the novice and the expert programmer is that the expert already has a set of mappings that allow him or her to translate common solution patterns. This article examines some of the most basic patterns and suggests that students be taught how to recognize them and translate them into code. It is argued that the patterns and the code requirements are similar across a whole range of imperative languages including C, Pascal, Basic, and Cobol.