Environmental print and word reading

The nature of the earliest stage of reading was examined by comparing two views about the importance of environmental print in children’s learning experiences. One theory holds that environmental print leads to the acquisition of reading through developing rudimentary representations of specific words and logos, while the second theory concerns assembled phonology and asserts that reading begins with knowing letters and their sounds. Supporters of this theory hold that knowledge of environmental print and logos is reading the environment and may not directly facilitate the acquisition of word reading. Two studies were conducted with non-reading preschool children in which environmental print knowledge was assessed and related to word recognition training. In the first session of each study children were presented with accurate representations of environmental print and logos such as ‘McDonalds’ and ‘Stop’ to find the ones they were able to identify and the ones they failed to identify. In the second session learning trials were conducted with those words from the logos that the children identified and also those that they failed to identify and with matching control words. Both studies found that the words from the known logos were more readily learned than the matching control words, but only in Study 1 were the known logo words learned more readily than the ones the children did not know. The results were discussed in terms of Gibson’s (1969) theory of perceptual learning, and supported the view that environment print and logo knowledge facilitated word reading.     

Technology in the elementary school: Blind variation and selective retention

Teaching technology without reference to the human need which calls for it, not only gives students the wrong idea about the nature of technology, it also hides the importance of the testing of artifacts for operation in the relevant environment. The research reported in this paper began with the trialing of stories designed to show the social need which triggered new invention, in the appropriate period of history, through the eyes of contemporary children of our pupils' age. The pupils were asked to design their working models through drawings, to construct them, and then to test and evaluate them. The model used to understand the interplay between the ideas in the minds of pupils, and the selection process which decided on their worthiness, is one drawn from evolutionary epistemology. Data shows that some elementary school children do recognise the mental nature of the design activity as the combination of parts of remembered mechanisms, and the grounds for selection as fitness for the job in the chosen environment. This approach goes some way towards distinguishing aspects of technological education from scientific education, including the high value accorded to creativity and personal invention in technology.