SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR OF GIFTED PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

This paper is divided into two parts: in the first a short overview of the current state of research on social behaviour of gifted preschool children is given; the second reports a small experimental observation study on social/cooperative play behaviour of gifted preschool children as compared with a normal kindergarten group. The study was conducted within the broad framework of a two year model project with a group of gifted children aged 3 to 6. Most striking in the results is the high absolute and relative amount of positive verbal interaction in the project group.     

Teaching at a Distance — Reflections on the relationship between discipline‐based and general teaching theories

German readers would immediately associate the term ‘discipline-based’ with Didaktik, which in the German-speaking world is an established branch of education science. The first section therefore deals with the development of Didaktik, understood as a theory of teaching and learning which seeks to investigate the relationships between discipline-based and general teaching theories. Didaktik was originally a strictly theory-oriented discipline in German-speaking countries, but changes in its terms of reference have led to an acceptance of the more pragmatically oriented curriculum theory of the English-speaking world. The term ‘discipline-based’ seems to indicate that here, too, education science has turned its back on positivistic, ‘purely scientific’ standards, so a knowledge of the German discussion of teaching-learning theory may be of interest.

The second section shows that in distance education, too, general teaching models need concretization in terms of discipline-based teaching theory, and that on the other hand, any discipline-based theory needs to have its foundations in general teaching theory, i.e. in pedagogic principles.

The third section therefore postulates the necessity of a theory of distance education which is based on practical experience.     

Concepts of special educational need

Editor's note. This article first appeared in 'Education Today' in 1981. At that time issues of classification and categorisation of children with special educational needs were being debated in many countries, and in England an enquiry into the education of children with disabilities had recommended the abolition of categories of disability in favour of the concept of special educational need ( DES, 1978 ). Today, as the government consults on the reintroduction of disability categories, it seems appropriate to reconsider this concept and the thinking that led to its adoption.
The use of the male pronoun has been retained in this article for fluency of reading. 'He' and 'his' should be understood as 'he or she' and 'his or her'.
The article is reprinted with the kind permission of the College of Teachers – http://www.collegeofteachers.ac.uk .     

Learning qualitative and quantitative reasoning in a microworld for elastic impacts

From a psychological point of view efficient teaching by means of an intelligent tutoring system necessarily involves that the communication of knowledge is adapted to the requirements of the learner: to her cognitive abilities, her pre-instructional knowledge and her learning capabilities. To tackle these topics in a precise way, we have developed the artificial-intelligence-based microworld DiBi (disk billiard) and MULEDS, a multi-level diagnosis system. The microworld DiBi sets up a learning environment which simulates elastic impacts as a subtopic of classical mechanics. DiBi enables and supports reasoning on different levels of mental domain representation ordered along the dimension ‘qualitative/quantitative’. This way of representing the domain provides a basis for passive adaptation in an advanced way. Correspondingly, active adaptation is supported by MULEDS, wherein student modeling is realized by assessing the student’s correct and/or incorrect domain-specific knowledge at these different levels. Within this psychological perspective, the use of instructional tools, such as the microworld DiBi and the computerized diagnosis system MULEDS, aims at gradually supporting and guiding the student in the construction of more and more powerful an sound domain representations. The progression through these levels of domain representation will enable the student to solve the problems posed by the domain in a flexible way.     

Institutional and academic entrepreneurship: implications for university governance and management

The teaching of Entrepreneurship in universities, particularly in the German‐speaking countries, began to take off in the 1990s. Once the idea was accepted, introduction of chairs and course programmes posed no particular difficulties. Some traditional academics have questioned the academic rigour of the subject, particularly when the teaching and practical training aspects of Entrepreneurship have been in greater demand than the research aspect. The author gives pointers as to how best to set up Entrepreneurship programmes in unviversities as per three models: the campus‐based integrative model, the campus independent model, and the campus‐based dual model. Two American examples of the latter model are presented.     

The 2001 Benjamin Franklin medal in chemistry presented to K. Barry Sharpless

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA awarded the 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry to K. Barry Sharpless for his important innovative scientific contributions to the field of asymmetric catalytic oxidation, which resulted in highly enantioselective processes for the epoxidation, dihydroxylation and aminohydroxylation of olefins.     

Implementing R&D policies: an analysis of Spain's pharmaceutical research program

We analyze Spain's National Pharmaceutical Research Program using detailed firm-level data. We find differences between ex ante announced evaluation criteria and ex post implementation. This suggests that judging R&D programs on their design, rather than their implementation, may be misleading. We also uncover that the apparent discrimination against non-European firms can be interpreted as a premium to having local production facilities. Overall, the program values firms on the basis of criteria, such as R&D investment and patent spending, consistent with empirically tested measures of innovative activity.     

Introduction to the Treatment of Non-Linear Effects Using a Gravitational Pendulum

We show that the treatment of pendulum movement, other than the linear approximation,may be an instructive experimentally based introduction to the physics of non-lineareffects. Firstly the natural frequency of a gravitational pendulum is measured as functionof its amplitude. Secondly forced oscillations of a gravitational pendulum are investigatedexperimentally without limiting amplitudes. By this arrangement new phenomena, thebistability and the jump-effect, can be observed. In the case of bistability the drivengravitational pendulum can oscillate in two different stable modes. Either it oscillateswith a small amplitude and approximately in phase with the exciting torque or it oscillateswith a larger amplitude and approximately anti-phase. The jump effect is the spontaneoustransition from one mode of oscillation to the other. Both effects can be demonstrated andexplained.