Performance characteristics of retarded and normal students on pattern recognition tasks

The purpose was to compare the performance of normal and educable mentally retarded children on pattern recognition tasks. Pattern recognition was assessed by the administration of 96 pattern tasks which measured the ability of children to find: (a) duplicate patterns and same elements as presented in model pattern sequences; (b) opposite patterns and same elements as presented in model pattern sequences; and (c) duplicate patterns but different elements than presented in model pattern sequences. The normal and mentally retarded children were matched on mental age derived from individual and group intelligence tests. Results indicated significant differences in performance measures between groups and various pattern tasks. The data support the suppositions that: (a) mentally retarded children and normal children show the same type of progression through the hierarchical arrangement of pattern tasks; and (b) mentally retarded children show a slower progression through the hierarchy than normal children when matched on mental age. Educational implications from this study are discussed.     

Learning to teach,learning to act: becoming a critical literacy teacher

Critical literacy requires an exploration of privilege and social justice. This includes an exploration of power and action in one’s “inner” and “outer” lives. This qualitative case study illustrates the ways in which Jonah, a preservice teacher, navigates social practices and actions in his roles as a student, activist, and literacy teacher. Through critical discourse analysis, we conceptualize social action in relation to critical literacy teaching, using a framework of discourses of, discourses as, and discourses in action to construct a nuanced understanding of social action in relation to critical literacy. Given the demands of a standardized curriculum on teachers’ autonomy, this is an important illustration of how social action can be enacted and embodied through the act of teaching.     

We can be as busy as a bee: a grounded theory study of Filipino elderly prisoners’ engagement

ABSTRACT

The centrality of social relationship for older adults living in prison cannot be underestimated. While previous studies have investigated the loss of social functioning among older prisoners, there is no known information pertaining to how engagement is experienced among this vulnerable group. This grounded study purports to describe the process by which engagement is experienced among a select group of incarcerated Filipino elderly. Strauss and Corbin’s Grounded Theory design was utilized. A total of 25 incarcerated Filipino elderly in the largest penitentiary in the country were purposively chosen to participate in semi-structured interviews. Field texts were subjected to thematic analysis involving open, axial, and selective coding. Finally, themes were validated via member checking procedure. Interestingly, the study afforded the development of de Guzman, Herrera, Hernando, Hipe, and Valdez Zipper of Engagement Theory among incarcerated elderly. Interestingly, three phases relative to engagement emerged, namely: Initiating, Connecting, and Enabling. Primarily, the Initiating phase involves feelings of fear and nervousness as the incarcerated elderly familiarize themselves with the prison environment. The Connecting phase typifies recognition of the benefits of engagement leading to voluntary participation in activities. Finally, in the Enabling phase, inmates empower themselves and others to grow as they fully acquire the sense of engagement. Gerontological education and research implications are discussed.     

The Interrelation of First-Year College Students’ Critical Thinking Disposition, Perceived Academic Control, and Academic Achievement

While a great deal of research has examined students’ critical thinking skills, less is known about students’ tendencies to use these skills. Specifically, little is known about what factors contribute to students developing a disposition to think critically or what impact this disposition has on college students’ academic achievement. Perceived control, which has been found to be an important factor in college students’ academic success, may be an important factor in developing this disposition. The current longitudinal study examined the reciprocal-effects between critical thinking disposition and perceived academic control, and their comparative influences on academic achievement in 1196 first-year college students. Using a two-wave, two-variable cross-lag structural equation model, a reciprocal-effect was found whereby students’ perceived academic control predicted their subsequent critical thinking disposition, and students’ critical thinking disposition predicted their subsequent perceived academic control. Furthermore, after controlling for high school academic performance, perceived academic control was found to have a stronger impact on students’ GPAs than critical thinking disposition. Implications of fostering a critical thinking disposition and perceived academic control among college students are discussed.

Attributional (explanatory) thinking about failure in new achievement settings

Attributional (explanatory) thinking involves the appraisal of factors that contribute to performance and is instrumental to motivation and goal striving. Little is understood, however, concerning attributional thinking when multiple causes are involved in the transition to new achievement settings. Our study examined such complex attributional thinking in the transition from high school to university, a shift from familiar to novel learning environments, in the context of Weiner’s attribution theory (1972, 1985, 1995, 2006). At the start of the academic year, students rated the extent to which each of six common attributions contributed to poor performance to ascertain their relative importance to each other. A fixed order of attributions was reported as contributing to poor performance that was identical across five independent cohorts of first-year students (effort, test difficulty, strategy, professor quality, ability, luck, respectively). Cluster analysis revealed that students differed in combining these attributions into clusters suggesting diminished or enhanced control over poor performance. These differences in attribution clusters were associated with cognitive and affective outcomes at the start of Term 1, and with course grades and GPA at the end of Term 2. Student differences in complex attributional thinking are discussed in terms of transitions to new achievement settings.     

Integrated cluster of independent courses: An ideal curricular cluster

The Integrated Cluster of Independent Courses is a Curricular model that takes one traditional course from each of three different academic departments and modifies the presentation of the content of all three courses so that overlapping themes are emphasized and developed in parallel. Synthesis of ideas across disciplines is further encouraged by a one-hour-per-week seminar taught jointly by the three course instructors.The model is a cost-effective way of creating the excitement and integration of concepts possible in team-taught interdisciplinary courses while retaining traditional departmental control and structure of the three courses.The prototype Integrated Cluster of Independent Courses, Twentieth Century Man, was funded by a grant from the Association of American Colleges and the Ford Foundation.     

Number Competence and Communication Difficulty: a Vygotskian analysis

Summary The first part of this paper consists of a discussion of the implications of a Vygotskian developmental model for teaching mathematics to children with communication difficulties. The second describes an exploratory empirical investigation of mathematical behaviour on the part of children with communication difficulties (CD).