The impact of theories of 'New Public Management' on the provision of support services for low-incidence special needs

This short report examines the impact of changes of government policy within England and Wales on the organization and provision of support services to pupils with a low-incidence disability. The specific case of support for pupils who are visually impaired is explored against a framework based on theories of ‘New Public Management’.     

Visuospatial Orientation Learning through Virtual Reality for People with Severe Disability

This study aims to test how an intervention based on virtual reality (VR) may enhance visuospatial skills amongst people with disability. A quasi-experimental intra-group study was therefore conducted. Participants were 20 people with severe disability (65% males; 34.35 years, on average, and 84.95% of disability rate according to the Andalusian Government index). Intervention consisted of 15 sessions of active navigation using a VR building similar to the participants’ day rehabilitation centre with the task of locating different rooms and objects. The time spent and errors in route in the virtual and the real environments were measured before and after the intervention. Additionally, participants had to fill out a map location task. As a result, participants showed fewer errors and less time at post-intervention assessments even with non-trained stimuli (p < .05). These results demonstrate the usefulness of VR-based interventions with active navigation to accelerate orientation learning in real-life situations.     

大学数学学习障碍的成因与对策

高等教育大众化以来,感觉数学学习困难的大学生人数逐渐增多,部分学生产生厌学情绪。理清这些大学生学习困难的原因,制定相应的教育策略,营造良好的学习氛围,进行因材施教,是当前大学数学教学改革的一项重要课题。导致学生学习障碍的主要原因：一是教学内容的衔接问题,二是教学方式的转变问题,三是思维方式的转变问题,四是外部环境的影响问题。大学数学教学要以学生为中心,不断改进教学方法,加强与中学内容的衔接,将数学思想、数学方法和数学建模思想融入课堂教学,构建和谐的数学教学文化理念,将数学文化融入课堂,激发学生的学习积极性,着力提高大学数学教的水平和学生学的质量,真正为学生的全面发展奠定良好的基础。     

Beyond Section 508: The spectrum of legal requirements for accessible e-government Web sites in the United States

In the United States, a number of federal laws establish requirements that electronic government (e-government) information and services be accessible to individuals with disabilities. These laws affect e-government Web sites at the federal, state, and local levels. To this point, research about the accessibility of e-government Web sites has tended to focus on compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Though Section 508 has the most specific guidelines regarding Web site accessibility, it is hardly the only law establishing accessibility requirements for e-government Web sites, and Section 508 does not apply to many sites that may be required to be accessible by other laws. Until assessment of the accessibility of e-government Web sites accounts for all of the relevant laws, the understanding of levels of accessibility and compliance will be incomplete. This article examines the entire spectrum of federal laws that create legal requirements for accessible e-government Web sites, analyzing the accessibility requirements that the laws establish and the ways in which each of the laws applies to an e-government Web site. This article also suggests research areas that should be included in future assessments to address the entire range of laws related to the accessibility of e-government Web sites. The issues raised in this article have significant relevance to the design and development of e-government, to the assessment of e-government information and services, and to the inclusion in e-government of the 54 million individuals in the United States with disabilities.     

An End to Disabling Policies? Toward Enlightened Universal Service

This article argues that an enlightened, inclusive vision of universal service is possible by learning lessons from disability. Telecommunications policy has historically built in norms that needlessly exclude people who are regarded as having a disability and therefore being outside of the mainstream. Accordingly, universal service policies focus on availability and affordability of telecommunications services, rather than on their accessibility and functionality. The article shows how rethinking universal service through disability can lead to inclusive policies that benefit everybody.     

残障者身体自我的影响因素

身体自我是整体自我的核心成分,与心理健康、运动参与有着密切的关系,为了考察残障者身体自我因残障所受的影响,探讨运动参与对残障者身体自我、心理健康的作用,在归纳总结相关研究成果的基础上,分析讨论了残障类型、成残时间和性别三个重要因素以及运动参与对残障者身体自我的影响.结果发现:残障类型与身体自我不同的维度之间存在交互作用,学习障碍对身体自我没有显著的消极影响;功能性的躯体残障更能损害身体能力知觉,而外显的残障能对身体意象造成更大的影响;先天残障、年龄较小的残障者表现出更低的身体评价;残障者的身体自我可能在某些方面存在独特的性别差异;适应性体育活动的开展有助于残障者提高身体自我评价和自我观念.对已有研究使用的研究方法也进行了讨论.     

Non-disabled secondary school children's lived experiences of a wheelchair basketball programme delivered in the East of England

Frequently an unquestioned belief is held in British schools in the value of ‘normalized’ ability in physical education (PE). Consequently inclusion of disabled students can be problematic. Negative perceptions of disability are rarely challenged. This study investigated the embodied experiences of 49 non-disabled secondary school pupils during a programme designed to introduce disability sport to non-disabled school children entitled ‘The Wheelchair Sports Project’. Funded by a County Sports Partnership, Wheelchair Basketball sessions were delivered by trained coaches during PE for a 12-week period. Forty-nine pupils aged between 10 and 12 years took part in the study. Non-participant observations were completed during the programme, and semi-structured group interviews were completed with 24 participants pre- and post-project. Bourdieu's theoretical framework guided data analysis. The impact of the project on pupils' perceptions of physical disability was investigated. Prior to the project, pupils emphasized the ‘otherness’ of disabled bodies and described disability sport as inferior and not ‘real’. Observations highlighted how pupils experienced physical challenges adapting to wheelchair basketball. Pupils struggled to control wheelchairs and frequently diverged from acceptable behaviour by using their lower limbs to ‘cheat’. Post-programme group interviews demonstrated that, due to their own embodied experiences, pupils began to question their perceptions of the potential ability of participants with physical impairments. Pupils described high physical demands of wheelchair basketball and began to focus upon similarities between themselves and physically disabled individuals. However, participants made no reference to impairments other than physical disability, emphasizing the specificity of the effects of pupils' embodied experiences on their embodied habitus, which, although difficult to assess over the long term, appeared to have an impact on self-perceptions over the short term.     

高校体育课实施差异教学转化体育差生的探索

因材施教原则是现代教学论中一条重要原则，按照其目标试的“差异教学”是近年来体育教学改革中涌现出来的新事物。“体育差生”是各类学校共存在的一个问题，本文试从理论与实践上探讨实施“差异教学”转化“体育差生”的可行性。     

The construction,expression, and consequences of difference in education practice,policy, and research

In this essay, I discuss three key ideas related to the construction and treatment of “difference” in and around schools and schooling. First, just as difference is most commonly located within marginalized populations at the intersections and along the lines of race, disability, social class, national origin, sexuality, sex, language, and religion, such “locating” is done by those socialized and reinforced to view themselves as normal and the norm against which they compare those different from them. Therefore, normalcy operates to maintain positions of superiority for some and inferiority for others. Next, the situation of disability at the intersection of non-dominant identities can be a powerful tool for disrupting normative spaces, practices, and beliefs. Finally, I call for critical action that exposes the negative construction of and consequences of difference in the academy, noting how epistemologies, methodologies, publication outlets and formats, and sentence structures that fall outside what we associate with normalcy, and those who employ them, are also sorted along lines of competence and incompetence, leading to the dismissal or exclusion of disabled scholars, scholars of color, and those scholars engaging in more public praxis outside the academy walls.