Refugees in Context: A Systemic,Intersectional Exploration of Discrimination in the United States

International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling - The goal of this study was to examine how individual, community, and socio-political mechanisms of discrimination intersect, manifest, and...     

The Will,the Wit,the Judgement: The importance of an early start in productive and successful creative writing

Most traditional concepts about creative writers include the idea that creative talent is evident early - that productive and talented writers began their careers at a young age. Yet few empirical studies have actually examined this supposition. A study of 986 creative writers from the twentieth century investigated the relationship between the age at first publication and measures of productivity (numbers of works produced) and success (winning a Nobel or Pulitzer prize). While significant relationships were found between an early debut and increased productivity in poetry and total number of works, it is more noteworthy that a writer's age at first publication was not significantly related to total productivity in fiction or success. Implications for creative writers and teachers of creative writing are discussed, along with how these findings might be incorporated into the current standards-based reform efforts.     

Analysis of Satisfaction and Perceived Learning of Science in Different Distance Education Delivery Modes for Rural Elementary School Teachers Involved in a Professional Development Project

The Science Co-op is a local systemic change project that connects eight regional clusters of elementary schools in rural Missouri and Iowa in the USA. These clusters are comprised of 38 school districts distributed over 40,000 square miles and include more than 1,400 teachers and 20,000 elementary school students. The project stresses inquiry science in the classroom and involves investigating science ideas using a constructivist approach and cross-curricular connections. Within the frameworks of the Science Co-op project a technology known as Interactive Television (ITV) allows for almost real-time interaction (a 3–5 second delay) within the state boundaries of Missouri and Iowa, respectively. The primary goals of the ITV sessions are to enhance the science content and science pedagogical knowledge among the population of elementary school teachers that they may have lacked in their prior education, and to reinforce and extend instructional strategies emphasized in this local systemic change project. In this study the participants' self-reported learning and reactions to live ITV sessions and videotaped, delayed broadcast of ITV sessions were compared. Regression analysis results show teaching experience's influence on overall satisfaction with ITV (p<0.05) while mode attended, perceived technical difficulty, preferred mode, and perceived new skills or content learned in the session entered the regression equation at p=.000. Further t-tests suggested p>0.05 for perceived new skills and content learned on the different modes of communication.     

A Critical Review of Students’ and Teachers’ Understandings of Nature of Science

Science & Education - There is widespread agreement that an adequate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) is a critical component of scientific literacy and a major goal in science...     

Integrated reflectography and thermography for wooden paintings diagnostics

The need of inspecting a masterpiece of fine art without affecting it led to develop non destructive methods of investigation. In the field of art conservation, several diagnostic techniques are being widely used to inspect works of art, giving different but complementary results. The present work deals with two of these methods, reflectography and thermography, both techniques examining objects in the infrared spectrum but in different wavelength bands. Their integrated data potentially provide a powerful tool for mapping hidden features and alterations of artworks. This was confirmed during the inspections of a 13th century panel painting under restoration at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure laboratories (Florence, Italy). A graphical user interface was also designed to aid operators in the field of conservation dealing with the results of the two IR methods. Many options such as image adjustment, comparison, overlaying and transparency variation, in addition to thermographic elaborations, have been made available to users. Imaging data integration provides a multi-layered and multi-spectral representation of the painting that yields a comprehensive diagnosis confirms the anomalies individuation and reduces the ambiguities of information coming from a single diagnostic method.     

Learning Disabilities in Guatemala and Spain: A Cross‐National Study of the Prevalence and Cognitive Processes Associated with Reading and Spelling Disabilities

The main purposes of this research were twofold. We examined the samenesses about learning disabilities (LD) in Guatemala and Spain, two countries with the same language but cultural, political, and educational differences, first analyzing data about the prevalence of reading and spelling disabilities in Guatemala City and the Spanish region of the Canary Islands. The focus of the second study was to determine whether there are cross‐national patterns of significant differences in cognitive processes associated with reading and spelling disabilities from a developmental approach in these two cultural contexts. We found some differences in the prevalence of specific LD in reading between both countries but we did not find significant differences between Guatemalan and Spanish reading‐disabled children in cognitive processes that are involved in reading and spelling acquisition in spite of the cultural and educational differences between the two countries.