Inclusion of Children with Disabilities: The Philippines Experience

In striving to educate as many children as possible and with limited funds to build a separate special education infrastructure to cater to the needs of children with disabilities, inclusive education was officially adopted in 1997 by the Department of Education in the Philippines as a viable educational alternative. This article reports on the current state of affairs for including children with disabilities within regular schools in the Philippines. The ‘Silahis Centres’ (‘school within the school’ concept) is presented as a feasible model for implementing and promoting the inclusion of children with disabilities within regular schools throughout the Philippines. Other aspects related to inclusive education such as teacher education, policies as well as lessons learned so far from inclusion efforts and future challenges are also described.     

Socioeconomic strata, mobile technology, and education: a comparative analysis

Mobile devices are highly portable, easily distributable, substantially affordable, and have the potential to be pedagogically complementary resources in education. This study, incorporating mixed method analyses, discusses the implications of a mobile learning technology-based learning model in two public primary schools near the Mexico-USA border in the state of Baja California, Mexico. One school was located in an urban slum and the other in a rural village community. Empirical and ethnographic data were collected through a series of achievement tests, observations, surveys, and interviews involving 160 s grade school children recruited by convenience sampling. The general technology infrastructure, distinctive features of mobile learning to supplement literacy development, profound contextual phenomena arising from the two uniquely underserved communities, and social factors possibly influencing the educational experiences are discussed. The findings suggest that students in the rural village, seriously lacking educational resources and technology exposure, may have benefited substantially more from mobile technologies than urban school students possibly due to their relatively higher socio-economic status and higher parental involvement and interest in education. In contrast, there was no evidence of interaction with parental education levels, the experience of teachers or school principals, or the teacher’s perception or preparation of the technology. Overall, the mobile learning technology adoption was rapid, seamless, and actively driven by the students rather than the teacher. The challenges of the phenomenal migratory nature of most families in this unique geographical region are also discussed to benefit future studies.     

Prior incest in mothers of abused children

Previous studies have shown that most abusing parents have a history of physical abuse or neglect in their own childhoods. There is little data on the frequency of prior sexual abuse among parents who physically or sexually abuse their children. Many case reports describe the uncovering of a prior incest experience in a parent during the investigation of the child's current incest accusation, but it is unclear how frequently this occurs. One hundred mothers of abused children were asked about sexual incidents that occurred before age 18; the control group consisted of 500 normal women from the same community who were surveyed during meetings of various voluntary organizations. Age and ethnicity did not differ in the two groups. Of the mothers of abused children, 24% reported a prior incest experience, whereas only 3% of the control women reported prior incest. This eightfold difference was highly significant. The 34 mothers from families where sexual abuse was occurring were no more likely to report prior incest than were the 66 mothers from families where physical abuse occurred. The one case of genital mutilation of a child occurred in a family where both parents had been incest victims. Case studies indicate that the parent who has been an incest victim has inhibitions and fears about tenderness, traceable to the childhood incest experience, which are important in the development of either physical abuse or sexual abuse in the family.     

Contributions of Male and Female Guests and Hosts to Peer Group Entry

92 7–9-year-old children (47 girls) were observed while attempting to join 2 relatively unfamiliar same- or opposite-sex peers who were playing a board game. Female guests were less obtrusive than male guests in their entry approaches, whereas male guests were more active and assertive. Guests were less behaviorally constrained when approaching same- than opposite-sex hosts. Female hosts were more attentive to the guests than male hosts, who tended to ignore the newcomers. Successful guests received initiations from the hosts, responded contingently to host initiations, and performed activity-related behavior. Since female hosts initiated more behavior to the guests than male hosts, and female guests were more contingently responsive than male guests, girls entering female groups were the most successful. These findings support the thesis that peer group entry processes and outcomes are affected by the personal characteristics and contexts of both the entering children and their hosts.     

Comparing cognitive performance in illiterate and literate children

While it is known that the process of becoming literate begins in early childhood and usually involves several years of schooling, research related to cognitive characteristics has been done mostly on illiterate adults, and information concerning illiterate children is therefore limited. The aim of the present study, involving 21 illiterate and 22 literate Mexican children aged 6 to 13, was to investigate the effects of literacy on neuropsychological characteristics during childhood. The children??s performance on 16 cognitive domains of the Evaluación Neuropsicológica Infantil (ENI, Child Neuropsychological Assessment) was examined in three mixed within- and between-groups profile analyses. The results suggest that the effect of literacy observed in adults is already evident in children in almost every task analysed. Moreover, the fact that an age effect was detected for the calculation abilities suggests that maths learning is school- and environment-dependent.     

The Validity of Academic Learning Time–Physical Education (ALT–PE) as a Process Measure of Achievement

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the ALT–PE system (Version 2) is valid as a process approach to estimate student achievement. Students (N = 60) were randomly selected from a data base that includes pretest and posttest scores for two volleyball skills and seven sessions of videotaped instruction. Videotapes were collected using two cameras with a split-screen generator so most instruction and practice could be seen. ALT–PE data were coded from the videotapes. In addition to normal ALT–PE coding conventions, coders recorded the skill that was the focus of instruction. Combinations of context and learner involvement categories were summed for each skill across the seven class sessions and to form other logical categories (e.g., total motor appropriate intervals). Achievement scores were calculated by posttest on pretest regression for each skill with the residual score used for subsequent analysis. Residual achievement scores were correlated with summed ALT–PE categories. The results indicate for the serve both total motor appropriate and practice–motor appropriate intervals were related to student achievement. For the pass, practice–motor appropriate intervals were related to achievement and the total motor appropriate–achievement correlation failed significance. These results demonstrate the validity of the ALT–PE system as a process measure of achievement can be partially substantiated.     

Problematizing the popular: the dynamics of Pinoy pop(ular) music and popular protest music

ABSTRACT

In 1973, the pop music industry in the Philippines, long dominated by the American Top 40, was jolted by the emergence of a new kind of sound that delivered soulful Filipino lyrics in the medium of Western rock. At about the same time the protest movement found, in the popular forms of Western rock and folk, powerful vehicles for cultural resistance. This experimentation within and outside the industry generated great interest across social classes and opened many possibilities for new kinds of popular music, later to be called Pinoy (slang for Filipino) rock or Pinoy pop music. This article looks into the dynamics of Pinoy pop/rock and protest music during the period of authoritarian rule and after, marking their points of intersection and divergence and analyzing the factors that account for the rich popular music production in the 1970s and the 1980s.     

Intervention program on the use of practical work as a teaching strategy in elementary school mathematics: Its effects on the teachers’ instructional skills and mathematical ability

This paper examines the extent to which an intervention program on the use of practical work affected the following two variables: instructional techniques and mathematical ability. An attempt was made to correlate these two variables with age, educational attainment, and teaching experience to determine if there exists a relationship with and without the effect of the intervention. Differences and relationships between these two variables before and after the intervention were significant. However, these two variables were not correlated with age, educational attainment and teaching experience before and after the intervention. Generally, the results and discussion in this paper may serve as a catalyst from which necessary remediation and modification of school and in-service programs could emanate.     

Greater fatigability in knee-flexors vs. knee-extensors after a standardized fatiguing protocol

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of a standardized fatiguing protocol on central and peripheral fatigue in knee-flexors and knee-extensors. Thirteen healthy men (age: 23?±?3 years; height: 1.78?±?0.09 m; body-mass: 73.6?±?9.2?kg) volunteered for the present study. Maximal voluntary contraction (MVC), Electromyography (EMG) activity, voluntary activation level (VAL) as an index of central fatigue and twitch potentiation as an index of peripheral fatigue were measured before and after the fatiguing protocol. The fatiguing protocol consisted of a 0.6 duty-cycle to exhaustion (6?s isometric contraction, 4?s recovery) at 70% MVC. After the fatiguing protocol, MVC decreased in both (Effect-size (ES)?=?1.14) and knee-extensors (ES?=?1.14), and EMG activity increased in both knee-flexors (ES?=?2.33) and knee-extensors (ES?=?1.54). Decreases in VAL occurred in knee-flexors (ES?=?0.92) but not in knee-extensors (ES?=?0.04). Decreases in potentiation occurred in both knee-flexors (ES?=?0.84) and knee-extensors (ES?=?0.58). The greater central occurrence of fatigue in knee-flexors than in knee-extensors may depend on the different muscle morphology and coupled with a greater tolerance to fatigue in knee-extensors. The present data add further insight to the complicated knee-flexors-to-knee-extensors strength relationship and the mechanisms behind the different occurrence of fatigue.     

Collaborative writing in engineering: Perspectives from research and implications for undergraduate education

In engineering, like in many other disciplines, collaborative writing (CW) has been identified as a central practice in both the academy and industry. A number of studies have shown that both students and professionals in this field write most discipline-specific genres collaboratively. Despite its centrality, CW in engineering is still an under-researched area with very few empirical studies on how it happens as situated practice. This article reports on a study that used a variety of data sets as its empirical base to examine CW in four schools of the faculty of engineering at a university in the UK. It also reports on the views of CW in the workplace that lecturers involved in industry hold. The article aims at contributing to the understanding of CW in engineering by identifying its role, nature and dynamics. It also examines pedagogical implications resulting from the study with a view to making a contribution to developments in writing in engineering education. The article finishes by making a number of recommendations for future research.