Form–meaning links in the development of visual word recognition

Learning to read takes time and it requires explicit instruction. Three decades of research has taught us a good deal about how children learn about the links between orthography and phonology during word reading development. However, we have learned less about the links that children build between orthographic form and meaning. This is surprising given that the goal of reading development must be for children to develop an orthographic system that allows meanings to be accessed quickly, reliably and efficiently from orthography. This review considers whether meaning-related information is used when children read words aloud, and asks what we know about how and when children make connections between form and meaning during the course of reading development.     

"A gentle and humane temper": humility in medicine

Humility is the medical virtue most difficult to understand and practice. This is especially true in contemporary medicine, which has developed a culture more characterized by arrogance and entitlement than by self-effacement and moderation. In such a culture, humility suggests weakness, indecisiveness, or even deception, as in false modesty. Nonetheless, an operational definition of medical humility includes four distinct but closely related personal characteristics that are central to good doctoring: unpretentious openness, honest self-disclosure, avoidance of arrogance, and modulation of self-interest. Humility, like other virtues, is best taught by means of narrative and role modeling. We may rightly be proud of contemporary medical advances, while at the same time experiencing gratitude and humility as healers.     

Questions in Lessons: Activity Settings in the Homes and School of Two Puerto Rican Kindergartners

This ethnographic study describes continuities and discontinuities between a bilingual kindergarten and the homes of two Spanish-dominant Puerto Rican children. The concept of activity setting was used to explore the relation of culture to question use in lessons taught in both settings. Findings highlight a complex web of continuities and discontinuities and the importance of the joint construction of a culture of teaching and learning by parents, teachers, and children.     

Replacing lectures by textbased flexible learning: students' performance and perceptions

This paper presents the results of an extended evaluation programme designed to test the effectiveness of text-based flexible learning as a replacement to 30 – 50% of the lectures in certain modules in conventional undergraduate courses within the School of Life Sciences at Napier University. For examinations in which students answered both types of question, marks for questions based on topics taught by flexible learning were equivalent to marks for questions based on topics taught by conventional teaching methods. Marks for examinations in which at least 50% of the answers were based on topics taught by flexible learning were equivalent to marks for examinations in which questions were based on topics taught by conventional teaching methods. Rates of achievement of a mark of 40% or more at first attempt for examinations in which at least 50% of the answers were based on topics taught by flexible learning were significantly better than rates of achievement of a mark of 40% or more at first attempt for questions based on topics taught by conventional teaching methods. Students gave positive feedback on flexible learning, both verbally and by questionnaire, and showed highly significant bias in favour of topics taught by flexible learning in their choice of questions in examinations. The flexible learning programme studied here has satisfied the various quality assurance criteria in place within the University throughout the time that it has been in operation. The evaluation has demonstrated that the textbased flexible learning programme studied here was an effective alternative to lectures.     

Who teaches children to forage? Exploring the primacy of child-to-child teaching among Hadza and BaYaka Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania and Congo

Teaching is cross-culturally widespread but few studies have considered children as teachers as well as learners. This is surprising, since forager children spend much of their time playing and foraging in child-only groups, and thus, have access to many potential child teachers. Using the Social Relations Model, we examined the prevalence of child-to-child teaching using focal follow data from 35 Hadza and 38 BaYaka 3- to 18-year-olds. We investigated the effect of age, sex and kinship on the teaching of subsistence skills. We found that child-to-child teaching was more frequent than adult-child teaching. Additionally, children taught more with age, teaching was more likely to occur within same-sex versus opposite-sex dyads, and close kin were more likely to teach than non-kin. The Hadza and BaYaka also showed distinct learning patterns; teaching was more likely to occur between sibling dyads among the Hadza than among the BaYaka, and a multistage learning model where younger children learn from peers, and older children from adults, was evident for the BaYaka, but not for the Hadza. We attribute these differences to subsistence and settlement patterns. These findings highlight the role of children in the intergenerational transmission of subsistence skills.     

Group Music Training and Children's Prosocial Skills

We investigated if group music training in childhood is associated with prosocial skills. Children in 3^rd or 4^th grade who attended 10 months of music lessons taught in groups were compared to a control group of children matched for socio-economic status. All children were administered tests of prosocial skills near the beginning and end of the 10-month period. Compared to the control group, children in the music group had larger increases in sympathy and prosocial behavior, but this effect was limited to children who had poor prosocial skills before the lessons began. The effect was evident even when the lessons were compulsory, which minimized the role of self-selection. The results suggest that group music training facilitates the development of prosocial skills.     

Distributional Learning of Appearance

Opportunities for associationist learning of word meaning, where a word is heard or read contemperaneously with information being available on its meaning, are considered too infrequent to account for the rate of language acquisition in children. It has been suggested that additional learning could occur in a distributional mode, where information is gleaned from the distributional statistics (word co-occurrence etc.) of natural language. Such statistics are relevant to meaning because of the Distributional Principle that ‘words of similar meaning tend to occur in similar contexts’. Computational systems, such as Latent Semantic Analysis, have substantiated the viability of distributional learning of word meaning, by showing that semantic similarities between words can be accurately estimated from analysis of the distributional statistics of a natural language corpus. We consider whether appearance similarities can also be learnt in a distributional mode. As grounds for such a mode we advance the Appearance Hypothesis that ‘words with referents of similar appearance tend to occur in similar contexts’. We assess the viability of such learning by looking at the performance of a computer system that interpolates, on the basis of distributional and appearance similarity, from words that it has been explicitly taught the appearance of, in order to identify and name objects that it has not been taught about. Our experiment tests with a set of 660 simple concrete noun words. Appearance information on words is modelled using sets of images of examples of the word. Distributional similarity is computed from a standard natural language corpus. Our computation results support the viability of distributional learning of appearance.     

Who was... John Henri Fabre?

The books of Jean Henri Fabre, replete with lively accounts of his observations on nature, inspired generations of children from all over the world. The detail in his study of insects and the entertaining presentation allowed readers to absorb his fascination. Yet, he was a physics teacher by profession and virtually self taught on matters of entomology.     

CORNEAL CONTACT LENSES-Special Value in Severe Anisometropia in Children

Careful selection of patients and skillful fitting result in a high rate of success with corneal contact lenses-over 96 per cent in 339 patients treated in the present series. The lenses were especially valuable in anisometropia in children (11 cases). Children can be taught to care for contact lenses and insert and remove them for themselves.     

Combining two teaching techniques for young children on Aedes aegypti control: effects on entomological indices in western Mexico

A study of the effect of educating four- to six-year-old children in mosquito control was recently conducted in a city in the state of Jalisco, western Mexico. Four neighborhood districts were selected. Children attending one kindergarten in each of two experimental districts were taught mosquito control with a video from the American Mosquito Control Association (AMCA), joined to the use of the AMCA Touch Table Technique. The entomological indices monitored in the study decreased significantly (P<0.05) in houses in the experimental districts, apparently because parents acted on the comments and suggestions of the children and eliminated or monitored containers used as oviposition sites by mosquitoes. Based on these results, combining both techniques for teaching children mosquito control is a potentially useful tool for control efforts in Mexico and other places in Latin America.     

CORNEAL CONTACT LENSES—Special Value in Severe Anisometropia in Children

Careful selection of patients and skillful fitting result in a high rate of success with corneal contact lenses—over 96 per cent in 339 patients treated in the present series. The lenses were especially valuable in anisometropia in children (11 cases). Children can be taught to care for contact lenses and insert and remove them for themselves.     

Dog Bite Prevention: Effect of a Short Educational Intervention for Preschool Children

This study aimed to investigate whether preschool children can learn how to interpret dogs’ behaviours, with the purpose of helping avoid dog bites. Three- to five-year-old children (N = 70) were tested on their ability to answer questions about dogs’ emotional states before and after participating in either an educational intervention about dog behaviour (intervention group) or an activity about wild animals (control group). Children who had received training about dog behaviour (intervention group) were significantly better at judging the dogs’ emotional states after the intervention compared to before. The frequency with which they referred to relevant behaviours in justifying their judgements also increased significantly. In contrast, the control group’s performance did not differ significantly between the two testing times. These results indicate that preschool children can be taught how to correctly interpret dogs’ behaviours. This implies that incorporating such training into prevention programmes may contribute to reducing dog bite incidents.     

Should Students Be Able to Opt Out of Evolution? Some Philosophical Considerations

One new development in the ongoing creationism/evolution controversy has been the proposal to institute opt-out policies that would allow creationist parents to exempt their children from any instruction involving evolution. By way of an explanation of some of the philosophical issues at play in the debate over evolution and the nature of science, this article shows the educational folly of such policies. If evolution is taught properly, it should not be possible to opt out of it without opting out of biology. Moreover, if Intelligent Design creationist criticisms of evolution and scientific naturalism were taken as the basis for opting out, then the effect would be even more radical and would require opting out of science entirely.     

Mapping urban ecology education in the UK

Abstract

Urban ecology has matured as a field of investigation. This paper explores how well it has transitioned into the educational curricula of UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) by mapping the presence of urban ecological or environmental topics across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The prevalence of different topics, the level at which they are taught, and the disciplinary areas in which they are housed, are quantified. Urban ecological topics are found in programmes across 50 of 147 HEIs (34%), mainly taught in ancillary fashion to support wider subjects, though some specialist modules and even programmes do exist. Only one HEI incorporates a compulsory (core) dedicated urban ecology module at undergraduate level. Much urban ecology teaching takes place at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Applied topics are usually taught from an environmental science perspective, with common examples including urban hydrology, climate, and green infrastructure; probably to address global concerns about urban sustainability and resilience. In particular there is scope for greater incorporation of urban ecology topics and themes into biological and ecological programmes, and utilising cities as labs to explore these topics. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of these possibilities.     

Challenges and Opportunities in the Anthropology of Childhoods: An Introduction to "Children, Childhoods, and Childhood Studies"

Anthropological attention to children and childhoods has had an uneven but lengthy history, both within the discipline and in interdisciplinary endeavors. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of children, with work often carried out under the rubrics of "Childhood Studies" or the "Anthropology of Childhoods." In these frameworks, children are at once developing beings, in possession of agency, and to varying degrees vulnerable. It has been a hallmark of anthropological work to recognize that these attributes manifest themselves in different times and places, and under particular social, political, economic, and moral circumstances and conditions. The five articles in this "In Focus" put forward some key challenges and opportunities for the anthropological study of children and childhoods.     

Visual arts education provisions for primary schools in Turkey

This article examines the history of art education in Turkey. Since the beginning, the purposes of the arts and art education have been a point of discussion by various authorities. Whether art education should be taught, and how it needs to be taught, have been at the forefront of educationalists' minds. As a result, introducing certain models of art education has been a challenge. The objective of this article is to present the changes in art education since the 19th century in Turkey. The main focus is on art education practices and policies and an overview of key events in Turkey's history of art education. The article also presents issues related to the importance of visual arts education in Turkish primary school settings. In so doing, this research aims to show readers how past developments helped to create the current visual art education policy in Turkey.     

“微生物学”全英文课程的建设改革与思考

“微生物学”是高等院校生物类、生物工程类及相关专业的专业基础课程。目前我国高等院校的“微生物学”以中文授课为主,但随着“双一流”建设等教改政策的推进及学生求学多元化需求的增加,全英文“微生物学”课程建设已势在必行。华东理工大学自2016年即开始“微生物学”全英文授课,并在授课方式和课程内容方面进行了改革和创新。“微生物学”全英文课程开设后,学生的学习兴趣有了很大的提高,科研能力和实践能力有了长足的进步,在专业英语的听、说、读、写能力方面也领先于同年级其他同学,为“双一流”建设背景下国家级一流本科专业创新性人才培养提供了重要支撑。     

fungi4schools - the new BMS education website

The one place it's almost impossible to find fungi is in the UK National Curriculum for schools. The state of the National Curriculum (NC) is a real concern because the current specifications all contain material on animal and plant comparisons with little or no consideration for the largest group of higher organisms on Earth: Kingdom Fungi. This means that children are missing out on being taught about the importance of an entire Kingdom of higher organisms. To try to compensate for this educational deficiency, the British Mycological Society has taken up the challenge by devising resources teachers can use within the current NC because they address NC topics and also give proper representation to fungi. These resources include specially-produced and ready-to-use lessons and classroom activities, teacher's guides and pupil class sheets, all classroom tested and well received by pupils. But the resources also feature articles published over many years in the Society's journals that need to be brought out of the library archives and made immediately accessible to schools. These resources are available now for free download from the British Mycological Society's new education website at www.fungi4schools.org, which is described in this article.     

"Ma'iingan Is Just a Misspelling of the Word Wolf": A Case for Teaching Culture through Language

Framed by the English language and positioned as a distinct subject, Ojibwe culture and language are often appreciated by students rather than taught for a deeper understanding or fluency, or used as the language of instruction in tribal schools. Ojibwe culture and language have been "added on" to existing school curriculum, an approach that changes the meaning of culture. In this article I critique the add-on approach and propose that teaching through the Indigenous language (immersion) supports cultural and language revitalization in a more fundamental way.     

The history of the human female inferiority ideas in evolutionary biology.

A review of the prominent late 19th-century biological writings reveals that a major plank of early evolution theory was the belief that women were intellectually and physically inferior to men. Female inferiority was a logical conclusion of the Darwinian world view because males were believed to be exposed to far greater selective pressures than females, especially in war, competition for mates, food and clothing. Conversely, women were protected from selection by norms that required adult males provide for and protect women and children. Darwinists taught that as a result of this protection, natural selection operated far more actively on males than on females, producing male superiority in virtually all intellectual and skill areas. As a result, males became "more evolved" than women. The women inferiority doctrine is an excellent example of the fact that armchair logic often has been more important in building Darwinism than fossil and other empirical evidence.