The Cognitive and Behavioral Characteristics of Children With Low Working Memory     

Tracy Packiam Alloway  Susan Elizabeth Gathercole  Hannah Kirkwood  Julian Elliott 《Child development》2009,80(2):606-621

This study explored the cognitive and behavioral profiles of children with working memory impairments. In an initial screening of 3,189 five- to eleven-year-olds, 308 were identified as having very low working memory scores. Cognitive skills (IQ, vocabulary, reading, and math), classroom behavior, and self-esteem were assessed. The majority of the children struggled in the learning measures and verbal ability. They also obtained atypically high ratings of cognitive problems/inattentive symptoms and were judged to have short attention spans, high levels of distractibility, problems in monitoring the quality of their work, and difficulties in generating new solutions to problems. These data provide rich new information on the cognitive and behavioral profiles that characterize children with low working memory.  相似文献   

Exploring ‘learning lives’: community,identity, literacy and meaning     

Ola Erstad  Øystein Gilje  Julian Sefton‐Green  Kristin Vasbø 《Literacy》2009,43(2):100-106

This article explores the term ‘learning lives’ by reporting on three research projects conducted by members of the Oslo‐based research group TransActions. By stressing the term ‘learning lives’ within a range of social ‘educational’ contexts, the article aims to look at learning within and across different learning sites exploring the positioning and repositioning of learner identity across these different ‘locations’. We emphasise how the individual learner relates to other people and objects, drawing on deeper trajectories or narratives of the self as it exists within and outside the immediate learning contexts. We pay attention to processes occurring between people which we find significant for the individual's identity, literacy and learning. By doing so we hope to make explicit the mobilisation of resources within and across specific contexts, in the ‘learning lives’ of Norwegian youngsters.  相似文献   

Two failures in computer-mediated textcommunication     

Julian Newman  Rhona Newman 《Instructional Science》1992,21(1-3):29-43

The low uptake of computer text conferencing, despite its unique functionality, suggests that developers of this technology have paid insufficient attention to human factors. In Ergonomics (Human Factors Engineering) the study of untoward events such as user errors, systems failures and disasters is a widely-used and fruitful research strategy. Anomalous and unexpected events and actions likewise constitute an important source of data and insights for sociological, ethnographic and linguistic studies of human communication. In the present paper we combine these traditions, applying qualitative failure analysis to computer-mediated text conferencing. The data is drawn from two episodes of communication failure involving geographically dispersed groups engaged in different types of task. In one episode a consultative discussion aimed at the development of professional expertise collapsed in rancour. In the other, a design error was propagated, through misunderstanding, into the implementation stage of a project. The analysis has substantive implications for user training in new types of writing and reading skill and for the functional and interface design of textcommunication systems. There are also methodological implications for studies of computer mediated communications. It is argued that a surface analysis of the episodes is insufficient for full understanding of the communication failures: the record must be interpreted in the context of the practices, institutions and structures that exist in the social world outside the computerised textcommunication system.  相似文献   

Variation in Vocabulary Development as a Function of Birth Order     

Julian M. Pine 《Child development》1995,66(1):272-281

Several researchers have argued for birth-order differences in the rate and style of children's early vocabulary development. However, the results of those studies that have examined these issues directly have so far proved inconclusive. In the present study, an attempt was made to examine the question of birth-order differences in children's early vocabulary development by comparing the composition and age of acquisition of the first 50 and 100 words of 9 firstborns and their younger siblings using a longitudinal maternal diary methodology. A small but significant birth-order effect was found for the age at which the 50-word milestone was reached. However, there was no significant difference in age at 100 words, and there was a strong correlation between sibling pairs on both of these measures. As regards qualitative differences, second-borns had a significantly higher percentage of frozen phrases in their first 100 words and a significantly higher percentage of deictic personal pronouns in their first 50 and 100 words. However, no differences were found in the percentage of common nouns at either measurement point. It is argued that, on balance, these results are more consistent with a "different" than a "disadvantaged" view of later-borns' early language, and that those differences that do exist may be due, at least in part, to the occurrence of a higher degree of observational learning in second-borns' early language acquisition.  相似文献   

Evaluating the validity of the Automated Working Memory Assessment     

Tracy P. Alloway  Susan E. Gathercole  Hannah Kirkwood  Julian Elliott 《教育心理学》2008,28(7):725-734

The aim of the present study was to investigate the construct stability and diagnostic validity of a standardised computerised tool for assessing working memory: the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA). The purpose of the AWMA is to provide educators with a quick and effective tool to screen for and support those with memory impairments. Findings indicate that working memory skills in children with memory impairments are relatively stable over the course of the school year. There was also a high degree of convergence in performance between the AWMA and the WISC‐IV Working Memory Index. The educational implications are discussed.  相似文献   

Teaching in the shadow: operators of small shadow education institutions in Japan     

Julian Dierkes 《Asia Pacific Education Review》2010,11(1):25-35

The shadow education sector plays a centrally important role in the Japanese education system. Advocates of Japanese shadow education institutions, or juku, claim that the pedagogy employed in these schools leads to superior results compared to teaching methods used in conventional schools. The lack of value-added testing of juku results suggests that these claims have not been tested. In this article, I examine the background of the owner– operators of small juku and the challenges they face in hiring teaching staff. The small juku examined were mostly founded during the juku-boom of the early 1970s and continue to teach 100–200 students with a staff usually numbering more than 10 part-time or full-time teachers. I find that almost no operators or employees come to the shadow education business by design. Instead, owner–operators “slide into” their role for lack of alternative options, or through early success, or through frustration with previous careers. Subsequently, many of the owner–operators embrace their work as a pedagogical calling. In hiring teaching staff, owner–operators circumvent the larger employment market by hiring their own “graduates”.  相似文献