(2011). Comprehensive Newborn Screening: The Lifesaving Test You May Never Be Told about. Exceptional Parent, v41 n9 p22-26 Sep. The birth of a child is among the most joyous events human beings ever experience. After months of anticipation and preparation, a precious little one joins a family. Parents dream of the things they will do with this new arrival, the birthdays, the family vacations, the continuing of family traditions. Above all, parents hope to provide the best possible life for their new child. Imagine, after the child has been born and celebrated, brought home from the hospital, and brought into the bosom of the family, something just doesn't seem right. Perhaps it starts with the baby crying constantly, or not having interest in eating. In what seems like hours, a baby that seemed perfectly healthy is suddenly being rushed to the Emergency Room. Imagine learning that although they did everything right as parents, their baby has suffered irreparable brain damage and will be severely disabled for life. Or worse, imagine that the baby does not survive the medical crisis. Imagine learning that an… [Direct]
(2018). Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods in Educational Systems: Proceedings of the International Conference on Teacher Education and Professional Development (INCOTEPD 2018), October 28, 2018, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group This proceedings volume of InCoTEPD 2018 covers many ideas for handling a wide variety of challenging issues in the field of education. The outstanding ideas dealing with these issues result in innovation of the system. There are many innovation strategies resulting from recent research that are discussed in this book. These strategies will become the best starting points to solve current and future problems. This book provides an in-depth coverage of educational innovation developments with an emphasis on educational systems, formal or informal education strategies, learning models, and professional teachers. Indeed, those developments are very important to be explored for obtaining the right way of problem-solving. Providing many ideas from the theoretical foundation into the practice, this book is versatile and well organized for an appropriate audience in the field of education. It is an extremely useful reference for students, teachers, professors, practitioners, and government… [Direct]
(2007). Lateralized Cognition: Asymmetrical and Complementary Strategies of Pigeons during Discrimination of the \Human Concept\. Cognition, v104 n2 p315-344 Aug. This study was aimed at revealing which cognitive processes are lateralized in visual categorizations of \humans\ by pigeons. To this end, pigeons were trained to categorize pictures of humans and then tested binocularly or monocularly (left or right eye) on the learned categorization and for transfer to novel exemplars (Experiment 1). Subsequent tests examined whether they relied on memorized features or on a conceptual strategy, using stimuli composed of new combinations of familiar and novel humans and backgrounds (Experiment 2), whether the hemispheres processed global or local information, using pictures with different levels of scrambling (Experiment 3), and whether they attended to configuration, using distorted human figures (Experiment 4). The results suggest that the left hemisphere employs a category strategy and concentrates on local features, while the right hemisphere uses an exemplar strategy and relies on configuration. These cognitive dichotomies of the cerebral… [Direct]
(2012). Individual Differences in the Multisensory Temporal Binding Window Predict Susceptibility to Audiovisual Illusions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, v38 n6 p1517-1529 Dec. Human multisensory systems are known to bind inputs from the different sensory modalities into a unified percept, a process that leads to measurable behavioral benefits. This integrative process can be observed through multisensory illusions, including the McGurk effect and the sound-induced flash illusion, both of which demonstrate the ability of one sensory modality to modulate perception in a second modality. Such multisensory integration is highly dependent upon the temporal relationship of the different sensory inputs, with perceptual binding occurring within a limited range of asynchronies known as the temporal binding window (TBW). Previous studies have shown that this window is highly variable across individuals, but it is unclear how these variations in the TBW relate to an individual's ability to integrate multisensory cues. Here we provide evidence linking individual differences in multisensory temporal processes to differences in the individual's audiovisual integration… [Direct]
(2012). The \Right Kind of Telling\: Knowledge Building in the Academic Design Studio. Educational Technology Research and Development, v60 n5 p839-858 Oct. Studio-based instruction, as traditionally enacted in design disciplines such as architecture, product design, graphic design, and the like, consists of dedicated desk space for each student, extended time blocks allocated to studio classes, and classroom interactions characterized by independent and group work on design problems supplemented by frequent public and individual critiques. Although the surface features and pedagogy of the studio have been well-documented, relatively little attention has been paid to student and teacher participation structures through which design knowledge is co-produced among instructors and students within the studio. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of faculty-student interactions through which students learn to think and act as designers. To that end, we have collected and analyzed ethnographic data from five studio classrooms across three design disciplines (architecture, industrial design, and human-computer interaction)…. [Direct]
(2011). Country Report: Introduction of a New Education Inclusion Reform–Republic of Uzbekistan. Journal of International Special Needs Education, v14 n2 p99-101. The republic of Uzbekistan has an ancient history yet almost half of its population consists of children and teenagers. Ancestors have left remarkable samples of widely known human work in the fields of literature, art, and education. Over centuries, the people of Uzbekistan have been developing education based on principles of early development, humanism, and mutual respect. These principles form the basis for modern legislative documents and activities of states and public organizations within Uzbekistan (e.g., a reform in the social policy promising adequate standard of living for children with special needs). The president of the Republic of Uzbekistan, I.A. Karimov, leads an intensive social policy reform: 12-year compulsory continuous inclusive education (CIE). It promotes inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream schools and a basic right for free and effective education and individualized programs whereby children's needs are met and methods of communication are… [Direct]
(2011). Balancing the Right to Manage with Dignity at Work. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, v15 n1 p3-6 Jan. It is well known that bullying and work-related stress are real issues. \Bullying Survey 2005\ revealed a number of insights into bullying at work. Much of this is down to lack of managerial skills. Individuals who have previously not been recruited or trained as managers have become managers but without the necessary skills set to carry out their managerial functions within acceptable human resource management standards. This accusation may find some resonance in the HE sector where line management may be a role superimposed on a preceding, purely academic, career. It is right to draw attention to extreme situations, which arise from bullying, harassment and work place stress and a failure to uncover conduct which is not just hard management but crosses the line in some way. Conversely, if a manager is himself or herself justly accused of bullying and harassment he or she may suffer distress and question marks may arise about future management roles. The author contends that it is… [Direct]
(2008). Automatic Imitation of Intransitive Actions. Brain and Cognition, v67 n1 p44-50 Jun. Previous research has indicated a potential discontinuity between monkey and human ventral premotor-parietal mirror systems, namely that monkey mirror systems process only transitive (object-directed) actions, whereas human mirror systems may also process intransitive (non-object-directed) actions. The present study investigated this discontinuity by seeking evidence of automatic imitation of intransitive actions–hand opening and closing–in humans using a simple reaction time (RT), stimulus-response compatibility paradigm. Left-right and up-down spatial compatibility were controlled by ensuring that stimuli were presented and responses executed in orthogonal planes, and automatic imitation was isolated from simple and complex orthogonal spatial compatibility by varying the anatomical identity of the stimulus hand and response hemispace, respectively. In all conditions, action compatible responding was faster than action incompatible responding, and no effects of spatial… [Direct]
(2010). Rerouting: Discipline, Assessment and Performativity in Contemporary Swedish Educational Discourse. Education Inquiry, v1 n3 p177-195. As Sweden drew nearer to the 2006 national election, two themes emerged in the educational debate: a concern for order and discipline in schools, and the ambition to raise educational levels of achievement. The objective of this article is to locate these two themes within a broader framework of understanding by: 1) discussing examples of how the reinforcement of disciplinary power in schools was introduced, justified and deployed by right-wing constellations during this time; and 2) to relate these policy changes to both a Foucauldian theory of power and to current discussions on performativity, assessment and governmentality. Considered as attempts to locate students, teachers and schools within networks of performativity, thereby strengthening the image of Sweden as a "performing knowledge nation", we argue that these policy changes have a much closer relationship with the art of "perception management" than with any genuine interest in education for human… [Direct]
(2010). Markets, Equality and Democratic Education: Confronting the Neoliberal and Libertarian Reconceptualisations of Education. Perspectives in Education, v28 n4 p72-79 Dec. The global emergence of market liberalism marks an effort to decouple the link between citizenship and the welfare state and to rearticulate people's identity as homo economicus, as independent citizens having the right to property and the freedom to choose in the marketplace. Confronting this phenomenon, this paper reviews neoliberal and libertarian understandings of educational equality and democratic education and interrogates the rationale for the justification of markets in education. In the process, I criticise the notion of possessive individualism as a principle of democratic education on the grounds that such a notion explains human action only at the individual level, as a matter of free will, and not as a part of the cultural and political struggle for nondiscrimination. I also provide reasons why the claim to equal respect and recognition needs to be given more importance in education and argue for the social responsibility to secure not only students' educational… [Direct]
(2010). Wanted: Tesseract. One Hypothesis on Languages, Cultures, and Ethics for Mind, Brain, and Education. Mind, Brain, and Education, v4 n3 p135-148 Sep. For potential consideration by the Mind, Brain, and Education community, here is a modest but provocative hypothesis regarding the relationships between acquisition of languages, awareness of cultures, and development of ethics in human beings. Starting from the basic idea according to which \a fish does not know what water is,\ and using both various literature sources and my personal experience of linguistic/cultural diversity, I postulate, using the mathematical metaphor of the \tesseract,\ that mastery of several languages is not only essential to developing cultural awareness but also a key to (partial) access to global awareness. This might open research avenues for colleagues interested in some of these fields, or in all of them; if sound neuroscientific work, possibly combined with quantitative studies, proves the hypothesis right, then we may hope to take one small step toward more tolerance: yet another \giant leap for mankind\? Let us dream–it is not forbidden yet…. [Direct]
(2007). Lives in the Balance. Chronicle of Higher Education, v53 n21 pB14 Jan. Of all animal-rights issues, medical research is perhaps the thorniest. The human use of animals–for companionship, entertainment, food, clothing–always assumes a hierarchy, one that puts humans at the top or the center of either the evolutionary order, God's creation, or the food chain. Although most people can come to terms with the use of animals for food, clothing, or entertainment, the elements are much more abstract when it comes to the use of animals for research. In this article, the author, whose parents were certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to supply dogs to various laboratories for various medical experiments describes his experiences accompanying his parents to the research facilities. He relates that, due to the controversial nature of the use of animals in laboratories, he preferred not to discuss his parents' business with his peers; and how, to avoid the scrutiny of animal rights activists, his father preferred delivering animals to laboratories in… [Direct]
(2009). The Psycholinguistics of Literacy in a Flat World. Reading Matrix: An International Online Journal, v9 n1 p67-76 Apr. If Friedman is right that the world is \flat,\ we need to understand the linguistic implications of that claim. In this increasingly flat world, classical critical literacy is both urgently needed and poorly understood from a linguistic perspective. Three claims based on research on reading can improve both the understanding of the common psycholinguistic features of literacy and the practice of critical literacy: The first claim is that in this flat world, psycholinguistic research on literacy shows that humans' underlying abilities are constant from page to screen, drawing on basic cognitive and linguistic processing mechanisms including recognition, identification, categorization and others. The second claim is that literacy is the highest level in the on-going evolution of human language abilities. Finally, the third claim states that the forms of literacy are evolving in new media across digital and linguistic borders of all kinds. Psycholinguistic research provides a deeper… [PDF]
(2013). The Promise of AP World History. Social Education, v77 n5 p263-265 Oct. AP World History is the ideal history course. It introduces students to 10,000 years of world history, and demands critical reading, critical writing, and critical thinking skills on the part of both the teacher and the students. It requires students to build their expertise in reading their textbook, and places demands on the teacher to assign the right primary sources to help clarify the inconsistencies, omissions, and different perspectives not presented in the textbooks. The teacher's role is also to make students aware of the varying points of view of those who experienced the events and occurrences of world history so as to help students synthesize, evaluate, and analyze the material. Most teachers would agree that it is not difficult to get a student to voice an opinion. However, it can be difficult to get that same student to explain why he or she maintains that opinion. In AP World History, the teacher must "break the wall" and show students how to transform… [Direct]
(2010). Fact Sheet: Summary of Self-Determination. NRC Fact Sheet. Center on Human Policy This fact sheet provides an explanation of what self determination is, provides the four principles of self determination, describes the values supported by self determination. The authors contend that if self-determination is going to be successful, it requires that those who supply services and fund them make certain changes in both the way they think about persons with disabilities and the way they serve them. The authors state that in order for self-Determination to happen, the system must shift: (1) From seeing persons with disabilities as having limitations that prevent them from participating fully in life to seeing them as valuable citizens who have many talents, strengths, and abilities to contribute to their communities; (2) From seeing persons with disabilities as service recipients to seeing them as individuals with rights and entitlements; (3) From providing agency-controlled services to supporting person-directed services; (4) From systemic and agency control of… [PDF]