Consuming children : education, entertainment, advertising

"Schools are dull, adults are dim, kids rule, pleasure can be purchased - these are canons of children's consumer cultures. In the places where kids, commodities and images meet, education, entertainment and advertising merge. Kids consume the corporate abundance with an appetite. But what happens now that schools are on the market? Is this a form of corporate gluttony? Are designer schools educationally "grotesque"? How are students packaged? How can curriculum compete with other attractions constantly advertised to students? Are students themselves both purchasers and commodities for sale?"

This volume argues that people are entering another stage in the construction of the young as the demarcations between education, entertainment and advertising collapse and as the lines between the generations both blur and harden. Drawing from the voices of students and from contemporary cultural theory this book provokes the reader to ponder the role of the school in the "age of desire.

Foster Children in Education: Resource Handbook for Elementary Educators

This project is aligned with examining the role of the education system and the foster care context on the learning experiences of young children in the classroom. This project is a study of the literature and research conducted on the life experiences, adverse effects of these experiences (such as attachment disorder), socioemotional development, and resiliency of foster care children. Furthermore, the project explores the literature on how the experiences of these foster children traverse contexts and impact the education setting. This study also outlines specific strategies and practices for teachers and school staff in order to promote students’ resiliency, competency, behaviour management, and overall educational success and positive academic experience. These strategies resulted from a critical review of the literature and translated into the development of an informative handbook intended for teachers. The handbook developed in this study focuses on the understanding of the lives of foster care children, their histories, adverse experiences, socioemotional development, strategies to manage behaviour, unique needs, and encouraging their resiliency and success in school. To ensure the soundness of the handbook, 2 education liaisons at a Family and Child Services agency within Ontario and a former child and service social worker from Manitoba reviewed the first draft and provided comments on the validity of the content and the potential usability of the handbook for educators. Suggestions and comments provided by these experts were used to enhance the final product of the handbook.

A school-based education programme to reduce salt intake in children and their families (School-EduSalt): protocol of a cluster randomised controlled trial

The current salt intake is very high for children as well as adults in China. A reduction in salt intake is one of the most cost-effective measures to curb the rapidly growing disease burden attributed to blood pressure and cardiovascular disease in the Chinese population. A lower salt diet starting from childhood has the potential to prevent the development of such conditions. The School-EduSalt (School-based Education Programme to Reduce Salt) study aims to determine whether an education programme targeted at school children can lower salt intake in children and their families.

Negotiating and creating intercultural relations: Chinese immigrant children in New Zealand early childhood education centres

A multiple-case study investigation of the experiences of eight Chinese immigrant children in New Zealand early childhood centres suggested that the immigrant children’s learning experiences in their first centre can be understood as a process of negotiating and creating intercultural relations. The children’s use of family cultural tools, such as the Chinese language, was a distinctive feature of their learning experiences, simultaneously revealing and extending their exploration of the intercultural practices and their establishment of a sense of belonging. In the presence of Chinese-speaking peers who acted as ‘bridges’ and ‘boundary objects’, the Chinese language was actively used by the immigrant children in English-speaking early childhood centres and, as a result, they created intercultural relations which: (i) bridged the two cultures; (ii) brought the cultures into convergence; (iii) enabled the children to claim group identity; and (iv) battled intercultural constraints. The absence of Chinese speakers, on the other hand, constrained possibilities for intercultural relations. The focus on intercultural relations in this study is expected to lead to educational initiatives to support the incorporation of diverse cultures in early childhood services.

Specific Features of the Education of Muslim Children in the Czech Republic

The paper tackles the requirements of the Muslim children’s parents on a change of the form of their teaching in various types of schools in the Czech Republic and the way in which the schools cope with these requirements.

Early childhood education : the natural starting point for environmental education

Young children are most vulnerable to, and most at risk from, environmental and sustainability challenges. Early education investments aimed at addressing such issues, until recently however, have been neglected or under-rated. Fortunately, this is changing. A groundswell of practitioner interest in early childhood environmental education/ education for sustainability is emerging, in contrast to the ‘patches of green’ that have characterised previous decades. Indeed, an international coalition for early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) is beginning to develop, evidenced by The Gothenburg Recommendations on Education for Sustainable Development (2008) that identifies early childhood, within a framework of lifelong learning, as a ‘natural starting point’ for all ongoing education for sustainability. This document is important as it is the first international statement to explicitly identify ECEfS as contributing to education for sustainability. The next challenge for ECEfS is for practitioner mobilisation to be matched by research activity aimed at broadening and deepening practice-based responses. This is the next exciting frontier in the legitimisation of ECEfS.

An educator's perspective of Dr. Feingold's K-P (Kaiser- Permanents) elimination diet for hyperkinetic children and others

Do evaluation of the literature and a regional observational report support Dr. Feingold's claim that the K-P (Kaiser-Permanente) elimination diet improves the behaviours of hyperkinetic children, and others? Dr. Feingold suggests that some hyperkinetic children, and other children as well, are genetically predisposed to intolerance of food additives, particularly food colours and flavours. He claims that the K-P diet, that eliminates salicylates and artificial food colours and flavours, improves the hyperkinetic child's behaviour, muscle co-ordination, and scholastic performance. Public acceptance of the K-P diet has outstripped acceptance in the medical and scientific communities. Evaluation of available data and additional studies are needed to arrive at a conclusion of acceptance or rejection of the K-P diet for hyperkinetic children and others. My interest in the K-P elimination diet for hyperkinetic children is educational. My experience as an elementary school teacher in special education and in the classroom from K-8 has taught me that attentiveness is crucial to learning. Hyperkinesis appears to impair a child's ability to attend. Learning problems appear, followed by behavioural and social problems. l If we accept the possibility of a relationship between diet and attentiveness, and attentiveness and school behaviours, then the diet-behaviour link could be of lay importance. For instance, if a diet such as the K-P diet could do what is claimed, substantial benefits could accrue to the child. One could, for example, improve a child's behaviours. One could identify attending disturbances early in the child's education, possibly minimizing, or eliminating future difficulties in school. Finally, the greatest benefit may be the fulfillment of the basic goal of our Ontario schools, that the eh~ld-,lIla1p.evelop happily and competently within our educational framework. 2 This thesis reports evidence from the literature and from a regional observational investigation to determine the possibility of a link between the behaviours of children and Dr. Feingold's K-P elimination diet. The literature research examines (1) Dr. Feingold's concept of H-LD, (2) his K-P elimination diet, and (3) the response from three sectors, medicine, science, and the public. The regional investigation examines the observed behaviours of nine children in Regional Niagara during a nine-month period on the K-P diet.

Exploratory study : exploring the effectiveness of a literacy-based intervention with children with language impairments

Research points clearly to the need for all concerned stakeholders to adopt a preventative approach while intervening with children who are at-risk for future reading disabilities. Research has indicated also that a particular sub-group of children at-risk for reading impairments include preschool children with language impairments (Catts, 1993). Preschool children with language impairments may have difficulties with emergent literacy skills - important prerequisite skills necessary for successful formal reading. Only in the past decade have researchers begun to study the effects of emergent literacy intervention on preschool children with language impairments. As such, the current study continues this investigation of how to effectively implement an emergent literacy therapy aimed at supporting preschool children with language impairments. In addition to this, the current study explores emergent literacy intervention within an applied clinical setting. The setting, presents a host of methodological and theoretical challenges - challenges that will advance the field of understanding children within naturalistic settings. This exploratory study included thirty-eight participants who were recruited from Speech Services Niagara, a local preschool speech and language program. Using a between-group pre- and posttest design, this study compared two intervention approaches - an experimental emergent literacy intervention and a traditional language intervention. The experimental intervention was adopted from Read It Again! (Justice, McGinty, Beckman, & Kilday, 2006) and the traditional language intervention was based on the traditional models of language therapy typically used in preschool speech and language models across Ontario. 5 Results indicated that the emergent literacy intervention was superior to the ,t..3>~, ~\., ;./h traditional language therapy in improving the children's alphabet knowledge, print and word awareness and phonological awareness. Moreover, results revealed that children with more severe language impairments require greater support and more explicit instruction than children with moderate language impairments. Another important finding indicated that the effects of the preschool emergent literacy intervention used in this study may not be sustainable as children enter grade one. The implications of this study point to the need to support preschool children with language impairments with intensive emergent literacy intervention that extends beyond preschool into formal educational settings.

Field effectiveness of stimulus equivalence for teaching reading skills to children with autism

Stimulus equivalence involves teaching two conditional discriminations that share one stimulus in common and testing all possible conditional discriminations not taught (Saunders & Green, 1999). Despite considerable research in the laboratory, applied studies of stimulus equivalence have been limited (Vause, Martin, Marion, & Sakko, 2005). This study investigated the field-effectiveness of stimulus equivalence in teaching reading skills to children with Autism. Participants were four children with Autism receiving centre-based intensive behavioural intervention (lBI) treatment. Three of the participants, who already matched pictures to their dictated names, demonstrated six to eight more emergent performances after being taught only to match written words to the same names. One participant struggled with the demands of the study and his participation was discontinued. Results suggest that stimulus equivalence provided an effective and efficient teaching strategy for three of the four participants in this study.

Funding special education provision by means of discriminant function analysis

This thesis is concerned with the development of a funding mechanism, the Student Resource Index, which has been designed to resolve a number of difficulties which emerged following the introduction of integration or inclusion as an alternative means of providing educational support to students with disabilities in the Australian State of Victoria. Prior to 1984, the year in which the major integration or inclusion initiatives were introduced, the great majority of students with disabilities were educated in segregated special schools, however, by 1992 the integration initiatives had been successful in including within regular classes approximately half of the students in receipt of additional educational assistance on the basis of disability. The success of the integration program brought with it a number of administrative and financial problems which were the subject of three government enquiries. Central to these difficulties was the development of a dual system of special education provision. On one hand, additional resources were provided for the students attending segregated special schools by means of weighted student ratios, with one teacher being provided for each six students attending a special school. On the other hand, the requirements of individual students integrated into regular schools were assessed by school-based committees on the basis of their perceived extra educational needs. The major criticism of this dual system of special education funding was that it created inequities in the distribution of resources both between the systems and also within the systems. For example, three students with equivalent needs, one of whom attended a special school and two of whom attended different regular schools could each be funded at substantially differing levels. The solution to these inequities of funding was seen to be in the development of a needs based funding device which encompassed all students in receipt of additional disability related educational support. The Student Resource Index developed in this thesis is a set of behavioural descriptors designed to assess degree of additional educational need across a number of disability domains. These domains include hearing, vision, communication, health, co-ordination (manual and mobility), intellectual capacity and behaviour. The completed Student Resource Index provides a profile of the students’ needs across all of these domains and as such addresses the multiple nature of many disabling conditions. The Student Resource Index was validated in terms of its capacity to predict the ‘known’ membership or the type of special school which some 1200 students in the sample currently attended. The decision to use the existing special school populations as the criterion against which the Student Resource Index was validated was based on the premise that the differing resource levels of these schools had been historically determined by expert opinion, industrial negotiation and reference to other special education systems as the most reliable estimate of the enrolled students’ needs. When discriminant function analysis was applied to some 178 students attending one school for students with mild intellectual disability and one facility for students with moderate to severe intellectual disability the Student Resource Index was successful in predicting the student's known school in 92 percent of cases. An analysis of those students (8 percent) which the Student Resource Index had failed to predict their known school enrolment revealed that 13 students had, for a variety of reasons, been inappropriately placed in these settings. When these students were removed from the sample the predictive accuracy of the Student Resource Index was raised to 96 percent of the sample. By comparison the domains of the Vineland Adaptive Behaviour Scale accurately predicted known enrolments of 76 percent of the sample. By way of replication discriminant function analysis was then applied to the Student Resource Index profiles of 518 students attending Day Special Schools (Mild Intellectual Disability) and 287 students attending Special Developmental Schools (Moderate to Severe Intellectual Disability). In this case, the Student Resource Index profiles were successful in predicting the known enrolments of 85 percent of students. When a third group was added, 147 students attending Day Special Schools for students with physical disabilities, the Student Resource Index predicted known enrolments in 80 percent of cases. The addition of a fourth group of 116 students attending Day Special Schools (Hearing Impaired) to the discriminant analysis led to a small reduction in predictive accuracy from 80 percent to 78 percent of the sample. A final analysis which included students attending a School for the Deaf-Blind, a Hospital School and a Social and Behavioural Unit was successful in predicting known enrolments in 71 percent of the 1114 students in the sample. For reasons which are expanded upon within the thesis it was concluded that the Student Resource Index when used in conjunction with discriminant function analysis was capable of isolating four distinct groups on the basis of their additional educational needs. If the historically determined and varied funding levels provided to these groups, inherent in the cash equivalent of the staffing ratios of Day Special Schools (Mild Intellectual Disability), Special Development Schools (Moderate to Severe Intellectual Disability), Day Special Schools (Physical Disability) and Day Special Schools (Hearing Impairment) are accepted as reasonable reflections of these students’ needs these funding levels can be translated into funding bands. These funding bands can then be applied to students in segregated or inclusive placements. The thesis demonstrates that a new applicant for funding can be introduced into the existing data base and by the use of discriminant function analysis be allocated to one of the four groups. The analysis is in effect saying that this new student’s profile of educational needs has more in common with Group A than with the members of Groups B, C, or D. The student would then be funded at Group A level. It is immaterial from a funding point of view whether the student decides to attend a segregated or inclusive setting. The thesis then examines the impact of the introduction of Student Resource Index based funding upon the current funding of the special schools in one of the major metropolitan regions. Overall, such an initiative would lead to a reduction of 1.54 percent of the total funding accruing to the region’s special schools.