Managua Relief

The Miami News. Mon., March 19, 1973. Managuan Relief. Miami News Staff Photo by George Kochaniec. Raymond and Connie Schultz with toys. (Back) "Focuses on kids" article On December 23, 12:29 a.m. local time in Managua, Nicaragua, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake occurred. The earth caused widespread damage among Managua, the capital city. In Managua, 5,000 residents were killed, 20,000 were injured and over 250,000 were left homeless. In Miami, residents and relief organizations focused on helping children. Wife of General Arturo Somoza pleaded on efforts on gathering sporting goods and toys for Managua’s young people. Relief committees purchased 230 dozen balls – basketball, rubber, and volley, soccer, and others. Nearly $500 came from students in Hialeah High School. Jump ropes and jacks were donated from a sorority at Florida International University. Arrangements were made to bring 44,000 pounds of baby formula and canned meat and 13,000 pounds of medicine. Many of Miami’s corporations, associations, and residents contributed to the Managuan Relief effort. Source: The Miami News, March 19, 1973 by Lynn Feigenbaum

Mother-Infant Reciprocity and the Development of Joint Attention in 12 Month Old Infants

Social contingency is the ability to connect social stimuli, such as those behaviors performed by oneself and those performed by others. Detecting social contingencies occurs by means of reciprocity through shared experiences with others. Reciprocity denotes a circumstance in which two individuals participate in a collaborative exchange, and is distinguished from an event in which two individuals engage in separate, unrelated activities. Specifically, reciprocity incorporates joint attention (JA), which occurs when two individuals simultaneously and visually attend to the same item. JA is facilitated by gazing and pointing, whereby one individual initiates the action and the second individual follows suit by, for example, gaze-following. However, little is known about the role the mother may play in the development of JA. The purpose of our study was to investigate social contingency between mothers and infants engaging in dyadic interactions. Thirty-three 12-month-old typically developing infants (M = 12.2, SD = .19; N = 19 males) were filmed for 10 minutes during free play with their mothers and toys provided by an experimenter. Reciprocity was measured by coding mother-infant interactions when a precise chain of events occurred: (1) mother initiated a bid by introducing a toy/activity or request to the infant, (2) infant accepted the bid/request by engaging in play with the given toy/activity, and (3) mother persisted by continuing to engage in play with said toy/activity. We computed a Pearson Correlation to assess the relation between the mothers’ initiations of JA and their infants’ responses to JA. We found a moderately positive correlation between the two variables (r= 0.37, p<.05). Our findings suggest that reciprocity, an important component of social relationships, during parent-infant dyads may serve as a scaffold for joint attention abilities, which have been linked to social and language development.

A injunção em livros didáticos de língua portuguesa do 4º e 5º anos do ensino fundamental

This investigation aims at identifying, describing, analyzing and interpreting how textbooks on Portuguese Language approach, beginning with the linguistic material, the effects of sense in texts that predominately employ injunctives. The corpus of this study is comprised of six collections of textbooks on Portuguese Language, which are part of the National Program Guide for Textbooks (PNLD) from 2010, adopted by the public schools in the city of Natal and the object of study for the Read/Tell Project of the Educational Observatory of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). Textbooks from the 4th and 5th grades, Elementary School, were analyzed – 12 copies total. For the analysis, we selected 16 writing proposals of injunctive texts. Our study is based on theoretical discussions by Adam (2001a, 2001b) with regard to the genre of: inciting to action. In addition, we consider the work of Koch and Fávero (1987), Koch and Elias (2009), Marcuschi (2003, 2008) Pery-Woodly (2001), Rodrigues (2013), Travaglia (1992, 2007) and Rosa (2007). With respect to discussions on textbooks, we refer to Choppin (2004, 2009), Batista (2003, 2009), Rojo e Batista (2005), and with regard to Portuguese Language textbooks specifically, we consider Soares (1998, 2001, 2004) and Bunzen and Rojo (2005). The proposals for writing in injunctive texts, in the collections analyzed, are tips/recommendations, instructions on making toys and/or games, travel itineraries and cooking recipes, such that 69% of them appear in the 4 th grade textbooks and only 31% appear in the 5th grade textbooks. With respect to the linguistic elements responsible for the construction of directive speech acts and the effects on sense produced by them, the data shows that 50% of the writing proposals do not exploit linguistic categories that implicate the effects on sense using injunctives, or rather, there is no work done dealing with linguistic analysis, while 33% mention the imperative mode and 17% investigate infinitive verbs. In this dissertation, the textual plans of incitation to act genres were studied and in them the linguistic materiality that vehicles injunction. This study might contribute to the improvement of Portuguese language teaching in what concerns the articulation of grammatical studies to textual sequences/types, mainly in the case of Portuguese language textbooks for the 4th and 5th grades of Elementary School.

Non-traditional day care center

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Non-traditional day care center

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Day care center

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Non-traditional day care center

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Child with progressive toy

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Granddaughter with Grandfather

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Non-traditional day care center

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Non-sexist toy display at NOW Conference

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Non-traditional day care center

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

HELPING YOUTH WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER DEVELOP SOCIAL COMPETENCE IN COMMUNITY-BASED SETTINGS

The purpose of the current dissertation is to identify the features of effective interventions by exploring the experiences of youth with ASD who participate in such interventions, through two intervention studies (Studies 1 and 2) and one interview study (Study 3). Studies 1 and 2 were designed to support the development of social competence of youth with ASD through Structured Play with LEGO TM (Study 1, 12 youths with ASD, ages 7–12) and Minecraft TM (Study 2, 4 youths with ASD, ages 11–13). Over the course of the sessions, the play of the youth developed from parallel play (children playing alone, without interacting) to co-operative play (playing together with shared objectives). The results of Study 2 showed that rates of initiations and levels of engagement increased from the first session to the final session. In Study 3, 12 youths with ASD (ages 10–14) and at least one of their parents were interviewed to explore what children and their parents want from programs designed to improve social competence, which activities and practices were perceived to promote social competence by the participants, and which factors affected their decisions regarding these programs. The adolescents and parents looked for programs that supported social development and emotional wellbeing, but did not always have access to the programs they would have preferred, with factors such as cost and location reducing their options. Three overarching themes emerged through analysis of the three studies: (a) interests of the youth; (b) structure, both through interactions and instruction; and (c) naturalistic settings. Adolescents generally engage more willingly in interventions that incorporate their interests, such as play with Minecraft TM in Study 2. Additionally, Structured Play and structured instruction were crucial components of providing safe and supportive contexts for the development of social competence. Finally, skills learned in naturalistic settings tend to be applied more successfully in everyday situations. The themes are analysed through the lens of Vygotsky’s (1978) perspectives on learning, play, and development. Implications of the results for practitioners and researchers are discussed.

David Bowie, brinquedos adultos e outras dimensões estranhas do universo de Twin Peaks

The article is based fundamentally on the authors' participation in the International Conference “I’ll See You Again in 25 Years: The return of Twin Peaks and generations of cult TV”, held on 21 and 22 May 2015, at the School of Arts and Media, at the University of Salford in England. Starting from there, it makes an irregular discussion of issues and working angles around the television series launched in 1990, a work by David Lynch and Mark Frost. Some issues gain particular attention: 1) the relations of the series to the album Outside (1995) by David Bowie; 2) the population of adult toys related to the series, as derivative products, driven by fans in their most playful exercises of affection and remembrance. Despite the article’s intentionally adopted tone of an “academic report”, it can evoke rich theoretical questions in a field of objects that are in a complex upgrade process and have to be subsequently treated according to more regular methodological procedures, seeking further theoretical and epistemological clarifications

Cooperative or collaborative learning: Is there a difference in university students’ perceptions?

The hypothesis that the same educational objective, raised as cooperative or collaborative learning in university teaching does not affect students’ perceptions of the learning model, leads this study. It analyses the reflections of two students groups of engineering that shared the same educational goals implemented through two different methodological active learning strategies: Simulation as cooperative learning strategy and Problem-based Learning as a collaborative one. The different number of participants per group (eighty-five and sixty-five, respectively) as well as the use of two active learning strategies, either collaborative or cooperative, did not show differences in the results from a qualitative perspective.