The Use of a Computer Graphic Organizer for Persuasive Composition Writing by Hispanic Students with Specific Learning Disabilities

Many culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) struggle with the writing process. Particularly, they have difficulties developing and expanding ideas, organizing and elaborating sentences, and revising and editing their compositions (Graham, Harris, & Larsen, 2001; Myles, 2002). Computer graphic organizers offer a possible solution to assist them in their writing. This study investigated the effects of a computer graphic organizer on the persuasive writing compositions of Hispanic middle school students with SLD. A multiple baseline design across subjects was used to examine its effects on six dependent variables: number of arguments and supporting details, number and percentage of transferred arguments and supporting details, planning time, writing fluency, syntactical maturity (measured by T-units, the shortest grammatical sentence without fragments), and overall organization. Data were collected and analyzed throughout baseline and intervention. Participants were taught persuasive writing and the writing process prior to baseline. During baseline, participants were given a prompt and asked to use paper and pencil to plan their compositions. A computer was used for typing and editing. Intervention required participants to use a computer graphic organizer for planning and then a computer for typing and editing. The planning sheets and written composition were printed and analyzed daily along with the time each participant spent on planning. The use of computer graphic organizers had a positive effect on the planning and persuasive writing compositions. Increases were noted in the number of supporting details planned, percentage of supporting details transferred, planning time, writing fluency, syntactical maturity in number of T-units, and overall organization of the composition. Minimal to negligible increases were noted in the mean number of arguments planned and written. Varying effects were noted in the percent of transferred arguments and there was a decrease in the T-unit mean length. This study extends the limited literature on the effects of computer graphic organizers as a prewriting strategy for Hispanic students with SLD. In order to fully gauge the potential of this intervention, future research should investigate the use of different features of computer graphic organizer programs, its effects with other writing genres, and different populations.

Increasing nurse's knowledge of neonatal pain assessment through inservice education program

Recognizing neonatal pain is a challenge for nurses working with newborns due to the complexity of the pain phenomenon. Pain is subjective, and infants lack the ability to communicate, and their pain is difficult to recognize. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of education on the NICU nurses' ability to assess neonatal pain. With a better understanding of pain theory and the effects of pain on the newborn the nurse will be better able to assess newborns with pain. Designed as a quasi-experimental one-group pretest and posttest study, the data was collected on a convenience sample of 49 registered nurses employed in the neonatal and special care nursery units at a Childrens Hospital in the Miami area. The nurses were surveyed on the assessment of neonatal pain using the General Information and Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire. After the initial survey, the nurses were inserviced on neonatal pain assessment using a one hour inservice education program. One week after the intervention the nurse was asked to complete the questionnaire again. Data analysis involved comparision of pre and post intervention findings using descriptive methods, t test, correlation coefficients, and ANOVA , where applicable. Findings revealed a significant ( p=.006) increase in nurse's knowledge of neonatal pain assessment after completing the educational inservice when comparing the pre-test and post-test results.

The utility of an integrated qualitative/quantitative data analytic strategy (IQ-DAS) to evaluate the impact of youth development interventions on positive qualitative change in the life course

This study reports one of the first controlled studies to examine the impact of a school based positive youth development program (Lerner, Fisher, & Weinberg, 2000) on promoting qualitative change in life course experiences as a positive intervention outcome. The study built on a recently proposed relational developmental methodological metanarrative (Overton, 1998) and advances in use of qualitative research methods (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). The study investigated the use the Life Course Interview (Clausen, 1998) and an integrated qualitative and quantitative data analytic strategy (IQDAS) to provide empirical documentation of the impact the Changing Lives Program on qualitative change in positive identity in a multicultural population of troubled youth in an alternative public high school. The psychosocial life course intervention approach used in this study draws its developmental framework from both psychosocial developmental theory (Erikson, 1968) and life course theory (Elder, 1998) and its intervention strategies from the transformative pedagogy of Freire's (1983/1970). Using the 22 participants in the Intervention Condition and the 10 participants in the Control Condition, RMANOVAs found significantly more positive qualitative change in personal identity for program participants relative to the non-intervention control condition. In addition, the 2X2X2X3 mixed design RMANOVA in which Time (pre, post) was the repeated factor and Condition (Intervention versus Control), Gender, and Ethnicity the between group factors, also found significant interactions for the Time by Gender and Time by Ethnicity. Moreover, the directionality of the basic pattern of change was positive for participants of both genders and all three ethnic groups. The pattern of the moderation effects also indicated a marked tendency for participants in the intervention group to characterize their sense of self as more secure and less negative at the end of the their first semester in the intervention, that was stable across both genders and all three ethnicities. The basic differential pattern of an increase in the intervention condition of a positive characterization of sense of self relative to both pre test and relative to the directionality of the movement of the non-intervention controls, was stable across both genders and all three ethnic groups.

Iniciação docente na educação infantil: cenários de uma cultura profissional

This paper focalizes the initial teacher socialization in the Infantile Education from the acknowledgement about that as a phase of a professional life cycle on distinguish of other steps in the teachers’ carrier. It is based on the studies of sociological and anthropological mark with the comprehension that the professional reality is equally constructed by daily practices of social interactions in the work environment. It aims understanding how the initial process of professional culture building of beginners in the infantile education occurs under a view toward to the organizational and dynamics aspects of the teacher activity (events, interactions, practices, wisdoms, tensions and dilemmas). This investigation assuming the orientations of an ethnographic type approach has been developed in a Municipal Center of Infantile Education (Centro Municipal de Educação Infantil) in the city of Natal, with daycare and pre-school. The participant subjects are four female teachers with less than five years in Infantile Education career. It has used a participant observation and a semi-structured interview in the data building that had interpreted through a content analysis and sources triangulation. It delineates three dimensions to the professional culture scenarios: the personal and formative profile of the subjects, the school daily and the teacher work management. The multiform character of the finds evidences that the professional culture of the novice teachers has been constituted from the confrontation with different situations of unpredictably in their emotions, routines and pedagogical and administrative difficulties, simultaneously to the dilemmas of child care and educate. The solitude feeling has been generating from the institutional and scholar organization, which offers no material and pedagogical conditions to the peers collaboration and discussion. Finally it means that teaching in the Infantile Education must been based on an expanding network relations, been indispensable to the beginners the support and orientation related to doubts, wistfulness and expectations as means of socializing and redefining their teaching practice

O erro produzido pelo aluno no contexto pedagógico: uma luz ou uma pedra no meio do caminho?

Student’s mistakes as viewed in a didactic and pedagogical perspective are a phenomenon inevitably observed in any context in which formal teaching-andlearning processes are taking place. Researchers have shown that such mistakes are viewed most of the times as undesirable and often as a consequence of lack of attention or poor commitment on the part of the student and rarely considered didactically useful. The object of our reflections in this work is exactly those mistakes, which are born in the entrails of the teaching-and-learning processes. It is our understanding that a mistake constitutes a tool which mediates knowledge and may therefore become a strong ally of the instructor’s actions in her/his teaching tasks and thus should be taken into the teacher’s best consideration. Understanding a mistake as so, we postulate that the teacher must face it as a possibility to be exploited rather than as a negative occurrence. Such an attitude on the part of the teacher would undoubtedly render profitable didactic situations. To deepen the understanding of our aim, we took a case study on the perception of senior college students in the program of Mathematics at UFRN in the year 2009, 2nd term. The reason of this choice is the fact that Mathematics is the field presenting traditionally the poorest records in terms of school grades. In this work we put forth data associated to ENEM1 , to the UFRN Vestibular2 and the undergraduate courses on Mathematics. The theoretical matrixes supporting our reflections in this thesis follow the ideas proposed by Castorina (1988); Davis e Espósito (1990); Aquino (1997); Luckesi (2006); Cury (1994; 2008); Pinto (2000); Torre (2007). To carry out the study, we applied a semi-structured questionnaire containing 14 questions, out of which 10 were open questions. The questions were methodologically based on the Thematic Analysis – One of the techniques for Content Analysis schemed by Bardin (1977) – and it was also used the computer program Modalisa 6.0 (A software designed by faculties the University of Paris VIII). The results indicate that most of the teachers training instructors in their pedagogical practice view the mistakes made by their students only as a guide for grading and, in this procedure, the student is frequently labeled as guilty. Conclusive analyses, therefore, signal to the necessity of orienting the teachers training instructors in the sense of building a new theoretical contemplation of the students’ mistakes and their pedagogical potentialities and so making those professionals perceive the importance of such mistakes, since they reveal gaps in the process of learning and provide valuable avenues for the teaching procedures.

Formação docente e conhecimento profissional: desafios para o ensino da matemática na EJA

As for the Education for Youth and Adult (EYA), the challenge of training these teachers is to provide tools to understand and act on the teaching of mathematics. It is realized just how special education in this modality and as such teaching is lacking in an adequate and solid training in the area of knowledge. One of the major problems affecting this type of education is the high dropout and failure rates, and lack of motivation among students. Thus the need to provide differentiated profile with a professional to teach youth and adults students, so that they are able to mobilize didactic-pedagogic knowledge, methodologies and theoretical frameworks that serve as a basis for school-developed teaching practice. This thesis aims to investigate how the math teacher, who acts in adult education from elementary school, has developed its didactic and pedagogical action, and that professional knowledge has been mobilized to teach? It has highlighted the importance of initial and continuing training and professionalization of teachers dedicated to this specific type of education, when teachers should be the protagonists of their professional development. The methodological approach was begun with a literature review, then the research was anchored mainly on the ideas by Gauthier, Nuñez and Ramalho (2004); Imbernon (2011), Garcia (2006); Perrenoud (2000); Tardif (2007 ); Haddad, Di Pierro (2000), D'Ambrosio (2002), Mendes (2006, 2009), Freire (1996, 2011), and other theorists and official documents of field of adult education here and abroad. That work leads us to the understanding of the present moment from a foray into historical and conceptual aspects, as well as educational policies of EYA, as well as training, professionalism, knowledge and skills necessary for professional practice. Then, the subjects and the locus of research and the instrument for data collection were set up and led by the object of study. To consolidate the study was selected a sample of 27 mathematics teachers, working in municipal EYA Network Teaching of Natal. This research is in an investigative nature, within the quantitative and qualitative approaches focused on the responses of study subjects from the content analysis by Bardin (1977). Results from the analyzes have revealed that the initial training of mathematics teachers of adult education needs to be reconfigured in order to formalize the knowledge base of professionals (the mathematical content, didactics and professional knowledge). Thus the study suggests that this base knowledge is embedded in the pedagogical practice of these teachers, so that there is a completion of the teaching and learning process for young people and adults. The study also has pointed out that there is a need for teachers to participate in a continuing education plan that prioritizes learning situations of mathematical content considering the previous knowledge of the students. The final analyses thus indicate that knowledge of mathematics and the didactic and pedagogical strategies to be mobilized by teachers must be able to motivate the students in such a way that they feel need to incorporate in their knowledge, mathematical knowledge capable of making them more likely to have access to social, economic and labor market