Hearing-aid volume control adjustment by deaf children

This paper examines hearing aid volume control adjustments by deaf children. Specifically the study looks at how accurately deaf children set the volume controls of their hearing aids, if deaf children are able to comprehend the effects of talker-microphone distance on stimulus intensity, and do deaf children use their hearing aids to monitor their own voices. Access to thesis is restricted. Contact Archives and Rare Books.

Children's lives, children's futures: A study of children starting secondary school

This title presents a fascinating analysis of how children in their first year of high school feel about their schools, its place in their lives and its role in their futures. This highly topical monograph focuses on how children in their first year of high school feel about school, its place in their lives and its role in their futures. The theoretical context of the study is the focus in educational studies on children's voice and children's active role in education, together with the focus in the sociology of childhood on children as active constructors of their lives and childhood as a subject of serious study. The importance of young people's life plans and the alignment between education and ambitions was recognized in the Sloan Foundation study of American teenagers. In many Western societies there is concern that children from less advantaged social backgrounds have limited aspirations, and are disproportionately unlikely to go to university. This book is highly relevant to understanding the nature of children's engagement with education, the choices and constraints they experience and the reasons some young people fail to take advantage of educational opportunities. "Continuum Studies in Educational Research" (CSER) is a major new series in the field of educational research. Written by experts and scholars for experts and scholars, this ground-breaking series focuses on research in the areas of comparative education, history, lifelong learning, philosophy, policy, post-compulsory education, psychology and sociology. Based on cutting edge research and written with lucidity and passion, the CSER series showcases only those books that really matter in education - studies that are major, that will be remembered for having made a difference.

Describing the design of children’s books: an analytical approach

Descriptions of graphic language are relatively rare compared to descriptions of spoken language. This paper presents an analytical approach to studying the visual attributes and conventions in children’s reading and information books. The approach comprises development of a checklist to record ‘features’ of visual organization, such as those relevant to typography and layout, illustration and the material qualities of the books, and consideration of the contextual factors that influence the ways that features have been organized or treated. The contextual factors particularly relevant to children’s reading include educational policy, legibility and vision research and typeface development and availability. The approach to analysis and description is illustrated with examples of children’s reading and information books from the Typographic Design for Children database, which also demonstrates an application of the checklist approach.

Explaining history to children: Otto and Marie Neurath’s work on the ‘Visual history of mankind’

This essay traces the development of Otto Neurath’s ideas that led to the publication of one of the first series of children’s books produced by the Isotype Institute in the late 1940s, the Visual History of Mankind. Described in its publicity material as ‘new in content’ and ‘new in method’, it embodied much of Otto Neurath’s thinking about visual education, and also coincided with other educational ideas in the UK in the 1930s and 1940s. It exemplified the Isotype Institute’s approach: teamwork, thinking about the needs of younger readers, clear explanation, and accessible content. Further, drawing on correspondence, notes and drawings from the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection at the University of Reading, the essay presents insights to the making of the books and the people involved, the costs of production and the influence of this on design decisions, and how the books were received by teachers and children.

Let’s look at leeks! Picture books increase toddlers’ willingness to look at, taste and consume unfamiliar vegetables

Repeatedly looking at picture books about fruits and vegetables with parents enhances young children’s visual preferences towards the foods in the book (Houston-Price et al, 2009) and influences their willingness to taste these foods (Houston-Price, Butler & Shiba, 2009). This article explores whether the effects of picture book exposure are affected by infants' initial familiarity with and liking for the foods presented. In two experiments parents of 19- to 26-month-old toddlers were asked to read a picture book about a liked, disliked or unfamiliar fruit or vegetable with their child every day for two weeks. The impact of the intervention on both infants’ visual preferences and their eating behaviour was determined by the initial status of the target food, with the strongest effects for foods that were initially unfamiliar. Most strikingly, toddlers consumed more of the unfamiliar vegetable they had seen in their picture book than of a matched control vegetable. Results confirm the potential for picture books to play a positive role in encouraging healthy eating in your children.

Vocabulary acquisition in young children: the role of the story

Sharing storybooks with babies increases their future achievements in literacy, especially in reading (Hall, 2001; Moore and Wade, 1997, 2003; Scarborough et al., 1991; Wade and Moore, 1998; Wells, 1985). This study, focusing on case studies of two 20-month-old children, attempts to identify the role the storybook plays in children’s vocabulary acquisition. Their mothers adopted a regime of daily reading of specific picture books over a six-week period, and recorded the children’s acquisition of new vocabulary, in order to explore what specific contribution these texts made to the children’s speech. The findings demonstrate that storybooks form one source of children’s newly-acquired vocabulary. Factors that might account for this were more difficult to determine through a study of this scale.

From Pettson and Findus to Festus and Mercury...and Back Again: A Comparison of Four Translations of Sven Nordqvist's Picture Books

In order to examine how children's literature might be translated, two different English translations of two Swedish picture books have been analyzed. The original Swedish books are Rävjakten and Pannkakstårtan by Sven Nordqvist. Rävjakten was translated as The Fox Hunt in 1988 and as The Fox Hunt in 2000. Pannkakstårtan was translated as Pancake Pie in 1985 and as The Birthday Cake in 1999. Literary translation in general, specific translation issues for children's literature, and trends in international English style have been considered. Analysis of the four texts has been made, with consideration given to the following areas: changes in illustrations, layout, or format; text changes; lexical choices; and retention, deletion, or modification of names and culturally specific references. The analysis revealed that the following tendencies were true for the later translations: foreignization of the text, word-for-word translation of the text, and a neutral international English variety.

Dissonant Voices : Philosophy, Children's Literature, and Perfectionist Education

Dissonant Voices has a twofold aspiration. First, it is a philosophical treatment of everyday pedagogical interactions between children and their elders, between teachers and pupils. More specifically it is an exploration of the possibilities to go on with dissonant voices that interrupt established practices – our attunement – in behaviour, practice and thinking. Voices that are incomprehensible or expressions that are unacceptable, morally or otherwise. The text works on a tension between two inclinations: an inclination to wave off, discourage, or change an expression that is unacceptable or unintelligible; and an inclination to be tolerant and accept the dissonant expression as doing something worthwhile, but different. The second aspiration is a philosophical engagement with children’s literature. Reading children’s literature becomes a form of philosophising, a way to explore the complexity of a range of philosophical issues. This turn to literature marks a dissatisfaction with what philosophy can accomplish through argumentation and what philosophy can do with a particular and limited set of concepts for a subject, such as ethics. It is a way to go beyond philosophising as the founding of theories that justify particular responses. The philosophy of dissonance and children’s literature becomes a way to destabilise justifications of our established practices and ways of interacting. The philosophical investigations of dissonance are meant to make manifest the possibilities and risks of engaging in interactions beyond established agreement or attunements. Thinking of the dissonant voice as an expression beyond established practices calls for improvisation. Such improvisations become a perfectionist education where both the child and the elder, the teacher and the student, search for as yet unattained forms of interaction and take responsibility for every word and action of the interaction. The investigation goes through a number of picture books and novels for children such as Harry Potter, Garmann’s Summer, and books by Shaun Tan, Astrid Lindgren and Dr. Seuss as well narratives by J.R.R. Tolkien, Henrik Ibsen, Jane Austen and Henry David Thoreau. These works of fiction are read in conversation with philosophical works of, and inspired by, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, their moral perfectionism and ordinary language philosophy.

'In Charge of the Truffula Seeds' : On Children's Literature, Rationality and Children's Voices in Philosophy

In this paper I investigate how philosophy can speak for children and how children can have a voice in philosophy and speak for philosophy. I argue that we should understand children as responsible rational individuals who are involved in their own philosophical inquiries and who can be involved in our own philosophical investigations-not because of their rational abilities, but because we acknowledge them as conversational partners, acknowledge their reasons as reasons, and speak for them as well as let them speak for us and our rational community. In order to argue this I turn, first, to Gareth Matthews' philosophy of childhood and suggest a reconstruction of some of his concepts in line with the philosophy of Stanley Cavell. Second, in order to examine more closely our conceptions of rationality and our pictures of children, I consider the children's books, The Lorax and Where is My Sister? and Henrik Ibsen's play, The Wild Duck.

Dialogic reading of a novel for children: effects on text comprehension

Estudos experimentais têm demonstrado efeitos positivos da leitura dialógica de livros ilustrados (leitura em voz alta intercalada com prompts e feedback para verbalizações por parte do ouvinte) sobre o vocabulário e a expressão verbal de crianças pequenas. Este estudo verificou o efeito da leitura dialógica sobre a compreensão textual de um romance infanto-juvenil por três crianças de 7-8 anos, utilizando um delineamento de sujeito único. Na Condição A, o texto era lido sem intervenções. Na Condição B, a leitura era intercalada com intervenções dialógicas baseadas nas funções narrativas presentes no texto. As medidas de compreensão mostraram um desempenho superior na Condição B para os dois participantes submetidos ao delineamento B-A-B, mas não para o participante submetido ao delineamento A-B-A. São discutidas possíveis interações da leitura dialógica com características do gênero textual e a necessidade de replicações sistemáticas com um maior número de sessões e reversões das condições.

Are there signs of change in gendered language use in children's early reading material?

In this study we investigate the relative frequencies of female and male terms in early reading material for children using the Children’s Printed Word Database as a resource. As roles of females and males have changed over time it is of interest to see if there has been a corresponding change in representations of females and males in children’s books. We carried out analyses regarding different words related to gender. Except for nouns referring to relatives, we found in all word groups a preponderance of male terms. The imbalance of male and female pronouns is equivalent to that reported by Carroll, Davies, and Richman (1971) in a frequency count of printed words in children’s book in the USA conducted some 40 years ago. The results are discussed in terms of gender inequality in reading materials and the development of social mores and stereotypical ideas.