Fostering At-Risk Kindergarten Children's Number Sense

A 9-month training experiment evaluated whether computer-assisted discovery learning of arithmetic regularities can facilitate kindergartners’ fluency with the easiest sums. After a pretest, kindergartners with at least one risk factor (n = 28) were randomly assigned to either a structured add-0/1 training condition, which focused on recognizing the n + 0/0 + n = n and the n + 1/1 + n = the number-after-n rules, or an active control group. Using pretest fluency as the covariate, ANCOVAs revealed that the structured add-0/1 group significantly outperformed the control group on both practiced and unpracticed (transfer) n + 0/0 + n and n + 1/1 + n items at the delayed posttest and had significantly larger gains in mathematics achievement. Key instructional implications include: Early intervention that targets discovering rules for adding with 0 and 1 and family-specific developmental prerequisites is feasible and more effective than typical classroom instruction in promoting fluency with such basic sums. Such rules may be a critically important bridge between informal and formal mathematics.     

Fitting the world to constructs: The role of activity in meaning making

Abstract

The authors underscore that construing is not simply a matter of passively anticipating events. Meaning making is understood more fully as a dialectic involving anticipation as well as participation, accommodation as well as assimilation. Factors that may obscure this more active view of the meaning-making process are discussed, and illustrations of the role of activity in construing are presented.     

Teaching with Complicating Views: Beyond the Survey,Behind the Pro and Con

In this article I propose a method of selecting and assigning readings in the religious studies or theology classroom, such that these readings complicate one another, rather than standing in opposition or as simple alternatives. Such a strategy emulates key pedagogical insights of twelfth‐century sentence collection, an activity at the very heart of the earliest universities in Europe. It also draws support from the theories of intellectual development advanced by William G. Perry, Jr. and the Women's Ways of Knowing Collaborative. Both precedents suggest a principle of “complicating views” that can be flexibly employed in a variety of ways and diverse pedagogical contexts, as illustrated by examples from several classes. Such strategies aim to avoid reinforcing intellectual patterns of dualism or undifferentiated relativism; instead, they attempt to promote students' ability to integrate discordant voices and to appreciate diverse points of view, while also staking their own claims relative to them.     

Natural Doubts: Williams's Diagnosis Of Scepticism

Michael Williams believes that scepticism about the externalworld seems compelling only because the considerations that underpin it are thoughtto be ``mere platitudes' about e.g., the nature and source of human knowledge, and hence,that if it shown through a ``theoretical diagnosis' that it does not rest upon suchplatitudes, but contentious theoretical considerations that we are no means bound toaccept, we can simply dismiss the absurd sceptical conclusion. Williams argues thatscepticism does presuppose two extremely contentious doctrines, however, he admits thatif these doctrines are themselves motivated by ``platitudes' then scepticism follows. Iaddress Williams's arguments for thinking scepticism must presuppose these doctrines,and argue that he overlooks a way that they can be seen as motivated by mere platitudes.Thus, I conclude that William's novel rejection of scepticism fails.     

Psychotic dream-related aggression: A critical review and proposal

The relationship among parasomnias, sleep-related violence (SRV), and psychosis has neither been reported nor studied. The authors introduce the phenomenon of psychotic dream-related aggression (PDRA) and, through a review of the research on manifest dreams, the continuity of thinking across the sleep–wake cycle, and SRV, argue for its inclusion alongside the parasomnias of DSM-IV. Five cases are presented that illustrate this phenomenon, usually a male diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia whose violent act toward another was closely associated with the manifest content of his nocturnal dreams and his inability to test reality. Differential diagnostic criteria are proposed to separate PDRA from other parasomnias that may be related to violence. Treatment and forensic implications are discussed.     

Research on Women of Color

Evidence that women of color are dealt with as anomalies in psychological research is discussed in order to: (a) inform researchers about the omissions, (b) stimulate interest in increased inclusion of women of color among research populations, and (c) demonstrate the need for increased diversity in research paradigms. It is noted that research paradigms directed at the study of the "universal woman" have in actuality focused on White middle class populations. This article examines the methodological and theoretical transformations that have occurred in the literature, and evaluates the extent to which researchers have successfully incorporated ethnicity into the study of gender issues. This is a call for an examination of women's experiences relative to ethnicity and a paradigmatic shift in the assumptions about what is worthy or appropriate for investigation.