Class Meetings with a teacher and group of young children (ages 3-5) provide a forum for creative group problem solving, both establishing a community of learners and developing oral language skills. The construction of a child's oral language and problem-solving skills is far reaching and is an underlying theme in many areas of social and emotional growth including moral development, character development, conflict resolution, identification of values, self esteem, and academic improvement. The theoretical framework for this study is based on various scholarly sources including those concerned with early childhood group learning, oral language, and problem solving.During this 12 week action research study, both teacher-talk and children's problem solving strategies were addressed to answer the following research questions: What roles do teachers play in Class Meetings? What types of teacher talk are used to influence student thinking and talk within Class Meetings? What problems are identified in a Class Meeting with young children? What problem-solving strategies do young children develop within Class Meetings? The research design and methodology include videotaping, audio taping Class Meetings and transcribing these interactions with preschool children in an early childhood classroom setting.Results indicate that during this study, attendance at the Class Meetings increased, and that young children, when given the opportunity to self-select, chose to attend the Class Meetings over other available activities. Also, this study suggests that the Class Meeting model and effective teacher-talk support student oral language, the use of positive communication, problem identification, and the development of problem solving strategies. Implications for early childhood educators, teacher educators, policymakers and researchers are discussed.

The goal of this inductive study was to identify factors that facilitate and inhibit binational collaboration in the recovery of endangered species in the northern Mexico borderlands, focusing on the Mexican wolf (Canis lupus baileyi). A conceptual model was developed using qualitative techniques, providing the basis for design of a mail survey. The target population included participants with experience in recovery efforts for over a dozen species at risk in the region. Long interviews were recorded with 44 participants from Mexico and the United States. Thematic hierarchical analysis was used to develop a conceptual model of how interviewees talked about factors influencing binational collaboration. Issues were classified in five thematic clusters: project, organization, people, resources, culture/history. The survey was used to conduct a needs assessment, measuring respondents' attitudes about the relative priority of issues identified in the conceptual model. High priority needs were identified from each thematic cluster: (a) equitable participation in project design and implementation, (b) continuity of personnel, (c) coordination of federal, state and local efforts, (d) increased funding, managed with accountability, and (e) exchange visits to facilitate understanding of diverse perspectives. Responses to almost half the survey items indicated accord among the sample of respondents, providing a basis for shared common ground. The nature of discord was within the range of "manageable", with no clear polarization of attitudes measured. This exploratory data analysis suggested that the structure of the conceptual model developed from the Mexican wolf case study was generally a valid basis for future deductive analysis and reflection by practitioners. For 82% of 22 statements of need, priorities of participants in the Mexican wolf recovery efforts did not differ significantly from other respondents. Nationality (of respondents) significantly affected priority rankings for only 18% of the need statements. Significant effects of five demographic variables indicated that interactive effects should be examined in future multivariate analyses to determine how respondents' attitudes on issues related to priority rankings. Recommendations were provided for a more efficient and effective approach to collaborative problem-solving, engaging reflective practitioners from the private and public sectors in principled negotiation processes to better understand diverse perspectives.

Searching for information pervades a wide spectrum of human activity, including learning and problem solving. With recent changes in the amount of information available and the variety of means of retrieval, there is even more need to understand why some searchers are more successful than others. This study was undertaken to advance our understanding of expertise in seeking information on the Web by identifying strategies and attributes that will increase the chance of a successful search on the Web. A model that illustrated the relationship between strategies and attributes and a successful search was also created. The strategies were: Evaluation, Navigation, Affect, Metacognition, Cognition, and Prior knowledge. Attributes included Age, Sex, Years of experience, Computer knowledge, and Info-seeking knowledge. Success was defined as finding a target topic within 30 minutes. Participants were from three groups. Novices were 10 undergraduate pre-service teachers who were trained in pedagogy but not specifically in information seeking. Intermediates were nine final-year master's students who had received training on how to search but typically had not put heir knowledge into extensive practice. Experts were 10 highly experienced professional librarians working in a variety of settings including government, industry, and university. Participants' verbal protocols were transcribed verbatim into a text file and coded. These codes, along with Internet temporary files, a background questionnaire, and a post-task interview were the sources of the data. Since the variable of interest was the time to finding the topic, in addition to ANOVA and Pearson correlation, survival analysis was used to explore the data. The most significant differences in patterns of search between novices and experts were found in the Cognitive, Metacognitive, and Prior Knowledge strategies. Based on the fitted survival model, Typing Keyword, Criteria to evaluate sites, and Information-Seeking Kno

Thesis (Ph.D. (Clinical Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

Våra tre månader i Indien har resulterat i en studie av olika perspektiv på lärande, inom ämnet matematik. De synsätt på lärande som vi observerade hos de indiska lärarna har kopplats till studiens fyra valda perspektiv; det behavioristiska perspektivet, det kognitiva perspektivet, det pragmatiska perspektivet och det sociokulturella perspektivet. Fältstudien genomfördes i en skola i den södra delstaten Kerala. Elever och lärare på skolan deltog under våra observationer, intervjuer och undervisningsförsök. Vår slutsats är att undervisningen innehöll influenser från alla fyra valda perspektiv, och att somliga perspektiv förekom mer än andra. / Our three months in India included a field study of different perspectives on learning the subject of mathematics. The chosen perspectives were; the behaviouristic perspective, the cognitive perspective, the pragmatic perspective and the socio-cultural perspective. The study was implemented with teachers and students at a public school in the state of Kerala, which is situated in the southernmost part of the country. They participated in our observations, interviews and teaching experiments. We sought to ascertain which of the four chosen learning perspectives the faculty and students at the host school use for educating. Our conclusion is that the observed teaching methods had influences from all four chosen perspectives, some more than others.

This thesis reports on a qualitative study in which three fifth grade children were presented with six nonroutine mathematical problems involving six different 3-D pyramids, constructed out of multi-link cubes1. The children were videotaped while they worked without any adult help as a cooperative group to solve the pyramid problems. During these sessions, the students produced various 3-D cube models, 2-D drawings, and written records of arithmetic calculations as their solutions to the six problems. Through the lens of enactivism, this study describes and interprets the coevolutionary processes of the group's path of mathematical understandings as it unfolded during the six videotaped sessions. The results revealed building, drawing, and numbering as modes of representation of this group's problem solving work. An analysis of these three modes of representation explored the co-emergence of the children's individual and collective understandings, as well as the interrelationships which existed between their spatial structuring and their use of numerical operations in solving the pyramid problems.

In four experiments on insight problem solving, we investigated the time course of the development of solution knowledge prior to response, as well as the impact of stimulus familiarity on task performance and eye movement measures. In each experiment, participants solved anagram problems while their eye movements were monitored. In Experiments 1a and 1b, each anagram problem consisted of a circular array of letters: a scrambled four-letter solution word containing three consonants and one vowel, and an additional randomly-placed distractor consonant. Viewing times on the distractor consonant compared to the solution consonants provided an online measure of knowledge of the solution. Viewing times on the distractor consonant and the solution consonants were indistinguishable early in the trial. In contrast, several seconds prior to the response, viewing times on the distractor consonant decreased in a gradual manner compared to viewing times on the solution consonants. Importantly, this pattern was obtained across both trials in which participants reported the subjective experience of insight and trials in which they did not. These findings are consistent with the availability of partial knowledge of the solution prior to such information being accessible to subjective phenomenal awareness. In Experiments 2 and 3, each anagram problem consisted of a centrally located three-letter string plus three additional individual letters located above and to the side of the central letter string. All the letters in the central letter string were members of the five-letter solution word, while one of the individual letters was a randomly placed distractor. In Experiment 2, we replicated our findings of the gradual development of solution knowledge using this more complex stimulus display. In Experiment 3, we manipulated the familiarity of the central letter string by presenting it either in the form of a three-letter word, or as a meaningless string of letters. Behavioural measures showed an overall negative impact of familiarity on task performance, while eye movement measures revealed a more complex pattern of effects, including both interference and facilitation. Critically, the effects of familiarity on problem solving did not interact with the development of solution knowledge prior to response.

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