No description available.

Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (PMT) is an intervention designed to teach young children to initiate nonverbal communication using vocalizations, gestures, and eye-gaze. Children are taught through social routines in their natural environment. Techniques include contriving an environment in which the children will be motivated to communicate and using a hierarchy of prompting and modeling to evoke the desired communicative behaviors, such as requesting and commenting. PMT has been previously studied in young children (ages 1-5) with developmental delays. In this study, it is implemented with six school-age children with Autism (ages 5-8). A multiple baseline design across participants was used to evaluate the effects of the intervention on the variables of frequency, clarity, and maintenance of the participants’ communication. All six participants showed increases in the targeted prelinguistic communication skills during treatment and maintained the increases during follow-up. Analysis of individual behavioral profiles was helpful for disambiguating individual differences in response to intervention across the three variables. Future research should target generalization of learned behaviors across implementers and settings. / text

The purpose of this study was to explore the meanings of the relationship of school-age siblings of brothers or sisters with Down syndrome in order to gain a greater understanding of the lived experience from the view point of the school-age sibling. Sibling spend more time together than any other family subsystem and siblings actively shape one another’s lives and prepare each other for future experiences. With children with Down syndrome living into their 60’s, the question regarding the sibling relationship is becoming an important focus due to the possible demands on the sibling to care for the individual with Down syndrome. Therefore, it is important to understand the sibling relationship at an early stage of their lives and what the lived experience is for the sibling. The framework for this study was developed from the author’s worldview of reciprocal interaction and epistemology of constructionism. The influences of the environment and other individuals on the sibling supported the use of the theoretical framework of Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological System Theory. The notion that children are continually evolving holistic individuals who are developing through task achievements and, with the influences of family members, supported the use of Erikson’s psychosocial developmental theory. These two theories were combined to frame this study. Interpretive phenomenology was used as the method of research in this study. The sample consisted of seven school-age siblings, between the ages of eight to eleven years of age, of children with Down syndrome. Data analysis involved the use of the hermeneutic circle. From the analysis emerged seven themes: always together, tolerance, intense love, responsibility for my brother or sister, things will change when child with Down syndrome gets better, no difference from other families, and impact on other relationships. Two themes provided new information about the meaning of the lived experience of being a sibling, always together and things will change when child with Down syndrome gets better. The knowledge gained from this study will allow us to begin to hear sibling’s voices so that we can see what we need to do in the future to help with support and future research.

The effects of the Home and Hospital Program upon entry, as contrasted with termination, on the neurotic tendencies and attitudes of pregnant school-age girls were studied using a sample of 25 pregnant junior and senior high school students in the Ogden City School District. Of the Four areas tested for neuroticism no difference was found between the time of entry and exit from the program. These pregnant girls did not test in the neurotic range and rate above the general population in only one component of neuroticism, "Submissiveness". The other components tested in the average range. Of the 8 areas on attitudes which were tested there was a difference from unfavorable to favorable attitude change toward school related subjects such as, school personnel, class participation, and preparation, and future educational goals.. The attitudes which seemed not to be affected to any great extent by the Home and Hospital Program were those towards circumstances and persons outside the school, such as , parents, husbands, peers and frustrations.

This project has been made in collaboration with the company Tinitell in Stockholm. The purpose of the project is to design mobile phones for children. This report explains all the Design Process, as SVID (Swedish Industrial Design Foundation) describes it. It starts with a research phase and according to its conclusions, a concept generation phase follows. After discussing the possible concepts, the best alternative is selected and developed. The final part of the report is the analysis and conclusions of the whole process. / Detta projekt har genomförts i samarbete med Tinitell i Stockholm. Syftet med projektet är att ta fram en design på mobiltelefoner anpassade för barn i åldrarna fem till elva år. Frågeställningen som skall besvaras i denna uppsats är ”Hur bör dessa telefoner fungera, och hur bör de se ut?” Målet har varit att ta fram en design som är häftig och innovativ men samtidigt enkel och rolig för barn att använda. Den skall även vara en trygghet för föräldrarna då den möjliggör kommunikation mellan förälder och barn vart som helst, när som helst. Projektet började med en omfattande undersökning bestående av observation av barn som hanterar mobiltelefoner, vilka problem som uppstår och vad man kan utveckla för att tillgodose barns behov, utöver detta genomfördes även tre stora enkäter. Barn i olika åldrar hanterar saker på olika sätt beroende på karaktärsdrag, utveckling och beteende. Baserat på detta faktum togs beslutet i början av arbetsprocessen att dela in användaren i tre olika åldersgrupper. Övergångsåren (5- 6 år), mellanåren (7-9 år) samt yngre ungdomsåren (10-11 år). Utifrån de första skisserna valdes tre olika koncept ut, ett för varje åldersgrupp. Trots att alla tre telefoner har samma grundfunktioner har de, beroende på åldersgrupp, olika extra funktioner och olika utformning för att på bästa möjliga sätt passa slutanvändaren. De tre skisserna presenterades för Mats Horn, grundare av Tinitell. De hade dock räknat med att göra en fast investering och valde därför att fokusera på produktion och design för en av modellerna. För att kunna välja ut ett av koncepten genomfördes en ”value opportunity analysis”, efter att ha tolkat resultaten från denna undersökning valdes koncept två (7-9 år) ut för vidareutveckling. Efter att ha gjort flertalet digitala 3D-modeller och provat många olika idéer nådde jag slutligen mitt mål vad gäller design och funktion för telefonen. Resultatet är Tiniphone, en mobiltelefon med touch-screen utformad som ett armband som barnet kan fästa på armen. Alla funktioner i Tiniphone kontrolleras av föräldrarna via en dator. Detta projekt har genomförts parallellt med Tinitell, som jobbar på en liknande produkt. Jag är väldigt nöjd med slutresultatet och jag hoppas att Tinitell kan använda det material jag framställt som hjälp och inspiration för att hitta en slutdesign för telefonen.

Thesis (M.S.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2009. / Thesis advisor: Philip P. Halloran. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mathematics." Includes bibliographical references (leaves [19]). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Playing is a common part of children’s leisure time, and with children spending an increasing amount of this time in school-age childcare, in both Sweden and England, staff have the responsibility to facilitate play. The way play is conceptualised by staff may lead to different aspects of play being facilitated. These play practices are enabled and constrained by the arrangements of what this dissertation calls the school’s play practice architecture, i.e. where play practices are intertwined with a school’s practice architecture. The aim of the research was to explore how staff talked about play and how to facilitate it, how concepts of play contributed to different play practices and how it might be possible to transform play practice architectures. The research draws on conversations with staff in school-age childcare settings in two Swedish and one English school during an action research project. Just as action research was used to disturb and change practice in order to understand it, concepts from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy (1980/2004) were put to work to disturb taken-for-granted concepts of play in order to explore how play works. Article I explores what the staff talked about in relation to play and its facilitation. The conclusion is that the ability of staff to interpret children’s play as children exploring their agency is crucial when facilitating play in a learning institution. Article II examines some discursive orders about play in school-age childcare and goes beyond them by conceptualising playing as becoming-different. The article argues that when foregrounding play, staff recognised children and themselves as becoming-players. Article III investigates how to think practice as constant change. For any practice, planning is required, and yet the unexpected keeps happening. When playing was conceptualised as a “What If? As If” approach, which allowed for potentialities to become actualised, then this approach was also useful as an approach in practice. The analysis suggests that when engaging in a playing practice, practitioners develop new knowledge and simultaneously change social situations. The practice of playing, whether intentional or unintentional, can not only disturb but also transform play practice architectures. The practice of playing is sensitised to the disturbances caused by playing and also puts itself “in play”. This opens up for a continuous de- and reterritorialisation of play and playing in school-age childcare practice.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of adult after-school supervision and the number of parents living at home on health-related fitness levels. Participants for the study were approximately 250 boys and girls in grades three, four and five from Selma Elementary School. The AAHPERD Physical Best Test (1988) was used to assess health-related fitness. This test measured the following components: a) flexibility (sit-and-reach test), b) cardiovascular endurance (timed run/walk test), c) body composition (sum of triceps and calf skinfolds) and d) muscular strength/endurance (timed sit-ups). A questionnaire and consent form were sent home to the parents of all participants. The questionnaire asked the child's name, grade, gender, number of parents/guardians living at home, and who supervises the child after-school. Each third-, fourth- and fifth-grade class completed two days of testing during physical education class time. The mile run/walk was administered on the first day. The second day consisted of three stations: 1) sit-and-reach, 2) skinfold assessment and 3) timed sit-ups. A 2 X 2 MANOVA was used to analyze the data. There was no significant difference between children with after-school supervision and those without after-school supervision. There was also no significant difference between children from one-parent families and children from two-parent families. However, there was a significant interaction between the number of parents and whether or not there was supervision [F(4, 109)= 4.23, p= .003]. An examination of the accompanying univariate Ftests showed that this interaction was mainly due to the difference on the variable sit-ups [F(1, 1 12)= 4.94, p= .028]. A post-hoc simple effects analysis of variance for one-parent families showed that the mean value for sit-ups for children without after-school supervision (x= 39.75) [F= 1, 112)= 5.27, p= .024] was significantly greater than the mean value for situps for children with after-school supervision(x= 34.33). The analysis also showed for two-parent families that there was no difference in the mean number of sit-ups between children with supervision (x= 35.94) [F(1, 112)= .36, p=.549] and those without supervision (x= 34.94). / Institute for Wellness

No description available.