The critical role of children’s play in the development of peer relationships, social and communicative skills is reviewed and discussed. The difficulties experienced by a pre-school learner in engaging in peer relationships, communicating successfully in a classroom situation and constructively using play materials was explained. This was done through the use of anecdotal records, checklists, questionnaires, photographic evidence and a semi-structured interview with the learner’s parent. A pre-school play programme, using blocks, dough and puppets (BDP Programme) was devised and used to assess its influence on the acquisition of social and communicative skills by a non-social and non-communicative learner. The study found the BDP Programme to be very successful in assisting this learner to develop peer relationships and communicative skills in the peer group and thus played a critical role in the social development of this learner. / Psychology of Education / M. Ed. (Psychology of Education)

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Behavioral skills training (BST) packages have been successful in increasing change agents’ correct implementation of various procedures. The current study evaluated the effects of a brief BST package to train daycare teachers to implement incidental teaching procedures with toddlers. The brief BST consisted of a set of written instructions, a two-minute video model, rehearsal, and feedback during session. Results demonstrated that teachers increased their correct implementation of incidental teaching procedures following training. In addition, two of the three toddlers increased the frequency of signs to request attention.

Autism is a disorder that affects children at an alarming rate. One out of every 88 children is diagnosed with autism in the United States. The disorder is characterized by communication, social, and behavioral deficits. Children with autism often require specialized teaching methods to learn basic skills that most children acquire without specialized instruction. Relatively few studies have examined strategies for teaching safety skills to individuals with autism. The current study utilized a multiple baseline across participants’ design to evaluate whether a modeling and rehearsal strategy is effective for teaching fire safety skills to children with autism between 4 and 5 years of age. Results indicated that modeling and rehearsal were effective in teaching fire safety skills, the skills generalized to novel settings, and maintained 5-weeks following the completion of training. Implications for safety skill instruction and future research are discussed. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

The critical role of children’s play in the development of peer relationships, social and communicative skills is reviewed and discussed. The difficulties experienced by a pre-school learner in engaging in peer relationships, communicating successfully in a classroom situation and constructively using play materials was explained. This was done through the use of anecdotal records, checklists, questionnaires, photographic evidence and a semi-structured interview with the learner’s parent. A pre-school play programme, using blocks, dough and puppets (BDP Programme) was devised and used to assess its influence on the acquisition of social and communicative skills by a non-social and non-communicative learner. The study found the BDP Programme to be very successful in assisting this learner to develop peer relationships and communicative skills in the peer group and thus played a critical role in the social development of this learner. / Psychology of Education / M. Ed. (Psychology of Education)

The goal of this project is to suggest a way to combine a functional curricula (domains) with literacy experiences.

Many studies have shown that an overwhelming number of classroom teachers are encountering increasing diversity issues in both the content of what they teach and among the students they are teaching The purpose of this project is to provide elementary teachers with a resource of multicultural literature that can be integrated into any curriculum, whether it is Language Arts, Social Studies, or story time.

Transmedia books are new and emerging technologies which are beginning to be used in current classrooms. Transmedia books are a traditional printed book that uses multiple media though the use of Quick Response (QR) codes and augmented reality (AR) triggers to access web-based technology. Using the transmedia book Skills That Engage Me students in kindergarten through second grade engage in curriculum designed to introduce science skills and careers. Using the modified Draw-a-Scientist Test (mDAST), observations and interviews, researchers analyzed pre and post data to describe changes students have about science and scientists. Future study may include the development and validation of a new instrument, Draw a Science Student, and examining the mDAST checklist with the intention of updating the parameters of what is considered positive and negative in relationship with work a scientist conducts.

It is the fundamental insight of phenomenology that meaning is first and foremost - not something which we intellectually reflect on. It is not a product of the mind reworking raw, perceptual experiences. Rather meaning, and our connection to the world, are perceptual phenomena. Thus, to understand the ways in which children find meaning demands a turn toward perceptual experiences - how children see and feel. In this theoretical dissertation, I explore questions of perceptual experiences through a phenomenological framework that I refer to as the perceptual rite of passage (PRoP). The conceptual framework, which centers on attentiveness, labors to help us understand the ontology of perception for preadolescents and how meaning emerges through everyday encounters.

This investigation examined Chinese children's development of place-value numeration concepts from ages 3 through 9, compared the development of place-value understanding of these Chinese children with that of American and Genevan children whose performances had been described in the literature, and examined the influence of adult assistance during Chinese children's performances on some of the place-value tasks.