In recent years there has been a veritable explosion in the range of instructional materials produced for classroom use: reading laboratories, spelling laboratories, study skill schemes, structured maths apparatus, science programmes, audio-visual packages, not to mention material for overhead projectors and listening posts. During the same time improvements have been ...

Family day-care (child-minding in private homes) is probably the most widespread form of day-care in New Zealand and it is possibly the one which has been with us the longest. It is not subject to official supervision (unless more than two children are being looked after) so nobody has really ...

Finding a way to predict a parent's potential for child abuse or neglect is now a real possibility. Researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle, have had encouraging success in developing reliable predictive measures. University of Washington researchers Mildred Disbrow, Hans Doerr, and Colleen Caulfield compared SS abusive and neglecting ...

Advocates of progressive teaching methods claim that these foster the social and emotional development of children without in any way hindering their academic progress. Critics of the 'new' education on the other hand, equate 'progressive' with 'permissive', insist that levels of achievement are falling, and lay the blame for this ...

Three short articles:

"In the real world you can't say cereal when you mean shampoo" by Virginia Makins

"Reading through the little screen" by Andree Brooks

"Can't read? Maybe they can't see" by Virginia Makins

Many young children watch television too long, indiscriminately, and too late into the evening. Their viewing may have an adverse effect on play and on creative and outdoor activities. At the same time, television watching often results in increased general knowledge. It may have a positive effect on language development ...

A concern for language learning, and the place of languages in the overall educational experience have not been the issues of great moment in New Zealand that they have been overseas, except amongst those actually involved in the teaching of foreign languages. In 1974 a small research committee was set ...

Behaviour modification is something that many teachers and parents regard with great suspicion. The cause for this distrust is not hard to find. The jargon of the process has a mind-bending ring to it: 'operant conditioning', 'contingency management', 'reinforcement learning', 'maladaptive functioning' and so on, and hints strongly at a ...

Why are there so many behaviour problems in children these days? Do they reflect falling values and standards in society and a breakdown in authority and discipline at home and in school? Are they the hallmarks of increasing deprivation and maladjustment, the outward signs of unfulfilled emotional needs, of conflict ...

In simple terms diagnostic testing consists of asking the learner to attempt certain tasks, so that the teacher can gain insights into his difficulties by observing his performance on them. Teachers will differ in the procedures they use to obtain this information. Some will use an oral reading setting as ...