set 1986: no. 2

'Who cares for the caregiver?'. American researcher and' grand old man' of family studies, Urie Bronfenbrenner, asked that question at the Second Early Childhood Convention in 1979. He suggested that the caregiver and the child are like two legs of a stool. For intact families, the 'third leg of the stool' is usually the caregiver's partner, (husband or wife). But even a stable family - a three legged stool - needs outside support in order to function well. For broken families, it is… Read more

Currently in secondary schools a special time allowance of 'up to five weekly teaching half days beyond regulation staffing' is available 'to permit schools to employ part time teachers when circumstances warrant approval'. Many schools claim this allowance to help children who are slow in Mathematics. Is the extra time,effective? I set out to look at the achievements of 3rd formers who were slow in Mathematics and compare those who had additional help in Maths and those who didn't. I was… Read more

Finding out how much your pupils know - how many points they can recall, the number of words mis-spelled, the number of problems solved correctly - this is comparatively easy and there is an elaborate technology of tests and statistical analysis to help. This is by far the most common form of evaluation, even in areas such as essay grading. An extremely common form of essay marking, for instance, is to award some sort of mark for each relevant point made. That is the 'how much' part of the… Read more

In 1985, I had the opportunity to visit, across four states of Australia, twenty primary schools interested in using computers as part of the school curriculum. In eighteen of these schools the children had been using computers for a year or more; in two, although they were interested in utilising computers they were still at the early stage of deciding what computer to buy. Discussions with the teachers who were already involved led me to the realisation that there are differing viewpoints… Read more

This article is not intended to be a series of handy hints on choosing between specific brands of microcomputers or different word processing programs. That sort of information is best obtained from teachers already using word processors, orfrom advisory staff in education departments. Instead, I hope to show just how useful word processors are for encouraging young authors, between the ages of 5 and 12 years, to write.

The study of children's mathematical behaviour goes back many years. Piaget in the 1930s used clinical interviews to unearth children's ideas about number. Earlier than this, Brueckner had used tests that measured ability in computation and solving verbal problems, and tests that sampled various combinations of a particular skill (such as the addition of fractions). In a short time the picture emerged that mathematics was an extremely difficult subject for many children to master. Some… Read more

For years I've had vague feelings of disquiet about my teaching of science and I couldn't work out what was worrying me. I read up the Units beforehand to see the scientific facts the children needed to know, carried out the activities which I thought enabled them to 'discover' those facts for themselves, asking leading questions which led them to the facts, and recorded their findings in notebooks, on charts, with artwork or projects. I was teaching the facts in a way that was comfortable… Read more

Just when can children take charge of their own health? New research shows that, even at age 5, children are quite clued up on ways to keep well. In our study we talked to 53 Wellington children about what it means to stay healthy and what they know about certain illnesses. To find out how healthy these 5- and 9-year-olds thought they were, we asked them to colour an oval shape using two felt-tip pens, an orange one 'to show how much of you is well', and a blue one 'to show how much of you… Read more

It is generally the case that teachers, instructing young children to read single words, present these sight-words in the company of pictures representing the same objects. For example, when teaching a child to recognise and later read the word I dog', the teacher presents the word accompanied by a picture of a dog. It is assumed that the child will make use of the information presented in the
picture to help learn the word. This practice was first adopted in the early eighteenth… Read more

Tertiary education should give students (1) the general ability to think critically and independently and, (2) competencies in at least one specialised discipline. Unfortunately, if tertiary education does have a beneficial impact on intellectual growth there is not much convincing evidence of it. A fundamental problem for teachers and researchers alike is what criteria should be used to judge such
growth. The criteria most popular in America have been standardised cognitive tests,… Read more