set 1986: no. 1

Open plan education began in New Zealand primary schools about 1970 when keen groups of teachers who wished to work in teams helped get conventional classroom blocks modified. Also the new minimum code of buildings permitted architects to design' open planned' units. The rnajority of New Zealand open plan units set up before 1973 were modified existing classrooms; after this date, most were architecturally designed. By 1975 there were 200 units working, 113 were designed and 87 were modified… Read more

The young people who are the subject of the National Child Development Study are now aged 25. For most of their lives they have been monitored by the National Children's Bureau and described in 19 books and 200 chapters and journal articles. Many of the books have dealt with very specific issues or examined the circumstances and development of particular subgroups of young people.

New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) is a true and unique language. Like any human language it transmits information efficiently,
using, in its case, great economy of movement rather than sounds. It is not English, but it does not interfere with the deaf person's knowledge and use of English. In fact there have been so many misconceptions about sign language in the past that it is perhaps best to pause here and describe what it is not. New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) is not miming ideas;… Read more

Language learning helps language learning. The more rich and varied the language experience we give deaf children, the more they can organise experiences into further language learning. Learning a language gets harder the older you get and young deaf children should communicate in the language that is most useful and accessible to them. Deaf communities in every generation and country have found signing allows them their most flexible and extensive language interaction.

In February 1985 Glenys and Ray Stephens found themselves both teaching new entrants at schools a kilometre apart, Ray at Sumner Primary, Glen at Van Asch College, a school for the hearing-impaired. Integrating the classes twice a week seemed possible, and getting the deaf amongst their peers most important, socially. Here is what happened.

What is a car? Shut your eyes and imagine it. You probably have a mental image of a brightly coloured metal and glass box on wheels. Did you 'see' the side view, the front, or maybe you were looking down on top of it? Maybe you experienced a succession
of images which included these and other viewpoints. Now try to cut out all the 'seeing ' part of your imagining. What is a car when you have never seen one but have only sensed it by sound, touch, and smell? Approach a car. Touch it.… Read more

The task of teaching a severely handicapped child mainstreamed into an ordinary secondary school is far from easy. Very little help can be found in the research literature. The bulk of this is geared to primary age children's needs, and those authors who do write of mainstreaming in secondary schools seem to limit themselves to observing that practical science is one of the most difficult subjects to teach! When a pupil who had been blind from birth arrived in my class of sighted pupils, I… Read more

Lab work is the unique feature of a science education. Most of the physical and biological sciences are essentially empirical - research is conducted, knowledge is produced and progress is made in the professional laboratories of scientists. It has seemed logical that student science should reflect professional science and thus science students have been taught, for at least part of the
time, in laboratory classes. This view is supported by research on learning which suggests that… Read more

American children's freewheeling play once took place in rural fields and city streets, using equipment largely of their own making. Today, play is increasingly confined to backyards, basements, playrooms and bedrooms, and derives much of its content from video games, television dramas and Saturday morning cartoons. Modern children spend an increasingly large part of their lives alone with their toys, a situation inconceivable several centuries ago. Childhood was once part of a collective… Read more

The average 18-year-old in the USA has already watched about eighteen thousand hours of television. This exposure (more than the total time spent in school) must be of enormous influence on morals, on emotions, on the imagination, on breadth and depth of knowledge, on aesthetic judgement, and on language. Tracing TV's influence on language, my primary interest, requires that we have some sort of base-line - we need to know exactly what sort of language is used on TV. I have begun this quest… Read more