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David McGavock

Ethnography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • Ethnography (from Greek ἔθνος ethnos = folk/people and γράφω grapho = to write) is a qualitative research design aimed at exploring cultural phenomena. The resulting field study or a case report reflects the knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group.[1][2][3]
  • communication studies
  • should be reflexive, make a substantial contribution toward the understanding of the social life of humans, have an aesthetic impact on the reader, and express a credible reality
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  • Data collection methods are meant to capture the "social meanings and ordinary activities" [8] of people (informants) in "naturally occurring settings"
  • from the point of view of the subject (not the participant ethnographer)
  • records all observed behavior and describes all symbol-meaning relations using concepts that avoid casual explanations.
  • Multiple methods of data collection may be employed to facilitate a relationship that allows for a more personal and in-depth portrait of the informants and their community.
  • collect data in such a way that the researcher imposes a minimal amount of their own bias on the data.
  • participant observation, field notes, interviews, and surveys.
  • Interviews are often taped and later transcribed, allowing the interview to proceed unimpaired of note-taking,
  • Secondary research and document analysis are also employed to provide insight into the research topic.
  • Reflexivity refers to the researcher's aim "to explore the ways in which [the] researcher's involvement with a particular study influences, acts upon and informs such research"
  • the ethnographer focuses attention on a community, selecting knowledgeable informants who know the activities of the community well.
  • Ethnography relies greatly on up-close, personal experience. Participation, rather than just observation, is one of the keys to this process
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    What if we used the approach of Ethnographer to guide us in our understanding of preschool "culture"
David McGavock

Using video to investigate preschool classroom interaction: education research assumpti... - 0 views

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    "This article reports on the use of video to collect dynamic visual data in education research and proposes that using visual technologies to collect data can give new insights into classroom interaction. Video data unveil how young children use the full range of material and bodily resources available to them to make and express meaning, forcing a reconsideration of Vygotskian accounts of the relationship between thought and language by producing grounded evidence for a pluralistic interpretation of the construction and negotiation of meaning. In addition to challenging language-biased approaches to classroom interaction, using video to collect data also forces a reexamination of established methodological practices. Drawing on data from ESRC-funded ethnographic video case studies of 3-year-old children communicating at home and in a preschool playgroup, this article discusses methodological and ethical dilemmas encountered in the collection and transcription, or representation, of dynamic visual data, arguing that visual data gives insights into aspects of communicative behaviour pre"
David McGavock

About Us | Communication Across Barriers - 0 views

  • We assist organizations and communities who want to improve outcomes for people living in poverty.
  • Conferences for youth and adults living in poverty and the Navigator/Neighbor program for matching trained citizens who are not in poverty with citizens who are in poverty), Poverty Competency assessments, customized action planning tools, books, articles, research, informative free newsletter, a resource focused website, and other educational materials for making a difference
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    If we intend to support children we need to understand the roots of poverty so we can support families. Donna Beegle can help us understand what it means and how to help families. Dr. Beegle was named a 2013 Woman of Influence by the Portland Business Journal! The annual Orchid Awards honor women who are compelling, affect change and represent their positions with strength, wisdom and grace. "Our Mission: Communication Across Barriers is dedicated to broadening and improving opportunities for people who live in the war zone of poverty Our far reaching goals: Assist communities and organizations to "fight poverty, not the people who live in it." We illuminate real and structural causes of poverty and provide life changing information that shatters common myths and stereotypes about people who live in poverty Offer research-based strategies and insider perspectives for improving relationships, communication, and opportunities across poverty barriers Develop an army of speakers and trainers who can educate and assist communities in breaking poverty barriers Provide models and programs that increase a connected, collaborative, community-wide approach to fighting poverty Educate and engage people not in poverty with tools and avenues for making a difference in their own communities"
David McGavock

Arrowsmith School Toronto - 0 views

  • Arrowsmith School is a privately owned co-educational and non-denominational day school that is dedicated to helping students with learning disabilities.
  • Students who come to Arrowsmith School have been struggling in school - some are just starting their schooling but their experience has already shown a pattern of learning problems. Others have been finding school a challenge for years.
  • The cognitive exercise program at Arrowsmith School is designed to strengthen the learning capacities that underlie the learning difficulties that our students have been experiencing in school.
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  • Each new student is fully assessed at Arrowsmith School so that we may identify his or her areas of strength and weakness and design a program of cognitive exercises specifically for that student’s particular learning profile.
  • The Arrowsmith Program is founded on neuroscience research and over 30 years of experience demonstrating that it is possible for students to strengthen the weak cognitive capacities underlying their learning dysfunctions through a program of specific cognitive exercises. 
  • Our program has proven effective for students having difficulty with reading, writing and mathematics, comprehension, logical reasoning, problem solving, visual and auditory memory, non-verbal learning, attention, processing speed and dyslexia.
  • The Arrowsmith Program is founded on two lines of research, one of which established that different areas of the brain working together are responsible for complex mental activities, such as reading or writing, and that a weakness in one area can affect a number of different learning processes. The other line of research investigated the principle of neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the brain to physically change in response to stimulus and activity, to develop new neuronal/synaptic interconnections and thereby develop and adapt new functions and roles believed to be the physical mechanism of learning.
  • The Arrowsmith Program deals with the root causes of the learning disability rather than managing its symptoms.
  • You may read more about the development of the Arrowsmith methodology in the book “The Woman Who Changed Her Brain,” by Barbara Arrowsmith Y
  • A number of television programs and interviews have been devoted to the work of Arrowsmith Program. A compilation of these programs describing the methodology of the program is available on our Videos link.
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    A school that works with students identified with learning problems. They appear to be changing children's lives through the exercise, connecting parts of the brain.
David McGavock

Brain Development and Learning 2013 Conference, Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 24-28, 2013 - 0 views

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    "A conference dedicated to making a difference. Be prepared to be inspired, empowered, perhaps even transformed. An interdisciplinary conference devoted to improving children's lives by highlighting innovative programs and by making the newest research and insights from neuroscience, child development, psychology, & medicine understandable & applicable to those who work directly with children."
David McGavock

Seth Pollak, PhD | Child Emotion Lab - 0 views

  • Seth Pollak, PhD College of Letters and Science Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Professor of Anthropology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Public Affairs University of Wisconsin at Madison
  • approach research on child development from both basic science and applied, public health perspectives.
  • My particular area of interest is in understanding how the quantity and quality of early experiences in children's lives influences how children think about and process information.
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  • the goal of our research is to better understand the role that early experiences in children's lives have on development of brain structure and function.
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    This fellow was featured on the PBS series, "This Emotional Life". He was doing some interesting work with children who had experienced trauma and separation.
David McGavock

UW research on brain activity delivers lessons on how kids learn | Local News | The Sea... - 0 views

  • she has found, in work that is not yet published, that the ability of 6-month-olds to tune in to the sounds of their native language — like the subtle difference between “pat” and “bat” — predicts a skill at age 5 that corresponds strongly with reading success.
  • parents strengthen those connections as their children grow by reading aloud to them, asking open-ended questions, and practicing serve-and-return conversations that build vocabulary and basic knowledge about the world around them.
  • two dimensions of attention — locking in on what’s important while ignoring distractions — predicted both how well they would speak at age 2½ as well as their phonological awareness at age 5.
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  • Children who have even one adult spending time with them like that can form those connections, regardless of family wealth and education,
  • preschool should be about practicing all the ways that the brain experiences language — hearing it, speaking it, seeing it and writing it
  • Preschool also should provide “lots of opportunities to play, explore, listen to stories, look at the pictures and written words, and talk about what they hear,” Berninger said.
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    "Those two dimensions of attention - locking in on what's important while ignoring distractions - predicted both how well they would speak at age 2½ as well as their phonological awareness at age 5. Parents direct their babies' attention to what's important with lots of warm, loving, face-to-face talk using that kind of singsong voice that dips and rises and stretches out vowel sounds. And parents strengthen those connections as their children grow by reading aloud to them, asking open-ended questions, and practicing serve-and-return conversations that build vocabulary and basic knowledge about the world around them. Children who have even one adult spending time with them like that can form those connections, regardless of family wealth and education, Kuhl said."
David McGavock

How The Memory Works In Learning - 1 views

  • Teachers are the caretakers of the development of students’ highest brain during the years of its most extensive changes. As such, they have the privilege and opportunity to influence the quality and quantity of neuronal and connective pathways so all children leave school with their brains optimized for future success.
  • We now know that through neuroplasticity, interneuron connections (dendrites, synapses, and myelin coating) continue to be pruned or constructed in response to learning and experiences throughout our lives.
  • The prefrontal cortex
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  • the CEO that can manage and control our emotions.
  • undergoing maturation throughout the school years.
  • the emotion sensitive limbic system is a switching-station that determines which part of the brain will receive input and determine response output.
  • ew information cannot pass through the amygdala (part of the limbic system) to enter the frontal lobe if the amygdala is in the state of high metabolism or overactivity provoked by anxiety. It is important for teachers to know that when stress cuts off flow to and from the PFC, behavior is involuntary.
  • it is possible to decrease the stressors of frustration from work perceived as too difficult or boredom from repeated instruction after mastery is achieved
  • research reveals other causes of the high stress state in school and suggests interventions to reduce the stress blocking response in the amygdala.
  • most successful construction of working (short-term) memory takes place when there has been activation of the brain’s related prior knowledge before new information is taught.
  • help students increase working memory efficiency
  • with opportunities to make predictions, receive timely feedback, and reflect on those experiences.
  • Memory is Sustained by Use
  • needs to be activated multiple times and ideally in response to a variety of prompts for neuroplasticity to increase its durability
  • Retention is further promoted when new memories are connected to other stored memories based on commonalities, such as similarities/differences, especially when students use graphic organizers and derive their own connections.
  • Multisensory instruction, practice, and review promote memory storage in multiple regions of the cortex,
  • requires opportunities for students to transfer learning beyond the contexts in which it is learned and practiced
David McGavock

Who is watching? Thinking ethically about observing children - Early Childhood Australia - 1 views

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    "Who is watching? Thinking ethically about observing children Just how much of a child's life is private? Who has the right to monitor? What judgements are being formed; and what decisions are being made on their behalf? Every day, educators observe, record conversations and capture images of children for analysis and reflection, to guide their curriculum decisions and inform their understanding. While every step is taken to ensure children's confidentiality and privacy, how often is the perspective of the child considered? This article outlines the ethical tensions that arise for early childhood education and care settings, as they manage recording observations of children with multiple requests from students, researchers and visitors to engage with and observe children."
David McGavock

CECMHC | Center for Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation - 1 views

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    "The Center for Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation was created through a grant from the Office of Head Start. Our target audience includes: Mental Health Consultants Head Start Program Administrators Head Start Staff Training & Technical Assistance Providers Families The Center translates research in healthy mental development into materials tailored to the needs of each of the target audiences, and makes them available on this website. In addition, the Center serves as an online "Community of Learners:" a clearinghouse for the exchange of ideas through traditional and new media. "
David McGavock

The Whole Child - ABCs of Child Care - Social - 1 views

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    "Social and Emotional Development abc's of child development for parents for early care providers Social and emotional milestones are often harder to pinpoint than signs of physical development. This area emphasizes many skills that increase self-awareness and self-regulation. Research shows that social skills and emotional development (reflected in the ability to pay attention, make transitions from one activity to another, and cooperate with others) are a very important part of school readiness"
David McGavock

Baby/Toddler Reading: What Neuroscientists and Parents Need to Know | Psychology Today - 0 views

  • experts seem to think that baby/toddler reading and learning to read in school are the same. They aren't. Of course babies and toddlers don't have the brain development to learn to read like a 6-year-old. Early literacy experts have come to understand that babies and toddlers learn to read differently.
  • Although no one can explain exactly how baby/toddler reading works, babies do have capacities from birth to age 3 for picking up reading–including phonics patterns and decoding–similar to their capacities for picking up languages.
  • hese events require intimate physical contact such as snuggling with a book or cuddling with the baby or toddler at the computer.
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  • The interview with Wang, a neuroscientist, along with one of his coauthors, Dr. Sandra Aamodt, celebrates the release of their new book, Welcome to Your Child's Brain, which synthesizes research on how the brain develops from infancy to adolescence and provides scores of tips for parents. The interview and a report on NPR's web site, "How to Help Your Child's Brain Grow Up Strong," are chock full of great advice that dovetails with best practices for baby/toddler reading:
  • • Don't use force.• Realize that children reach cognitive milestones at different times.• Expect babies' brains to do very complicated things. • Take advantage of the baby's special language capacities.• Capitalize on babies' attraction to language. • Use active and social exposure to words.• Encourage bilingual learning in babyhood.• Teach self-control.• Take advantage of your child's natural sense of fun.
  • "The most simple way is to talk to your baby and around your baby a lot" and "Respond when the baby speaks, even if the baby isn't forming the words correctly or you don't understand it.
  • add reading aloud and talking about the story to increase the number and quality of word data going into the baby/toddler brain in the first three years of life.
  • most of all, add book sharing and word games, because the attention and fun with words and books are a wonderful vehicle for physical contact and bonding.
  • About 1 in 5 children struggle with phonemic awareness and other disabling issues, so dismissing reading as something that seems as simple as telling "the letter 'b' from the letter 'd' and so on" and saying that "it's something that older children can do without any effort at all," is oversimplification.
  • Many babies learn to read some words before they can speak them.
  • Children have to think in words before they can read them. But they don't necessarily have to speak them before they can read.
  • Teaching your baby or toddler to read joyfully and informally is easier than teaching a child to read formally at age 6.
  • Teach your baby/toddler to read and bring loving physical contact, language, thinking, feelings, bonding, creativity and expression into one simple act. There may be no better way to help your child's brain grow up strong than to teach your child to read joyfully.
David McGavock

Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) - 0 views

  • Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) is a video coaching program that aims to strengthen positive interactions between caregivers and children.
  • If an adult’s responses are consistently unreliable, inappropriate, or simply absent, children may experience disruptions to their physical, mental, and emotional health.
  • FIND coaches film families for 10 minutes as they engage in everyday activities, such as playing a game or having a snack. The coaches then edit down the footage to three brief clips that highlight positive instances of parent-child interaction, and share these with the caregiver in weekly structured coaching sessions.
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  • streamline the process for sending and receiving video files for analysis, resulting in a far more cost-effective solution that maintained participant confidentiality
  • The researchers developed and have employed a protocol for editor certification to ensure the reliability of the edited footage.
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    Using video clips of reciprocal interaction between caregivers. Learning from discussion.
David McGavock

Is working memory training the priority for ADHD patients? | SharpBrains - 0 views

  • Not all chil­dren ben­e­fit from med­ica­tion, some expe­ri­ence intol­er­a­ble side effects, and many con­tinue to strug­gle despite the ben­e­fits pro­vided by medication.
  • Behav­ior ther­apy can be dif­fi­cult for par­ents to con­sis­tently imple­ment, and does not gen­er­ally reduce behav­ior dif­fi­cul­ties to nor­ma­tive levels.
  • researchers have shown grow­ing inter­est in whether cog­ni­tive train­ing — gen­er­ally done via com­puter — can induce more last­ing changes in children’s abil­ity to focus and attend. One approach that has shown promise in help­ing youth with ADHD, and which is now widely avail­able, is Work­ing Mem­ory Training.
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  • In one, chil­dren with ADHD were ran­domly assigned to high inten­sity (HI) or low inten­sity (LI) WM train­ing. The HI treat­ment involved per­form­ing com­put­er­ized WM tasks, e.g., remem­ber­ing the sequence in which lights appeared in dif­fer­ent por­tions of a grid, recall­ing a sequence of num­bers in reverse order, where the dif­fi­culty level was reg­u­larly adjusted to match the child’s per­for­mance by increas­ing or decreas­ing the items to be recalled.
  • Each group trained 30–40 min­utes per day, 5 days per week, for 5 weeks with train­ing super­vised by par­ents
  • A sub­se­quent study also used ran­dom assign­ment to HI vs. LI train­ing, and observed the impact on children’s behav­ior in a con­trolled class­room set­ting.
  • The authors con­clude that their find­ings cast “…doubt on the claims that CWMT is an effec­tive treat­ment in young chil­dren with ADHD.”
  • par­ent reports indi­cated sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tions in ADHD symp­toms, par­tic­u­larly inat­ten­tive symp­toms; these reduc­tions remained evi­dent at 3 months. How­ever, no ben­e­fits in ADHD symp­toms were evi­dent in reports pro­vided by children’s teach­ers.
  • A sig­nif­i­cant lim­i­ta­tion in the evidence-based for using CWMT to treat youth with ADHD is the absence of teacher reported ben­e­fits.
  • some have sug­gested that CWMT should be regarded as no more than a ‘pos­si­bly effi­ca­cious’ treat­ment for ADHD and not con­sid­ered a ‘first-line’ treat­ment like med­ica­tion and behav­ior therapy.
  • Two recently pub­lished stud­ies
  • Results indi­cated sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tions in off-task class­room behav­ior among chil­dren with ADHD who received HI train­ing. This par­tially addresses con­cerns about fail­ure to find teacher reported ben­e­fits in other stud­ies.
  • Results from these 2 randomized-controlled tri­als do not sup­port CWMT as a first-line treat­ment for ADHD.
  • What can we con­clude from this work? Despite promis­ing ini­tial reports sug­gest­ing that CWMT is a poten­tially effec­tive treat­ment for ADHD, these stud­ies sig­nif­i­cantly under­cut this con­clu­sion. This does not mean that there is no util­ity to CWMT, how­ever, par­tic­u­larly for indi­vid­u­als with demon­strated work­ing mem­ory deficits. If one’s treat­ment goal is to enhance work­ing mem­ory, CWMT may have real value. If the goal is to bring ADHD symp­toms under con­trol, how­ever, these find­ings indi­cate that for most chil­dren with ADHD, CWMT would not cur­rently be con­sid­ered a rea­son­able sub­sti­tute for med­ica­tion and/or behav­ior therapy.
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    What can we con­clude from this work? Despite promis­ing ini­tial reports sug­gest­ing that CWMT is a poten­tially effec­tive treat­ment for ADHD, these stud­ies sig­nif­i­cantly under­cut this con­clu­sion. This does not mean that there is no util­ity to CWMT, how­ever, par­tic­u­larly for indi­vid­u­als with demon­strated work­ing mem­ory deficits. If one's treat­ment goal is to enhance work­ing mem­ory, CWMT may have real value. If the goal is to bring ADHD symp­toms under con­trol, how­ever, these find­ings indi­cate that for most chil­dren with ADHD, CWMT would not cur­rently be con­sid­ered a rea­son­able sub­sti­tute for med­ica­tion and/or behav­ior therapy.
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