Curriculum Integration: The Experience of Three Founding Faculty at a New Community College

This article explores the design and implementation of the curriculum for City Seminar, an integrated course in the first-year experience at a new community college. This interdisciplinary course focuses on a critical issue that provides content and context for quantitative reasoning (QR), reading, and writing (RW) to strengthen students’ developmental skills. This integrated curriculum is taught in a learning community. Its goals include greater information retention, better transfer of knowledge and developmental skills-building while students earn college credit. These tie in with the College’s overarching goals of improving retention and graduation rates. Early results from this curriculum are encouraging

Conducting Life History Research With Adolescents

This article is a commentary on the life history approach, which specifically described aspects of and offered suggestions for conducting life history research with adolescents. The life history approach is well suited to a wide variety of types of health-related inquiry. In this article, the author used an exemplar study to show how well the life history approach was suited for questions regarding adolescent issues. This approach was also a good match for the developmental skills and needs of adolescents. The author uses the strengths and weaknesses of the approach and a detailed example of how she used the life history data to identify themes drawn from the exemplar study. She makes specific suggestions, including the development and implementation of an interview guide, planning and scheduling interviews, and the use of a life history grid. She includes examples of each suggestion and a sample life history grid

Developmental delay in Rett syndrome: data from the natural history study

Background: Early development appears normal in Rett syndrome (OMIM #312750) and may be more apparent than real. A major purpose of the Rett Syndrome (RTT) Natural History Study (NHS) was to examine achievement of developmental skills or abilities in classic and atypical RTT and assess phenotype-genotype relations in classic RTT. Methods: Developmental skills in four realms, gross and fine motor, and receptive and expressive communication from initial enrollment and longitudinal assessments for up to 7 years, were assessed from 542 females meeting criteria for classic RTT and 96 females with atypical RTT divided into two groups: 50 with better and 46 with poorer functional scores. Data were analyzed for age at acquisition and loss of developmental features and for phenotype-genotype effects. Acquired, lost, and retained skills were compared between classic RTT and atypical RTT with better or poorer functional scores using Fisher's Exact test. To examine if the mean total score from the Motor Behavioral Assessment during follow-up differed for acquiring a skill, we used a generalized estimating equation assuming compound symmetry correlation structure within a subject. A general linear model was used to examine whether the mean age of acquisition or loss of a developmental skill differed by mutation type. P values <0.05 were considered significant and were two-sided without adjustment for multiple testing. Statistical analyses utilized SAS 9.3 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC, USA). Results: Early developmental skills or abilities were often acquired albeit later than normal. More complex motor and communication acquisitions were delayed or absent. Clinical severity was less in those achieving the respective skill. Individuals with R133C, R294X, and R306C point mutations and 3′ truncations tended to have better developmental outcomes. Conclusions: Early developmental skills were acquired by many, but clear differences from normal emerged, particularly in skills expected after age 6 months. When comparing clinical severity, greater acquisition of specific skills was associated with specific mutations, confirming the impression that these mutations confer milder developmental abnormalities. These data may serve for planning and interpretation of early intervention studies in RTT. Trial registration This NHS study, clinicaltrials.gov (NCT00296764), represents the largest group of RTT participants assessed repeatedly by direct examination

The Use of Dance/Movement Therapy in a Preschool Curriculum: Enhancing Kindergarten Readiness Skills

This thesis will focus on an internship project designed to integrate dance/movement therapy into the Early Childhood Center (ECC) at Sarah Lawrence College. The premise was that specific dance/movement therapy goals would enhance the ECC’s preschool curriculum by strengthening each child’s cognitive learning, supporting their developmental skills and preparing them for the transition to kindergarten. Activities were created addressing developmental skills needed for the transition from preschool to kindergarten. The various activities developed for the dance/movement therapy sessions focused on the development of one\u27s own sense of self and relational sense of self, impulse control, interpersonal boundaries, social skills and coping transitional/adjustment situations skills. The children\u27s developmental growth was monitored through observation then assessed during dance/movement therapy sessions and regular class activities. Their progress was tracked based on each child\u27s cognitive, social, emotional and physical skills baseline

Parent-Mediated Targeted Intervention for Young Children At-Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Given that screeners can now detect markers of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as early as six to nine months of age, conducting pre-diagnostic interventions for young children at risk for developing ASD is important to improve key developmental skills. Parents of three pre-diagnostic at-risk children (aged 19, 23 and 26 months old) first identified potential target problems on the Parent Observation of Early Markers Scale (POEMS, Feldman et al., 2012) that were confirmed in baseline observations. A multiple baseline design across parent and child behaviours was used to evaluate a parent-mediated behavioral intervention to increase targeted developmental skills (e.g. responding to name, pointing to request, motor imitation) and reduce ASD-like symptoms. Parents received individual training in their home one hour per week over M=19 weeks (range: 11 to 29 weeks) on teaching strategies incorporating applied behaviour analysis and natural teaching environment techniques. Parent training consisted of behavioural skills training (instructions, modeling, practice and feedback). Some trained child behaviors include the child responding to their name being called with eye contact, pointing to request and motor imitation. All parents and children improved skills that were maintained in a 4 or 8 week follow-up period. For the most part, child skills did not improve until parents reached 80% teaching fidelity. There was some evidence of child response generalization for untrained behaviors. Post-intervention, parents rated many targeted developmental skills as less concerning on the POEMS, suggesting that parents may be able to mitigate target developmental concerns in young children showing early symptoms of ASD

The Development of a Parent Report Instrument of Early Communication and Language Skills of Infants and Toddlers in Mainland China

This study was designed to produce a new parent-report measure, the Diagnostic Receptive Expressive Assessment of Mandarin-Infant Toddler Assessment of Communication and Language (DREAM-IT) in order to provide norms for the developmental skills of children aged 0–36 months in four areas: expressive language, receptive language, cognitive play and social skills

An interactive E-book with an educational game for children with developmental disorders: a pilot user study

Children diagnosed with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as one of the most complex neurodevelopmental disabilities, are characterized by different brain and functioning development, distinct interaction with the environment and different learning patterns, language and social skills impairments, and repetitive auto-stimulating restricting behaviors. It has been shown that computer-assisted intervention is much more attention captivating and interesting to children compared with a classic approach to teaching, allowing for faster acquisition of skills. This makes these tools and the technology highly suitable for teaching children with autism basic developmental skills. In addition, interactive electronic books showed positive outcomes for comprehension and information acquisition in children with ASD, while decreasing inappropriate children behavior in the classroom. In this paper a pilot user study on an e-book with an embedded educational game for children with developmental disorders was presented. The results show that the e-book can be efficiently used for teaching children with ASD basic developmental skills and that the learned skills can be efficiently transfered to new media and environments. The framework will provide preschool children with and without disabilities with appropriate educational software, to build up their early cognitive abilities and school readiness skills, and promote incorporating technology as part of the educational and pedagogical process in school

Touch screen technology in the first three years

There has long been debate about the use of screen technology with young children. The first part of this paper reviews the literature currently available, looking at previous research about television viewing as well as emerging research about touch screens. The second part takes observation of three toddlers, ages 20-26 months, using iPads as well as playing with traditional toys and analyzes the differences in play and the developmental skills demonstrated by each

The short term effects of a developmentally based substance abuse program with incarcerated youth

The purpose of this study was to provide a group experience to a high risk population which addressed the problems of chemical use. The study attempted to evaluate the impact of a developmentally focused prevention program on the range of developmental skills in a population of high risk youth.;The subjects for this study were drawn from a population of young adolescent boys who had been committed to the State Department of Corrections and placed at Barrett Learning Center. Subjects were randomly selected from those youth who entered the institutional population between November 1, 1981 and February 1, 1982.;Twenty-four subjects were randomly selected from the population and randomly assigned to one of three groups, two treatment groups and a control group. The subjects in the treatment groups participated in the developmental skills program, the eight subjects in the control group received no treatment other than participation in the regular program of the institution.;It was hypothesized that the subjects who had completed the developmentally oriented prevention program would show a greater knowledge of alcohol and drugs, would show greater gains in self concept, would exhibit a greater frequency of appropriated interpersonal behaviors as selected in ratings by the institutional counselors using the Adaptive Behavior Scale and selected scales of the Adjective Checklist, and would show greater improvements in overall adjustment to institutionalization than those subjects in the control group.;It was concluded that the subjects who participated in the developmental skills program demonstrated a greater understanding of basic information on the effects of alcohol and other drugs than those subjects in the control group. A significant difference was found in ratings by counselors of the subjects on Domain 15- Mannerisms of the Adaptive Behavior Scale. The data did not support the other hypothesis conclusively.;Further study is recommended to evaluate the relative effectiveness of this model of prevention in comparison with other selected prevention models. Evaluation of the long term effects of the program, the application of this proram to other high risk populations of youth, and additional suggestions for further research are proposed

Effectiveness of developmental courses and the voluntary placement system at an Iowa community college

The purpose was to evaluate developmental course effectiveness by comparing three groups of students in terms of the following: cumulative grade point average; total credits earned; goal attainment for certificate, degree, and transfer; certificate earned; and degree earned. The three groups were: (1) Exempt Group: exempt from developmental skills courses in reading, writing, numerical skills, and elementary algebra, (2) Completer Group: completed all four developmental skills courses (may have been exempt from some), and (3) Did Not Complete Group: assessed as needing at least one developmental skills course and did not complete at least one. The effectiveness of the voluntary placement system was also examined;Subjects for the outcomes section consisted of 314 fulltime students who enrolled first time fall 1988, and who were also ASSET participants. Subjects for the voluntary placement section consisted of 480 students enrolled spring 1992 in either: Psychology, Sociology, English Composition, Introduction to Algebra, Intermediate Algebra, or College Algebra;The results from the outcomes section did not support the prediction that students from the Exempt and Completers Group would succeed at higher rates than the students from the Did Not Complete Group. Students in the Exempt and Completers Group did not do better than the students in the Did Not Complete Group on the following outcomes measures: total credits earned, retention to second year (two-year students), retention to second semester (one-year students), goal attainment (for students whose goal was to earn a certificate, degree, and transfer), certificate earned, and degree earned;The results of the voluntary placement section indicated that ASSET Reading scores are valid predictors for Psychology, but not for Sociology. ASSET Writing Skills scores are valid predictors of Psychology grades, but not English Composition, and ASSET Numerical Skills are valid predictors for Elementary Algebra, but ASSET Elementary Algebra scores are not valid predictors for Intermediate Algebra. Other unexpected statistically significant correlations include: ASSET Writing and Sociology; ASSET Reading and English Composition, Elementary Algebra, and College Algebra; ASSET Numerical Skills and Intermediate Algebra and College Algebra; and a negative correlation between ASSET Elementary Algebra and Elementary Algebra grades