The Effect of Dramatic Play on Children\u27s Graphic Representation of Emotion

Drawing is valued as a non-verbal assessment tool to measure children\u27s conceptual development and emotional state. Drawing has also been described as a problem-solving activity and unique symbol system. Although drama has been known to facilitate learning in other symbol systems, such as reading and writing, and to bring about advances in perspective taking and understanding of emotion, its impact on drawing has not been previously examined. In this study, Kindergarten and first grade children were instructed to draw a happy tree, sad tree, and angry tree before and after a 10-hour drama intervention. Half of the children participated in the intervention while the remaining children were members of a control group who participated in the regular school program. Consistent with expectations, children who participated in the drama program showed significantly greater improvement from pretest to posttest in drawing emotion compared to control children. Their drawings of emotion improved in clarity, that is, they depicted more clearly the emotion they were instructed to convey. Participants in the drama program also used significantly more highter level drawing strategies. The results suggest that the experience in emotional perspective taking provided by dramatic play may generalize to the domain of drawing and enhance expression

Adolescent Literacy and Textbooks: An Annotated Bibliography

A companion report to Carnegie's Time to Act, provides an annotated bibliography of research on textbook design and reading comprehension for fourth through twelfth grade, arranged by topic. Calls for a dialogue between publishers and researchers

Accessible Font. A typeface for teaching strategies of autistic individuals based on latin script

The present research is based on studies in the areas of psychology, pedagogy and design. It was investigated the reading process and reading education strategies of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) with the purpose of developing a typographic system to assist pedagogues and to develop educational aids appropriate for child's reading problems. It was used interdisciplinary research methodology in this thesis with literature study, interviews with experts and a survey study. The survey was based on the opinions and experiences of special education teachers and the following findings were presented: • The student with autism may have difficulties learning to read. • They may mistake similar letters with each other, for example b and p, due to the similarity in letter shape. • Their reading pattern may be characterized by impaired or normal delayed reading pattern. According to the combined results of special education teachers’ common opinions, legibility studies and literature study, the prototype of a typeface for individuals with autism, learning disabilities was developed. The Accessible Typeface v.1, v.2, v.3, v.4, v.5 family has been developed with the intention to ease individuals ability to learn reading and minimize mistakes in reading. However, before being implemented, this font family should be tested to conclude whether it is beneficial or not to teach an individual who has an autism or learning disabilities in reading

The semantic and pragmatic comprehension of visual rhetorical codes by literate and illiterate adults in a health communication setting

ThesisThe focus of the study was on the comprehension of visual rhetoric in printed health learning visuals by literate and illiterate adults. The broad aim of the study was to establish whether visual rhetorical codes, which usually perform a strong phatic function, constitute a significant readability barrier in an illiterate adult target group. The literature investigation of the study covered (1) a semiotic perspective of the distinction between visual and verbal texts, (2) visual rhetorical articulation for closed visual texts and (3) the readability of development visuals with the emphasis on health education. The design of the empirical component of the study involved the production of three health education posters with a Tuberculosis theme which were encoded with varying degrees of visual rhetoric taking existing guidelines for the design of development visuals into account. In order to measure the semantic (or literal) and pragmatic (or figurative) comprehension of the visual rhetoric, 300 voluntary, confidential, structured interviews were conducted with clinic patients attending Primary Health Care clinics in the greater Bloemfontein area following the refinement of the test visuals and questionnaires during a pilot phase. The mainly Sesotho speaking and pre-dominantly female study population consisted of 150 literate adult patients (>21 years of age, 12 years of formal schoo.ling or higher) and 150 illiterate adult patients (>21 years of age, 6 years of formal schooling or lower and the demonstrated inability to read and understand the full text of an acronym). The working hypotheses of the study, which read that (1) on the semantic level, the comprehension of visual rhetorical codes in a closed visual text does not differ between literate and illiterate adults, and that (2) on the pragmatic level, the comprehension of visual rhetorical codes in a closed visual text differs between literate and illiterate adults, were both accepted following chi-square analysis which tested for independence of the literate and the- illiterate study population groups. Flowing from the result obtained, design guidelines for the utilisation of visual rhetorical codes in a development communication context, as well possibilities for further research, were formulated

Visual Programming: Concepts and Implementations

The computing environment has changed dramatically since the advent of the computer. Enhanced computer graphics and sheer processing power have ushered in a new age of computing. User interfaces have advanced from simple line entry to powerful graphical interfaces. With these advances, computer languages are no longer forced to be sequentially and textually-based. A new programming paradigm has evolved to harness the power of today's computing environment - visual programming. Visual programming provides the user with visible models which reflect physical objects. By connecting these visible models to each other, an executable program is created. By removing the inherent abstractions of textual languages, visual programming could lead computing into a new era

Practice, principles, and theory in the design of instructional text

This study is concerned with an analysis of the research arising from three quite different perspectives on instructional text - the `physical characteristics' research (legibility, layout, and readability), the `improvement of text' research (visual illustrations, adjunct aids, and typographical cueing), and the `learning theories' research (representation of knowledge, human memory, and quality of learning). From this analysis there is synthesised principles for the design of instructional text against which heuristic practice in text design is evaluated and from which a nascent theory of instructional text design is evolved. The principles derived from the various research perspectives provide a basis for the manipulation of text design elements in order to ensure that (a) existing knowledge in the reader can be activated, and (b) new knowledge can be assimilated in a manner facilitative of comprehension by (i) presentation in a structured and organised way, and (ii) appropriately highlighted through verbal and typographic cueing supported, as required, by verbal illustration and organisation. The emerging theory of instructional text design suggests: a topical analysis to determine the heirarchic relationship of ideas within the topic and the desired learning outcomes or objectives; a consideration of the linguistic aspects of the text; a consideration of the role of visual illustrations; and a consideration of the physical parameters of the text. These activities are concerned, respectively, with the design areas of structure and organisation, readability, visual illustration, and legibility, and are summed up in the acronym SORVIL

An integrated environment for problem solving and program development

A framework for an integrated problem solving and program development environment that addresses the needs of students learning programming is proposed. Several objectives have been accomplished: defining the tasks required for program development and a literature review to determine the actual difficulties involved in learning those tasks. A comprehensive Study of environments and tools developed to support the learning of problem solving and programming was then performed, covering programming environments, debugging aids, intelligent tutoring systems, and intelligent programming environments. This was followed by a careful analysis and critique of these systems, which uncovered the limitations that have prevented them from accomplishing their goals. Next, an extensive study of problem solving methodologies developed in this century was carried out and a common model for problem solving was produced. The tasks of program development were then integrated with the common model for problem solving. Then, the cognitive activities required for problem solving and program development were identified and also integrated with the common model to form a Dual Common Model for problem Solving and Program Development. This dual common model was then used to define the functional specifications for a problem solving and program development environment which was designed, implemented, tested, and integrated into the curriculum. The development of the new environment for learning problem solving and programming was followed by the planning of a cognitively oriented assessment method and the development of related instruments to evaluate the process and the product of problem solving. A detailed statistical experiment to study the effect of this environment on students\u27 problem solving and program development skills, including system testing by protocol analysis, and performance evaluation of students based on research hypotheses and questions, was also designed, implemented and the result reported

Final MA Portfolio

This portfolio is a compilation of graduate research and writing completed as the capstone project for the Master of Arts in English degree with a specialization in professional writing and rhetoric. The first selection is a research paper that reviews how embellishments in graphical representations and infographics affect viewer perception. The second research paper is a content analysis that explores the extent to which visual metaphors are used in ISO public information graphical symbols. The third research paper explores how to create effective video software tutorials and reorganizes existing guidelines into eighteen distinct guidelines in three major categories: accessibility, cognitive design, and affective design. The final selection is a teaching guide geared toward an introductory undergraduate technical writing course

A review and assessment of novice learning tools for problem solving and program development

There is a great demand for the development of novice learning tools to supplement classroom instruction in the areas of problem solving and program development. Research in the area of pedagogy, the psychology of programming, human-computer interaction, and cognition have provided valuable input to the development of new methodologies, paradigms, programming languages, and novice learning tools to answer this demand. Based on the cognitive needs of novices, it is possible to postulate a set of characteristics that should comprise the components an effective novice-learning tool. This thesis will discover these characteristics and provide recommendations for the development of new learning tools. This will be accomplished with a review of the challenges that novices face, an in-depth discussion on modem learning tools and the challenges that they address, and the identification and discussion of the vital characteristics that constitute an effective learning tool based on these tools and personal ideas