Dialogic reading: Informal pedagogy in early childhood literacy

Meginmarkmið þessarar greinar er að lýsa fyrirmyndardæmi um óformlegar aðferðir leikskólakennara við að efla áhuga leikskólabarna á rituðu máli, bæta orðaforða, skapa skilning á hugtökum og æfa börnin í að tjá hugsanir sínar í mæltu máli. Rannsóknarspurningarnar eru: Hvernig spurningar notuðu sex leikskólakennarar 68 barna á aldrinum fjögurra til fimm ára í samræðum um barnabókmenntir og afþreyingarefni? Hvernig brugðust börnin við spurningum kennaranna? Gögnin eru úr rannsókn á menningarlæsi leikskólabarna frá árunum 2006–2012. Árin 2010–11 voru tólf samræðustundir barna og kennara teknar upp á myndbönd í tveimur leikskólum í Reykjavík og viðtöl tekin við sex kennara. Á árunum 2012–13 voru gögnin endurkönnuð og sjónum beint að því hvernig spurnaraðferðum kennararnir beittu í samræðum við börnin og hvort og þá hvernig þær nýttust börnunum til að auka skilning sinn á tal- og ritmáli. Einnig var athugað hvernig kennararnir fjölluðu um fagmennsku sína í viðtölunum. Í ljós kom að spurnaraðferðir kennaranna féllu undir samræðulestur (e. dialogic reading) en í honum felst að börn og kennarar ræði saman um bækur og afþreyingarefni sem börnin hafa kynnst innan og utan leikskólans. Áhersla er á að börnin tjái sig um innihaldið á sínum eigin forsendum. Hlutverk kennara er að styðja frásagnir barnanna og ýta undir frásagnargleði þeirra. Niðurstöðurnar benda til þess að spurnarleiðir kennaranna hafi veitt börnunum tækifæri til að tjá sig um margvísleg málefni sem tengd voru sögunum sem til umræðu voru hverju sinni. Auk þess virtust spurnarleiðirnar skapa flestum börnunum tækifæri til að bæta orðskilning, auka orðaforða, efla skilning á sínu nánasta umhverfi og að tjá hugsanir sínar í mæltu máli.Informal pedagogy involves child-centred social education and “here and now” oriented activities, as a way to help children to learn on their own terms. The current debate in Iceland reflects an increased interest in formal teaching and standardized testing in preschools, which comes at the cost of spontaneous or informal learning; thus it is important to understand how traditional (unprompted) early childhood education works in a preschool context. The primary aim of this study was to analyze whether and how six preschool teachers’ informal pedagogy motivated four and five-year-old children’s interest in texts and literacy in two Reykjavik preschools. This article focuses on preschool teachers’ informal ways of organizing conversations on literature and popular culture, familiar to the children. The teachers’ questions and children’s reactions are foregrounded in this discussion by emphasizing whether and how the teachers’ questions created opportunities for the children to express themselves and make their own meaning out from the discussion topic. The analysis is based on data from a study of preschool children’s cultural literacy from 2006-2012. According to Clarke and Cosette (2000) it has become common among researchers to use past data collection in a new way, as is done in this research. During the initial examination of the video data analysis, where the aim was first and foremost to understand the children’s knowledge of children’s literature and popular culture, a secondary result was that all the teachers put very similar questions to the children, unbeknownst to either group. This result evoked the researcher’s interest in preschool-teacher’s professional role in helping young children to construct emergent literacy, which forms the frame of analysis in this article. The theoretical framework has its foundation in theories of dialogic reading, which have been shown to have a positive effect on language development and emergent literacy. Dialogic reading is based on asking open questions, providing positive feedback, and encouraging young children to further express their experience, rather than to answer more specific leading questions. It relies on teachers’ and children’s conversations relating to books and popular culture, on the children’s terms. The teacher’s role is to support and encourage the children to enjoy the conversation in a creative way (Hargrave and Sénéchal, 2000; Riley & Reedy, 2003). The research questions are: What kind of questions did six preschool teachers use, in conversations on children’s literature and popular culture, with 4–5 year old children? How did the children in smaller groups react to the teachers’ questions? The research took place in two preschools in the greater Reykjavik area. The data involves twelve videotaped conversations, lasting from 20 to 35 minutes. The group sizes varied from 8 to 12 children and always included one teacher. To supplement this data semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teachers to gather their perspectives on the role of children’s literature in early childhood education. Then previous findings of the videotape analysis from 2012, on the children’s knowledge of the discussions topics, were compared to this newer analysis of the teachers’ way of leading the conversation. The analysis method used was qualitative content analysis, normally used in studies aiming at describing a phenomenon (Snape & Spencer, 2003). The teachers’ questions were divided into six categories: the story line; the characters; the characters’ relationships; fantasy or reality; reason and arguments. Within each category the following themes appeared: the time of the story, the author, the place of the story, the story line, and questions which motivate imagination and reasons; that is, what would happen if this character met a character from a different story. The findings indicate that most of the children seemed to enjoy the discussions. They explored such concepts as: appearance, characteristics, dispositions, relations, practices and circumstances of the characters. Furthermore, they discussed meanings of words and compared story lines with real life experience and developed an understanding of their closest environment. For example, they discussed the meaning of the concept “greed” (from an Icelandic folktale) and argued whether it meant “to be hungry” or “to want more than you needed”. Their conclusion was it meant “to want more than you need”. They compared real step-parents to the stepmother and stepsisters in the Cinderella tale, concluding that fairy tale step-parents differ from real step-parents.Peer Reviewe

Biomarkers in preclinical familial Alzheimer disease

Background: Alzheimer disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by the accumulation of b-amyloid (Ab) plaques and tangles consisting of hyperphosphorylated tauprotein in the brain. It accounts for 60-70% of dementia cases, making it the most common cause of dementia. In rare cases the disease is inherited in autosomal dominant early onset form caused by mutations in APP, PSEN1 or PSEN2. These familial forms of AD (FAD) allow for studies of the long preclinical stage of the disease and may thereby address unanswered questions about the natural history of AD which can be used to develop optimal tools for early diagnosis and for monitoring treatment response, as well as finding new possible treatment targets. To this end we conducted a prospective study, involving repeated clinical evaluations and collection of biomarkers from asymptomatic carriers of mutations leading to FAD with non-carriers (NC) from the same families as controls. The asymptomatic mutation carriers (MC) are good representatives of the preclinical stage of AD as they will develop symptoms of the disease in the future at an age which can be estimated based on the age at symptom onset in their family members who have already become symptomatic. Aims: To map biomarker changes in preclinical AD, as well as their temporal trajectories and sequence, through repeated collection and analysis of biomarkers in asymptomatic FAD MC and NC. Results: There were significant differences in the levels of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers Ab42, total-tau protein (t-tau) and phosphorylated tau-protein (p-tau), as well as in the Ab42/p-tau ratio when comparing MC to NC, more than 7 years before the expected onset of symptoms in the MC. Ab42 and the Ab42/p-tau ratio were lower in MC than NC, while ttau and p-tau were higher in MC than NC. There was a trend of Ab42 and the Ab42/p-tau ratio decreasing as the onset of symptoms approached in MC, while t-tau and p-tau showed a trend of increasing with approaching symptom onset. On structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, the MC had reduced volume of the left precuneus, left superior temporal gyrus and left fusiform gyrus, 9 years before the expected symptom onset. However, there was no observable decline in grey matter thickness or volume as the onset of symptoms approached, making the temporality of these changes difficult to assess. In the same group of subjects there was no significant difference on neuropsychological assessments between MC and NC, but a trend of poorer results was observed in the MC regarding immediate memory, episodic memory and attention/executive function. The CSF biomarkers YKL-40, reflecting glial activation, and neurogranin, a synaptic marker, were compared between asymptomatic MC and NC and found not to differ between the groups. A longitudinal study of changes in YKL-40 and neurogranin with approaching symptom onset was also conducted, revealing an increase in YKL-40 in both MC and NC as the age of symptom onset drew nearer, with a steeper increase in MC than NC. No such correlation to years to symptom onset was found for neurogranin. The APP processing products sAPPa, sAPPb, Ab42, Ab40 and Ab38 were compared both between the MC group as a whole and the NC and between subgroups of MC carrying specific mutations and the NC. The whole MC group had lower levels of Ab42, Ab40 and Ab38, as well as a lower Ab42/Ab40 ratio than NC. No significant correlation was observed between any of the aforementioned APP processing products and years to symptom onset in MC. When comparing different MC subgroups to each other, the whole MC group and the NC group, some mutation specific differences in the levels of the APP processing products and their temporality emerged. During the biomarker studies presented above the presence of a statistical outlier came to our attention, an MC carrying the PSEN1 H163Y mutation who had passed the age at symptom onset in his family but displayed no cognitive decline and no abnormalities in CSF biomarkers. This individual had been followed-up within the FAD study for 22 years and had opted for a presymptomatic genetic test, making his mutation status known to him and to the researchers involved in the study. His clinical case was characterized in paper III, with his brother serving as a control. The brother was only one year older than the outlier but had already passed away from AD at the end of the follow-up time, having displayed typical signs and symptoms of the disease in the preceding years. Conclusions: The study revealed early preclinical changes in CSF biomarkers, reflecting Ab aggregation, glial activation, tau phosphorylation and neurodegeneration, as well as loss of volume in specific areas in the left hemisphere of the brain on structural MRI in asymptomatic carriers of FAD mutations. When assessing the temporality of specific biomarkers in the CSF, Ab42 and the Ab42/p-tau ratio seemed to decrease with approaching symptom onset, while ttau and p-tau increased as symptom onset drew nearer. These results are based on crosssectional data, but only longitudinal studies can properly assess temporal changes, as we did for CSF neurogranin and YKL-40 (with YKL-40 increasing at a faster rate in MC than in NC). However, the overall results give an important indication of the true nature of these preclinical temporal changes. We also observed mutation specific differences in APP processing products in the CSF and characterized a case of reduced penetrance of the PSEN1 H163Y mutation. In conclusion, the study sheds light on preclinical biomarker changes in FAD and the possible sequence of these changes. It also emphasizes the differences in phenotype between specific FAD mutations and the presence of reduced penetrance which affects the estimation of symptom onset in these families and has an impact on genetic counseling and possibly on the design of clinical trials in this population

Cerebrospinal Fluid YKL-40 and Neurogranin in Familial Alzheimer's Disease: A Pilot Study

BACKGROUND: YKL-40 and neurogranin are promising additional cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease (AD) which reflect different underlying disease mechanisms. OBJECTIVE: To compare the levels of CSF YKL-40 and neurogranin between asymptomatic carriers of familial AD (FAD) mutations (MC) and non-carriers (NC) from the same families. Another objective was to assess changes in YKL-40 and neurogranin, from the presymptomatic to clinical phase of FAD. METHODS: YKL-40 and neurogranin, as well as Aβ42, total tau-protein, and phospho-tau, were measured in the CSF of 14 individuals carrying one of three FAD mutations, APPswe (p.KM670/671NL), APParc (p.E693G), and PSEN1 (p.H163Y), as well as in 17 NC from the same families. Five of the MC developed mild cognitive impairment (MCI) during follow-up. RESULTS: In this pilot study, there was no difference in either CSF YKL-40 or neurogranin when comparing the presymptomatic MC to the NC. YKL-40 correlated positively with expected years to symptom onset and to age in both the MC and the NC, while neurogranin had no correlation to either variable in either of the groups. A subgroup of the participants underwent more than one CSF sampling in which half of the MC developed MCI during follow-up. The longitudinal data showed an increase in YKL-40 levels in the MC as the expected symptom onset approached. Neurogranin remained stable over time in both the MC and the NC. CONCLUSION: These findings support a positive correlation between progression from presymptomatic to symptomatic AD and levels of CSF YKL-40, but not neurogranin

"Språkutviklingen kan man aldri få for mye kunnskap om" : en studie av førskolelæreres og barnehageassistenters kunnskap om barns språkutvikling

Bakgrunn og formål: Vår hensikt med denne undersøkelsen var å finne ut hvilke kunnskaper førskolelærer og assistenter i barnehagen har om barns språkutvikling og hva de anser som logopedens rolle. Forskning viser at det er av stor betydning å oppdage de barna som ikke følger den normale språkutviklingen så tidlig som mulig. Det er derfor viktig at personalet i barnehagen har kunnskap om den normale språkutviklingen, da dette er en forutsetning for å oppdage en avvikende språkutvikling. Problemstilling: ”Hvilke kunnskaper har førskolelærere og assistenter i barnehagen om barns språkutvikling og hva anser de som logopedens ansvar i arbeidet med barn som har behov for logopedisk hjelp?” Metode: Vi valgte en deskriptiv kvantitativ metode med elementer fra kausal komparativ metode for å belyse problemstillingen. Undersøkelsen har et selvadministrerende survey som instrument og datamaterialet er samlet inn ved hjelp av et spørreskjema med faste svaralternativer og enkelte åpne spørsmål. Undersøkelsen er gjennomført blant førskolelærere og assistenter i barnehager på Østlandet. Utvalget består av 122 informanter hvorav 66 er førskolelærere og 56 er assistenter. Svarprosenten er på 59.6%. Dataanalyse: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 14.0) er benyttet til behandling og analyse av datamaterialet. I analysen benyttes i hovedsak frekvenstabeller, krysstabeller, korrelasjonsanalyse, t-test og Cronbach’s Alpha. Resultatene er fremstilt ved hjelp av tabeller og diagram. Resultater og konklusjon: Våre resultater viser i stor grad at førskolelærere og assistenter har god kunnskap på generelle spørsmål om språkutvikling. De viser imidlertid mer varierende kunnskap på spørsmål hvor de selv skal aldersbestemme mestring av ulike språkferdigheter. Førskolelærere skårer litt bedre enn assistentene på de fleste spørsmålene, noe som kan forklares med utgangspunkt i utdanningen til førskolelærerne. Likevel er forskjellene på resultatene til assistentene og førskolelærerne ikke veldig store, noe som kan tyde på at erfaring i barnehagen også gir god kunnskap om nettopp barns språkutvikling. Svarene fra våre informanter om logopedens ansvar viser et ønske om samarbeid mellom barnehagepersonalet og logopeden. Det er stor grad av enighet blant informantene om at barnehagen og logopeden skal dele det faglige ansvaret for barn med språkvansker. Flere informanter understreker viktigheten av veiledning fra logoped i forhold til språkvansker. Videre er det mange som trekker frem at logopeden skal bistå barnehagen i utforming av opplegg for barn med språkvansker, men at det i hovedsak er barnehagen som skal ta seg av den daglige språkstimuleringen. Tips fra logopeden om ulike metoder for å stimulere barns språkutvikling trekkes frem som viktig. Assistentene og førskolelærerne har et noe forskjellig syn på logopedens ansvar, noe som kan tyde på at førskolelærerne er sikrere enn assistentene på selv å kunne oppdage og tilrettelegge for barn som ikke utvikler språk som forventet

The effects of different familial Alzheimer's disease mutations on APP processing in vivo

BACKGROUND: Disturbed amyloid precursor protein (APP) processing is considered to be central to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The autosomal dominant form of the disease, familial AD (FAD), may serve as a model for the sporadic form of AD. In FAD the diagnosis of AD is reliable and presymptomatic individuals carrying FAD mutations can give valuable insights into the earliest stages of the disease where therapeutic interventions are thought to be the most effective. METHODS:In the current cross-sectional study, products of APP processing (e.g., sAPPα, sAPPβ, Aβ38, Aβ40 and Aβ42) were measured in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of individuals carrying one of three FAD mutations, APPswe (p.KM670/671NL), APParc (p.E693G) and PSEN1 (p.H163Y), as well as in non-mutation carriers from the same families. RESULTS: We observed pathological APP processing in presymptomatic carriers of FAD mutations, with different profiles of APP and Aβ isoforms in the three mutation carrier groups, APPswe (p.KM670/671NL), APParc (p.E693G) and PSEN1 (p.H163Y), except for the well-established decrease in CSF Aβ42 that was found with all mutations. CONCLUSIONS: These findings add to the current evidence that AD pathophysiology differs between disease-causing mutations and can be monitored in the presymptomatic disease stage by CSF analyses. This may also be important from a therapeutic standpoint, by opening a window to monitor effects of disease-modifying drugs on AD pathophysiology

DESC9115 Lab Report 1

The implementation of the Vibrato and Flanger effect by Oscar GonzalezArchitecture & Allied Art

How much exposure to English is necessary for a bilingual toddler to perform like a monolingual peer in language tests?

Background Bilingual children are under-referred due to an ostensible expectation that they lag behind their monolingual peers in their English acquisition. The recommendations of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) state that bilingual children should be assessed in both the languages known by the children. However, despite these recommendations, a majority of speech and language professionals report that they assess bilingual children only in English as bilingual children come from a wide array of language backgrounds and standardized language measures are not available for the majority of these. Moreover, even when such measures do exist, they are not tailored for bilingual children. Aims It was asked whether a cut-off exists in the proportion of exposure to English at which one should expect a bilingual toddler to perform as well as a monolingual on a test standardized for monolingual English-speaking children. Methods & Procedures Thirty-five bilingual 2;6-year-olds exposed to British English plus an additional language and 36 British monolingual toddlers were assessed on the auditory component of the Preschool Language Scale, British Picture Vocabulary Scale and an object-naming measure. All parents completed the Oxford Communicative Development Inventory (Oxford CDI) and an exposure questionnaire that assessed the proportion of English in the language input. Where the CDI existed in the bilingual's additional language, these data were also collected. Outcomes & Results Hierarchical regression analyses found the proportion of exposure to English to be the main predictor of the performance of bilingual toddlers. Bilingual toddlers who received 60% exposure to English or more performed like their monolingual peers on all measures. K-means cluster analyses and Levene variance tests confirmed the estimated English exposure cut-off at 60% for all language measures. Finally, for one additional language for which we had multiple participants, additional language CDI production scores were significantly inversely related to the amount of exposure to English. Conclusions & Implications Typically developing 2;6-year-olds who are bilingual in English and an additional language and who hear English 60% of the time or more, perform equivalently to their typically developing monolingual peers