Using multimodal analysis to unravel a silent child’s learning

Although the English Foundation Stage Curriculum for children aged 3 to 5 years recognises that children learn through talk and play and through ‘movement and all their senses’ (DfEE & QCA, 2000: 20), there is comparatively little theoretical understanding of how children learn through diverse ‘modes’, such as body movement, facial expression, gaze, the manipulation of objects and talk, and there is little practical guidance on how practitioners can support children’s ‘multimodal’ learning. Indeed, mounting research evidence indicates that since the introduction of a national early years curriculum and early years assessment schemes, practitioners have felt under increased pressure to focus on children’s verbal skills in order to provide evidence of children’s literacy and numeracy skills in preparation for primary education (see Flewitt, 2005a & 2005b). In the context of these changes, this article relates the story of Tallulah, a 3-year-old girl with a late July birthday, who, like many summer-born children in England, spent one year in an early years setting before moving to primary school aged just 4 years. The article draws on data collected as part of an ESRC-funded study that explored the different ‘modes’ young children use to make and express meaning in the different social settings of home and a preschool playgroup (Flewitt, 2003). Examples are given of how Tallulah communicated her understandings at home through skilful combinations of talk, gaze direction, body movement and facial expression, and how others in the home supported Tallulah’s learning. These are then compared with examples of how Tallulah communicated in playgroup, primarily by combining the silent modes of gaze, body movement and facial expression. The article identifies how the different social settings of home and preschool impacted upon her choices and uses of different expressive modes

Parents' choice of education for their young children: lessons for inclusive education

This paper reports on aspects of a small-scale, UK-based study that investigated local discourses and practices operating for young children within a global context of commitment to inclusion. The study focused on parents of young children identified as having special educational needs, who opted for a combination of both inclusive and special early years settings to ‘get the best of both worlds’ for their children (Nind, Flewitt & Johnston, 2005). The paper discusses the implications of the emerging themes for the development of inclusive education

Storytelling and story-acting: co-construction in action

In the light of sustained interest in the potential value of young children’s narrative play, this paper examines Vivian Gussin Paley’s (1990) approach to storytelling and story-acting, in this case with three to five year-olds. It scrutinizes how children’s narratives are co-constructed during adult-child and peer interactions through spoken and embodied modes, as their stories are scribed by an adult and later dramatised by their peers. Data are drawn from an evaluation of an eight-week training programme, based on Paley’s approach, designed for early years professionals and undertaken in different geographic and demographic locations in England. Naturalistic data collection techniques including video and field notes were used to record the storytelling and story-acting of 18 case study children. The resultant data were subject to close discursive and multimodal analysis of storytelling and story-acting interactions. Findings reveal discursive co-construction ‘in action’ and illustrate how the child story-tellers, story actors and practitioners co-construct narratives through complex combinations of gaze, body posture and speech in responsive and finely-tuned interactional patterns. The study contributes significantly to knowledge about how young children’s narratives are co-constructed through multiple modes in the classroom

Multiple Till in North Dakota

The purpose of this paper has been to provide more detailed information on the pleistocene geology of North Dakota. Field and laboratory studies have been completed on a glacial till exposure in the Inkster area. From the results obtained, it is the belief of the author that multiple till does occur in North Dakota

An Approach to Simultaneously Test Multiple Devices for High-Throughput Production of Thin-Film Electronics

New generation of thin-film transistors (TFTs), where the active material is amorphous oxide, conjugated polymer, or small molecules, have the advantage of flexibility, high form factor, and large scale manufacturability through low cost processing techniques, e.g., roll-to-roll printing, screen printing. During high-throughput production using these techniques, the probability of defects being present increases with the speed of manufacturing and area of devices. Therefore a high-throughput and low cost testing technique is absolute essential to maintain high quality of final product. We report a Simultaneous Multiple Device Testing (SMuDT) approach which is up to 10 times faster and cost effective than conventional testing methods. The SMuDT approach was validated using circuit simulation and demonstrated by testing large scale indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) TFTs. A method to ‘bin’ the tested devices using Figure of Merit was established.The authors acknowledge the support of this project provided by the EPSRC and Innovate UK through the AUTOFLEX Project (grant no. EP/L505201/1) and CIMLAE Project (EP/K03099X/1). AK and AJF would like to thank PragmatIC Printing Ltd. for wafer samples. Additional data related to this publication which is not of a commercially sensitive nature is available at the DSpace@Cambridge data repository (www.repository.cam.ac.uk).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from IEEE via http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JDT.2015.246229

A thermalization energy analysis of the threshold voltage shift in amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide thin film transistors under simultaneous negative gate bias and illumination

It has been previously observed that thin film transistors (TFTs) utilizing an amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO) semiconducting channel suffer from a threshold voltage shift when subjected to a negative gate bias and light illumination simultaneously. In this work, a thermalization energy analysis has been applied to previously-published data on negative bias under illumination stress (NBIS) in a-IGZO TFTs. A barrier to defect conversion is extracted of 0.65 – 0.75 eV, which is consistent with reported energies of oxygen vacancy migration. The attempt-to-escape frequency is extracted to be 106 – 107 s–1 which suggests a weak localization of carriers in band tail states over a 20 – 40 nm distance. Models for the NBIS mechanism based on charge trapping are reviewed and a defect pool model is proposed in which two distinct distributions of defect states exist in the a-IGZO band gap: these are associated with states that are formed as neutrally charged and 2+ charged oxygen vacancies at the time of film formation. In this model, threshold voltage shift is not due to a defect creation process, but to a change in the energy distribution of states in the band gap upon defect migration as this allows a state formed as a neutrally charged vacancy to be converted into one formed as a 2+ charged vacancy and vice versa. Carrier localization close to the defect migration site is necessary for the conversion process to take place, and such defect migration sites are associated with conduction and valence band tail states. Under negative gate bias stressing, the conduction band tail is depleted of carriers, but the bias is insufficient to accumulate holes in the valence band tail states, and so no threshold voltage shift results. It is only under illumination that the quasi Fermi level for holes is sufficiently lowered to allow occupation of valence band tail states. The resulting charge localization then allows a negative threshold voltage shift, but only under conditions of simultaneous negative gate bias and illumination, as observed experimentally as the NBIS effect.This work was supported by the European Community’s 7th Framework Programme under grant agreement NMP3-LA-2010-246334.Copyright 2014 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics

Call for regulation on securing children’s data in personalised reading

While children’s reading experience is being transformed with digital reading formats, personalised and interactive books allowing for more personalisation, there are risks around the data this releases. Natalia Kucirkova and Rosie Flewitt identify four main areas of concern and call for regulation. Natalia is Senior Research Associate, and Rosie is Reader in Early Communication and Learning, both at University College London, Institute of Education. [Header image credit: B. Flickinger, CC BY 2.0_08]

On-chip temperature-compensated Love mode surface acoustic wave device for gravimetric sensing

Love mode surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors have been recognized as one of the most sensitive devices for gravimetric sensors in liquid environments such as bio sensors. Device operation is based upon measuring changes in the transmitted (S21) frequency and phase of the first-order Love wave resonance associated with the device upon on attachment of mass. However, temperature variations also cause a change in the first order S21 parameters. In this work, shallow grooved reflectors and a ‘dotted’ single phase unidirectional interdigitated transducer (D-SPUDT) have been added to the basic SAW structure which promote unidirectional Love wave propagation from the device’s input interdigitated transducers. Not only does this enhance the first-order S21 signal, but it also allows propagation of a third-order Love wave. The attenuation coefficient of the third-order wave is sufficiently great that, whilst there is a clear reflected S11 signal, the third-order wave does not propagate into the gravimetric sensing area of the device. As a result, whilst the third-order S11 signal is affected by temperature changes, it is unaffected by mass attachment in the sensing area. It is shown that this signal can be used to remove temperature effects from the first-order S21 signal in real time. This allows gravimetric sensing to take place in an environment without the need for any other temperature measurement or temperature control; this is a particular requirement of gravimetric biosensors.This is the accepted manuscript. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters and may be found at http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/105/21/10.1063/1.4902989. Copyright 2014 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics

Understanding parents’ conflicting beliefs about children’s digital book reading

In light of growing evidence that many parents are deeply concerned about their young children’s increasing technology use, in this paper we report on aspects of a study funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, where we sought to understand parents’ views on children’s digital book reading. We introduced seven families to four award-winning digital books (story apps and e-books), observed how the mothers mediated their children’s digital book reading over a period of several weeks and subsequently interviewed the mothers about their shared reading experiences with the digital books. Focusing on the interview data and drawing on the theoretical framework of socio-materiality, this paper reports on how parents’ views about digital book features were entangled with their social perceptions of the value of digital reading. Analysis of parents’ accounts show three conflicted themes of trust/mistrust, agency/dependency and nostalgia/realism in parental attitudes towards their children’s reading on screens. The paper concludes with a discussion of how these findings regarding the unresolved dichotomies inherent in parental views about their children’s digital reading are highly relevant for future research on parental mediation of their children’s learning with digital media

Understanding parents’ conflicting beliefs about children’s digital book reading

In light of growing evidence that many parents are deeply concerned about their young children’s increasing technology use, in this paper we report on aspects of a study funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, where we sought to understand parents’ views on children’s digital book reading. We introduced seven families to four award-winning digital books (story apps and e-books), observed how the mothers mediated their children’s digital book reading over a period of several weeks and subsequently interviewed the mothers about their shared reading experiences with the digital books. Focusing on the interview data and drawing on the theoretical framework of socio-materiality, this paper reports on how parents’ views about digital book features were entangled with their social perceptions of the value of digital reading. Analysis of parents’ accounts show three conflicted themes of trust/mistrust, agency/dependency and nostalgia/realism in parental attitudes towards their children’s reading on screens. The paper concludes with a discussion of how these findings regarding the unresolved dichotomies inherent in parental views about their children’s digital reading are highly relevant for future research on parental mediation of their children’s learning with digital media.publishedVersio