Elementary Perception Research Articles

Teacher perceptions of an online tutoring program for elementary mathematics

This study explores elementary teacher perceptions related to the implementation of an online tutoring program. Teachers were surveyed regarding factors that affected use of the online tutoring program as a supplement to mathematics instruction. Results indicated that teachers overwhelmingly reported positive views of the training and support opportunities provided, as well as confidence in their level of knowledge and the ease of use of the program. Teachers also indicated strong support of the mathematical content and instructional value of the program. Each of these factors increases the likelihood that online tutoring programs such as the one implemented in this study will continue to be used among teachers as a supplement to mathematics instruction.

Science Professional Learning Communities: Beyond a singular view of teacher professional development

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are frequently being used as a vehicle to transform science education. This study explored elementary teachers' perceptions about the impact of participating in a science PLC on their own professional development. With the use of The Science Professional Learning Communities Survey and a semi-structured interview protocol, elementary teachers' perceptions of the goals of science PLCs, the constraints and benefits of participation in PLCs, and reported differences in the impact of PLC participation on novice and experienced teachers were examined. Sixty-five elementary teachers who participated in a science PLC were surveyed about their experiences, and a subsample of 16 teachers was interviewed. Results showed that most of the teachers reported their science PLC emphasized sharing ideas with other teachers as well as working to improve students' science standardized test scores. Teachers noted that the PLCs had impacted their science assessment practices as well as their lesson planning. However, a majority of the participants reported a differential impact of PLCs depending on a teacher's level of experience. PLCs were reported as being more beneficial to new teachers than experienced teachers. The interview results demonstrated that there were often competing goals and in some cases a loss of autonomy in planning science lessons. A significant concern was the impact of problematic interpersonal relationships and communication styles on the group functioning. The role of the PLC in addressing issues related to obtaining science resources and enhancing science content knowledge for elementary science teachers is discussed.

A Study on Elementary and Middle School Teachers' Perception on the Application and Quality Management Plan of Science Curriculum according to the 2009 Revised Curriculum

A Study on Elementary and Middle School Teachers' Perception on the Application and Quality Management Plan of Science Curriculum according to the 2009 Revised Curriculum

Feature of elementary school intermediate year's person perception

Feature of elementary school intermediate year's person perception

Teachers' perceptions of challenging student behaviours in model inner city schools

Elementary teachers often cite challenging student behaviours and classroom management as areas of concern and therefore priorities for professional development. In this paper, the authors discuss the findings from a two-year research project, Sociocultural Perspectives on Behaviour and Classroom Management (SPBCM). SPBCM examined the social and cultural context of challenging student behaviours in four model inner city schools in Toronto, Canada. The purpose of SPBCM was to gain a better understanding of elementary teachers' perceptions of challenging student behaviours and the strategies they use to address those behaviours. Fifty teachers in total participated in individual and group interviews. Results were interpreted using Ronald Heifetz's concept of technical versus adaptive problems of leadership. Extending this theory to the realm of classroom management, the authors aimed to gain a better understanding of whether or not the interventions described were premised on the notion of challenging behaviours as either technical or adaptive problems. According to Heifetz, experts can solve technical problems, whereas the solutions to adaptive problems reside in teachers themselves. Analysis of interview transcripts revealed that most challenging behaviours were adaptive in nature, as were teachers' strategies for intervening through building trusting relationships with students. In conclusion, the authors suggest that teachers and administrators who seek to address challenging student behaviours should consider professional development in which experts facilitate teachers' development of context-specific strategies for classroom management, rather than offer solutions.

Preservice Elementary Teacher Attitudes and Perceptions of Mathematics and Mathematics Learning in College

Preservice Elementary Teacher Attitudes and Perceptions of Mathematics and Mathematics Learning in College

Pre-service Elementary School Teacher's Educational Experience and Perceptions about Multicultural Education

Pre-service Elementary School Teacher's Educational Experience and Perceptions about Multicultural Education

A study on the meanings of storytelling based on the narrative mode of thought and the elementary teachers' perception about storytelling in art education

A study on the meanings of storytelling based on the narrative mode of thought and the elementary teachers' perception about storytelling in art education

Seeing what we know and understand: How knowledge shapes perception

Expertise in object recognition, as in bird watching or X-ray specialization, is based on extensive perceptual experience and in-depth semantic knowledge. Although it has been shown that rich perceptual experience shapes elementary perception and higher level discrimination and identification, little is known about the influence of in-depth semantic knowledge on object perception and identification. By means of recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we show that the amount of knowledge acquired about initially unfamiliar objects modulates visual ERP components already 120 msec after object presentation, and causes gradual variations of activity in similar brain systems within a later timeframe commonly associated with meaning access. When perceptual analysis is made more difficult by blurring object pictures, knowledge has an even stronger effect on perceptual analysis and facilitates recognition. These findings demonstrate that in-depth knowledge not only affects involuntary semantic memory access, but also shapes perception by penetrating early visual processes traditionally held to be immune to such influences.

Ganzfeld-induced hallucinatory experience, its phenomenology and cerebral electrophysiology

Ganzfeld, i.e., exposure to an unstructured, uniform stimulation field, elicits in most observers pseudo-hallucinatory percepts, and may even induce global functional state changes (‘altered states of consciousness’). The present paper gives a comprehensive overview of the phenomenology of subjective experience in the ganzfeld and its electrophysiological correlates. Laboratory techniques for visual or multi-modal ganzfeld induction are explained. The spectrum of ganzfeld-induced phenomena, ranging from elementary percepts to complex, vivid, dream-like imagery is described, and the latter illustrated by transcripts of subjects' reports. Similarities and differences to related sensory/perceptual phenomena are also discussed. Earlier findings on electrophysiological correlates of the ganzfeld are reviewed. Our own studies of electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in the ganzfeld are presented in some detail, and a re-analysis of data on EEG correlates of hallucinatory percepts in statu nascendi is reported. The results do not support the hypothesis of the hypnagogic origin of the percepts; the ganzfeld-induced steady-state is an activated state, and the spectral EEG dynamics in the alpha frequency range reveals processes of attention shifts and percept formation. The final section is devoted to the controversial topic of allegedly anomalous communication between human subjects (‘ganzfeld telepathy’). It is shown that the use of ganzfeld in this research field relies partly on unsupported hypotheses concerning ganzfeld-induced states, partly on a weak conceptual background of the experimental procedure. The rôle of a particular belief system shared by the participants and experimenters is critically discussed.

Sensational Differences: the Case of the Transit of Venus

In the nineteenth century, astronomers, physiologists and experimental psychologists noticed that different individuals timed simultaneous phenomena differently. These small “sensational differences”, sometimes referred to as personal equations, augmented considerably in astronomical measurements, in perceptions of movement, and in measurements of rapid phenomena, such as the speed of light. Alarmingly, these differences affected science beyond determinations of time and simultaneity. They appeared in elementary perceptions of lengths, angles, color, and sound. Unlike well-known random errors, they persisted even when observations were repeated and averaged. This paper examines various attempts by scientists to overcome these differences in the determination of the most important constant of celestial mechanics: the solar parallax. It takes us from the famous transit of Venus observations of 1874 to later speed-of-light measurements, tracking fundamental changes in the establishment of measurement-based science.

Visuospatial abilities in cerebellar disorders

Background: Cerebellar involvement in spatial data management has been suggested on experimental and clinical grounds. Objective: To attempt a specific analysis of visuospatial abilities in a group of subjects with...

Spatio-temporal Properties of Elementary Perception: An Investigation of Parallel, Serial, and Coactive Theories

A mathematical theory and related experimental methodology are developed that permit strong, converging tests of parallel versus serial versus channel summation processing and of exhaustive versus self-terminating processing. An experimental design is used for two studies, in which the presence or absence of a target in each of two positions, is factorially combined with two levels of brightness (a version of the double factorial paradigm). When both targets are present (redundant target condition) the two levels of brightness permit factorial technology to determine mental architecture and stopping rules. Comparison of the single versus double target conditions allows capacity analyses that strongly reinforce the double target factorial phase of the investigation. The results provide decisive support for parallel channels with either a self-terminating stopping rule or a coactive summation of information. General serial models and any variety of exhaustive processing were conclusively falsified.

Students' Perceptions of Two Hypothetical Teachers' Instructional Adaptations for Low Achievers

This article reports the results of 2 studies designed to examine elementary students' perceptions about adaptations hypothetical teachers made to meet individual students' needs and the extent to which students' perceptions of adaptations related to their achievement. The first study focused on the extent to which the Students' Perceptions of Teachers (SPT) Scale was appropriate for use with elementary students. 87 fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students from 2 urban schools participated in this exploratory investigation. Results indicated that elementary students' responses to the SPT scale were similar to those of secondary students in a previous study, and although the items of the SPT were appropriate for elementary students, procedures for administering the SPT scale needed to be altered. The 158 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in the second study completed the SPT and were interviewed about whether they preferred adaptations or nonadaptations by their teachers. In addition, a subset of 56 studen...

Matière inerte et matière vivante. La théorie de la perception chez Maupertuis

Inert and living matter. Maupertuis'S theory of Perception. Starting from an "open", inquiry into the idea of matter, Maupertuis proposes a theory of the generation and reproduction of living bodies on the model of perception. Maupertuis borrows Leibniz's theory of monadic perception and like him accords perception and appetite to animals and plants. Hence, Maupertuis claims that the smallest living particles possess elementary perception. He can thus show that a sort of memory of its former state leads the particle to the place where it can play its appropriate role in the make-up of the future organism, and he can establish the relation between the elementary particles and the whole organism. The role of contingency allows him to explain both the way the particles join together according to their chosen affinities and also the failures of this teleology, such as monsters or albinos.

Comparing preservice, elementary, and junior high teachers' perceptions of school psychologists: Two decades later

Comparing preservice, elementary, and junior high teachers' perceptions of school psychologists: Two decades later

Moving Embedded Figures Test

Abstract The Moving Embedded Figures Test (MEFT) is a 20-min., 16-mm., individually administered filmed test, designed for use in movement behavior research. It assesses elementary school aged children's perception of embedded figures that appear to move away from stationary backgrounds. Construction, administration, and scoring procedures are described. Findings from data collected on 80 subjects are reported and discussed.

Die Stärke von optokinetischen Reaktionen auf verschiedene Mustergeschwindigkeiten

The strength of optokinetic reactions in the beetle Chlorophanus has been measured in relation to the angular velocity of a moving irregular stripe pattern (Fig. 2). The stimulus situation was so arranged that only one type of elementary perception mechanism was involved. As shown in Fig. 4 the reactions followed very well REICHARDT'S theoretical curve (5, Fig. 9), which was calculated from experiments on the interaction between single successive light stimuli in the eye (cf. the CNS) of Chlorophanus. Mathematical evaluation of the experimental facts shows that the two types (E and D 3, 5) of transmitting elements involved possess linear first order kinetics of reaction. The time constants of the E- and D-Elements proved to have the value of 3,5 sec and 46 msec, making a quotient of 76,24. These figures determine a nearly logarithmic relation between angular velocity and strength of reaction within the range from 2°/sec to 40°/sec, a maximum of reaction near 50°/sec and a logarithmic decrease from 100°/sec to 2000°/sec (see Fig. 4). - The experimental results confirmed, that the movement perception of the beetle Chlorophanus works in accordance with the principle of autocorrelation.

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ETHICS

I FIND myself in fundamental agreement with Dr. Waddington, though I should base my argument on an epistemology more explicit than his own. To start off, I would aver, with Mach, that “bodies or things are compendious mental symbols for groups of sensations—symbols that do not exist outside of thought”. The basis of all knowledge is experience. So–called external objects are constructs from experience: equally the doctrine of evolution and the view of the universe summed up in the Ten Commandments are constructs from experience. Of course, the experience may be partial: elements in it may be false (that is to say, unconfirmed by the majority of our fellow–men). The activity of the mind which links together elementary perceptions and fashions the constructed symbol may be inadequate to make a symbol which shall cohere with other symbols as we try to picture some wide region of the universe in which we find ourselves. But by a process of trial and error, in which the individual constantly checks his experience by that of others, the race has gradually created, among other ideas, those which we distinguish as external objects, laws of Nature and ethical principles.

The Roots of Social Knowledge

Approaching the study of knowledge from the standpoint of its evolutionary genesis we find that there are two distinct sorts, which may be called spatial and social. The former, based on sense perceptions, gives rise to exact or mensurative science. The latter, based on the "mental-social complex," gives rise to a sort of knowledge essentially sympathetic or dramatic which is lackingin that exact agreement upon elementary perceptions which is necessary to true mensuration. However, owing to the essential likeness of mental-social complexes, a working agreement is possible and the accumulation of social knowledge goes on. The external or behavioristic study of human life should not be disjoined from its natural union with the sympathetic observation of consciousness. Statistics is a method of manipulation, not of perception. Interpretation and prevision, in sociology as in other sciences, is a work of the constructive imagination.