Years Of Formal Schooling Research Articles

Early Home Intervention to Promote School Readiness: A Turkish Experience

The paper presents the results of an evaluation research that studied the impact of a nationwide home intervention program, the Mother-Child Education Program, on both children and mothers immediately after the termination of the program and at the end of the children's first year of formal schooling. A prebost control group quasiexperimental design was used. There were 102 experimental and 115 control mother-child pairs, the total sample being 217. The results revealed that the Program has important effects on the cognitive development of the child as reflected in the significant increase in the performance of the group receiving training with respect to preliteracy and prenumeracy skills. When the children were followed in their first year of schooling, the experimental children were found to be better at in literacy and numeracy skills and had started to read earlier than the control group. Furthermore, their end-of-year grades were better than their counterparts. Teachers also perceived them as meetin...

CHILDREN'S SPIRITUALITY AND “THE GOOD SHEPHERD EXPERIENCE”

This article aims to explore the connections between a religious education curriculum's methodology in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia and some contemporary theories about children's spirituality. “The Good Shepherd Experience” curriculum is intended for use with 5- and 6-year-old children in the first years of formal schooling. It forms a part of the To Know, Worship and Love religious education text based curriculum, directed for use by schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne as a key text in the religious education curricula. In exploring connections with children's spirituality, this article analyzes “The Good Shepherd Experience” in terms of wonder (mystery-sensing, contingency, and dependability), play and imagination, and the ability to use religious language and concepts.

Using Visuals to Communicate Medicine Information to Patients with Low Literacy

The patient was adamant that she had taken her medicine as instructed, pointing to the visual (Visual 1) illustrating the instructions to endorse this. Via an interpreter, she communicated that she took her tablet three times during the day and once at night (which was correct), but only on those days when the sun was shining (not on cloudy days) and the moon was visible (depending on both cloud cover and phases of the moon). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Another patient who had been diagnosed with a vaginal infection, and who had received a cream to be inserted vaginally, reported no improvement in her infection. On further questioning, we found out that she had been rubbing the cream on the side of her leg like the picture tells me to do (Visual 2). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Are pictures a so-called universal language? Maybe, but pictures are open to interpretation and potentially disastrous outcomes, when misinterpretation influences subsequent actions such as taking medicines. This fascinating area of research and practice has continued to interest and enthrall me over the years, and just when I think I have heard it all, along comes another oh wow, how did he get that? interpretation. Using visuals has many advantages (Doak, Doak & Root, 1996). Visual presentations are more persuasive, emotions are easily stimulated via the visual sense initiating a rapid response, memory systems in the brain favor visual storage, and materials including visuals are more user-friendly. Their usefulness is even more apparent in people with poor reading skills. We proudly call South Africa the Rainbow Nation. The name speaks for itself in describing the incredible diversity of its people. We have 11 official languages and 8 different African ethnic groups, each with its own culture, language and customs, and each with its unique perception and understanding of allopathic medicine. Literacy is a major challenge in South Africa with approximately 40% of South Africans aged 15 years and over having less than 7 years of formal schooling (grade 7 is often used as a minimum education level indicator of sustainable functional literacy) and 18% having no schooling at all, with the lowest functional literacy rate occurring in the Black population (Statistics South Africa, 2001). Apart from the nursing profession, the majority of doctors and pharmacists in South Africa are of a different culture from the average public health sector patient, with language constituting the most common communication barrier. In fact, it has been estimated that cross-cultural communication occurs approximately 80% of the time in health-care consultations (Adams, 1991). Unlike developed countries, where the problems with literacy and communication often occur with minority patients groups, in South Africa the reverse situation applies. Together, all these factors constitute a real challenge to effective patient-health care provider communication. Medicine-taking behavior is complex, multi-factorial, and depends on a dynamic interaction of several factors, including cognitive, behavioral, social, environmental, and physiologic factors (World Health Organization, 2003). However, a minimum requirement for appropriate medicine taking is a basic understanding of the medication instructions, and the ability to recall this information. Studies in patients with limited reading skills have demonstrated the value of visuals in enhancing understanding and recall of written or verbal information (Mansoor & Dowse, 2003; Dowse & Ehlers, 2005; Houts, Doak, Doak, & Loscalzo, 2006), but their use is not a strategy generally accepted and adopted by health authorities. Instead, using visuals to communicate information to low-literate patients appears to be restricted to relatively small-scale local initiatives, which are often driven by one person who is passionate about their effectiveness. These initiatives are not usually sustainable in the long term. …

Infectious disease in Haiti. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and social inequalities.

More than 50 years after the introduction of chemotherapy for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB), the disease is far from being under control. Among curable infectious diseases, TB remains the number‐one killer—each year, 2 million people still die of the disease and 8.4 million more fall ill (World Health Organization (WHO), 2002a). And future projections are grim. Fewer than half of all TB cases are diagnosed, and of those that are, fewer than 30% have access to the care recommended by the WHO (WHO, 2002a). The increase in TB worldwide is due, in part, to the expansion of the HIV/AIDS pandemic (WHO, 2001): at least one‐third of people with HIV die of TB (WHO, 2002a). HIV/AIDS now causes more than 3 million deaths per year (UNAIDS, 2002). More than 90% of HIV/AIDS deaths and new infections occur in poor countries where less than 5% of those who need antiretroviral treatment have access to these therapies (WHO, 2002b). If we consider that, on average, 10% of people with HIV need antiretroviral treatment, the 5% figure comes down to less than 1% in sub‐Saharan Africa, the region most affected by the pandemic. > The social contexts in which our patients became infected are an integral part of their stories Large‐scale social forces, such as racism, sexism, political violence, poverty and other social inequalities, are rooted in historical and economic processes and sculpt the distribution and outcome of HIV/AIDS and TB. We refer to these social forces as ‘structural violence’ (Castro & Farmer, 2002, 2003a,b; Farmer, 2003), which predisposes the human body to pathogenic vulnerability by shaping the risk of infection and subsequent disease reactivation. After infection, structural violence also determines who has access to diagnostics and effective therapy. Drugs that could stop or slow down these epidemics, such as …

Early intervention in the home for children at risk of reading failure

In this study, Ruth Fielding‐Barnsley and Nola Purdie evaluate the effects of an eight‐week dialogic reading intervention with an experimental group of 26 at‐risk children in the year prior to formal schooling. The results on measures of literacy taken during the first year of formal schooling, compared with results of a control group of 23 children, will encourage all those working to involve families in early intervention.

Revisiting major determinants of participation in adult education with a direct measure of literacy skills

The purpose of this article is to investigate major determinants of participation in adult education. Specifically, a direct measure of literacy skills available in the International Adult Literacy Survey is included. Interpreted as a measure of human capital, it is expected that literacy skills are at least as important a predictor of participation in adult education and training as educational attainment. The findings however do not support this expectation. Instead educational attainment remains the most important factor predicting participation in adult education and training. The models in this article are based on the idea that readiness to learn is formed early in life and further developed through educational and work experiences. Factors that are hypothesised to influence participation in adult education and training are separated into factors associated with the long arm of the family and the long arm of the job. The findings indicate the long arm of the family plays an important role, which supports early intervention, especially during the formal schooling years. The results also highlight the strong link between the use of literacy skills at work and participation in adult education and training.

Diarrhoea and child feeding practices in Saudi Arabia.

The aim of the study was to estimate the prevalence of diarrhoea in children less than two years old and study the relationship between diarrhoeal episodes and action taken for these episodes by their mothers. The prevalence of diarrhoeal episodes among children and its associations with sociodemographic information and anthropometric measurements of the subjects was examined. Predictive factors for morbidity-associated diarrhoeal disease and actions taken for this were explored. Primary health care centres (PHCCs) in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Children less than two years of age. Nearly a quarter of the children contracted diarrhoea during the two weeks preceding the data collection point, giving about six episodes of diarrhoea per child per year. Diarrhoea was more common in children over 6 months of age, in children who had no vaccination or follow-up cards, and in those who were taken care of by friends and neighbours if their mothers were working outside the home. The mothers of the affected children were young, married before 25 years of age with 2-6 years of formal schooling. During diarrhoeal episodes, about 25% of mothers stopped or decreased breast-feeding, 11.3% reduced the volume of fluids given to their children, and 22.7% of children were fed less solid/semi-solid foods. Mothers used oral rehydration salt in more than 40% of diarrhoeal episodes and unprescribed antibiotics were used in 17% of cases. The mothers who were not taking appropriate action included young mothers with low education level and those working outside the home. Diarrhoea is common in children less than two years old in Riyadh City, and intervention based in PHCCs needs to be undertaken to correct the faulty practices of mothers during diarrhoeal episodes in their children. Health education messages should emphasise feeding during diarrhoeal episodes.

Methodology for a project examining cognitive categories for library information in young children

AbstractThis article presents an overview of some of the methodology used in a project that examined children's understanding of library information and how those perspectives change in the first 5 years of formal schooling. Because our understanding of information is reflected in the manner in which we classify, or typify, that information in order to view the library collection from a child's perspective children were invited to shelve (i.e., classify) terms representative of library books and then to label those categories. The resulting shelf categories help us to see library information from a child's perspective. Data collection using group dialog, visual imagery, narrative, cooperative learning techniques, and hands‐on manipulatives is described for one session of a project in which children used induction to form concepts related to knowledge organization in a hypothetical library. Analysis for this session included use of hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling to examine and compare children's constructions for qualitative differences on several grade levels. Following the description of data collection methods and analysis, a discussion focuses on the reasons for using these particular methods of data collection with a child population.

The Swedish WAIS-R Factor Structure and Cognitive Profiles for Adults with Dyslexia

Factor analysis of the Swedish version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) on a group of 88 adult individuals with dyslexia showed a three-factor structure with a verbal comprehension (VC) factor, a perceptual organization (PO) factor, and a freedom from distractibility (FD) factor. The results of this factor analysis support earlier findings from factor analyses of adults in the original U.S. normative sample and in different clinical groups. The profile of scores for the sample of individuals with dyslexia showed the expected pattern, with PO highest and FD lowest. The predicted pattern was also observed using Bannatyne's recategorization of WAIS-R subtests. As has been true for other typical and exceptional samples, women scored significantly higher than men on the Digit Symbol subtest. Related to this gender difference, Digit Symbol scores proved to be sensitive to problems associated with dyslexia only for men with dyslexia. Also, education level was shown to be related to verbal (V)-performance (P) IQ discrepancy, with larger P > V differences observed for participants with fewer years of formal schooling. Regardless of these gender and education differences, the characteristic factor score and Bannatyne patterns were identified for both men and women and for three different subsamples categorized by educational level.

Teacher ratings of behavior among African American and Caucasian children during the first two years of school

AbstractThis article prospectively examines teacher‐rated behavior problems and competencies during the first 2 years of formal schooling among African American (n = 190) and Caucasian (n = 350) children. A significant main effect for race was found for both behavior problems and competencies in repeated measures analyses conducted across kindergarten and first‐grade teacher ratings. A time × race interaction indicated that teachers rated Caucasian children's competence as stable over time, whereas their African American peers were rated as less competent. According to these data, African American children did not maintain age‐appropriate school‐based competencies in task orientation and frustration tolerance. No interaction effects were found for a gender × time term for either competencies or behavior problems, suggesting that African American boys do not show more disturbed behavior in the early school years. Behavior trajectories are discussed in terms of the need for competence‐enhancing interventions aimed at early school transitions, particularly for African American children. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Women and crime the world over

This article examines female crime rates in twenty-seven countries over the past thirtyfive years. The results show that there has been an overall increase in total crime rates for all of the countries, and that the more economically advanced and industrialized countries have higher crime rates than the less developed nations. All countries also experienced an increase in the percent of all crimes committed by women. The percentages of violent crimes committed by women—specifically homicide and robbery—were consistently low across countries and increased only slightly over time. The percentages of property and financial crimes committed by women—specifically theft and fraud—were consistently higher than the percentages for violent crimes, and have increased more substantially over time. In addition, an analysis of the most recent data revealed a positive and significant relationship between women's overall crime rates and the countries' economic development. In those countries in which women occupy a higher status, as measured by formal years of schooling and representation in the labor force, we found some positive and significant correlations with the arrest rates for theft and fraud. There were also some strong negative relationships between female arrest rates for homicide and their status in society.

Phonological processing and early literacy

Phonological awareness and phonological memory have been cited separately as two cognitive skills thought to underpin literacy. Few studies, however, have investigated the relationship between these two skills and their relative contribution to early reading and spelling. The aims of this longitudinal study were to evaluate the developmental relationship between these two phonological processing skills and to consider their relative contributions to early literacy.This paper reports results from the first 12 months of the study, which monitored 80 preliterate children during their first year of formal schooling. The findings discussed here suggest that phonological awareness and phonological memory both make significant yet distinctive contributions to early literacy: while early phonological awareness may predict subsequent single‐word reading, early phonological memory appears to play an important part in the development of the decoding strategies needed for later reading. Evidence that a qualitative change in phonological memory takes place during the first year of formal schooling confirms earlier claims that a phonological strategy for spelling may develop before a similar strategy for reading (Frith, 1985; Huxford, 1993).

Obesity: does it occur in African children in a rural community in South Africa?

Total body fatness and a centripetal fat patterning are recognized as risk indicators of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. In this study, the development of these risk factors in rural South African children during the preschool years and first years of formal schooling is explored. The initial cross-sectional data from the Ellisras Longitudinal Investigations in Rural Community Children Project, ongoing since 1996, were used, involving 684 boys and 652 girls, aged 3-10 years, in the Ellisras rural community. Overweight was measured using the body mass index (BMI) (kg/m2). Overfatness was based on the sum of the triceps and subscapular skinfold thicknesses. A centripetal fat patterning was measured by the sum of trunk skinfolds relative to limb skinfolds and the ratio of the subscapular to triceps skinfold. Further, the ratio of the subscapular to supraspinale skinfold was used as an indicator of lower body fat patterning. The 85th percentiles of the NHANES III were used as cutoff values for overweight, overfatness and a centripetal fat patterning. At ages 7 and 8 years, mean BMI was statistically significantly higher in males compared to females (P < 0.05). The log transformed supraspinale skinfold thickness was larger in females compared to males at ages 4-7 years; the log transformed subscapular skinfold was larger in girls compared to boys aged 7-10 years. Less clear patterns were found for the extremity skinfolds and the skinfold ratios. Very few children (0-2.5% in males and 0-4.3% in females) had BMI values above the NHANES III 85th percentiles, indicating a very low prevalence of overweight children in the area. About 15% of the males showed overfatness at ages 3-4 years, while low prevalence was found at older ages. Few Ellisras rural children had above normal values for BMI, indicating a low prevalence of obesity in this population. In the 3- and 4-year-old group more subjects were found to have excessive fat, as indicated by the sum of the triceps and subscapular skinfold thicknesses.

Simultaneous Determination of Home Work and Market Work of Women in Urban West Africa

Little is known about how women in urban environments in developing countries allocate their time. A simultaneous tobit model of hours in market work and home work, incorporating jointness in decisions regarding time in these activities and allowing for non-participation in either activity, is estimated on a sample of women from Conakry, Guinea. The results indicate that years of formal schooling has non-linear effects on women's market labor supply, becoming positive only around completion of primary school. As in rural areas, infrastructural factors such as transportation costs and access to electricity have substantial impacts on female time in home and market activities.

Adult Literacy: The Next Generation

~ n 1993,_the first report from the federa!ly funded .National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), the most comprehensive study of its kind, was released. The good news was that nearly 95% of adult Americans could read at a fourth-grade level or better, showing that illiteracy in its most basic form was relatively low, but the bad news was that nearly half of all adult Americans scored in the lowest two levels of literacy, levels that the National Educational Goals Panel (1994) has stated are well below what American workers need to be competitive in an increasingly global economy. 1 Although these findings shocked public opinion, research showed that it was possible, even likely, that America would continue to fail to achieve a fully literate society. For example, the NALS indicated that nearly 25% of America's adults with an average of 10 years of formal schooling had only fourth-grade literacy skills or lower (Kirsch, Jungeblut, Jenkins, & Kolstad, 1993). In many ethnic minority groups, fewer than 50% of the children complete 10 of the compulsory 12 grades of schooling (National Center on Educational Statistics, 1993a). Low achievement in schools, early dropout from schools, along with the continued flow of poorly educated immigrants, increase the population of adults in need of further skills at least as fast as adult education programs attempt to reduce the size of this group through remediation and retraining. In other words, low-literate 2 Americans may now be seen as a chronic feature of the American educational landscape, with all the well-known statistical relationships with increased children's school failure, lower worker productivity, crime, and welfare. 3 Fortunately, we know considerably more now than we did a decade or even a half decade ago about how to improve literacy in America. 4 This article focuses principally on the 1990s, which have seen a number of new and important studies that can provide guidance for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in the field of adult literacy. Seven areas, corresponding to key topics in the improvement of adult literacy services, are delineated; in each, we provide a brief analysis of major research findings, followed by a series of recommendations. The article concludes with a synthesis of the recent past and a prognosis for what we believe will be the next generation of adult literacy work in America.

Adult Literacy: The Next Generation

~ n 1993,_the first report from the federa!ly funded .National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), the most comprehensive study of its kind, was released. The good news was that nearly 95% of adult Americans could read at a fourth-grade level or better, showing that illiteracy in its most basic form was relatively low, but the bad news was that nearly half of all adult Americans scored in the lowest two levels of literacy, levels that the National Educational Goals Panel (1994) has stated are well below what American workers need to be competitive in an increasingly global economy. 1 Although these findings shocked public opinion, research showed that it was possible, even likely, that America would continue to fail to achieve a fully literate society. For example, the NALS indicated that nearly 25% of America's adults with an average of 10 years of formal schooling had only fourth-grade literacy skills or lower (Kirsch, Jungeblut, Jenkins, & Kolstad, 1993). In many ethnic minority groups, fewer than 50% of the children complete 10 of the compulsory 12 grades of schooling (National Center on Educational Statistics, 1993a). Low achievement in schools, early dropout from schools, along with the continued flow of poorly educated immigrants, increase the population of adults in need of further skills at least as fast as adult education programs attempt to reduce the size of this group through remediation and retraining. In other words, low-literate 2 Americans may now be seen as a chronic feature of the American educational landscape, with all the well-known statistical relationships with increased children's school failure, lower worker productivity, crime, and welfare. 3 Fortunately, we know considerably more now than we did a decade or even a half decade ago about how to improve literacy in America. 4 This article focuses principally on the 1990s, which have seen a number of new and important studies that can provide guidance for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in the field of adult literacy. Seven areas, corresponding to key topics in the improvement of adult literacy services, are delineated; in each, we provide a brief analysis of major research findings, followed by a series of recommendations. The article concludes with a synthesis of the recent past and a prognosis for what we believe will be the next generation of adult literacy work in America.

Which Counts More for Excellence in Childcare Staff — Years in Service, Education Level or ECE Coursework?

A sample of 81 caregivers in 24 urban centers was observed in interactions with preschool children three‐to‐five years old, in domains of positive and negative socioemotional inputs, language facilitation, concept promotion, and caregiving and cleaning up (of children and of environment).The teachers independently had provided responses to questions about their: number of years of formal schooling, years in childcare, years at the same center, own parenting status, and how many ECE/CD (early childhood education and child development) courses and workshops they had ever taken. Hierarchical stepwise regressions and ANOVAs showed the importance of ECE/CD training. When all positive teacher interactions tallied in the classroom were combined, ECE/CD training accounted for over 62 percent of the variance in teacher inputs. Thus, when interviewing candidates for childcare positions, directors need to verify a candidate's prior ECE/CD training and they need provide supports for staff to obtain ongoing ECE/CD coursework to ensure high quality childcare.

Education and other measures of socioeconomic status and risk of incident Alzheimer disease in a defined population of older persons.

To assess the relations of 3 measures of socioeconomic status (education, occupational prestige, and income) to risk of incident clinically diagnosed Alzheimer disease (AD). Cohort study with an average observation of 4.3 years. East Boston, Mass. a geographically defined community. A stratified random sample of 642 community residents 65 years of age and older who were free of AD at baseline. Clinical diagnosis of probable AD according to standard criteria, using structured uniform evaluation. The relations of the 3 measures of socioeconomic status to risk of disease were assessed using logistic regression analyses. In individual analyses, fewer years of formal schooling, lower income, and lower occupational status each predicted risk of incident AD; risk of disease decreased by approximately 17% for each year of education. In an analysis including all 3 measures, the effect of education on risk for disease remained approximately the same, but the effects of the other 2 measures were somewhat less and did not attain formal statistical significance, compared with separate analysis of each measure. Markers of lower socioeconomic status predict risk of developing incident AD. The mechanism of this relation is uncertain, but the possibility that it reflects unidentified and potentially reversible risk factors for the disease deserves careful investigation.

The Effect of a Brief Education Program on Glaucoma Patients

To assess our patients' knowledge of glaucoma and to measure the effect of a brief education program on their understanding of glaucoma. Patients attending glaucoma clinics at a university and a Veterans' Affairs hospital were randomized into two groups: "exposed" and "unexposed" to a simple education program of a video and brochures. Glaucoma knowledge was assessed twice by an oral questionnaire, at 2 weeks and 6 months after randomization plus or minus education. Younger patients and those with more years of formal schooling knew more about glaucoma. Two weeks after the education program, the exposed group performed significantly better than did the unexposed group. Analysis of the results showed benefit from both brochures and video. This effect of education was not seen at retesting 6 months later. Older patients and those with less formal education know less about glaucoma. A brief, simple education program can significantly improve levels of knowledge about glaucoma, even in a relatively well-informed population. However, patient education must be repeated to maintain a useful effect.

A decomposition of training probabilities

The determinants of workers' training probabilities are analysed. A distinction is made between the unconditional probability that a worker is employed by a firm that provides any training opportunities at all, and the conditional probability that the worker receives training given that s/he works for a firm that provides training. For this analysis a censored version of the bivariate probit model is applied. The results indicate that establishment size, industry dummies, type of schooling, age and experience affect only the unconditional probability, whereas the type of labour contract, working hours and job level affect only the conditional probability. Years of formal schooling affect both probabilities; more highly educated workers are both more likely to work for training-providing firms and, given that they work for such a firm, to be selected for training programmes.