In order to investigate the effects of cognitive early education on the seriational performance and learning effectiveness of transcultural children, 20 young Ethiopian children whose families had immigrated to Israel were given two tests of seriational thinking before and after they received mediational instruction in the Pattern and Sequence unit of Bright Start: Cognitive Curriculum for Young Children. 20 children of the same age, gender distribution, and family background had a control (non-mediational) activity. The control children performed initially at a higher level than did the cognitive education children, but the latter group closed that gap and surpassed the performance of the control children following their Bright Start experience. The authors concluded that there was evidence of cultural difference rather than cultural deprivation in this transcultural group, that their performance in seriational problem solving could be enhanced by cognitive early education, and that there was also evidence of intermediate transfer of their training in seriation.
The authors conducted an e-mail survey of persons who train practitioners to do dynamic assessment (DA). The report presents the opinions and recommendations of 29 DA trainers from 14 countries. The brief survey includes recommendations and suggestions about credentials, time required for training, content, and follow-up policies for individuals who are being trained to become DA practitioners. The participants generally agree that a broad range of credentialed practitioners could be appropriate for DA training, and essentially agree on the central content appropriate for inclusion in this training with an emphasis on mediation and deemphasis on quantitative information. There was inconsistent preference for training in generalizable principles of DA over training in a variety of instruments and tasks.
Transculturality is defined as “the condition of being either between cultures or astride two (or more) cultures.” The condition has both a dynamic aspect, i.e., movement between or across boundaries, but, more importantly, a social and psychological aspect, i.e., movement between or across social systems whose cultural characteristics are fundamentally different. Transculturality may occur both between and within persons. Data on language mastery and use, educational attainment, school dropout rates, occupations, and incomes of transcultural persons in the United States are examined for generalizable inferences. Language appears to be both a powerful component of culture and of great power in transcultural situations. Language mastery and use are strongly related to a host of adaptation variables. Three models (syndrome, risk factor, and multivariate) are discussed briefly.
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