This paper introduces an example of how pictures were used to facilitate exploration of spiritual aspects of self, as a basis for qualitative research, with young people aged 15-18 years. The author considers how spiritually moving and stirring experiences may be related to the notion of a direct, participatory embodied attunement to the world.…

Young Maltese children have experience and knowledge of animals. We explored the range of animal with which they are familiar and the origin of this knowledge. The children interviewed were in Pre School, aged 4 years, and in the first year of compulsory education, aged 5 years Verb l questions and photographs were used as the probe to access…

Embodied approaches to cognition propose that our own actions influence our understanding of the world. Do other people's actions also have this influence? The present studies show that perceiving another person's actions changes the way people think about objects in a scene. In Study 1, participants viewed a photograph and answered a question…

The high school dropout crisis in diverse urban communities in the United States is evidence of an endemic disengagement from formal education. The project on which this essay reports utilized visual sociology methods to explore city students' perceptions of schools' purposes, as well as the supports for and impediments to their school success.…

This is a qualitative examination of how the presentation mode of Renaissance painting--original artwork, printed reproduction, or digital reproduction--influences the critical responses of adolescents. In contrast to prior experimental research in this area, the findings of this study provide insights into the experiential dimensions of student's…

In the past, copyright and education have evolved together in response to technological advances from the book to the videocassette, and copyright law has been designed to allow educators to use a wide range of media with their students. Stephen Marshall describes how digital communication technologies threaten these accommodations, not as a…

Photonovels look like comic books but contain photographs instead of drawings. Because photonovels combine pictures and everyday language, adult ESL learners can use them to communicate their thoughts and ideas. Photonovels can also be an aid in learning spoken and written English. This article describes a photonovel project that one of the…

Over the last two or three decades a revolution has taken place in the area of communication which forces people to rethink the social and the semiotic landscape of Western developed societies. The effect of this revolution has been to dislodge written language from the centrality which it has held, or which has been ascribed to it, in public…

We used a multiple-baseline design across materials to assess the effects of stimulus superimposition and background fading on the sight-word reading skills of a 6-year-old boy with autism. Before the study began, the boy was taught to make verbal responses when shown 15 photographs of physical education activities and equipment. During baseline…

Inviting teachers back to the role of reflective advocates for thoughtful reading instruction, this book presents theory and pedagogical possibilities to reclaim and build upon the knowledge base that was growing when government mandates, scripted commercial programs, and high stakes tests took over as the dominant agenda for reading instruction…

Virtual reality (VR) has demonstrated effectiveness as an instructional technology in many technical fields. However, VR research has generally lacked a sound theory base to provide explanatory or predictive strength. Further, research into the effectiveness of "new desktop technologies" that place VR within the reach of schools and teachers is…

An extensive research literature in education and psychology demonstrates positive effects of perspective-taking on various forms of learning. Until recently, perspective-taking has been limited to the mental simulation of how someone with different beliefs, knowledge, physical location, etc., perceives an object or event. Over the last decade…

Practice posters, with pictures and captions, are useful for controlled practice of vocabulary and structures in an EFL context. The author has found many advantages of using posters with beginners in a high school setting. Student led review gets students active, increases autonomy and improves confidence. The use of small groups is effective…

Previous work has shown that illiterate subjects are better at naming two-dimensional representations of real objects when presented as colored photos as compared to black and white drawings. This raises the question if color or textural details selectively improve object recognition and naming in illiterate compared to literate subjects. In this…

A few years ago, the author was introducing her students to David Hockney's "Pearblossom Highway" photo collage, when she decided to try his technique herself. It turned into an assignment that her students love and request. Hockney states that "Pearblossom Highway" gives "a sense of closeness to everything yet at the same time depth can be…