School Psychology
Lida Malekzade; Elaheh Hejazi; Sara Aghababaei; Nasrin Zamani
Abstract
Scientific thinking is a type of knowledge seeking involving intentional information seeking, including asking questions, testing hypotheses, making observations, recognizing patterns, and making inferences. The purpose of this research was designing a package of scientific thinking training and its ...
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Scientific thinking is a type of knowledge seeking involving intentional information seeking, including asking questions, testing hypotheses, making observations, recognizing patterns, and making inferences. The purpose of this research was designing a package of scientific thinking training and its ‘effect on problem-solving skill in preschool children. For this purpose, a study was designed in two steps. At first time, based on Kuhn theory and by reviewing and analysing available resources, the scientific thinking training package was designed. This teaching package includes discussions between the researchers and the child about stories with topics related to children's environment that they may not have encountered in everyday situations in the form of questions. At second step, in order to determine the effect of scientific thinking training on problem-solving, 30 children aged 5 to 6 (15 girls-15 boys) with a moderate score in Raven intelligence test was chosen from three primary schools. Subjects were trained individually in scientific thinking for 8 sessions. Data were analysed using repeated measures analysis of variance. Findings showed that teaching scientific thinking significantly improves problem solving skills (p <005) and this effect is stable over time. The results of this study show that preschool education and interaction with teacher is an opportunity to provide stimulus situations appropriate to children's abilities, and provide conditions for improving problem-solving.
Marzieh Gholami; ali Delavar; Hassan Pasha Sharifi; Nastaran Sharifi
Abstract
Children with cognitive disability have a poor performance in all of the visual –motor tests. Therefore, diagnosis and rehabilitation of these learning disabilities seem necessary. The purpose of the present study was to construct and normalize a learning disability test for pre-school students. ...
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Children with cognitive disability have a poor performance in all of the visual –motor tests. Therefore, diagnosis and rehabilitation of these learning disabilities seem necessary. The purpose of the present study was to construct and normalize a learning disability test for pre-school students. A researcher-made visual-spatial test was devised consisting of seven sections (symbolization, space status, visual distinction, visual argumentation, visual memory sequence, maze, and rotational form) whose content validity was confirmed by psychology professors and then was performed on a sample of 206 preschool students. The questions were analyzed, and their validity, reliability and cut point were determined. This test showed an acceptable reliability. Then, to determine the construct validity and components of the tests, Varimax normalized method was used. Conformity factor analysis was also used to determine the validity of the factors which confirmed that the structure of questionnaire had an acceptable fitness to the data. Independent t-test demonstrated that there is a significant difference between the average scores of the normal students and those with learning disability. To investigate convergent validity, we used learning disability checklist that was simultaneously completed by the mothers. The results of Chi-Squared test demonstrated that there is a significant relationship between these two variables: the completed checklist by mothers and completed learning disability test by children.Considering the acceptable reliability and validity of the tests, it can be a tool to be used by learning disorders and counseling centers.