Describes the use of concept cartoons as a teaching strategy. The cartoons represent scientific ideas in everyday situations and use published research to identify common areas of misunderstanding which then provide a focus for the concept cartoons. Cartoons provide teachers with good access to children's ideas, promote conceptual change,…

This study looks at the syllable onset interval (SOI) patterning in Taiwan Mandarin spontaneous speech and its relationship to discourse and syntactic units. Monologs were elicited by asking readers to tell stories depicted in comic strips and were transcribed and segmented into Discourse Segment Units (Grosz & Sidner, 1986), clauses, and…

Many students approach the transition to secondary school with feelings of both excitement and apprehension, but it is excitement that usually prevails. For students with Asperger's Syndrome, however, those aspects of secondary school that most students anticipate with great enthusiasm, such as being in a new and larger environment, having…

Graphic novels help all different types of learners. For children who are incapable of visualizing a story, the artwork helps them create context. Graphic elements also attract visually dependent readers, who then freely read the text, and help reluctant readers understand the plot of a story. Finally, graphic novels cross gender lines. In this…

This paper defines visual literacy, provides a synopsis of the current research on political awareness among today's youth, and shows how using political cartoons with children and adolescents will enhance their political cognition. It introduces the political cartoon, defining and describing what makes a political cartoon particularly effective…

This paper argues that in addition to being an important source of data for a project evaluator, project humor also provides a check on the evaluator's comprehension of background and events (i.e., if an evaluator does not understand a joke, he or she has probably not attained an insider's perspective). In addition, humor becomes a source of…

In order to determine some of the effects of children's television, a study investigated the communicative response repertoire of primary female characters in Saturday morning children's cartoons as perceived by children. Those perceptions were then compared with those of the researchers, formulated through previous studies, showing a relationship…

This paper provides a critical review of the behavioral research on film music, indicates that there is a visual bias in media attribute research which needs to be balanced, and provides media producers and instructional developers with a theoretical basis and practical guidelines for using music in audiovisual presentations. The question of film…

Noting the research finding that children watch an average of 20 to 25 violent acts per hour on Saturday morning cartoons, this paper discusses cartoon violence and presents the findings of a survey examining children's ability to differentiate between real and fantasy violence in television cartoons and the impact of such violence. Participating…

This theme issue of "InSEA News" is about several international and local curriculum concerns, building on topics of the previous two issues. The authors, from Taiwan, Brazil, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Portugal, address international cooperation projects or describe local curriculum projects. Some articles are accompanied by…

This paper suggests that developmental reading teachers could benefit from a little laughter or a little humor in their courses, since they teach subject matter no one wants to hear or read about to students who resent being placed in the classes, and they must do this well enough so that their students will pass a test they have already failed…

Describes an instructional project, How to Tell a Foreigner to Berlin the Way,'' designed to give 8th graders practical experience in using English; format based on the text London--People ans Pictures,'' Cornelsen-Velhagen & Klasing, Berlin. (RS)

Presented is an experiment investigating children's awareness of regularities in physical phenomena and their capacity for expressing these regularities. Hypothesized and confirmed is that children can use statements with the form and purpose of a physical law. Cartoons related to Archimedes' principle (and connected gravitation and fluid…

Describes the use of the "cultoon," an informative cartoon depicting some aspect of a culture, to develop cultural understanding. (AM)