Using response to kindergarten and first grade intervention to identify children at-risk for long-term reading difficulties

Entry-level kindergartners in classrooms from five middle class school districts were given a test of letter identification and children who scored at or below the 30th percentile on the test were classified as “at risk” for early reading difficulties. Half of these children were randomly assigned to a project-based intervention condition where they received supplementary intervention in small groups until the end of their kindergarten year. The other half received whatever remedial services were available at their home schools and literacy skills development in both groups was tracked throughout kindergarten. All available at-risk children were again assessed at the beginning of first grade and dichotomized into a “continued-risk” group and a “no-longer-at-risk” group using a composite measure of basic word level skills. Normal reader controls were also identified using the same measure. Children in the continued-risk group received either project-based intervention (one-to-one tutoring 30 min daily) or school-based intervention throughout first grade. Intervention for project treatment children was discontinued at the end of first grade and literacy development in all groups was tracked until the end of third grade. The present study focused on literacy development in children who received only project-based kindergarten intervention or both (project-based) kindergarten and first grade intervention, relative to the normal reader controls. Of special interest was the question of whether measures of response to intervention would more effectively distinguish between continued-risk and no-longer-at-risk children than would kindergarten screening measures, measures of intelligence, or measures of reading-related cognitive abilities. Results indicated that the RTI measures more effectively and more consistently distinguished between these two groups than did the psychometric measures.

Teaching structured troubleshooting: integrating a standard methodology into an information technology program

Troubleshooting skills are integral for the Information Technology professional. In order to address faculty concerns that students were not effectively learning required troubleshooting skills, a standardized troubleshooting methodology (the DECSAR Method) was created and integrated into the standard curriculum of a college information technology program. Components of troubleshooting were measured using a pre-/post-testing approach with the Social Problem Solving Inventory—Revised. Testing indicated improvement in several areas of troubleshooting reinforced by DECSAR. The context in which the troubleshooting methodology was applied was associated with post-test change.

Dyslexia speed problems in a transparent orthography

This study was intended to help clarify the nature of dyslexia in Spanish. A sample of 30 children, 8 to 16 years old, participated in this study. Dyslexic children were compared to two control groups, a chronological age-matched control group and a reading level-matched control group. Measures included nonword and pseudohomophone reading (phonological procedure), homophone choice (orthographic procedure), and phonological awareness tasks (syllabic, intrasyllabic, and phonemic level). For each task, accuracy (error percentage) and performance time were measured. Results showed a deficit in the dyslexic group on all the tasks, which was more evident when time was considered. With the results consistent with studies in other transparent orthographies such as Italian and German, speed problems seem to be more evident and relevant than accuracy problems in Spanish dyslexic children.

Critical physics agency: further unraveling the intersections of subject matter knowledge, learning, and taking action

In this rejoinder to Bryan Brown and John Reveles, we highlight the facts that (a) sociocultural theories of learning do not go far enough because they fail to address a number of issues and (b) we require concepts such as power and positionality to understand science learning.

Training reading fluency: is it important to practice reading aloud and is generalization possible?

Outcomes of three different types of computerized training in sub-lexical items (word-initial consonant clusters) on reading speed for 39 German-speaking poor readers in Grades 2 and 3 were evaluated. A phonological–orthographic association group, a reading aloud group, and a combined group were compared in performance with an untrained control group. During short-term training, the intervention groups showed higher gains than the control group in reading speed of the trained sub-lexical items and of the words containing the trained segments. No differences were found between the intervention groups. In the development of pseudoword reading, the groups did not show differential improvements. The generalization effect to pseudoword reading was similar, whether the pseudowords contained the trained segment as a syllable or as a non-syllabic letter string. The gains induced by training were specific to the materials used in training and did not induce gains in general reading speed.

A research framework for creative and imitative reasoning

This conceptual research framework addresses the problem of rote learning by characterising key aspects of the dominating imitative reasoning and the lack of creative mathematical reasoning found in empirical data. By relating reasoning to thinking processes, student competencies, and the learning milieu it explains origins and consequences of different reasoning types.

The Dark Side of “Postmodern Moonshine”

In our summer 2006 issue, we ran a comprehensive overview of how postmodernism has degraded composition on our campuses. Steve Kogan enlarges that indictment and charges that the movement has deliberately corrupted every area of English instruction—from the acquisition of skills and knowledge to the more fundamental mission of developing in students the habits of disciplined learning.

Making the Hidden Explicit: Learning About Equity in K-8 Preservice Science Education

Preservice teachers in a K–8 science methods course used guided video reflection to examine their interactions with children during science teaching. This inquiry approach helped preservice teachers identify and respond to gaps between their beliefs and intentions about teaching all children and their enactment of those beliefs. The experience of teaching a science lesson and then viewing it multiple times through a critical framework provided an opportunity for preservice teachers to recognize hidden assumptions, unexamined behaviors, and the unintentional meanings they may have conveyed to children. This encouraged them to think more critically about their roles as teachers in creating spaces where all children have access to quality science learning experiences.

Project InterActions: A Multigenerational Robotic Learning Environment

This paper presents Project InterActions, a series of 5-week workshops in which very young learners (4- to 7-year-old children) and their parents come together to build and program a personally meaningful robotic project in the context of a multigenerational robotics-based community of practice. The goal of these family workshops is to teach both parents and children about the mechanical and programming aspects involved in robotics, as well as to initiate them in a learning trajectory with and about technology. Results from this project address different ways in which parents and children learn together and provide insights into how to develop educational interventions that would educate parents, as well as children, in new domains of knowledge and skills such as robotics and new technologies.

Mapping the Field of VET Partnerships

This paper looks critically at partnerships in education and training by presenting a case study of a community-level partnership aimed at promoting high school apprenticeships in Ontario Canada. The analysis maps the field of social relations within this partnership in order to reveal institutionally-based struggles and their implications for youth training and employment. The assumptions within policy that employers are actively engaged as partners and that they and other stakeholders share a unitary vision for education and training are challenged. Rather, partnerships reflect tensions among partners that must be addressed in order to improve the learning affordances for youth.

Crosslinguistic influence on phonological awareness for Korean–English bilingual children

This study examined (1) the potential influence of oral language characteristics of two languages that bilingual children acquire on their PA and (2) the relationship of PA in L1 with PA and literacy skills in L2, using data from Korean–English bilingual children. Thirty three Korean–English bilingual children, composed of two subsamples from two different locations/bilingual programs, participated in the study. The findings showed that the sample of bilingual children from two bilingual programs differed in their mean performances on intrasyllabic phonological awareness in Korean (i.e., rime awareness and body awareness). Furthermore, children’s Korean rime awareness, but not body awareness, was positively related to their phonological awareness and literacy skills in English. Finally, these children’s phonological awareness in Korean made a positive contribution to English decoding skills even after controlling for their English sight word reading skills. The results are discussed in light of interlingual influence on bilingual children’s phonological awareness.

Preschool Teachers’ Shared Beliefs About Appropriate Pedagogy for 4-Year-Olds

The 18 preschool teachers in the study tended to agree that preschool education for 4-year-olds should foremost be fun and engaging, not stressful. Teachers should develop curricula based on children’s interests and everyday lives, and allow children to choose their activities and to direct their own play and exploration at their own pace. The goal of preschool education should be to promote children’s social, emotional, and physical well-being, and not focus so much on academic learning.

Evaluation of a classroom based training to improve self-regulation in time management tasks during homework activities with fourth graders

A study on classroom based training of self-regulated learning was conducted with fourth grade pupils attending German public schools. The participating classes were assigned randomly to either a training group or a control group. The pupils in the training group received 5 weeks of training, as depicted by Zimmerman, Bonner, & Kovach (American Educational Research Journal 31:845-862 1996), during normal classroom instruction and homework activities. Training effects were confirmed for various skills associated with self-regulation, motivation and performance. By reviewing the solution rates to daily assignments with the help of hierarchical linear models, a linear growth in the solution rates over the course of the 5 weeks was proven, which weakened towards the end of the training. Significant differences in the growth rates among the students were also confirmed. Skills in time management, learning goal orientation and self-efficacy that were evidenced by the students prior to the training proved to be able to explain variances among the growth curves.

The Importance of Art Viewing Experiences in Early Childhood Visual Arts: The Exploration of a Master Art Teacher’s Strategies for Meaningful Early Arts Experiences

The visual arts can be an important and rich domain of learning for young children. In PreK education, The Task Force on Children’s Learning and the Arts: Birth to Age Eight (Young children and the arts: Making creative connections, Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership, 1998) recommends that art experiences for young children include activities designed to introduce children to works of art that are high quality and developmentally appropriate in both content and presentation. This paper documents the teaching strategies utilized by a master art teacher at the Denver Art Museum to engage preschool-age students in art viewing experiences which were part of a museum-based art program. This research provides support for integrating rich, meaningful art viewing experiences as a regular part of young children’s arts experiences while offering early childhood educators teaching strategies for early art viewing experiences.

Using interpretative meta-ethnography to explore the relationship between innovative approaches to learning and their influence on faculty understanding of teaching

Faculty experiences of innovative approaches to learning and the changes to their knowledge emerging from such experiences constitute an important area of inquiry that has to date largely been ignored or has been approached with research methods ill-suited to examining such experiences. This paper adopts interpretative meta-ethnography as its research framework to investigate the changes to faculty knowledge that occur when they adopt problem-based learning (PBL). The paper presents themes that emerged through the analysis and argues for future inquiry.

Clergy’s Views of the Relationship between Science and Religious Faith and the Implications for Science Education

Since many teachers and students recognize other kinds of knowledge (faith) based on other ways of knowing, consideration of these realities is appropriate for the science education community. Understanding the multitude of ways that clergy view relationships between science and faith (i.e. alternative ways of knowing) would assist in understanding various ways that people address complex issues arising from ideas about science and faith. We administered a questionnaire composed of multiple-choice and short answer items to 63 United Methodist ministers. Findings included (1) that formal, organized faith contexts (e.g. church services) serve as informal science education opportunities, (2) participants demonstrated considerable diversity regarding the types of relationships developed between science and faith, and (3) participants recognized a need exists for better understandings of science and its relationship to faith for them, their colleagues, and their congregations.

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Bringing the Classroom to the Web: Effects of Using New Technologies to Capture and Deliver Lectures

Technology expands instructional options for faculty, and this study examines the differential learning effects of offering a lecture on physics to students in a traditional classroom versus internet video formats. Based on an experiment conducted in a natural educational context, results indicate enhanced transfer of lecture information in the video formats relative to the live condition, with students also responding more positively to personalized video presentation.

Influences of Teacher–Child Social Interactions on English Language Development in a Head Start Classroom

Increasing numbers of Spanish-speaking preschool children require attention to improve the likelihood of success in school. This study, part of a larger 2-year ethnographic study of a Head Start classroom, elaborates the role of teachers’ interactions with students who were learning English. Using an interactional ethnography approach, the authors focus on the social nature of these interactions. The study illuminates the kinds of teacher interactions with students that support and hinder the students’ language learning. It reinforces the importance of student engagement in social interactions with teachers and with English other than codes of obedience and authority. Finally, it recommends actions teachers can take to provide optimal circumstances for English learning interactions for students.

Technology in Support of Collaborative Learning

This paper reviews the research conducted in the last 20 years on the application of technology in support of collaborative learning in higher education. The review focuses primarily on studies that use Internet-based technologies and social interaction analysis. The review provides six sets of observations/recommendations regarding methodology, empirical evidence, and research gaps and issues that may help focus future research in this emerging field of study.

Parents’ Perceptions of Child Care for Children with Disabilities

Sixteen Minnesota families with children with disabilities participated in a 2-year interview study of their care experiences. Findings show that families developed a network of care providers, struggled to pay additional costs for care, were not informed of community services and programs, and believed that their children received adequate child care. This study highlights the need to provide information to families and providers and to link services in both rural and urban communities.