Comparing composing processes in writing-only and reading-to-write test tasks

The use of reading-to-write tasks for assessing academic writing in English is increasing, often replacing traditional impromptu writing-only tasks. This shift has led to a number of studies comparing the written products of these two task types. To add to this literature, this article reports on a study comparing test takers’ processes in composing reading-to-write and writing-only test tasks. Ten non-native English-speaking students at a large Midwestern United States university participated in talk-aloud writing sessions and interviews. They wrote on tasks developed for the English placement exam at the university. The data were analyzed qualitatively across tasks and test takers. Differences were found across tasks and writers with the reading-to-write task eliciting a more interactive process for some writers and writing-only tasks requiring more initial and less online planning. Those with more experience and interest in writing reported using a more interactive process. To use the results in choosing between the two tasks, careful consideration of the construct for academic writing is needed. However, the results suggest a more authentic process in reading-to-write tasks, and also reveal test takers’ preference for these tasks.     

Parents' reflections on their children being excluded

Abstract

The human cost of exclusion is not confined to the student. Parents of excluded students feel they are judged as unworthy parents and are mere observers to a decision that has radical implications for their son's/daughter's future education. As partners in the educational enterprise of their child, they are often powerless in the exclusion process and are voiceless in the discourse that surrounds the decision to exclude as well as the decisions regarding future education options. The parents' experience of exclusion is a side of the exclusion story that is not often heard. This article describes how a group of parents experienced their son's/daughter's mainstream schooling and exclusion from a mainstream secondary school. The parents' story is passionate, painful and poignant. It highlights the need for the continued development of inclusive practices in mainstream schools.     

Children's school problems and family system processes

The literature concerning the relationship between children's school problems and family system processes is reviewed. While it is noted that there is no strong linkage between the empirical studies and case reports that have appeared to date, it is observed that the findings from these studies are showing some convergence. There is now reasonable evidence that some school problems may indeed be a consequence of family system processes. The fact of this possibility and the character of the relationship is brought to the attention of school counselors and school psychologists.     

Dissonance in first-year students’ reflections on their learning

This paper presents the findings of an interview study of first-year engineering students’ approaches to study. Data is presented to illustrate the construct of “dissonant study orchestration” as it is manifested in the everyday academic reality of these students’ learning behaviour. This data is theorised within a student’s-experiences-oflearning framework and patterns of study approach considered atypical of or theoretically undesirable within, the model used to determine them are presented and discussed. Individual-level, qualitatively different patterns of “dissonant” orchestration are articulated. The conclusion to the paper argues that the qualitative distinctions apparent amongst dissonant approaches present particular challenges to academic practitioners whose aim is the improvement of these students’ learning behaviour.     

Children's Perceptions of their Nursery Education

There is much in the literature reporting details of children's experience of their preschool educational setting as perceived by adults; however, few reports exist with regard to children's own perceptions of their experience. This article discusses some of the problems associated with interviewing young children and suggests an interviewing technique involving the use of role play. Children in three nursery classes were interviewed in order to ascertain their perceptions of their nursery experience. Phenomenography has provided a useful framework for the interpretation of findings. This approach is based upon the theory that there are a limited number of qualitatively different ways in which people perceive or understand various aspects of, or phenomena in, the world (Marton, 1988). The present study has attempted to identify the qualitatively different ways in which children perceive aspects of their experience in nursery education.     

Television Formats and Children's Classifications of their Viewing

Children's ability to classify television programmes by genre has been depicted as significant in the development of children as viewers and employed as a variable in researching such development. This article reports a research study, employing the repertory grid procedure with 9‐10 year olds, designed to investigate the constructs children employ in describing and differentiating television programmes. Recent approaches to children's viewing have begun to prioritise their construction of meaning in relation to broadcast television. This study indicates that 9‐10 year olds' classifications of their viewing do not conform to those assumed in many earlier studies.     

Children's illnesses: their beneficial effects on behavioral development

The theme of this presentation concerns the potential beneficial effects of children's illnesses on their behavioral development. Illnesses of a minor nature such as colds and gastrointestinal upsets are frequent events in the lives of all children at every age, but are most frequent in the preschool period. They are generally not life threatening and are managed within the family, day-care center, or school. These illnesses, like other life perturbations, can expand children's personal and social experiences in ways beneficial to their behavioral development. They provide many opportunities for children to increase their knowledge of self, other, prosocial behavior, and empathy, as well as a realistic understanding of the sick role. This knowledge is gained, not only from their personal feelings and social experiences while ill, but also by their observations of siblings, parents, and peers as they become ill and recover, often in quick succession after their own experience. This important subject has seldom been studied from a developmental point of view. The conceptualizations as presented are based on the author's clinical experiences and the existing related research. It is the author's hope that in the future developmental psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and other behavioral scientists will study children's illnesses as part of normal behavioral development.     

Children's concepts of gears and their promotion through play

The mechanical transmission of motion, which is observable in gears’ turning direction (TD) and turning speed (TS) can be understood as part of the core concept “force and motion”. Previous studies have suggested that most children before the age of nine have naïve concepts of gears’ TD and TS. However, these studies relied on children's explanation data and might have therefore underestimated young children's potential. Moreover, these studies did not examine whether preschoolers can overcome their naïve concepts through teaching. Recently, educators have proposed guided play as an educational approach that combines children's play with teacher guidance in a purposefully designed environment. We conducted two subsequent studies. In Study 1, we investigated the children's (naïve) concepts of gears’ TD and TS with a cross‐sectional approach using a nonverbal test procedure. This study comprised 248 children aged 5–10 years and 73 adults. The results showed that the proportion of children with adequate concepts increased with age. More specifically, 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds differed significantly from 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds, indicating a developmental shift around this age. However, naïve concepts of TS were more persistent with age than naïve concepts of TD. Altogether, the results indicated the potential to foster 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds’ concepts of both TD and TS in an intervention. Thus, in Study 2, we developed and tested a guided play intervention to foster 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children's concepts of TD and TS. We conducted a prepost‐intervention design with a guided play group (n = 19) and a free play group (n = 21). The results suggested stronger learning gains in the guided play group (d_TD = 0.337, d_TS = 0.758) than in the free play group (d_TD = 0.224, d_TS = 0.158).     

幼儿合作意识与合作能力的培养

幼儿园教育应该关注同伴的合作行为,要依靠家长的理解和支持,培养幼儿的合作意识,并将幼儿合作意识与合作能力的培养纳入幼儿团课程目标体系中,其中,幼儿"观点采择"能力的培养是切入点.教师应尽量给幼儿提供与同伴交往合作的机会,并及时有效地对幼儿同伴合作意识和合作能力进行评价.     

Children's patterns of preserving emotional security in the interparental subsystem

Guided by the emotional security hypothesis, this research identified (1) individual differences in children's strategies for preserving their emotional security in the interparental relationship, and (2) the psychosocial and family correlates of these individual differences. Study 1 assessed reactivity to parental conflict simulations among 56 school-age children, whereas Study 2 solicited child and mother reports of 170 young adolescents' reactions to actual marital conflict. Cluster analyses in both studies indicated that children fit three profiles: (1) secure children, who showed well-regulated concern and positive representations of interparental relationships; (2) insecure-preoccupied children, who evidenced heightened distress, involvement or avoidance, and negative representations of interparental relationships; and (3) insecure-dismissing children, who displayed overt signs of elevated distress, avoidance, and involvement and low levels of subjective distress, avoidance and intervention impulses, and negative internal representations. Results in both studies indicated that preoccupied and dismissing children experienced more interparental conflict than did secure children, and preoccupied children evidenced the highest levels of internalizing symptoms. Study 2 results indicated that dismissing children had the highest levels of externalizing symptoms and preoccupied and dismissing children reported more coping, family, and personality difficulties than did secure children.     

Parents' Attitudes Towards Science and their Children's Science Achievement

Although countries worldwide are emphasizing the importance of science education for technological development and global economic competition, comparative findings from standardized international student assessments reveal a huge gap in science scores between developed and developing countries. Certain developed economies too have made little progress in raising science achievement over the past decade. Despite school improvement being placed high on the policy agenda, the results of such actions have been poor. Therefore, there is a need to explore additional ways in which science achievement can be enhanced. This study focuses on the family and examines whether parents' attitudes towards science (how much they value science and the importance they place on it) can influence their children's science achievement. Individual- and school-level data are obtained from the Program for International Student Assessment 2006 survey for 15 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and non-OECD countries. Hierarchical linear modelling is employed to estimate the equations. The findings indicate that parents' attitudes towards science have a positive and statistically significant effect on science achievement, after controlling for other important student- and school-level variables. Moreover, students from poor backgrounds appear to benefit from more positive parental science attitudes as much as students from high socioeconomic status, such that equality of student achievement is not affected. This study recommends that schools and teachers encourage parents to play a more pro-active role in their children's science education, as well as educate parents about the importance of science and strategies that can be adopted to support their children's science learning.     

Norwegian deaf teachers' reflections on their science education: implications for instruction

In this study, undertaken in an attempt to expand our understanding of science learning by deaf students, five teachers are interviewed about their views, based on their own experiences as Deaf students. They are all my former students and were among the first to successfully complete the upper secondary school with a university entrance certificate from a Norwegian school for deaf students. Physics was their major subject. These teachers see the systematic work in class discussions, especially on the concepts of physics, as a major contributor to their success, and they try to use similar methods in their own teaching. They believe that a thorough discussion of a topic using sign language prior to the reading of the textbook is crucial.     

Text-signaling devices and their effects on reading and memory processes

Signals are writing devices that emphasize aspects of a text's content or structure without adding to the content of the the text. Findings are reviewed for studies of several different types of signaling devices, including: titles, headings, previews, overviews, summaries, typographical cues, recall sentences, number signals, importance indicators, and summary indicators. Most investigations have examined how the presence of signals in a text affects subsequent memory for the text. Virtually all types of signals produce better memory for information they cue in a text, whereas memory for unsignaled information often is unaffected. Less attention has been directed to signaling effects on other cognitive processes, such as attention, basic reading processes, and comprehension. It is argued that an understanding of how signals influence these processes will contribute to the application of signaling research to reading and writing instruction and to our general understanding of reading.     

Shaping at the point of utterance: an investigation of the composing processes of the deaf student writer

All writers face the challenge of making meaning on a blank page. They struggle to make meaning for themselves and to communicate this meaning to the potential readers of their texts. Although, in this way, the act of writing can be perceived as a solitary endeavor, the activity of writing, as one aspect of literacy development, is embedded in a sociocultural framework and must be considered not only from the perspective of an individual's mental functioning but from the social context in which it exists. What follows is a preliminary report from a larger case study examining the composing processes of four deaf student writers. This broader study aspires to the goal of sociocultural research, which is to understand the relationship between human mental functioning, on one hand and cultural historical and institutional settings, on the other (Wertsch, 1995). From such a perspective, individual mental processes and sociocultural setting are understood in terms of this relationship, and human action is understood in the context of interrelated moments. I focus on one 'moment' of the writing process that I will term, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Krashen (1977) and James Britton (1978), 'shaping at the point of utterance.' In other words, I will explore what deaf writers do as they face the 'challenge of the blank page.'     

Six teaching orientations of Holocaust educators as reflections of teaching perspectives and meaning making processes

This study explored processes of curricular reinterpretation made by teachers who teach about the Holocaust. We conducted holistic narrative analyses of in-depth interviews with 31 American Holocaust educators. Six teaching orientations were identified: passionate historical, mythologizing-transforming, social-contemporizing, empathic-personalizing, riveting-shocking, and pragmatic-socializing. We offer vignettes for each orientation and compare them to other teaching perspective typologies, highlighting the novelty and utility of the presented typology. The findings demonstrate how narrative identity, meaning-making processes and teaching perspectives interconnect and lead teachers to reinterpret the Holocaust in their teaching. These findings have implications for teaching complex and value-laden topics.