Teaching writing to middle school students: a national survey

A random sample of language arts, social studies, and science middle school teachers from the United States were surveyed about their preparation to teach writing, beliefs about responsibilities for teaching writing, use of evidence-based writing practices, assessment of writing, use of technology, and adaptations for struggling writers. The findings from this survey raised concerns about the quality of middle school writing instruction. Many teachers believed their preservice and inservice preparation to teach writing was inadequate. Middle school students spend little time writing or being taught how to write. While most teachers used a variety of evidenced-based writing practices and made adaptations for struggling writers, such methods were applied infrequently. Most teachers did not appear to use assessment data to shape how they taught writing, and computers played a relatively minor role in middle school writing instruction. Even though teachers generally agreed that writing was a collective responsibility, language arts teachers placed a greater emphasis on writing instruction than social studies and science teachers.     

Multidimensional perfectionism in a sample of middle school students: An exploratory investigation

In this exploratory study, 185 middle school students were administered the Almost Perfect Scale‐Revised and the Behavioral Assessment System for Children‐Self Report. Self‐reported grade‐point average was also obtained. Students who established high personal standards but nonetheless recognize their limitations (adaptive perfectionists) reported significantly higher (i.e., more positive) scores on a number of academic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal variables. However, the perceived inability for some students to consistently meet their high standards (maladaptive perfectionists) was significantly and negatively related to perceptions of school and family relationships, and greater emotional distress. Implications of these findings and future research and clinical suggestions are provided. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 40: 677–689, 2003.     

Sex work and students: an exploratory study

Available evidence suggests that changes in the funding of higher education have led to some students entering the sex industry in order to make ends meet. The current study comprises a sample of undergraduates (N = 130) in the south of England, who completed a cross‐sectional survey of their financial circumstances, health, psychological well‐being, substance use and lifestyle. A response rate of 74% was obtained. Data indicated that over 10% of all respondents knew of students engaged in sex work (defined as prostitution, escorting, lap dancing or stripping) in order to support themselves financially. Poor psychological well‐being, drinking problems and financial circumstances were associated with sex work, and although no direct evidence was found linking this to an earlier history of sexual abuse, there was an indirect relationship through the impact of abuse on mental health. A logistic regression model incorporating General Health Questionnaire scores, alcohol problems and hours worked outside of study strongly predicted whether respondents knew of students engaged in sex work. For lap dancing in particular the model was very strong. This study provides further evidence of students' participation in sex work and its association with economic circumstances. Further longitudinal work is required to clarify the nature of these relationships.     

Argumentative skills development in teaching philosophy to secondary school students through constructive controversy: an exploratory study case

The use of argumentative strategies that promote the defense of well-grounded personal arguments contributes to the development of a critical, ethical and political thought that leads to responsible and socially committed people. Based on the quality of the produced arguments in philosophical essays, this work evaluates the potential application of a cooperative learning method – the constructive controversy – for the development of argumentative skills in secondary school students in philosophy. The quality of the arguments was evaluated through the analysis of a total of 144 philosophical essays produced by the students over a school year. The results point to the advantages of using this method over more traditional ones in the acquisition of argumentative skills.     

Teaching thermodynamics to middle school students: What are appropriate cognitive demands?

What cognitive demands foster understanding of thermodynamics for middle school science students? We successively modified the cognitive demands of a 13-week thermodynamics curriculum for four cohorts of 100-200 eighth graders while maintaining the same basic experiments and real-time data collection software. When comparing posttest performance across four versions, we found two- to fourfold increases in understanding when (a) students actively predicted outcomes and reconciled results, and (b) students used a heat-flow model of thermodynamics to integrate their experimental results. We argue that the curriculum must explicitly motivate students to construct understanding, and that middle school students benefit from what we call “pragmatic models” of scientific concepts.     

Handwriting automaticity and writing instruction in Australian kindergarten: an exploratory study

Accumulating evidence indicates handwriting automaticity is related to the development of effective writing skills. The present study examined the levels of handwriting automaticity of Australian children at the end of kindergarten and the amount and type of writing instruction they experienced before entering first grade. The current study involved 177 kindergarten children enrolled in 23 classrooms from seven government-funded primary schools in Western Australia. Individual child level data (e.g., handwriting automaticity and word-reading skills) were collected and teachers were asked to complete a survey assessing the amount of time and types of writing activities developed in their classrooms (e.g., teaching basic skills and teaching writing processes). Hierarchical linear models were conducted to examine total variance attributable to child and classroom levels. Results showed a total variance of approximately 20% in children’s handwriting automaticity attributable to differences among classrooms when gender and word-reading skills were controlled for. Large variability was noted in the amount and type of writing instruction reported by a subset of participating teachers. Handwriting automaticity was associated with the teaching of revising strategies but not with the teaching of handwriting. Implications for writing development and writing instruction are discussed.     

Validation of a scheme for assessing argumentative writing of middle school students

Two studies tested factors influencing ratings of argumentative essays in order to develop a scheme for assessing essays written by middle school students. Study CLAIM-CLARITY assessed the effect of:

• 1.(a) claim clarity,
• 2.(b) reason strength,
• 3.(c) strength of rebuttals to counterarguments,
• 4.(d) the rater's personal values, and
• 5.(e) the rater's topic knowledge.

These factors explained a third of the variance in holistic scores. There was a significant interaction between raters' topic knowledge and the validity of evidential statements. Raters' values were not significant with respect to the range of topics included in this study. Study DEVELOPMENT assessed the effect of:

• 1.(a) development,
• 2.(b) voice, and
• 3.(c) conventions.

The factors explained 63 percent of the variance in holistic ratings. This result was attributed to an assessment scheme that fostered integrated rather than isolated consideration of argument elements.     

探究性学习在中学物理教学中的应用

改变传统的教育观念和课堂教学模式,采取"探究性学习教学模式",切实提高学生参与和体验学习的程度.落实课堂教学学生主体性这一现代教学基本原则.本文先是从理论的角度介绍探究性学习及其特点、探究性学习教学模式,再在实践的层面上结合实例,阐述探究性学习的教学应用.     

浅论高中作文教学

随着社会的发展,作文教学面临着巨大的时代挑战。本文主要探讨新形势下高中作文教学存在的问题,并提出了相应的解决策略。     

Promoting science motivation in American Indian middle school students: an intervention

U.S. national data show that American Indians earn lower math and science scores than other ethnic/racial groups. In the current study, a brief, self-affirmation intervention was aimed at increasing science motivational beliefs in American Indian middle school students (n?=?212, M_age?=?12.7 years). Students, each read a biography of a successful scientist who was matched to them on both ethnicity and gender; ethnicity but not gender; gender but not ethnicity; or no match. Students then wrote a short essay describing traits they shared with the scientist. Pre- and post-intervention science self-efficacy, individual interest, and goal orientations were measured to assess intervention efficacy immediately following the intervention and one week later. Results revealed no benefits of the intervention in increasing motivational beliefs for students in any experimental condition. We discuss the fragile fidelity of self-affirmation interventions and conditions that might be necessary for intervention success.     

中介语理论的偏误观与高中英语写作教学

中介语是学习者在二语习得过程中形成的一种兼具母语和目的语特征的语言系统,中介语理论的偏误观对高中英语写作教学有着较强的解释力和指导意义。偏误是学生学习外语过程中不可避免的现象。教师在教学和科研中,应对学生的中介语偏误进行详尽的收集和系统分析,根据偏误的类型给出正确的评价,并实施灵活恰当的纠错策略,从而引导学生逐步修正其中介语系统,促进其写作能力的发展。     

Teaching self-instruction to high school students

In an attempt to demonstrate the effectiveness of instructional programming in counseling, an experimental evaluation of a ten-week program aimed at teaching skills and strategies of self-instruction to high school students was conducted. Thirty-two grade ten students were assigned randomly to an experimental self-instruction group and a control group. Dependent variables included Rotter's (1966) Control of Reinforcement Questionnaire, Rosenbaum's (1980) Self-control Schedule, a curriculum-specific test of self-instruction concepts, and a transfer test. Results revealed that students in the experimental, self-instruction program outperformed students in the control group on all dependent variables except for the Self-control Schedule. Content analysis of student responses to the transfer test showed a distinct pattern of skill development in the experimental group from pretest to posttest. Implications for the development and offering of instructional counseling programs are drawn.Many students of counseling have argued that counseling is essentially a kind of teaching (Carkhuff and Berenson, 1976; Ellis, 1977; Katz and Ivey, 1977; Krumboltz and Thoresen, 1976; Sorenson, 1967). More recently, Martin and his colleagues have developed an approach to counseling that employs models of instruction as a basis for the development and implementation of a broad range of counseling interventions and programs (Hiebert et al., 1981; Martin and Hiebert, 1982; Martin et al., 1981; Martin et al., 1980). Martin (1983) also has suggested that counselors in schools and elsewhere can make use of systematic teaching programs to help clients/students acquire functional skills in a variety of areas such as anxiety management, decision making, interpersonal skills, and so forth. In the development and offering of such programs, counselors act as curriculum developers and instructors. Initial evidence for the viability of this type of instructional counseling in schools was provided by Haynes et al. (1983), and Leal, Baxter, Martin, and Marx (1981) who developed programs based on cognitive and behavioral counseling methods that were successful in alleviating the test anxieties experienced by high school students. The experiment reported here extends the work of Martin and others in instructional counseling by evaluating an instructional program designed to teach a series of integrated skills of self-instruction to high school students. [Note that the term self-instruction is used here to refer to the activities of people engaged in systematic self-change, and is not intended to connote the system of self-instruction training developed by Donald Meichenbaum (1977).]Nearly all teachers and curriculum specialists share at least one goal: to help students acquire the capacity to engage in self-directed learning. Most often, it is assumed that school students will acquire skills in areas such as self-instruction and critical thinking (skills often seen as necessary requisites to self-directed learning) as a result of stimulating interactions with traditional school curricula. A frequently voiced alternative is to attempt to teach such skills directly (cf. Beyers, 1984a, 1984b), more or less as a curriculum in their own right. Many attempts have been made to do this, but few have received detailed empirical, experimental analysis. In a recent meta-analysis of primary prevention studies conducted in schools, Baker, Swisher, Nadenichek, and Popowicz (1984) found 40 such studies that had been conducted since 1970. Most of the experimental programs in the studies reviewed were targeted at improving students' communication skills, decision making and problem solving skills, and self-awareness. None of the studies reviewed by Baker et al. included instructional interventions that attempted to teach a broad range of skills and strategies that would permit students to plan, implement, and evaluate programs of personal change and development. Teaching school pupils to engage in systematic self-instruction for purposes of personal change simply has not been attempted, to date, in the context of an experimentally controlled investigation. Given an increasing number of pleas for exactly this kind of broad-based school programming (Martin, 1983; Sprinthall, 1984), the need for controlled experimental studies in this area is acute.Self-introduction or learning to learn has been the subject of considerable theorizing by both cognitive and instructional psychologists (Gagné, 1977; Bransford, 1979). Experimental work by Ann Brown and her colleagues (Brown, 1978; Brown et al., 1979) has highlighted the difficulty of teaching various metacognitive strategies that would seem basic to the capacity to self-instruct so as to ensure the transfer of such strategies to tasks other than those employed during strategy acquisition. At the same time, Brown's research also shows that the teaching of generalizable metacognitive strategies such as self-testing is possible, even with educable retarded children (Brown, et al., 1979). Other research concerned with differences between expert and novice knowledge has highlighted the importance of the ability to access declarative knowledge stores and the availability of relevant procedural knowledge in attempting to explain these differences (Chi et al., 1982; Leinhardt, 1983). [See Anderson, (1980) for formal definitions and discussions of declarative and procedural knowledge.] The greater ability of experts to function as independent learners or self-instructors in their areas of expertise likely is related to such differences. While it sometimes is unclear as to whether self-instructional competence resides in procedural knowledge stores or cognitive and/or metacognitive strategies, it seems clear that learning to learn involves more than simply acquiring necessary declarative knowledge in relevant substantive areas (Glaser, 1984). Thus, explicit, direct instruction in skills and strategies of self-instruction probably is necessary if students in schools are to learn to direct their own learning and development.The experiment reported here was conducted to supply initial experimental data about the possible effectiveness of a program designed to teach skills and strategies of self-instruction to high school students. It is a study of a ten-week instructional counseling program developed to teach self-instruction skills in areas such as decision making, gathering information, self-assessment, framing objectives, planning, and self-evaluation. As such, it is a more comprehensive program than other programs of primary prevention in schools that have been studied experimentally. While a variety of school and extracurricular situations were employed as illustrative contexts for presenting information about these skills to the students, the goal of the experimental program was to teach the self-instruction skills as detached skills that could be applied to a variety of situations and life circumstances. This approach was viewed as contrasting with traditional approaches in which such skills are thought to be acquired indirectly as a result of working through a series of tasks in defined substantive areas such as mathematics, history, or physics. In this latter method, it is likely that such skills, if they are acquired, become embedded in specific substantive contexts and are therefore less likely to generalize to situations or contexts other than those in which they were acquired (see Rigney, 1978 for the distinction between detached and embedded strategies). Dependent variables employed in the study were selected to test for the acquisition and transfer of targeted skills as well as for the acquisition of underlying beliefs about one's ability to control or influence external and internal events. The latter type of learning is thought by many counselors to be of great importance, particularly if attitudes and beliefs are learned that affect clients' attributional styles and/or tendencies (Strong and Claiborn, 1982).The overall purpose of the experiment was to determine whether instructional counseling curricula could be developed that would succeed in teaching detached strategies/skills of self-instruction to high school students. Should such instruction be possible, additional support would be provided for the notions of instructional counseling and counselors as curriculum developers and instructors. After all, a major part of counseling typically is associated with assisting clients to make decisions, gather information, frame goals and objectives, assess their situations and capabilities, plan actions, and evaluate the effects of their actions—all components of the self-instruction program taught to the experimental students in this study.The specific hypotheses investigated were that participation in the experimental instructional counseling program would increase: 1) students' knowledge of self-instruction skills (acquisition learning), 2) students' abilities to apply this knowledge to everyday events (transfer learning), and 3) students' attitudes consistent with higher levels of self-control and internal attributional processes (general attitudinal learning).The research reported here was supported by a grant from the Chairpersons' Research Fund, Simon Fraser University.The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Bruce Dallin, Louise Bourassa, Olwyn Irving, David Langton and the Abbotsford School District (British Columbia, Canada) in completing this work.     

中学英语课堂中激发学生自主学习的教学策略

在中学英语教学中应激发学生主动参与教学，给予学生自我发展的空间和机会。使学生想学、愿学，最终达到通过语言教学提高学生综合能力的目的。     

Perfectionism differences in gifted middle school students

Perfectionism has been cited as a major characteristic associated with children and adolescents who have been identified as gifted and talented. This study explored grade level, birth order, and gender differences among 391 students in three gifted and talented programs. The students completed an adaptation of the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. A2 × 3 × 3 between subject multivariate analysis revealed that females expressed more concern than males about organization, while males reported stronger parental expectations. First born adolescents reported higher parental criticism and expectations than youngest children. Females' concerns about making mistakes increases from grade 6 to grade 8 while the pattern for males fluctuated insignificantly. Patterns of parental criticism varied between males and females from grade 6 through grade 8.     

Settling In: Facilitating the transition to an inclusive middle school for students with mild disabilities

The present qualitative study examined the experiences of nine students with mild disabilities during their first year in an inclusive middle school in a Midwestern state of the United States (US). Data were gathered through interviews with students, teachers, and parents; classroom observations; and document analysis. Following the data analysis, three themes were identified: how the demands of navigating a new environment increased students’ anxiety; how students satisfied their need for belonging; and how students’ perceptions of school influenced their attitude towards help. Suggestions for facilitating school transitions for early adolescents with mild disabilities are provided.     

Componential skills of beginning writing: An exploratory study

The present study examined the components of end of kindergarten writing, using data from 242 kindergartners. Specifically of interest was the importance of spelling, letter writing fluency, reading, and word- and syntax-level oral language skills in writing. The results from structural equation modeling revealed that oral language, spelling, and letter writing fluency were positively and uniquely related to writing skill after accounting for reading skills. Reading skill was not uniquely related to writing once oral language, spelling, and letter writing fluency were taken into account. These findings are discussed from a developmental perspective.     

Mentoring at-risk middle school students to reduce communication apprehension

Research has demonstrated the efficacy of mentoring at-risk students in a number of fields from physical education to math and science. While separate research has found that many at-risk students lack effective communication skills, little research has explored the potential of communication mentoring in improving at-risk students’ communication efficacy. In our study, we examined the effectiveness of communication majors in a senior capstone course mentoring at-risk middle school students. Mentors were assigned a protégé and were required to design a curriculum targeting specific communication apprehension concerns identified in each student and implement the curriculum over a 10-week period. Analysis of self-reported communication apprehension scores showed at-risk students prior to mentoring reported higher than average levels of communication apprehension. After mentoring, they reported statistically significantly lower levels of communication apprehension. The implications for mentoring, at-risk students, and improved middle school communication education are considered.     

Academic vocabulary and middle school English learners: an intervention study

The goal of this experimental intervention study was to determine if evidence-based instructional strategies for general vocabulary words are effective with middle school English learner (EL) students and academic vocabulary words. Participants showed significantly more growth in their knowledge of academic vocabulary during the treatment condition than during the control condition. A secondary goal of this study was to examine the predictive utility of students’ English language proficiency, and students’ general vocabulary knowledge in English was a positive predictor for their academic vocabulary growth during the intervention. However, participants’ growth during the control period had the greatest predictive utility for their growth during the intervention. Furthermore, this relationship was negative, suggesting that the intervention had the greatest benefits for students who made the least progress in English vocabulary in the absence of the intervention. Implications for instruction, policy, and future research are presented.     

大中学生英语听力元认知比较研究

采用Vandergrift等人的听力元认知意识调查问卷,对244名大学生和205名中学生进行调查,以探讨听力元认知和听力水平的关系.结果发现:1)大学生的总体英语听力元认知及其计划评价和个人知识维度均高于中学组,且存在显著差异;2)大学组与中学组在集中注意、问题解决和心译三维度不存在统计上的显著差异.研究结果对提高我国中学英语听力教学有启发意义.