Comparing vocabulary development in Spanish- and Chinese-speaking ELLs: the effects of metalinguistic and sociocultural factors

This study evaluated the impact of two metalinguistic factors, English derivational awareness and English?CSpanish cognate awareness, and the impact of two sociocultural factors, maternal education and children??s length of residence in Canada, on English Language Learners (ELLs)?? vocabulary knowledge. The participants of the study were 89 Spanish-speaking ELLs, 77 Chinese-speaking ELLs, and a comparison group of 78 monolingual English-speaking children in Grades 4 and 7. The sample included both first-generation (born outside of Canada) and second generation (born in Canada) immigrant children. The study?yielded several important findings. First, it confirmed the strong link between derivational awareness and vocabulary knowledge observed in the previous research, and extended this relationship to two groups of ELLs from different first language backgrounds. Second, this study unveiled differences in vocabulary learning between Spanish-speaking and Chinese-speaking ELLs. While Spanish-speaking children were able to utilize the cognate strategy to learn English words, this strategy was not available for Chinese-speaking ELLs. With respect to the sociocultural factors, length of residence in Canada was significantly related to ELLs?? vocabulary development. Interestingly, length of residence in Canada only influenced the development of noncognate vocabulary, but not cognate vocabulary, in Spanish-speaking ELLs, which provides additional evidence for these children??s use of the cognate strategy. Finally, maternal education was not related to English vocabulary development. The theoretical and educational implications of these findings were discussed.     

Society,individual, family,and school factors contributing to child mental health in war: The ecological-theory perspective

Mental health problems are common in war-affected areas, but children have different levels of vulnerability. Based on ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner, 2005), this study analyses how factors related to the child (cognitive capacity), their family (parental depression and parenting styles), and their school (teachers’ practices and peer relations) mediate the association between traumatic stress (traumatic war experiences and stressful life-events) and child mental health (posttraumatic stress and psychological distress symptoms). The participants were 303 Palestinian children (51.2% girls) of 10–13 years (M = 10.94 ± 0.50) and their parents from the Gaza Strip. The children filled in questionnaires during school classes and the parents did so at their homes. The results of structural equation modeling substantiated the hypothesis that parental depression, poor parenting and low-quality peer relations mediated between traumatic stress and children’s mental health problems. Contrary to the hypothesis, child-related factors did not mediate that association. To conclude, parents and peers provide important age-salient social resources for children in war conditions, and psychosocial interventions should therefore enhance their beneficial functions.     

From expectancy-value theory to situated expectancy-value theory: A developmental,social cognitive,and sociocultural perspective on motivation

Eccles and colleagues’ expectancy-value theory of achievement choice has guided much research over the last 40+ years. In this article, we discuss five “macro” level issues concerning the theory. Our broad purposes in taking this approach are to clarify some issues regarding the current status of the theory, make suggestions for next steps for research based in the theory, and justify our decision to call the theory Situated Expectancy-Value Theory (SEVT). First, we note how visual representations of the model make it appear static, linear, and monolithic, something that was not intended from its inception. Second, we discuss definitions of the major psychological constructs in the model, focusing on our and others’ elaboration of the task value component, particularly the “cost” component. In this section we also discuss research on the development of expectancies and values. Third, we discuss the often-neglected middle part of the model focused on how individuals understand and interpret their own performance as well as the many messages they receive from different socializers regarding their activity participation and performance. In the fourth section we discuss the situative and culturally-focused aspects of the model, stressing the impact of the situation and cultural background on children’s developing expectancy and value hierarchies. The fifth issue (one that we mention in several of the previous sections) concerns the importance of understanding the development of individuals’ hierarchies of expectancies of success and subjective task values and how they relate to performance, choice, and engagement.     

Deaf children in regular classrooms: a sociocultural approach to a Brazillan experience

Inclusion of deaf children in regular classrooms is often described as unsuccessful. The present article shows how communicative and metacommunicative strategies used in teacher(s)-deaf students(s) interactions may facilitate inclusion. A fourth-grade classroom was investigated where a coteaching approach--a master teacher working with a teacher trained in Brazilian Sign Language (BSL)--was used. The class, 7 deaf and 19 hearing students, was selected because of the teacher dyad's effectiveness with these students. The teachers' interactive styles and strategies are highlighted, along with communicative and metacommunicative processes that occurred between them and the deaf students. The authors show that meanings are co-constructed not only through words or BSL but through nonverbal actions. Relational metacommunicative strategies make integration more effective and learning easier and more pleasant; therefore, dialogue with deaf children entails more than the mere use of words, either vocally or with signs.     

Prenotification,Incentives, and Survey Modality: An Experimental Test of Methods to Increase Survey Response Rates of School Principals

Abstract

Teacher and principal surveys are among the most common data collection techniques employed in education research. Yet there is remarkably little research on survey methods in education, or about the most cost-effective way to raise response rates among teachers and principals. In an effort to explore various methods for increasing survey response rates, we randomly assigned 1,177 high school principals in the state of Michigan to 1 of 4 experimental conditions. We varied the mode of survey delivery, the mode in which the prenotification letter was sent, and whether or not a $10 incentive was provided. The results indicate that providing a monetary incentive substantially increased response rates over the no incentive condition and that principals were more likely to respond to a paper-based survey than a web-based one.     

Backing the right horse: Teacher education,sociocultural analysis and literacy in rural education

This paper is a reflection on the way that a background in sociocultural theory and research actually saved my teaching career by allowing me to shift from being a dispenser of knowledge to a cultural neophyte attempting to understand where he is. Teaching then is understood as a reading exercise which is undertaken in a particular place which itself needs to be read by the effective teacher. This is a narrative inquiry into practice which represents an attempt to understand my own teaching career in the light of Frank Smith's (1984) provocative essay “How education backed the wrong horse” in which he argues that anthropology would have made a better choice for a foundational discipline for education than psychology. I conclude with some thoughts on what this perspective implies for literacy instruction.     

The intersection of cognitive and sociocultural factors in the development of reading comprehension among immigrant students

The present paper synthesizes the international research literature on the educational achievement of immigrant and minority language students by articulating three propositions for which there is strong empirical evidence: (a) print access and literacy engagement play a key role in promoting reading comprehension; (b) the development of bilingual students?? L1 proficiency plays a positive role in L2 academic development; and (c) societal power relations play a direct causal role in promoting school failure among students from subordinated communities. This interpretation of the empirical evidence is contrasted with the conclusions of recent North American and European reviews. For example, the comprehensive review of literacy development among minority students conducted in the United States by the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth acknowledged the legitimacy of bilingual education as a policy option but said very little about the role of literacy engagement in promoting reading comprehension. By contrast, various reports of the Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) highlighted the importance of reading engagement for reading achievement but discounted bilingual education as a feasible or realistic policy option. The instructional implications of the present review include the need for educators to promote print access and literacy engagement, teach for cross-lingual transfer, and affirm students?? identities in classroom interactions.     

Constructivist,emergent, and sociocultural perspectives in the context of developmental research

Our overall intent is to clarify relations between the psychological constructivist, sociocultural, and emergent perspectives. We provide a grounding for the comparisons in the first part of the article by outlining an interpretive framework that we developed in the course of a classroom-based research project. At this level of classroom processes, the framework involves an emergent approach in which psychological constructivist analyses of individual activity are coordinated with interactionist analyses of classroom interactions and discourse. In the second part of the article, we describe an elaboration of the framework that locates classroom processes in school and societal contexts. The perspective taken at this level is broadly sociocultural and focuses on the influence of indlividuals' participation in culturally organized practices. In the third part of the article, we use the discussion of the framework as a backdrop against which to compare and contrast the three theoretical perspectives. We discuss how the emergent approach augments the psychological constructivist perspective by making it possible to locate analyses of individual students' constructive activities in social context. In addition, we consider the purposes for which the emergent and sociocultural perspectives might be particularly appropriate and observe that they together offer characterizations of individual students' activities, the classroom community, and broader communities of practice.     

Norm-Referenced Test Gains May Be Real: A Response to John Jacob Cannell

Finding Cannell's evidence that large proportions of students are scoring above median levels "compelling," the author discusses possible causes, including recent achievement gains, inadequate norms, focusing of curriculums on test content coverage, and teaching to the tests.     

Integrating the ontological,epistemological, and sociocultural aspects: a holistic view of teacher education

The three aspects of teacher change – ontological, epistemological, and sociocultural – are traditionally regarded as independent. Usually only the epistemological aspect is highlighted in formal teacher education. In this paper, I argue that a holistic and interdependent view of these aspects is needed. Thus, this paper aims to explore the process of teacher learning from a holistic perspective. Through deliberative discussions and selection, 13 ‘good’ teachers were interviewed in this study. The findings indicate that there may be a two-stage pattern (the II-VA model) that describes two different sorts of teachers. The first sort refers to those teachers who developed strong identities before beginning their teaching service and who tended to have a clearer educational vision which had a direct impact on their practices and professional development. As for the second sort, the teachers’ identities were vague in their first years of teaching, but their professional identities gradually developed within the referential community with affective and professional functions. These stages imply that we should replace ‘abstract theory’ with ‘subject reflection’ in the center of teacher education. Three kinds of reflection (theory-rationale, identity-integration and vision-accomplishment) are thus identified from a holistic view of teacher change.     

Response to ACCEL: Emphasize Development,Domains, and Application

In this article, we provide a response to the Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model put forward by Sternberg (2017). Our commentary focuses on four critical areas that do not receive sufficient attention in Sternberg’s proposed model: (a) the developmental nature of giftedness; (b) that giftedness is domain specific, particularly at later stages in the talent development process; (c) the challenge in applying ACCEL in the real world of schools; and (d) whether the arts and other performance areas are compelled to have an ethical theme in order to be valuable.     

Item Response Theory,Vertical Scaling,and Something's Awry in the State of Test Mark

It is generally accepted that variability in performance will increase throughout Grades 1 to 12. Those with minimal knowledge of a domain should vary but little, but, as learning rates differ, variability should increase as a function of growth. In this article, the series of reading tests from a widely used test battery for Grades 1 through 12 was singled out for study as the scale scores for the series have the opposite characteristic-that is, variability is greatest at Grade 1 and decreases as growth proceeds. Item response theory (IRT) scaling was used; in previous editions, the publisher had used Thurstonian scaling and the variance increased with growth. Using data with known characteristics (i.e., weight distributions for ages 6 through 17), a comparison was made between the effectiveness of IRT and Thurstonian scaling procedures. The Thurstonian scaling more accurately reproduced the characteristics of the known distributions. As IRT scaling was shown to improve when perfect scores were included in the analyses and when items were selected whose difficulties reflected the entire range of ability, these steps were recommended. However, even when these steps were implemented with IRT, the Thurstonian scaling was still found to be more accurate.     

Authority,Inquiry, and Education: A Response to Dewey's Critics

In this article I seek to investigate and to rebut charges that Dewey had either too authoritative a conception or use of philosophical and educational inquiry, or not enough of an authoritative use. I look specifically at two critics, one in the discipline of education and one in the discipline of history. These two are, respectively, Clarence Karier and J. P. Diggins. In the final analysis, I conclude that Dewey's talk of authority generally, and his talk of inquiry specifically, functions according to the needs and problems of the community that it take place in, and cannot, therefore, be hooked to some larger, metaphysical end or aim beyond this.     

Children in foster care: factors influencing outpatient mental health service use

OBJECTIVE: To determine factors influencing outpatient mental health service use by children in foster care. METHOD: Detailed survey and administrative data were collected on 480 children who entered long-term foster care in San Diego County from May 1990 through October 1991. These data were linked with claims data from Medicaid and San Diego County Mental Health Services information systems. A Poisson regression model was used to determine whether the following factors influenced outpatient mental health service use: age, race/ethnicity, gender, maltreatment history, placement pattern, and behavioral problems as measured by the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). RESULTS: Except for maltreatment history, all independent variables included in the multivariate regression model were statistically significant. The total number of outpatient mental health visits increased with age, male gender, and non-relative foster placements. Relative to Caucasians, visits were lower for Latinos, and Asian/Others, but comparable for African-Americans. Concerning maltreatment history, differences were only found in one category; children experiencing caretaker absence received fewer visits compared to children who did not experience caretaker absence. Children with CBCL Total Problem Scale T-scores of 60 or greater had significantly more visits than those with a score less than 60. CONCLUSIONS: Both clinical and non-clinical factors influence outpatient mental health service use by foster children. Limitations imposed by gender, race/ethnicity, and placement setting need to be addressed by child welfare policies. These finding suggest that guidelines are needed to systematically link children in foster care with behavioral problems to appropriate services.