Scaffolding Narrative Skills: A Meta-Analysis of Instruction in Early Childhood Settings

Research Findings: Children’s ability to tell stories and to understand the stories of others typically emerges in early childhood, supported by primary caregivers and educators. This article reviews instruction designed to foster children’s narrative skills in preschool and kindergarten settings and examines the effects using meta-analysis. The review covers more than 3 decades (1980–2013) of experimental research (k = 15 studies, 28 effects). The findings showed that verbal scaffolding, alone or in combination with other strategies, was the predominant teaching approach. The meta-analysis revealed average effects (weighted for sample size) for narrative expression (.50) and a slightly larger effect for comprehension (.58). These effects were unrelated to the duration of instruction. However, when verbal strategies were combined with nonverbal ones, such as engaging children in enacting stories or in telling stories with props, the effects for expression increased (i.e., children’s storytelling improved more from pretest to posttest). Practice or Policy: The review indicates promising strategies for supporting narrative skills. Furthermore, the studies identified can serve as a resource for practitioners by suggesting diverse kinds of verbal scaffolds, complementary nonverbal approaches, and storybooks that have been used effectively to foster narrative competencies among young children.     

Context-sensitive regularities in English vowel spelling

The predictive value of rime spellings in English was compared directly to other types of regularities beyond the level of the single letter. A computer-assisted analysis of a list of twenty-four thousand written words, each paired with its corresponding pronunciation, reveals that only a small number of rime spellings are highly regular in their pronunciations. The conventional division of vowel letter pronunciations into short and long in closed and open written syllables is the most reliable key to English pronunciation. Our findings support the notion that English spelling is based at least in part on syllable structure. In addition, prefixes and suffixes provide very reliable clues to pronunciation, which suggests that their regularity should be exploited in the teaching of reading.     

Indian child welfare: A community team approach to protective services

The purpose of this study is threefold: first, to describe the characteristics of child abuse and neglect on a major Indian reservation; second, to examine the impact of a community team approach to child abuse and neglect as measured by the incidence of reported abuse and neglect and admissions for emergency foster care; and third, to make recommendations for actions to close the gaps in child welfare services to Indian children living on reservations.     

Correlates of Work-Life Balance for Faculty Across Racial/Ethnic Groups

Very few studies have examined issues of work-life balance among faculty of different racial/ethnic backgrounds. Utilizing data from Harvard University’s Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education project, this study examined predictors of work-life balance for 2953 faculty members from 69 institutions. The final sample consisted of 1059 (36%) Asian American faculty, 512 (17%) African American faculty, 359 (12%) Latina/o faculty, and 1023 (35%) White/Caucasian faculty. There were 1184 (40%) women faculty and 1769 (60%) men faculty. The predictors of worklife balance included faculty characteristics, departmental/institutional characteristics and support, and faculty satisfaction with work. While African American women faculty reported less work-life balance than African American men, the reverse was true for Latina/o faculty. In addition, White faculty who were single with no children were significantly less likely to report having work-life balance than their married counterparts with children. Faculty rank was a significant positive predictor of work-life balance for all faculty. Notably, the findings highlight the importance of department and institutional support for making personal/family obligations and an academic career compatible. Institutional support for making personal/family obligations and an academic career compatible was consistently the strongest positive predictor of perceived work-life balance for all faculty. In addition, satisfaction with time spent on research had positive associations with work-life balance for all faculty, highlighting how faculty from all racial/ethnic backgrounds value being able to spend enough time on their own research.     

Exploration De La Résilience éducationnelle Chez Des Enseignants

AN EXPLORATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE OF TEACHING STAFF – This study focuses on the degree of resilience displayed by teaching staff with the aim of promoting their professional development and preventing job-related exhaustion. Seven underprivileged schools in Montreal were selected, and 24 teaching staff with contrasting personal profiles were interviewed on the subject of their work. The Alceste software was used to analyse the conversations, which revolved around techniques applied when dealing with critical incidents. The main analysis identified five different discourses among the respondents. Three of these were associated with the more resilient of the teachers and two were associated with the more vulnerable ones. Resilient teaching staff characteristically discussed dealing with aggressive behaviour, the teaching-learning relationship and the subject of social relationships, whereas vulnerable teaching staff focused on work beyond the classroom, people in positions of higher authority and the community. The authors note that teachers who are just embarking on their careers appear more vulnerable than more experienced teaching staff, which suggests that more resources should be provided to support teachers in their profession.     

La Littérature De Jeunesse Entre Normes Pédagogiques Et Littéraires : Le Cas Des Pays Francophones D’afrique

YOUTH LITERATURE IN THE CONTEXT OF PEDAGOGIC AND LITERARY NORMS: THE FRENCH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES OF AFRICA – There are two approaches to children’s and youth literature, one didactic, the other aesthetic. This gives rise to the following question: taking into account the fact that children’s literature aspires to be a literary form in its own right, should more weight be attibuted to its aesthetic value when evaluating it? This paper examines this question – which has in the past been the subject of highly controversial discussions in the German-speaking regions – by focusing on youth literature in the French-speaking coutries of Africa. The pedagogic dimension cannot be ignored when considering this literary context because it is so much a part of the post-colonial dynamic. Youth literature in the French-speaking countries of Africa echoes current realities. Examples are used to demonstrate how literature can deal with vital questions without neglecting the literary aspect.     

A women's scientific society in the west. The late eighteenth-century assimilation of science

The Natuurkundig Genootschap der Dames (Women's Society for Natural Knowledge), formally established by and for women, met regularly from 1785 to 1881 and sporadically until 1887. It challenges our stereotypes both of women and the physical sciences during the eighteenth century and of the intellectual interests open to women in the early European republics. This essay aims not simply to identify the society and its members but to describe their pursuits and consider what their story adds to the history of Western science. What does this society's existence tell us about the relationship between women and early science in general and about science and society in the Dutch setting in particular? Science and gender look rather different when observed through the activities of the immensely prosperous women of Middelburg, citizens of one of the most highly literate Western countries. The elite lives of the first-generation members of the women's society also offer us a glimpse into the early domestication of science, a process vital to its acceptance and assimilation.     

Appropriability of innovation benefit as a predictor of the source of innovation

It has been empirically observed that, in some industries product users are the most frequent sources of product innovations while, in other industries, product manufacturers are. I hypothesize that such differences are caused by differences in the ability of these two “functional” categories of innovators to appropriate innovation benefit. I explore this hypothesis by examining the real-world effectiveness of mechanisms (such as patents and lead time) used for the appropriation of innovation benefit and the dependence of this effectiveness on the functional relationship between innovator and innovation.     

Relative efficiency of R&D activities: A cross-country study accounting for environmental factors in the DEA approach

This paper applies the production framework associated with the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to evaluate the relative efficiency of R&D activities across countries. R&D capital stocks and manpower are treated as inputs while patents and academic publications are considered as outputs. A three-stage approach, which involves using DEA for evaluating efficiency and using Tobit regressions for controlling the external environment, is applied to 30 countries in recent years. The results show that less than one-half of the countries are fully efficient in R&D activities and that more than two-thirds are at the stage of increasing returns to scale. Most countries have a more significant advantage in producing SCI cum EI publications than in generating patents.