Indirect Impact: How Early Childhood Educator Training and Coaching Impacted the Acquisition of Literacy Skills in Preschool Students

Learning to read becomes a difficult task for many children, particularly if they have not been reared in early childhood settings where literacy-based activities, interactions, or materials are prevalent. This study examined the impact that providing a college-level course in research-based instructional strategies for literacy development to early childhood educators had on the development of early reading skills in the preschool children they taught. In addition, impact on children’s rates of literacy skill attainment was examined when a coaching component (i.e., a Literacy Coach) was added.     

A Guide to Analyzing Message–Response Sequences and Group Interaction Patterns in Computer‐mediated Communication

This paper proposes a set of methods and a framework for evaluating, modeling, and predicting group interactions in computer‐mediated communication. The method of sequential analysis is described along with specific software tools and techniques to facilitate the analysis of message–response sequences. In addition, the Dialogic Theory and its assumptions are presented to establish a theoretical framework and guide to using sequential analysis in computer‐mediated communication research. Step‐by‐step instructions are presented to illustrate how sequential analysis can be used to measure the way latent variables (e.g., message function, response latency, communication style) and exogenous variables (e.g., gender, discourse rules, context) affect how likely a message is to elicit a response, the types of responses elicited by the message, and whether or not the elicited sequence of responses (e.g., claim → challenge → explain) mirror the processes that support group decision‐making, problem‐solving, and learning.     

Weeding with Wisdom: Tuning Deselection of Print Monographs in Book-Reliant Disciplines

As university libraries transition to digital collections and new services, their book deselection projects often lead to the adoption of cross-discipline quantitative weeding criteria (such as age and low circulation) in the interest of speed and presumed fairness. Cross-discipline quantitative rubrics, however, can have unintended negative consequences when applied to disciplines such as history and literature that rely on older books with low circulation statistics. The authors argue for a discipline-differentiated approach to weeding academic library collections that can employ quantitative criteria for disciplines, such as in the sciences, that are more reliant on current materials and qualitative criteria for disciplines, such as in the humanities, whose scholars benefit from ready access to older and low-use books.     

Insights into the Integration of Traditional Filipino Arts in Art and Design Education: Voices from the Academe

This article presents the first segment of a qualitative study that explores the feasibility of integrating traditional arts in Philippine art and design education. The views of educators on traditional arts were sought to provide an impetus for the study and a springboard for discussion regarding the relevance of traditional Filipino arts in a predominantly Westernised educational system. The educators’ views and opinions on the central question, ‘Why and how should the study of traditional Filipino arts be integrated in the art and design programme?’ will be used to guide a trial integration of the learning of traditional arts in tertiary art and design classes. They will form part of the multiple perspectives that will be gathered from various sectors throughout the course of research. This phenomenological study, on the whole, seeks to uncover the potentials of traditional arts as a rich resource for learning, particularly for students of art and design.     

Filipino parents’ school choice and loyalty: a factor analysis

This quantitative study aims to ascertain the significant relationship existing between parents’ profile, and their school choice and school loyalty. Data were gathered using the researcher’s two-part made instrument. Respondents were first asked to fill in a robotfoto for purpose of profiling their baseline characteristics and were later asked to rate listed indicators, using a modified 8-point Likert scale. Using statistical tools such as the ANOVA, factor analysis, correlation, mean, and standard deviation, data were treated indepth. It is interesting to note that although parents are loyal to their alma mater, this does not have a much impact on their choice of school for their children. On the whole, parents’ choice of school is based on its indispensable qualities. Among the three interval-scale profiles of the parent respondents such as age, income, tuition fee payment and number of children, none of these relate to school choice, but age, income, and tuition fee payment negatively relate to school loyalty. From their nominal-scale profiles, significant differences were noted in their school choice when grouped according to civil status, place of work, and terms of payment. With respect to school loyalty, significant differences occurred in their responses when classified according to gender, terms of payment and their active participation in the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA).     

From teaching from the heart to teaching with a heart: Segmenting filipino college students’ views of their teachers’ caring behavior and their orientations as cared-for individuals

Caring, as a universal human phenomenon, should permeate elementary, secondary and tertiary level instruction. The practice of teaching, especially at the tertiary level, is not only substantial and procedural but relational as well. To teach with a heart is the essence that makes teaching a form of caring. When teaching is viewed as a form of caring, teachers become relational geniuses in their own right. This study is an attempt to segment Filipino college students’ views (n=1000) of their teachers’ caring behavior and their orientations as cared-for individuals. The identified clusters of teacher roles that indicate caring behavior imply that acts of teaching become acts of caring depending on how the teachers, theefficient cause of education, perform their ordinary tasks in the context ofextraordinariness. Such extraordinariness spells out a big difference in the way teachers practice the so-calledsingle loop caring or caring visibility anddouble- loop caring or caring presence. The former refers to teaching from the heart while the latter pertains to teaching with a heart. Interestingly, the extent to which teachers’ caring behavior is felt and experienced by the students positively shapes their orientations as cared-for individuals.     

Attitudes of preservice kindergarten teachers toward the integration of computers and the reduction of the digital divide in kindergartens

Educational technology research and development - Given the great importance of integrating computers into kindergartens and the fact that today such integration has been implemented only...