Development and initial investigation of a self-report measure of teachers’ readiness to implement

This paper describes development and piloting of a self-report measure of teachers’ readiness to implement evidence-based programs. Using mixed methods, this project proceeded in two phases. In the first phase, a program-independent self-report measure of readiness to implement was developed and piloted with N?=?53 teachers. Results of quantitative analyses offer initial support for the structure and utility of this scale. In the second phase, qualitative interviews were conducted with a subset of the overall sample in order to more thoroughly understand teachers’ experiences of readiness and implementation. Together, results contribute to further scale development and offer preliminary support for the validity of this measure in assessing readiness.     

The Pedagogy of Jewish Community: Reflections on the Work of Jonathan Woocher

A leader in Jewish education policy for over 30 years, Jonathan Woocher influenced countless practitioners and policy makers. This article examines Woocher’s body of written work by investigating three of his pieces published over a span of 20 years. The article exposes four themes: Jewish education is a project of building infrastructure, Jewish education is a project of America, Jewish education needs to emphasize not program but person, and Jewish education needs to be restimulated by Jewish wisdom. The themes woven together amount to a pedagogy of community, a way to understand the purpose, structure, and tools of Jewish education.     

The intensive multisupervisory internship in school psychology

An alternative model of the school psychology internship is presented. Specific features of such an internship experience are reviewed, including full-time placement, training vs. service functions, supervision, research time, and stipend.     

Effects of the SOLVE Strategy on the Mathematical Problem Solving Skills of Secondary Students with Learning Disabilities

This study examined the effects of explicit instruction in the SOLVE Strategy on the mathematical problem solving skills of six Grade 8 students with specific learning disabilities. The SOLVE Strategy is an explicit instruction, mnemonic‐based learning strategy designed to help students in solving mathematical word problems. Using a multiple probe across participants design, results suggested a functional relation between explicit instruction in the SOLVE strategy and increase in strategy use and computation scores on grade level mathematical word problems for all participants. Additionally, all participants generalized the SOLVE Strategy to other mathematic topics and concepts, and the teacher and students felt the intervention was socially acceptable. Finally, limitations, implications for practice, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Gender and doctoral studies: the perceptions of Ph.D. students in an American university

Twenty students enrolled in Ph.D. programmes were interviewed to examine the role of gender in their academic experiences. Gender was examined in three ways: gender of the student, gender of the student’s faculty supervisor and gender make‐up of the faculty within the student’s department or academic unit. All students reported the importance of supportive faculty mentors and that financial worries, time pressure and the uncertainty of future employment were sources of stress. Family formation and striving toward personal as well as professional goals were particularly of concern for women, as were perceptions of differential treatment. Women students valued women faculty mentors, although female faculty were perceived as less supportive than male faculty of family concerns when these women had themselves sacrificed family formation for the sake of their careers. Both men and women experienced less stress and reported greater career commitment when faculty in their departments exhibited less traditional values regarding the balancing of personal and professional goals. The implications of these findings for reducing doctoral student attrition rates and for creating a more supportive environment for Ph.D. students are discussed.     

Of dogs and martyrs. Sherrington,Richards, Pavlov and Vygotsky

I. A. Richards' psychological account of the poet's experience was central to his The principles of literary criticism. He aimed to ‘rehabilitate’ English criticism through perspectives gained from scientific discoveries in psychology after the Great War. A chief source for this was the work of the neurophysiologist, C. S. Sherrington. The title of this piece refers to a remark made by Sherrington to the Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov: ‘the animal [a dog] seemed to me in a state of persecution best comparable with that of a Christian martyr’. Paradoxically, Vygotsky retold the story within a critique of Pavlov's limiting accounts of human behaviour. Richards' picture of the complexity of the poet's experience—the balancing of conflicting impulses—also relied on an essentially reductive account of behaviour, in which the ‘extraordinary’ quality of the poet's experience is traceable to the workings of the brain and the nervous system. In contrast, Vygotsky offered a powerful picture of semiotically mediated consciousness, dependent on human agency and purpose. The story restores neglected European historical perspectives to a key development in English studies.     

Smoking hygiene: an educational intervention to reduce respiratory symptoms in breastfeeding infants exposed to tobacco

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently removed nicotine from the category of drugs contraindicated during breastfeeding. Little evidence demonstrates that infants exposed to nicotine through breastfeeding experience increased health risks beyond the airborne risks associated with passive smoking. The purpose of this longitudinal, five-week, quasi-experimental pilot study was to determine whether "smoking hygiene," an educational intervention, reduces the frequency of respiratory symptoms experienced by infants whose mothers both smoke and breastfeed. Twenty-nine mother-infant pairs entered the study with 28% dropping out. Of the 21 mother-infant pairs who completed the study, 66% of the nine infants in the control group experienced respiratory illness, compared to 42% of the 12 infants in the intervention group (x2 = .814; p > .05). Thus, the difference was statistically nonsignificant in this small sample, but the trend worsened the anticipated direction. The study demonstrates some of the difficulties of intervening with this group of mothers.