Transforming Teacher Constructs of Children and Families Who Are Homeless

The focus of this article is on articulating the importance of teacher development of constructs about homeless children and families and examining factors that influence teachers’ perceptions of children and families who are homeless or at high-risk of becoming homeless. The article also explores some strategies to support teachers in transforming their perceptions of homeless children and provides case examples of how this process can work. Three case studies explore how teacher educators and practicing teachers can work together to reflect on their own perceptions of homeless children from high-poverty backgrounds and how educators were able to transform their own perceptions in being able to better serve their students.     

Topicalization and the Processing of Expository Prose by Children: mediating effects of cognitive styles and content familiarity

This study assessed the effects of text topicalization conditions (initial position, final position, or no topic sentence) on the comprehension of main ideas and specific passage information for middle school readers. Also of interest were interactions of topic familiarity and readers’ cognitive styles (degree of field independence) with text topicalization. One hundred and seven subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three topicalization conditions and read three familiar and three less‐familiar multipleparagraph expository texts. Main idea comprehension was assessed with both a sentencesummary (generation) and best‐title (recognition) task. Comprehension of specific passage information was evaluated with multiple‐choice items. Text topicalization effects were observed for main idea comprehension (with initial position best, followed by final position), while topic familiarity resulted in higher comprehension scores for specific passage information. Moreover, a cognitive style‐text topicalization interaction was found on the best‐title task; in this case, relatively field dependent readers were assisted by a final topic sentence placement. Implications are drawn for future research concerning the complex interplay of texts, tasks and readers in prose‐processing.     

An Investigation into the Nature of Inclusion Problem-Solving Teams

This investigation addressed the use of problem-solving teams (PST) to support general education teachers working in inclusive classrooms. Eight teams in a high-poverty elementary school that had recently implemented an inclusive program were the focus of the study. Teachers noted several benefits of PSTs, including social support, learning new instructional approaches, obtaining practical help with problems, and improving practice through reflection. However, there were several problems with the teams, primarily related to the logistics of team meetings. Finally, analysis of teacher dialogue revealed several features of meetings that contributed to meeting productivity. The implications of these findings for practice are discussed.