Learning with immigrant children,families and communities: the imperative of early childhood teacher education

Abstract

This article reports on a longitudinal study spanning over 5 years, involving the design and implementation of an early childhood teacher education program model that engages a critical-ecological theoretical approach, a funds of knowledge perspective, and design-based methodology. This project aimed to promote equitable education for all children, and especially for young immigrant children encountering situations of oppression within the national and local educational contexts in Arizona. In this teacher education program, families, community members, researchers, pre-service teachers and teachers worked together to develop new modes of curricular activity, new spaces, new relationships, and new forms of movement among participants, as well as new circulations of literacy artefacts.     

(Re) thinking Emotions in Visual Education Activities: Students' Experiences

This article focuses on the emotions of 13 and 14 year‐old students related to visual art education activities. Our aim is to understand the interference of the students' emotions with the processes of the creation and reception of their own pictures, as well as their characteristics in an art education context. The article adopts a Vygotskian theoretical perspective about emotion and aesthetic education that refers to the biopsychological nature of emotion and its cultural determination. The need to transform emotions in art activities is stressed and the teenagers' pictures are interpreted as a means of communication. The data collection was based on questionnaires and interviews with seventh and eighth grade secondary school students. It is concluded that students' emotions are not only present in the creative process and in its result, but also that they could have a significant positive or negative impact on students' motivation and achievement behaviour in art education classes. In this context, the students' pictures, acting as stimuli, may evoke their emotions.     

Secondary science students’ beliefs about class discussions: a case study comparing and contrasting academic tracks

The dialogue that occurs in science classrooms has been the subject of research for many decades. Most studies have focused on the actual discourse that occurs and the role of the teacher in guiding the discourse. This case study explored the neglected perspective of secondary science students and their beliefs about their role in class discussions. The study participants (N?=?45) were students in one of the three differentially tracked chemistry classes taught by the same teacher. Findings about the differences that exist among students from different academic tracks are reported. While it seems that epistemological beliefs focusing on content are common for the students in this study, the students' social framing in the different tracks is important to consider when teachers attempt to transition to more dialogic forms of discourse. Some key findings of this study are (a) students’ beliefs that science is a body of facts to be learned influenced the factors they deemed important for whole-class discussion, (b) students from the lower-level track who typically were associated with lower socioeconomic status were more likely to view their role as passive, and (c) students’ comfort level with the members of the class seemed to influence their decisions to participate in class discussions.     

AILEM Programme: a long‐term intervention to promote literacy learning in low‐performing primary schools in Chile

After one year of implementation, this paper describes a programme designed to support literacy learning in low performing schools from poor sectors in Santiago, Chile. School‐based intensive training on theory and practice of a literacy learning framework for classroom instruction and long‐term support were used to impact the achievement of students from disadvantaged families in 16 kindergarten classrooms and 16 1st‐grade classrooms in nine primary schools. Preliminary results showed an improvement in learning achievement positively related to level of implementation of the literacy instruction framework in the classrooms and teachers' perception of an improvement in their knowledge and classroom practices. Although findings from this study cannot support definite conclusions, because of the lack of experimental conditions, they provide relevant information for future experimental studies on how to meet the literacy learning needs of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.     

Adult learning and education as a tool to contain pandemics: The COVID-19 experience

International Review of Education - In combating pandemics, more can be gained by changing citizens’ behaviours than by relying solely on the medical route. In the current COVID-19 pandemic,...     

Gender bias in IQ-discrepancy and post-discrepancy definitions of reading disability

The present study investigated the hypothesis that the higher prevalence of reading disability (RD) often observed among boys is partly an artifact of gender bias in the prediction of reading from IQ. The relevant regression statistics derived from a sample of more than 900 children revealed a statistically significant intercept bias. Predicted reading scores for boys were systematically overestimated, thereby inflating IQ-reading discrepancies; the converse was found for girls. When defined separately for girls and boys, severe underachievement in reading was found to be equally prevalent in both genders and, furthermore, was associated with qualitatively and quantitatively similar patterns of deficits. Because the bias arose from general differences between boys and girls in reading score distributions (a lower mean and greater variance for boys) rather than from differences in IQ scores, gender bias poses a potential threat not only to traditional IQ-discrepancy definitions but also to post-discrepancy definitions that are based solely on reading score cutoffs. Future classification criteria for RD need to take heed of the possibility that when the distributions of reading scores for boys and girls are not identical, performance cutoffs designating low achievement that are based on data pooled from both genders are likely to result in the overidentification of boys with RD and the underidentification of girls with RD.     

What catches the eye in class observation? Observers’ perspectives in a multidisciplinary peer observation of teaching program

Peer Observation of Teaching has raised a lot of interest as a device for quality enhancement of teaching. While much research has focused on its models, implementation schemes and feedback to the observed, little attention has been paid to what the observer actually sees and can learn from the observation. A multidisciplinary peer observation of teaching program is described, and its data is used to identify the pedagogical aspects to which lecturers pay more attention to when observing classes. The discussion addresses the valuable learning opportunities for observers provided by this program, as well as its usefulness in disseminating, sharing and clarifying quality teaching practices. The need for further research concerning teacher-student relationships and students’ engagement is also suggested.     

The organization and temporal properties of appetitive behavior in rats

In the presence and absence of an externalinterfood clock stimulus (a sequence of flashing lights), rats showed a multimodal behavior pattern during successive quarters of interfood intervals (IFI) ranging from 12 to 192 sec. Responses near the feeder peaked before and just after food presentations, whereas locomotion remote from the feeder peaked toward the middle of the IFI. The temporal patterns of nosing in the feeder and remote locomotion were scalar (the time at which a response peaked in the IFI was proportional to the IFI length), whereas the patterns of postfood feeder-directed behavior, rearing, and pawgrooming were time bound (peaking at a fixed time after food, regardless of IFI length). Responses varied in their control by the external clock stimulus. During the last half of the IFI, rats nosed in the feeder more with an external clock, but only at intermediate IFIs. During the first quarter of the IFI, rats pawgroomed more with an external clock, but only at the longest IFI. The general sequence of responses during the interfood clock was consistent with the view that food delivery engages an organized sequence of search states that are expressed through a variety of responses.