An Analysis of Teachers’ and Paraeducators’ Roles and Responsibilities with Implications for Professional Development

There is a lack of documented evidence related to the relationships existing between paraeducators and teachers working in early childhood classrooms. Based on a 2-year project with three phases of data collection, the authors explore the duties of paraeducators and their working relationships with the teachers with whom they team. Based on findings from the data collected, the authors make specific recommendations for targeted professional development that is designed to improve collaboration and skill sets for paraprofessionals within early childhood learning environments. The position taken is one that supports collaborative teamwork designed to maximize the learning of young children.     

Reading with meaning: the contributions of meaning-related variables at the word and subword levels to early Chinese reading comprehension

This study examined the associations of three levels of meaning acquisition, i.e., whole word (vocabulary), morpheme (morphological awareness), and semantic radical (orthography-semantic awareness) to early Chinese reading comprehension among 164 Hong Kong Chinese primary school students, ages 7 and 8?years old, across 1?year. With time 1 word reading, phonological awareness and speeded naming controlled, morphological awareness was uniquely associated with concurrent and subsequent reading comprehension; orthography-semantic awareness uniquely explained concurrent reading comprehension at time 2. Together, the meaning acquisition variables explained between 2 and 6% unique variance in reading comprehension across time, underscoring the importance of acquisition of meaning for early reading comprehension among Chinese children.     

CULTURALLY RESPONSIBLE MENTORING: EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH FOR PREPARING STUDENT TEACHERS FOR DIVERSITY

Teacher education is challenged with preparing teachers to work effectively with culturally diverse students. Gaps in the research literature demonstrate that more bridging is needed between teacher education coursework and student teaching experiences, particularly in terms of supervision approaches that consider multicultural issues. This study argues that culturally responsible mentoring is one way to help student teachers put multicultural education into practice. Culturally responsible mentoring helps preservice teachers become critical thinkers about the cultural contexts in which they work. It also assists them in developing equitable and inclusive practices for their particular students. This study defines and describes the practices of culturally responsible mentoring and examines the impact it has on two student teachers in the field.     

Contributors in this Issue

After going through Assertive Discipline training, a student teacher entered her new first-grade class. The mentor classroom teacher did not use Assertive Discipline, but gave permission for the student teacher to use this management system. After teaching students her rules, rewards, and negative consequences—and appropriately implementing Assertive Discipline—it was found that students responded to both the student teacher and the regular classroom teacher in the appropriate ways each expected.     

BOOK REVIEWS

The relationship between components of emotional intelligence (EI) (interpersonal ability, intrapersonal ability, adaptability and stress management) and academic performance in English, maths and science was examined in a sample of 86 children (49 males and 37 females) aged 11–12 years during the primary–secondary school transition period. Results indicated that for both males and females, intrapersonal ability had little relationship with academic achievement, while adaptability had the strongest relationship with achievement in all subjects. Gender differences were particularly pronounced for science, for which stronger relationships were observed with all EI components for males. In addition, apparent only for males was a negative relationship between stress management and science. These findings offer support for the current inclusion of a personal and emotional element in the primary school curriculum, and indicate that such training is likely to help males more than females to make a successful transition from primary to secondary school.     

The Role of Play in Helping Children with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties Access the Curriculum in a Mainstream Secondary School

In this discussion I aim to explore the use of ‘play’ with pupils with perceived emotional and behavioural difficulties in mainstream secondary schools and to provide practical examples of how this could be achieved. This will involve references to viewpoints regarding the value of play for its own sake, for therapeutic purposes, within child development, and within Primary education, and then the linking of these with discussions regarding the needs of children with perceived emotional and behavioural difficulties. The part on practice will focus on the use of play, in the sense of the provision of practical and concrete materials, as a means of accessing the curriculum in a mainstream secondary classroom, rather than on its use for emotional or social development, although the three can be shown to be interchangeable. This discussion is in no way meant to be considered as comparable to a piece of research or containing any empirical evidence as to the validity of the arguments within it. It is meant to present considerations, prompted by and deriving from personal perspectives and experiences.