Understanding Singaporean preschool teachers' beliefs about literacy development: Four different perspectives

Investigating teachers' beliefs may shed light on their activities in the classroom, and in turn, on the pedagogical process itself. It is, however, not easy to study teachers' beliefs empirically. Q-methodology has been used over several disciplines to systematically investigate individuals' points of view on a range of issues. A study involving Q-methodology was conducted in Singaporean preschools to investigate some teachers' perceptions of early literacy development and instruction. The study revealed four viewpoint groups among the 30 preschool teachers who participated in the study, and possible teacher characteristics that distinguish the viewpoints from each other. The results suggest that the differences in viewpoints are indicative of differences in cultural expectations held by various groups of teachers.     

The concept of validity in theory and practice

The concept of validity, as described in the literature, has changed over time to become a broad and rather complex issue. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if practice has followed theory, or if there is a gap between validity in theory and validity in practice. It compares the theoretical development of the concept of validity with the methodology adopted in validity studies over time. Important phases in the history of validity, and also common arguments for and against traditional and modern validity perspectives, are presented and discussed. Thereafter, three Swedish research projects aiming to validate instruments used for selection to higher education are described. The idea is to use these projects as examples of contemporary practice, and to compare their designs, research questions and outcomes with how validity was theoretically described during their specific period of time. The conclusions from these comparisons are that practices seem to have followed theory when it comes to how the validity research programmes have been designed, but not when it comes to how they then were carried out in practice. This gap between theory and practice seems to have increased with the introduction of broader and more modern validity perspectives. The scope of the research is more extensive but results are fragmented and there is no evidence of a ‘unified’ validity argument, which has been one of the central aspects in modern validity theory. This supports the arguments that validity theory is difficult to put into practice and that there is a need for guidance on how to prioritise validity questions and interpret validity evidence.     

美国漫游记

小头爸爸带大头儿子去美国华盛顿游玩,一来为了增长他的见识,俗话说“行万里路,读万卷书”嘛!二来为了提高他的英语口语。你瞧!他们刚出机场,正要打的去旅馆呢。你能听懂他们在说些什么吗？[第一段]     

虚拟国际规范文档——连接德国国家图书馆和美国国会图书馆的规范文档

德国国家图书馆、美国国会图书馆和OCLC联机计算机图书馆中心联合开发了一个个人名称的虚拟国际规范文档(VIAF),它连接世界各国国家书目机构的规范记录,并免费提供网上检索,以证明自动连接不同国家规范文档的规范记录的可行性和优点.美国国会图书馆和德国国家图书馆的规范文档和书目文档被用来创建初始的VIAF,其中包括600多万个名称和50多万个连接.该项目的一个关键点是利用规范记录和其对应书目记录的信息开发自动名称匹配算法.该项目显示了用算法建立不同国家规范文档的个人名称之间连接的实用性.VIAF项目的长远目标是将许多国家图书馆和其他重要来源的规范名称结合起来,形成一个共享的全球规范服务.参考文献3.     

Fan identification and national identity

It is commonly assumed that sport plays an important role for national identity. However, empirical research has primarily focused on sport’s role for emotional-affectice rather than cognitive aspects of national identity. Therefore, research presented here explores whether identification with the German national soccer team serves to reinforce ethnic or civic conceptions of national identity. Analyses of a unique dataset conducted during the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016?EURO show that national team identification is an important determinant of national pride and national belonging. Respondents who identify with the national soccer team can adhere to different conceptions of national identity. It seems that national pride and affection as well as conceptions of national identity represent stable attitudes not affected by the success of the national team. Further research should improve conceptual clarity and measurement.     

‘“COFO Is Not Godot’ The Free Southern Theater,the Black Freedom Movement,and the Search for a Usable Aesthetic”*

ABSTRACT

This article explores the home as a site of ‘scientific’ enquiry in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland via the experiences of female experimenters. The focus of their investigation was the cultivation of silkworms for the purposes of making silk and substituting expensive foreign imports with domestic manufacture. This research argues that enquiry was just one of many domestic practices and that the relationship between domestic labour and intellectual work was enmeshed. The spaces and objects of home, alongside the tacit knowledge of its inhabitants, provided a flexible context for experiment, which was accessible to a broad section of eighteenth-century society.     

(Re)Constructing Ideals of Multicultural Education Through Grow Your Own Teachers

Reflecting on the current status of multicultural education in higher education institutions, we examine Grow Your Own Teachers, a progressive, innovative program that not only embodies and enacts major principles of multicultural education, but also represents an ongoing effort to redefine and revitalize multicultural education within teacher preparation.     

Promoting toddlers' self-regulation and healthy eating habits among families living in poverty: A randomized controlled trial of Recipe 4 Success

The Recipe 4 Success preventive intervention targeted multiple factors critical to the health and well-being of toddlers living in poverty. This randomized controlled trial, which was embedded within Early Head Start home visits for 12 weeks, included 242 racially and ethnically diverse families (51% girls; toddler mean age = 2.58 years; data collected 2016–2019). Compared to parents in usual practice home visits, parents in Recipe 4 Success displayed greater sensitive scaffolding of toddlers' learning and more responsive food parenting practices (Cohen's d = .21–.30). Toddlers in Recipe 4 Success exhibited greater self-regulation and had healthier eating habits (Cohen's d = |.16–.35|). Results highlight the value of Recipe 4 Success in promoting parent and toddler behavior change that could have life-long benefits.     

35 YEARS OF BJSE: Personal reflections on 35 years of BJSE

Christina Tilstone was, for many years, the editor of BJSE and subsequently became the chair of the Editorial Board for the nasen journals. She is therefore in an excellent position to reflect upon the contribution the journal has made to the field over the past 35 years. In this article, she traces the origins of the journal back over 100 years. She notes the launch of BJSE's ancestor, Special Education: Forward Trends, and shares the contents of the issue of this journal that marked the publication of Mary Warnock's seminal report in 1978 and the development of the notion of inclusion. She goes on to describe the metamorphosis of Special Education: Forward Trends into BJSE in 1985 and soon after that, in 1992, the formation of nasen – still BJSE's sponsoring organisation. Christina Tilstone records the origins of BJSE's valued ‘Research Section’, now building a substantial archive of educational research papers, and the popular ‘Focus on Practice’ feature that enables practitioners to share reports of their work. She also notes the role that BJSE's other regular features, ‘Book Reviews’, ‘Politics Page UK’ and ‘Notes from the SENCo‐Forum’ (itself now ten years old) have played in the journal's recent national and international success.     

Beyond the Poststructuralist-Modern Impasse: The woman returner as 'exile' and 'nomad'

This paper speaks to two articles that have been published in Gender and Education . The first, and most obvious, is that of Tett (2000). Lynn Tett's paper is concerned with an analysis of community activists 'returning' to education. I offer a complementary reading of Tett (2000) in the hope of illustrating the saliency of postcolonial perspectives for developing theorisation in the field of 'women returners'. I do this by drawing on the metaphors of 'exile' (Benhabib, 1992) and 'nomad' (Braidotti, 1994) in order to explore the issues of location and transition that form part of the material and subjective experiences of the returning woman. More immanent, however, is a conversation with Francis (1999). Becky Francis explores the relations between poststructuralism and the modernist emancipatory project of feminism. She illustrates the tensions in the binary of poststructural/modern and makes an appeal that we need to continue to worry away at the 'theoretical brick wall' (p 391) of this binary. My purpose is to contribute to Francis' appeal through the analysis that I present of the multiply located subject-in-process that is the woman returner. Specifically I argue that if we seriously wish to worry away at the binaries in academic debate we need to develop practices of critical literacy that recognise the reader as similarly multiply located and subjectively-in-process. As it is much of the contemporary literature continues to set up the reader as the humanist subject who can rationally choose, and is willing to be fixed by, some form of 'correct' intellectual position.