Development of a Questionnaire Assessing Teacher Perceived Support for and Attitudes About Social and Emotional Learning

Research Findings: In the past 20 years school districts have increasingly adopted classroom-based social and emotional development programs. The dissemination of these programs, however, has surpassed our understanding of and ability to assess factors that influence program implementation. The present study responded to this gap by developing a questionnaire that focuses on teacher perceptions of implementation support and teacher attitudes about social–emotional learning and by assessing its psychometric properties. One hundred forty-five Baltimore City Head Start preschool teachers completed the questionnaire. Factor analyses suggested 6 underlying constructs, which we termed administrative support, training, competence, program effectiveness, time constraints, and academic priority. Several of these scales predicted teacher reports of program implementation. Practice or Policy: The questionnaire holds significant promise as a tool for assessing readiness and barriers to social and emotional program implementation.     

A 30 Year Perspective On Best Practices for Consultation Training

This article uses the author's 30 years of teaching consultation as a basis for developing suggestions for those providing training in this field. The article addresses questions about what the content of training should be, how consultation training can link theory to practice and how to respond to persistent challenges to training (e.g., freedom versus constraint, multicultural consultation, and when consultation training should be offered within a preservice curriculum for developing school-based consultants). The training suggestions derive from a model of consultation and consultation training that is based in constructivism and seeks to enhance feelings of empowerment and long term implementation of consultation on the part of the trainee. The article proposes a practitioner-researcher model in which practicing consultants view themselves as researchers who collect data and share information about their practice with other school-based consultants. These shared practices are used to inform the knowledge base and are used as a basis for contributing to the scholarly literature. Finally, this article proposes directions for researching the process and outcome of consultation training that cut across all of the issues raised in this article.     

Textbook adoption and other landmark decisions: The coverage of court cases in criminal justice textbooks, 1986 to 1995

We examine the coverage of court cases in 23 introductory criminal justice textbooks published from 1986 to 1995. The 30 cases receiving the most coverage (in inches of print) in the textbooks are identified and ranked by the amount of attention each receives. Collectively these cases can be considered the “landmark” decisions in the textbooks. We then evaluate the criminal justice textbooks by how extensively they cover (1) court cases in general and (2) the landmark cases in particular. We conclude with some recommendations of textbooks for course adoption.     

The Spaces of Children's Programming

In the competitive world of children's programming, networks are under intense pressure to build brand loyalty and increase market share. This essay examines how Fox Kids and the Disney Channel transform electronic space into “place” as a means for carving out brand identity. This transformation of electronic space into place requires strategies that encourage viewers to see electronic spaces as habitable and desirable. While the two networks employ different approaches to the creation of place, they both reproduce familiar ideologies (e.g., individuality as identity) and social arrangements (e.g., families and neighborhoods) to represent a habitable place that can inspire loyalty and even affection from viewers.     

African American women and violence: gender,race, and class in the news

This study uses discourse analysis to examine the representation of violence against African American women in local TV news coverage of Freaknik, an annual “spring break” ritual that drew African American college students from throughout the country to Atlanta, Georgia in the 1990s. It draws on Black feminist theory in its examination of the ways that gender, race, and class intersected to shape the representation of the victims, the perpetrators, and the violence. The results indicate that the convergence of gender, race, and class oppressions minimized the seriousness of the violence, portrayed most of its victims as stereotypic Jezebels whose lewd behavior provoked assault, and absolved the perpetrators of responsibility. Coverage also reinforced race and class stereotypes by representing locals as underclass troublemakers prone to crime while students were linked to law‐abiding, middle class values and norms. In demonstrating the utility of addressing the intersectionality of gender, race, and class, this study argues that such an approach is necessary to the study of representation.     

Taking the Guesswork Out of Collection Development: Using Syllabi for a User-Centered Collection Development Method

Over the course of a year, 98 syllabi were collected from history, English, philosophy, religion, and foreign literatures and languages departments at a large university in the Southeast. The syllabi were analyzed for potential additions to the print collection. In addition to the syllabus study, a survey was conducted of all faculty in those departments to establish their views toward syllabi and the library's place in providing access to items on syllabi.     

Using the Text Structures of Information Books to Teach Writing in the Primary Grades

Teaching children in the primary grades the text structures and features used by authors of information text has been shown to improve comprehension of information texts and provide the scaffolding and support these children need in order to write their own information texts. As teachers implement the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards (CCSS), they will need support and training on how to meet these increased curricular demands. In this article, we describe how children’s information books can be used as exemplars of well-structured text models to teach young students how to write selected discourse patterns required in the CCSS. As children in the primary grades learn to recognize and use well-structured example information texts as models for their own writing, they will be better prepared to deal with less well-structured, more complex text examples in their reading and writing in the years to come.     

ASSESSING STUDENT PERFORMANCE USING VIDEO IN COMBINATION WITH SELF,PEER, AND INSTRUCTOR EVALUATION CHECKLISTS

Abstract

In this article, the authors propose six standards for the work of Intergenerational Specialists in an emerging field of professional practice. These standards are intended to guide students in academic settings who are preparing to work as Intergenerational Specialists in direct service roles, administrative capacities, or the supervision and training of others in the field. In addition, they might also be considered useful guidelines for program developers who want to ensure mutually beneficial interactions between younger people and older adults in any kind of organized intergenerational context. The proposed Standards for Intergenerational Practice are currently being piloted by students in a graduate degree program, and eventually will be submitted to Generations United for endorsement and widespread acceptance by the field. These basic principles are consistent with NAEYC's Developmentally Appropriate Practices for early childhood programs, and they are also consistent with ethical practices in programs for older adults.     

Distractor Similarity and Item-Stem Structure: Effects on Item Difficulty

Methods for detecting copying of multiple-choice test responses developed over a 60-year period are reviewed and compared with respect to their effectiveness and the practicality of their application for groups of varying size. Although effective detection methods are routinely used in large admissions and licensing testing programs, they are seldom applied in the areas of standardized testing or classroom testing in schools or colleges. Circumstances associated with this discrepancy are discussed.     

Effects of High and Low Prior Knowledge on Construction of a Joint Problem Space

The participants were 4th-year medical students designing a clinical trial to test a new hypothetical anticancer drug. They worked with the computer simulation the Oncology Thinking Cap in facilitated groups that differed in terms of their prior knowledge. Both groups engaged in constructive activity and reached similar endpoints. The groups differed qualitatively in how they went about constructing and navigating the joint problem space. The high-prior-knowledge group used their knowledge to help them construct plans, evaluate their actions, and stay focused on the goals of the experimental design task. The low-prior-knowledge group searched through the data exhaustively and used them to generate their plans. They were unsystematic in their planning and interpretation. They used the computer representations in their reasoning and worked at mapping the connections between the representations. The computer scaffolding played an important role for both groups, but the facilitator played a greater role in the low-prior-knowledge group.