A Culturally Responsive Alternative to “Drill and Kill” Literacy Strategies: Deep Roots,Civil Rights

This article describes two approaches to improving literacy in a high poverty, diverse urban high school. One curriculum program, “Striving Readers,” included a prescribed course of study for students reading below grade level along with schoolwide strategies. This approach did not improve targeted students’ reading scores or motivation to read. The alternative approach, “Deep Roots: Civil Rights,” was a culturally responsive curriculum that had a strong impact on the identified students’ academic development as well as their understanding of racism in this country. An examination of “Striving Readers” and “Deep Roots: Civil Rights” projects provides insight into the impact of the curriculum on student achievement and motivation. At a time when many schools are implementing the Common Core State Standards, this article is a reminder that a compelling, rigorous, culturally responsive curriculum best serves all our nation's schoolchildren. Projects such as “Deep Roots: Civil Rights” provide an effective alternative or complement to prescribed reading programs.     

The paradoxes of Utopian game-playing

In The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, Suits maintains the following two theses: (1) game-playing is defined as ‘activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity’ and (2) ‘game playing is what makes Utopia intelligible.’ Observing that these two theses cannot be jointly maintained absent paradox, this essay explores the logical possibility that if (2) is true, then (1) must be false. More specifically, in the tradition of conceptual analysis it is argued that Suits’ definition of game-playing is too narrow inasmuch as it excludes really magnificent Utopian games of significance.     

Ethnic identity maintenance within the Latino-American church: a structuration perspective

The Latino ethnic/immigrant church plays a significant role in maintaining the ethnic identity of its congregants. Through the perspective of structuration theory, this qualitative analysis investigates how the activities of the church impact its members and how an individual might contribute to the cultural structure of the Latino church (i.e., duality of structure). Interviews of 25 pastors from Spanish-speaking congregations in both urban and rural settings in Oregon resulted in several themes including the initial planting of the church, the denominational structure, the emergence of a new multi-ethnic cultural identity, generational differences, and the influence of Spanish.     

Telecommunications and Effective Distance Learning Telecourse Design

Effective distance learning course design focuses on meeting the lifestyle and learning-style needs of a non-traditional student. Fulfilling these needs is accomplished by making provision for human interaction that fosters classroom rapport, builds class membership behaviors and identification with the university. Equal attention is given to matching high-tech equipment capabilities to instructional purpose, instructor personality, student learning style, and preferred interaction style. Continuing evaluation of telecourse programs is vital for assuring telecourse program quality focusing on student learning satisfaction and cost effectiveness. Findings indicate important implications for the design of distance education courses and programs. An effectively designed distance learning telecourse provides for student academic support services. Effective tele-courses also provide the means for instructor/learner, learner/learner, and learner/content interactivity.     

Appropriating scientific practices and discourses with future elementary teachers

We describe a physics course designed to engage preservice elementary teachers in the practices and discourses of science through activities they would later use with children. Formerly successful science students encountered considerable barriers in giving up prior conceptions of science as an enterprise practiced alone, with quick and certain answers that were obvious to everyone, and external authority as the preferred grounds for knowing. Other students, who deemed themselves unsuccessful in previous science learning, came to the course with a value for personal understanding—something they had not accomplished in earlier science courses. We describe how both sets of students made progress in inventing and testing models, working with empirical data, critically evaluating and using authoritative sources, and talking and thinking within a community of validators. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 755–776, 1999     

The effects of developmental placement and early retention on children's later scores on standardized tests

The relationship between early school retention as a result of preschool and kindergarten developmental testing and children's later academic achievement was examined. Two hundred twenty-three children were coded as Traditional, Overplaced, or “Buy a Year,” depending on their scores on the Gesell Screening Test and their subsequent school placement. Their performances on the full Gesell Developmental Test, 3rd grade New York State PEP Tests in reading and math, and the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) were compared. Those children who scored as immature on the Gesell Screening Test and who were retained a year according to the Gesell Developmental Placement Program had the lowest scores on all measures, even though they were almost a year older than the other two groups of children at the time of the PEP and SAT testing.