What happens to precocious readers' performance by the age of eleven?

This paper reports on the progress made by a small group of fourteen 11‐year‐old children who had been originally identified as being precocious readers before they started primary school at the age of five. The data enable comparisons to be made with the performance of the children when they were younger so that a six‐year longitudinal analysis can be made. The children who began school as precocious readers continued to make progress in reading accuracy, rate and comprehension, thereby maintaining their superior performance relative to a comparison group. However, their progress appeared to follow the same developmental trajectory as that of the comparison group. Measures of phonological awareness showed that there are long‐term, stable individual differences that correlated with all measures of reading. The children who were reading precociously early showed significantly higher levels of phonological awareness than the comparison children. In addition, they showed the same levels of performance on this task as a further group of high achieving young adults. A positive effect of being able to read at precociously early age was identified in the significantly higher levels of receptive vocabulary found amongst these children. The analyses indicated that rises in receptive vocabulary resulted from reading performance rather than the other way round.     

The development and validation of a framework for teaching competencies in higher education

In higher education, approaches to teaching are becoming more student-centred, which demands different teaching competencies. Therefore, it is necessary to have an adequate framework of teaching competencies that can be used for evaluation purposes. The weaknesses of the existing frameworks are that they do not pay attention to the person as teacher, they are too narrowly defined, they are not validated and they are not adjusted to modern approaches to teaching. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a framework of teaching competencies in higher education. A framework for teaching competencies was therefore constructed containing the following domains: The Person as Teacher, Expert on Content Knowledge, Facilitator of Learning Processes, Organiser and Scholar/Lifelong Learner. The framework was validated using a Delphi method. Educational experts (N = 63) were asked: ``How important are the following teaching competencies in each domain for an experienced teacher in higher education?'' A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the adequacy of the domains. After two rounds, the shift in ratings was minimal, so the results were considered stable. The response rate was 82%. From the original list with 134 items, 30 items were omitted because many experts failed to respond to them. The experts reached consensus on 61 out of the resulting 104 items (59%). A confirmatory factor analysis on the three best scoring items in each domain confirmed the model. A framework of teaching competencies was developed and validated that can be used as a starting point for teacher evaluation in higher education.     

Using a conceptual framework and the opinions of portfolio experts to develop a teaching portfolio prototype

This article reports the design of a prototype for a teaching portfolio for development and assessment purposes. A portfolio prototype was developed according to theoretical choices based on portfolio literature and Zeichner and Wray's (2001) conceptual framework. We conducted an interview study in which portfolio experts were asked to judge to what extent our theoretical choices were reflected in the prototype developed and which modifications were needed. In general, the experts agreed that our choices were reflected in the prototype developed. However, there were some controversial topics, which are discussed, as well as key issues for further research.     

Student Perspectives on Academic Accommodations

The active involvement of secondary school students with high-incidence disabilities (HI) in instructional accommodations is essential to both enacting the accommodations and to the accommodations effectiveness. Very little is known about students with HI’s knowledge about instructional accommodations, experiences with them, or opinions on effective practices. A focus group study was conducted with 10 high school students with HI. A content analysis (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009) revealed they are unaware of how their accommodations are identified, and that they typically are not directly taught to use them. The students explained how accommodations are usually provided in the classroom, including the ways they signal need, and offered their suggestions for more effective practices, which included responding to fairness and potential embarrassment. Their comments also revealed their beliefs and practices for self-advocating for accommodations.     

Multimedia and the changing experience of the learner

This paper argues for a pedagogical analysis of what the new multimedia systems can offer that will impose on them a more ambitious objective than they currently have. It begins by summarising a framework for analysing educational media, in terms of how well they each support the teaching-learning process. The different types of media are then related to different 'modes' of learning: via the narrative media which support learning through acquisition, the discursive media which support learning through discussion, the interactive media, which support learning by discovery, and adaptive media which can be used to support 'guided discovery'. Multimedia is sometimes seen as a way of re-purposing material originally developed for narrative media. Because it can be (even should be) an adaptive medium, this requires the learning objectives to be re-constructed if the new medium is to achieve its pedagogical potential and offer a new kind of learning experience to students.     

The Influence of Education and Family Background on Women's Earnings in Midlife: evidence from a British national birth cohort study

Studies which have investigated the influence of education on adult earnings are almost exclusively concerned with men and take little account of family influences on either education or later earnings. Those studies which have information on women's earnings focus on gender differentials rather than differences between women in opportunities and outcomes. This paper which examines the influence of education and family background on the midlife earnings of a national cohort of British women born immediately after the Second World War is an attempt to redress this situation. It shows that the few women who were able to take full advantage of the expansion in educational opportunities and achieve high educational qualifications earned significantly more in adult life than less educated females. Family background played an important role, both through its effect on early educational achievement and attitude to school work, which in turn influenced the type of secondary school attended and the achievement of educational qualifications, and also by well‐educated mothers raising their daughter's career expectations or providing successful role models. In adult life, employment characteristics which indicated a long‐term commitment to full‐time work and the decision not to have children, or to delay childbearing, were also important predictors of later economic success in this cohort, but did not explain the prior effects of education and family background. Advanced educational qualifications were the key to economic success for women bom in the early post‐war period.     

The Interfacing of Preservice and Inservice Experiences of Reform-Based Teaching: A Longitudinal Study

This article contrasts four elementary teachers who were graduates of a teacher education program that incorporated a reform-based mathematics methods course. The report provides results from a four-year longitudinal study that extended from the time that the participants were preservice teachers until the end of their second year of teaching. The article provides background information of each teacher, vignettes from her teaching, excerpts from interviews, and an analysis of each teacher's case. Results from the case studies indicate that two of the four teachers sustained their cognitively-based conceptions about mathematics teaching and learning, and implemented these conceptions into practice. The analysis suggests that there were several factors that influenced the teachers' conceptions and the choices they made in their teaching: personal commitment, professional strength, curriculum, planning, assessment, beliefs, knowledge, and support from school administration. The article concludes with implications for teaching and questions about the nature of what might be required in the beginning years of teaching if new teachers are expected to implement reform-based mathematics teaching practices. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Ignis Fatuus Effect of Faculty Category: Is the Tenure Versus Non-Tenure Debate Meaningful to Students’ Course Experiences?

The American professoriate is shifting its majority makeup from tenure track to non-tenure track faculty members. Less known, though, is what the implications of this shift are for students’ course experiences. We sought to examine the extent to which the teaching practices, with regard to academic rigor and cognitively responsive teaching, differ between faculty category using observational measures of teaching in the classroom. We found that broad categorizations of faculty may not be meaningful unless they are examined in particular contexts, such as discipline and class size.     

Prevalence and psychological sequelae of self-reported childhood physical and sexual abuse in a general population sample of men and women

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the prevalence and psychological sequelae of childhood sexual and physical abuse in adults from the general population. METHOD: A national sampling service generated a geographically stratified, random sample of 1,442 subjects from the United States. Subjects were mailed a questionnaire that included the Traumatic Events Survey (TES) [Traumatic Events Survey, Unpublished Psychological Test, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles] and the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI) [Trauma Symptom Inventory Professional Manual, Psychological Assessment Resources, Odessa, FL]. Of all potential subjects, 935 (64.8%) returned substantially completed surveys. RESULTS: Sixty-six men and 152 women (14.2% and 32.3%, respectively) reported childhood experiences that satisfied criteria for sexual abuse, and 103 males and 92 females (22.2% and 19.5%, respectively) met criteria for physical abuse. Twenty-one percent of subjects with one type of abuse also had experienced the other type, and both types were associated with subsequent adult victimization. After controlling for demographics, adult history of interpersonal violence, and other child abuse, childhood sexual abuse was associated with all 10 scales of the TSI, and physical abuse was related to all TSI scales except those tapping sexual issues. Sexual abuse predicted more symptom variance than did physical abuse or adult interpersonal victimization. Various aspects of both physical and sexual abuse experiences were predictive of TSI scores. Abuser sex, however, both alone and in interaction with victim sex, was not associated with additional TSI symptomatology. CONCLUSIONS: Childhood sexual and physical abuse is relatively common in the general population, and is associated with a wide variety of psychological symptoms. These relationships remain even after controlling for relevant background variables.