Success by Degrees: Addressing Teacher Shortages through a School-Community College-University Partnership

Using a teacher recruitment and preparation model, a unique partnership between PK–12 schools, a community college, and a university is examined. The focus is on the training and credentialing of future educators, particularly from underrepresented backgrounds, in an efficient and quality manner to assist in meeting the current PK–12 teacher shortage. Data indicate that the partnership is progressing towards, or has met, its targets in addressing said shortage.     

Stability of Core Language Skill from Early Childhood to Adolescence: A Latent Variable Approach

This four‐wave prospective longitudinal study evaluated stability of language in 324 children from early childhood to adolescence. Structural equation modeling supported loadings of multiple age‐appropriate multisource measures of child language on single‐factor core language skills at 20 months and 4, 10, and 14 years. Large stability coefficients (standardized indirect effect = .46) were obtained between language latent variables from early childhood to adolescence even when accounting for child nonverbal intelligence and social competence and maternal verbal intelligence, education, speech, and social desirability. Stability coefficients were similar for girls and boys. Stability of core language skill was stronger from 4 to 10 to 14 years than from 20 months to 4 years, so early intervention to improve lagging language is recommended.     

Measuring Socioeconomic Status at the School Level

Why is there an increased need for quantitative indicators of student socioeconomic status at the school level? What alternative approaches have been used to measure SES? Can principals accurately estimate the SES distribution of their student populations? How do their estimates correlate with other indexes o f family SES?     

The Region 4 collaborative virtual reference project

In May 2002, the Denison Memorial Library at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and the J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library at the University of Missouri-Columbia, with funding from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine-Midcontinental Region, embarked on a collaborative, real-time reference project using the 24/7 Reference, Inc., software package. This paper describes how the project was conceived, and includes details on the service hours, staffing, training, marketing, lessons learned, and future plans for the service.     

FAST-Future Academic Scholars in Teaching: A High-Engagement Development Program for Future STEM Faculty

Doctoral granting institutions prepare future faculty members for academic positions at institutions of higher education across the nation. Growing concerns about whether these institutions are adequately preparing students to meet the demands of a changing academic environment have prompted several reform efforts. We describe a professional development model designed to prepare the future faculty to integrate the multiple components of academic careers. The program emphasizes the study and application of effective teaching practices centered on student learning and assessment and expectations for faculty careers. We describe the impact of the program on its participants.     

The role of gender constancy in early gender development

Kohlberg's (1966) hypothesis that the attainment of gender constancy motivates children to attend to gender norms was reevaluated by examining these links in relation to age. Ninety-four 3- to 7-year-old children were interviewed to assess whether and how constancy mediates age-related changes in gender-related beliefs. As expected, results indicated a general pattern of an increase in stereotype knowledge, the importance and positive evaluation of one's own gender category, and rigidity of beliefs between the ages of 3 and 5. Moreover, the stability phase, rather than full constancy, mediated some of these relations. After age 5, rigidity generally decreased with age, with relations primarily mediated by consistency.     

Humor in middle management: women negotiating the paradoxes of organizational life

Women in middle management continue to face multiple paradoxes arising from their structural and gendered locations that add to the uncertainty of negotiating organizational life. Investigating the lived experiences of women middle managers can illuminate the constraints and paradoxes endemic to organizing, for such experiences foreground tensions at the intersection of structure, identity, agency, and power. Specifically, this contextual investigation of conversational humor explores links between organizational status, gender, and paradox. In so doing, it demonstrates how women can use humor to negotiate managerial identities and to navigate organizational life. This study uncovers nuanced and important communication tactics of middle management women. This study also reveals the value of investigating the complex convergence of humor, gender, and organizational communication theory.     

Response to intervention as a vehicle for distinguishing between children with and without reading disabilities: Evidence for the role of kindergarten and first-grade interventions

Children at risk for early reading difficulties were identified on entry into kindergarten, and half of these children received small-group intervention two to three times a week during their kindergarten year. The other half received whatever remedial assistance was offered by their home schools. These children were again assessed at the beginning of first grade, and those who continued to have difficulties in reading received either one-to-one daily tutoring offered by project teachers from the beginning to the end of first grade or whatever remedial assistance was offered by their home schools over the same time period. All target children were periodically assessed through the end of third grade. Results suggest that either kindergarten intervention alone or kindergarten intervention combined with first-grade intervention are both useful vehicles for preventing early and long-term reading difficulties in most at-risk children.