Effect of delay on search decisions in a task-oriented reading environment

The goal of this study was to determine the effect of setting a delay between reading a text and answering comprehension questions on when-to-search and what-to-search decisions in a task-oriented reading environment. Fifty-five eighth-grade students were randomly divided into two groups. One group read one text, answered comprehension questions regarding the text with the text available, and subsequently repeated the procedure with a second text (immediate condition). The other group read both texts first and then answered, with the texts available, the questions for the first text and then for the second text (delayed condition). In both conditions, the readers’ actions during the task were recorded. The results demonstrated that the students in the delayed condition made more search decisions. In addition, moderated mediation analyses indicated that setting a delay had a positive indirect effect on performance via increased searching only for the students with average and high comprehension skills. Moreover, decisions regarding what information to search for depended exclusively on comprehension skill. Instructional implications are discussed.     

Native Mexican Parents’ Beliefs About Children’s Literacy and Language Development: A Mixed-Methods Study

Research Findings. This study examined Mexican caretaker roles, beliefs, and practices around their child’s language and literacy development. Twenty-six parents in three preschools representing three socioeconomic strata located in Querétaro City, México completed questionnaires and participated in focus groups. We used convergent parallel mixed methods to analyze and compare parent questionnaire quantitative data and qualitative focus group data with a grounded theory approach to identify focus group discussion themes. Four themes were emerged: (a) Goals and expectations regarding reading and socioemotional development, (b) Perceptions and beliefs about children’s oral and written language, (c) Caretaker’s perceived role in children’s language and literacy development, and (d) Home and community learning-related resources and practices. Findings highlighted that Mexican parents highly value supporting their children’s education both socioemotionally and through engagement in literacy routines—evidence of duality in the educacíón value among native Mexican families. These literacy routines were complementary and responsive to teacher classroom instruction. Practice or Policy. Understanding how Latino families instantiate literacy practices to respond to American schooling expectations may be a way to address home-school discontinuities that often reflect lack of familiarity with the U.S. educational system.     

A Social Constructivist Approach to Preparing School Counselors to Work Effectively in Urban Schools

In this article a social construction framework is used to improve the capacity of school counselors and trainees to work effectively with African American and Latina/o students in urban schools. Three key theoretical tenets of the social construction worldview are presented as a new lens for thinking about the meaning-making process of students in an urban school setting and how school counselors can support it. We offer activities to operationalize this theoretical point of view and implications for school counselor training and practice.     

What if privatising higher education becomes an issue? The case of Chile and Mexico

Over the last 30 years, Chile and Mexico have been implementing neoliberal policies to reform their higher education systems. This report compares the development and impact of those policies within three main areas in both countries, namely: (1) trends and characteristics of the growing private higher education sector, (2) commercialisation and business-like trends that private academia is experiencing and, finally, (3) it discusses how all this has created tensioning situations with assessment and accrediting agencies to ensure quality in their private higher education systems. This study shows that private higher education is facing the following challenges in both nations: (1) an uncritical implementation of neoliberal policies, (2) that there is a very unregulated legislation that has allowed many private institutions to profit within loopholes in the law, (3) that quality has become a central concern and some of the mechanisms applied to correct it have not been effective, showing a lack of a comprehensive system of quality assessment, and (4) that enrolment has grown but with several mismatches that challenge the initial goal of advancing economic development through human resources capacities. Alternative policies are discussed.     

Resource location and structural properties of the nestbox as determinants of nest-site selection in the golden hamster

Nest-site selection, an ecologically relevant behavior, was studied in the golden hamster in a model environment where the animals could choose between nestboxes differing in distance from resource or in structural features (size and illumination). Experiment 1 showed that hamsters can decrease foraging costs by setting their nests in the nestbox nearest to the food and/or nestmaterial sources, and that hoarding costs, as distinct from simple procurement costs, are taken into account in the choice process. Preferences for darker and larger nestboxes were obtained in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 revealed an internally coherent hierarchical pattern in preferences, with illumination being more important than size and resource distance, and size more important than resource distance. The results suggest that nest-site selection and foraging behaviors are parts of an integrated causal system.     

Science education through informal education

To develop the pedagogic efficiency of informal education in science teaching, promoting a close cooperation between institutions is suggested by Monteiro, Janerine, de Carvalho, and Martins. In their article, they point out effective examples of how teachers and educators work together to develop programs and activities at informal education places such as science museums. Their study explored and discussed the viability and relevancy of school visits to museums and possibilities to enhance the connection between students’ visits in informal contexts and their learning in schools. Given that students learn science by crossing the boundaries of formal and informal learning contexts, it is critical to examine ways of integrated and collaborative approach to develop scientific literacy to help students think, act and communicate as members of problem solving communities. In this forum, we suggest the importance of students’ lifeworld contexts in informal learning places as continuum of Monteiro, Janerine, de Carvalho, and Martins’ discussion on enhancing the effectiveness of informal learning places in science education.     

Reverberating chords: implications of storied nostalgia for borderland discourses in pre-service teacher identity

The research that is the subject of this paper set out to interrogate pre-service teachers’ responses to issues of national identity, ideology, and representation in contemporary multicultural Canadian picture books. While the research focused on whether and how the literature could serve to inform and broaden pre-service teachers’ conceptualizations of diversity, we retrospectively decided to re-visit the focus group and interview data to know which of the 70 picture books had most engaged the teachers and why. We critically consider the implications of teachers’ attachments for social justice education and teachers’ cultivation of a critical, ‘borderlands’ discourse aware of self and open to others. The research suggests that a significant source of teacher knowledge and thinking is lodged in teachers’ personal memories of childhood texts, called touchstones. Touchstones were a place from which teachers implicitly began; certain stories struck particular chords, chords largely attributable to childhood memories. Most intertextual connections were personal, with some tangential to the text. While touchstones performed different functions depending on the subject position of the pre-service teachers, they pointed to the existence of an underlying position of teacher as nostalgic subject. Given the importance of this subject position for teachers’ responses to picture books, we explore critical reconceptualizations of nostalgia that can support the development of borderland discourses. We suggest that pre-service teachers need to be invited to individually and collectively examine their responses to both old and new touchstone stories. More nuanced research also needs to be conducted on the role of nostalgia in teacher formation, how it influences teacher practice, and how to best design teacher education courses to foster ‘borderland discourses’ related to the storying of teacher identity, especially with respect to popular ‘collectibles’ and core teaching texts like picture books.     

Using the Flipped Classroom Model in Your Library Instruction Course

In the flipped classroom model, the pedagogical paradigm is reversed and the students learn the class lesson at home and do homework in class. Although much of the focus of the flipped model has been on the secondary education level, this model could be a viable way to teach library instruction sessions to college-level students as well as a way to preserve scarce class time. This article examines a project that was done at LIU Post, where an instructor of the Library Competency Workshop course flipped the classroom and compared test results to sections where the class was run in a traditional lecture classroom model as well as the experiences on how the instructor flipped the classroom.     

Looking back: reasoning and metacognition with narrative texts

This study explored the abilities of 5th, 8th, and 10th graders, and College students to reason logically about what they read. Both students’ metacognitive behavior (looking back at previously read text) and their performance on logical deduction questions were recorded and analyzed in a reading task. Conditional logic premises and deductive questions were embedded in three narratives containing premise information that was factual (True Story), contrary to fact (False Story), or unverifiable via common world knowledge (Neutral Story). The texts and questions were presented one sentence at a time on a computer screen; participants controlled the presentation of sentences. For answering the questions, three response tasks were devised. One task (labeled Generate) required readers to generate their own logical conclusions in response to deduction questions. Two tasks (labeled Valid and Invalid) required readers to evaluate logically valid or logically invalid conclusions drawn by story characters in the texts. Students in early and late adolescence looked back more when asked to evaluate logical conclusions than when asked to generate conclusions on their own; College students’ lookback frequencies were not significantly affected by response task, but were greater overall than those of younger students. With conditional forms requiring an uncertainty response (Affirmed Consequent and Denied Antecedent), readers looked back more when evaluating logically invalid conclusions than when evaluating logically valid ones. Readers of all ages were more likely to agree with story characters’ (valid) uncertain conclusions with the AC and DA forms than they were to disagree with story characters’ (invalid) certain conclusions to these forms. Both lookback frequency and performance on logic questions were lowest when readers were required to reason from contrary to fact premises.     

International trends in health science librarianship: Part 4 – Four Southern European countries

This is the fourth in a series of articles exploring international trends in health science librarianship in four Southern European countries in the first decade of the 21st century. The invited authors are from Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Future issues will track trends in Latin America and Central Europe. JM