Mother-child bookreading in low-income families: correlates and outcomes during the first three years of life

About half of 2,581 low-income mothers reported reading daily to their children. At 14 months, the odds of reading daily increased by the child being firstborn or female. At 24 and 36 months, these odds increased by maternal verbal ability or education and by the child being firstborn or of Early Head Start status. White mothers read more than did Hispanic or African American mothers. For English-speaking children, concurrent reading was associated with vocabulary and comprehension at 14 months, and with vocabulary and cognitive development at 24 months. A pattern of daily reading over the 3 data points for English-speaking children and daily reading at any 1 data point for Spanish-speaking children predicted children's language and cognition at 36 months. Path analyses suggest reciprocal and snowballing relations between maternal bookreading and children's vocabulary.     

The impact of academic self‐concept,expectations and the choice of learning strategy on academic achievement: the case of business students

This study provides evidence of the impact of two critical self‐regulation components – academic self‐concept and outcome expectations – on the selection of learning strategies conducive to academic achievement in undergraduate business education. Self‐concept theory is the framework for the analysis of students’ motivations and learning behaviors. Path analysis suggests that high academic self‐concept favors engagement in complex cognitive effort, deep learning strategies and self‐reflection, as well as in the adoption of strategic learning approaches alone. However, the composite effect of deep learning through strategic approaches has the most impact on student’s academic performance. High academic expectations favor students’ selection of deep learning more than strategic approaches. Clearly, the use of surface approaches to learning is not conducive to academic achievement. Overall, these findings suggest that high students’ academic self‐concepts and unambiguous outcome expectations encourage critical thinking and reflective approaches to learning. Implications for the design of educational models and curriculum in business undergraduate education are discussed.     

The Educational Journeys of Students of Color Across the Educational Pipeline: A Pedagogy of Storytelling or a Struggle for Freedom?

Social inequality as evident through poverty, racism, and irrelevant social and educational policies and practices have created consistent disparities on most educational achievement and attainment outcomes for historically marginalized students, and students of color specifically. These ongoing inequalities and injustices require policy, practical, and pedagogical changes across the educational pipeline. The work of the people on the ground needs to be intentional when exploring ways to creatively and courageously engage with students of color inside and outside the classroom. This paper describes, conceptualizes, and applies a pedagogical practice called Educational Journeys/Caminos Educativos, which is built on a grounded, context-specific, and culturally relevant set of processes that helps students, educators, leaders, policy makers, and other stakeholders to co-create a series of pedagogical approaches that facilitate opportunities for educators to heal, build, and thrive with historically marginalized students, particularly minoritized, immigrant, and undocumented youth. The goal of this paper is to propose pedagogical processes that allow these populations, and the educators who serve them, to imagine a new social condition for and with students of color across the educational pipeline as a gesture toward equity and social justice. The author suggests that the pedagogy of Educational Journeys is more than storytelling; it’s about a struggle for freedom—past, present, and future.     

Wavelet-based deconvolution of ultrasonic signals in nondestructive evaluation

INTRODUCTION Deconvolution of ultrasonic signals is defined as the solution of the inverse problem of convolving an input signal, known as the system function h(n), with a medium reflectivity function x(n) and can be rep- resented by y(n)=h(n)*x(n) η(n), (1) where y(n) is the measured signal, * denotes the convolution operation and η(n) is the additive noise. Recovering x(n) from the observation y(n) leads to improving the appearance and the axial resolution of the RF-signals by removin…     

Achievement in Science as a Function of the Mobility—Fixity Dimension

The characteristic of field‐independent subjects to function consistently in a field‐independent fashion (i.e. fixity) and of others to vary more according to circumstances (i.e. mobility) has been referred to as the Mobility‐Fixity Dimension. This dimension, based on the theories of Werner, Witkin and Pascual‐Leone suggests, that field mobile students perform better than fixed students in science courses. The main objective of this study, based on high school students (mean age = 16.5 years; SD = 1.0) in Venezuela, was to test the following predictions. (1) Mobile students would obtain a better performance than fixed students on variables such as introductory high school mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and earth science courses; and (2) among mobile students, those classified in the middle‐high range of the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) and the Figural Intersection Test (FIT), would obtain a better performance as compared to those in the lower‐middle range. Results obtained, in general, provide support for the first prediction. The differences between the performances of mobile and fixed groups were, however, significant (p < 0.05) only for the biology and earth science courses. Students in one of the high mobility groups obtained a better performance (in all courses) than not only the corresponding low mobility group but also a fixed group with high scores on both the GEFT and FIT, which provides support for the second prediction. It is concluded that problem‐solving ability in science courses may be strengthened through the mediation of the Mobility‐Fixity Dimension.     

When does the researcher (should) also become a resource for the bricoleur teacher? A review of Ajay Sharma’s Portrait of a science teacher as a bricoleur : A case study from India

This paper provides a critical review essay of Ajay Sharma’s Portrait of a science teacher as a bricoleur: A case study from India. The main focus is two fold. First, arguments are presented to draw attention to how little advances in science teaching and science learning research have impacted teachers’ practice and student achievement in the last 40 years. Second, the paper describes how the researcher’s traditionally detached role and truncated agency may inadvertently contribute to preserving the status quo by only documenting the Other’s struggles and challenges. I suggest that researchers need to re-conceptualize their roles as co-agents of change if we are to assist the Other effect positive and long-lasting change in the increasingly complex and demanding contexts in which teachers are expected to teach and students to learn.

Postwar abandoned children: psychology and pedagogy at the service of the Franco Regime

ABSTRACT

This article explores the political, religious, and ideological backdrop to psychology and pedagogy under Franco’s dictatorship. To this end, it analyses the important research carried out between 1940 and 1944 by the psychologist and pedagogue José J. Jover y Piquer into the intelligence, mentality, and moral judgement of a large number of abandoned and vulnerable postwar children. The article demonstrates how, although the approach adopted by Piquer was a scientific one – with the usual aims, techniques, and methods – the research contents were subordinated to ideological and religious considerations and aimed to determine the extent to which these children could be re-educated and integrated into the new regime. Thus, psychology became the scientific packaging for studies that were eminently ideological and politically subservient, turning pedagogy into a key instrument of the biopolitics aimed at building Franco’s New Spain.     

Attributions and discipline history as predictors of child abuse potential and future discipline practices

OBJECTIVES: We attempted to identify factors that can be applied in primary and secondary prevention programs and expand the understanding of why those who were not abused may engage in abusive behavior. The purpose of this research was to explore how young adults' attributions of whether they deserved their childhood discipline, as well as their abuse history, relate to physical child abuse potential and their discipline plans for their future children. METHOD: A sample of 140 non-parent college students were asked to report on their discipline history, perceptions of that discipline, child abuse potential, and expected discipline practices. An age range of 18-20 was targeted for multiple reasons, including the suitability of these young adults for primary and secondary prevention programs. RESULTS: Analyses revealed that both physical child abuse potential and future discipline practices were independently predicted by respondents' belief that they deserved their discipline in conjunction with the harshness of their childhood discipline. DISCUSSION: These results suggest that the attributions of self-blame held by young adults about their discipline experiences are significant for increasing physical abuse potential regardless of whether the individual reports a history of abuse.     

Redefining Interdisciplinary Curriculum: A Journey of Collaboration and Change in Secondary Teacher Education

When beginning to teach a secondary education course focusing on interdisciplinary curriculum together, four women teacher educators determined changes we hoped to make for the following semester. For example, we took up the notions of difference, arts integration, and collaboration all under the umbrella of interdisciplinary curriculum. We were in search of a model of interdisciplinarity that could incorporate our understanding of education and our teaching interests. We designed this model in order to guide our students into identifying themselves as educators rather than purely content-area specialists.Similarly, we saw this course as an opportunity to encourage collaborative practices. We could model team-teaching as our students planned interdisciplinary units together. Likewise, we could demonstrate to our students that transcending their own disciplines allows for more powerful teaching and learning. We saw redefining interdisciplinary curriculum as a route to encourage preservice teachers to teach for social justice and to show teaching's potential as a collaborative profession.This article narrates how we experienced the changes of crossing disciplines, co-teaching sections of the course, exploring arts integration, and providing practical experiences in four different voices. We use our varied voices as we hope the reader may then come to better understand our individual experiences as well as our collaborative journey. While we encountered several roadblocks on our travels, we also found that we offered opportunities for creating new knowledge among ourselves and our students.