Early Literacy Measures for Improving Student Reading Achievement: Translating Research Into Practice

The importance of early literacy instruction and its role in later reading proficiency is well established; however, measures and procedures to screen and monitor proficiency in the area of early literacy are less well researched. The purpose of this study was to (a) examine the technical adequacy and validity of early curriculum-based literacy measures, Letter–Sound Correspondence, Onset Phoneme Identification, and Phoneme Segmentation, developed for use within the problem-solving model in the Minneapolis Public Schools and (b) describe the district-wide implementation of these measures. In general, these measures were found to have adequate reliability and validity, have moderate to moderately high correlations with criterion measures (oral reading, report cards), and be sensitive to growth across the school year. A case study of how these measures are used for screening and progress monitoring to improve reading achievement within 1 school is included. Limitations and future directions are also presented.     

Creating the plural self: athletic teams’ use of members’ bodies

Galatzer‐Levy and Cohler's (1993) definition of “ self” allows for the possibility of a “ plural self,” that is, moments when an individual locates the center of initiative for action, feeling, and awareness among a group of people. Using observations and interviews, this investigation explores the ways four basketball teams used players’ bodies to create such a plural self, transforming autonomous individuals into interconnected, deindividualized members. One set of somatic practices made the team perceptible as a whole: huddles, team movements, hand slapping, and certain passing drills. A complementary set of practices encouraged the players to incorporate the team into their bodies. Examples presented of such incorporation are communal relaxation of bodily tension, the rhythms of shared ritual music, and a “sixth sense” of the location of teammates. Acute pain interferes with the emergence of this plural self in both injured and healthy players. The possibility is raised that for many athletes this temporarily realized plural self continues as a possible self and invites the development of certain virtues and failings.     

Focus-on-form instructional methods promote deaf college students' improvement in English grammar

Focus-on-form English teaching methods are designed to facilitate second-language learners' noticing of target language input, where "noticing" is an acquisitional prerequisite for the comprehension, processing, and eventual integration of new grammatical knowledge. While primarily designed for teaching hearing second-language learners, many focus-on-form methods lend themselves to visual presentation. This article reports the results of classroom research on the visually based implementation of focus-on-form methods with deaf college students learning English. Two of 3 groups of deaf students received focus-on-form instruction during a 10-week remedial grammar course; a third control group received grammatical instruction that did not involve focus-on-form methods. The 2 experimental groups exhibited significantly greater improvement in English grammatical knowledge relative to the control group. These results validate the efficacy of visually based focus-on-form English instruction for deaf students of English and set the stage for the continual search for innovative and effective English teaching methodologies.     

"Thinking the Practice": Academic adult educators' reflections on mediating a summer institute as a multicultural learning journey for graduate students

In this paper we research our roles as academic adult educators who worked with 40 graduate students during a 10 day summer institute, which we developed using the theme "Culture and Diversity in Education for Adults". We discuss how we framed the development and delivery of this summer institute in the context of a transgressive and transformative learning journey that heeds Paulo Freire's (1998) call to "think the practice" by reading and comprehending the word and the world critically. From this perspective, we examine our positionalities that situate us as present, sometimes strong, yet sometimes vulnerable educators who use insurgent theories and positional pedagogies to shape alternative learning experiences. We also examine how these positionalities impact our conceptions of pedagogy and multiculturalism, and we explore how they helped to shape the inclusive teaching-learning interactions that we designed to query being, acting, becoming, belonging, and surviving in education and the larger Canadian and global cultures. In this regard we investigate how our learning journey emerged as one deeply textured by engagements with issues of educator and learner positionalities as well as matters of context, disposition, relationship, and affiliation. We explore how our learning journey with institute participants took us into the uneasy intersections of the personal, professional, and political where pedagogical practices and associated challenges, risks, possibilities, and liabilities emerge.     

Reward contrast in delay and probability discounting

In this study, we examined whether reward contrast influences choice between delayed and probabilistic outcomes. Specifically, we predicted that the subjective value of an intermediate reward would seem relatively larger or smaller, respectively, if it followed choices involving a smaller or larger reward and would produce corresponding changes in rates of delay and probability discounting. In Experiment 1, subjects made choices about hypothetical 5,000 or5,000 or 50 outcomes and then made choices about 500 outcomes. Delay-discounting rates for the500 outcomes. Delay-discounting rates for the 500 outcome were larger for Group 5,000 than for Group5,000 than for Group 50, whereas the opposite result was obtained for probability-discounting rates. In Experiment 2, we used a design that allowed for contrast effects to be assessed within subjects. Two groups made choices about delayed or probabilistic rewards. After completing question blocks in which the amount was 5,000 or5,000 or 50, subjects responded to questions with an intermediate amount (475/475/525). For Group Delay, the present value of the intermediate reward was greater after the 50 block than after the50 block than after the 5,000 block, whereas the opposite was obtained for Group Probability. The results from both experiments confirmed the predictions of reward contrast and suggested that the subjective value of a monetary reward varies inversely with the prior reward amount.     

Age,Physical Activity,Physical Fitness,Body Composition,and Incidence of Orthopedic Problems

Abstract

The incidence of orthopedic problems was examined in 5, 582 men and women who attended the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Texas between 1974 and 1982. The effects of age, physical activity, physical fitness, and body mass index (EMI) on the occurrence of these problems were examined using a proportional hazards approach. The expected risk of orthopedic problems per person-year was 0.045 for men and 0.046 for women. For men, physical fitness, BMI, and physical activity were associated with orthopedic problems, while for women, physical activity was the main predictor. Age was not a factor for either gender. The effect of change in physical fitness, physical activity, and BMI was examined in a subset of 2, 325 persons with more than one visit to the clinic. For women, physical activity and a decrease in BMI were associated with orthopedic problems, while for men none of those factors were significant. Again, age was not a factor in either group. The absence of any age effect on the occurrence of problems suggests that with regard to orthopedic problems, moderate amounts of physical activity in generally healthy persons may be recommended without special consideration as to age.     

Selection of models in contingency tables: A reexamination

Qualitative data often need analysis using log-linear models, as pointed out by Liu and Sanders. In this article, references to the state-of-the-art literature and software packages for analyzing such data are presented. We also illustrate the two types of log-linear models and present procedures for investigating both types.