Seniors’ organizations in China’s new rural reconstruction: experiments in Hubei and Henan

This article tracks the shifting cultural meanings that the East/West distinction has produced in the history of nationalism in colonial and post-colonial India. It does so by focusing on the word “civilization” and the role it played in promoting a rich sense of inter-cultural dialogue in the writings of nationalist leaders such as Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Jawaharlal Nehru. The article documents how the word figures with much reduced significance in contemporary cultural debates about globalization in India and concludes by asking if the rise of China and India to global prominence holds the potential today to initiate a conversation across cultures similar to the one that accompanied the rise of the West in the age of modern imperial rule.     

Community College Students With Criminal Justice Histories and Human Services Education: Glass Ceiling,Brick Wall,or a Pathway to Success

In spite of open access to community college education, specifically human service associate degree programs, students with criminal justice histories do not necessarily have an unobstructed pathway to obtaining the degree and admission to the baccalaureate programs in human services and social work that are almost always selective. The first obstacle may arise when a student must be placed in the field internship. This may mark the first time in a student’s educational career where he or she must disclose his or her ex-offender status. While higher education plays a well-documented role against recidivism, students who are ex-offenders who are enrolled in community college programs and also have their sights set on transfer, professional credentialing, and professional employment, may face similar barriers. There is a paucity of research related to students in community college with criminal justice histories and a clear need for qualitative and quantitative study in the area. The author calls for more active advocacy and community education roles for community college professionals in this arena as well.     

Extending pre‐school experience as preventive intervention: Relationships with later reading achievement

This study investigated the predictive validity of decisions made by a pre‐school teacher concerning the cognitive and social maturity of her pupils to enter formal schooling, based on their performance on the Neale Scales of Early Childhood Development.Thirty‐five children selected from the rolls of a Melbourne pre‐school which had maintained records over a ten‐year period were followed up in primary school and their reading ability assessed. Findings showed that subjects who had undertaken an additional pre‐school year following advice based on their Neale Scales’ performance were reading significantly better than those who had displayed similar developmental anomalies but who bad not been exposed to further pre‐school experience; moreover, the former were reading as well as or better than children selected on the basis of their pre‐school profiles as being ready for school.     

Examining listening previewing as a classwide strategy to promote reading comprehension and vocabulary

Classwide instructional strategies to improve not only reading fluency but also comprehension and vocabulary knowledge are essential for student reading success. The current study examined the immediate effects of two classwide listening previewing strategies on reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Twenty‐one, fourth‐grade general education students were exposed to three experimental conditions including a silent reading control condition, a listening previewing condition, and a listening previewing with vocabulary previewing condition. For all conditions, students read grade‐level passages, answered 10 comprehension questions, and completed a vocabulary‐matching task. Results showed that both listening previewing conditions led to improvements in comprehension as compared to silent reading. Adding a vocabulary previewing component to listening previewing procedures resulted in the highest levels of comprehension and vocabulary. Applied implications and directions for future research are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The WISC-R as a predictor of WRAT performance

This study investigated the efficacy of predicting academic achievement as measured by the WRAT, using the Verbal and Performance scores of the WISC-R as predictors. Both tests were given to 155 children referred for psychological evaluations in a four-county area in southeastern Nebraska, and a multiple regression analysis was conducted where the Verbal and Performance IQ scores were conjointly regressed on Reading, Spelling, and Arithmetic standard scores from the WRAT. The results indicated that the Performance IQ did not significantly predict academic achievement, and that the Verbal IQ significantly predicted only Reading and Arithmetic scores. Generated regression equations were provided.