A longitudinal analysis of the alignment between children’s early word-level reading trajectories,teachers’ reported concerns and supports provided

Reading and Writing - In this longitudinal study, the word-level reading trajectories of 118 children were tracked alongside teachers’ reported concerns and types of support provided through...     

The Correlation Between Brain Development, Language Acquisition, and Cognition

There continues to be a debate whether educators should use brain research to their advantage in the classroom. This debate should not prevent educators from using their new found knowledge toward enhancing their students’ learning. By understanding how the brain learns, educators are able to determine what developmental level the child is physically, mentally, socially, and cognitively. The more knowledge an educator has and applies, the better the children will learn, and our future leaders will be better educated.     

Talking to children about science is harder than we think: characteristics and metacognitive judgments of explanations provided to children and adults

Adults modify the way they speak to children to support children’s learning across several domains. However, no previous research has studied whether adults change their language when explaining science to children. The current study examined if and how adults change the manner in which they talk about science when providing explanations to children vs. providing explanations to other adults. Participants (N = 81) were video recorded while explaining basic science concepts to children and adults. Recordings were later analyzed to determine if and how participants changed the quality and content of their explanations. The results confirmed that adults did change their explanations when talking to children about science by providing more potentially beneficial, but also disadvantageous, information. Participants perceived that they provided more accurate explanations to children, but appeared to be making metacognitive judgments largely based upon the changes made that could be beneficial to learning. Taken together, this work suggests that science may be a domain in which adults are not well equipped to modify and monitor their language to children.     

Celebrating the Past,Creating the Future: 50 Years of Community College Research

The Council for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC) celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008. This article summarizes the establishment of the Council and sets it in the context of the development of the community college movement. Highlights of research conducted by CSCC members to address contemporary issues facing community colleges are described. A summary of insights offered by members during a 2008 plenary session, research presented at the 50th annual conference, and key community college leaders are described in the context of the historical evolution of community college research and future directions.     

Put Theory Into Practice

Audrey J. Jaeger, Stephany Dunstan, Courtney Thornton, Alyssa B. Rockenbach, Joy G. Gayles, and Karen J. Haley argue that applying our theoretical frameworks in everyday decision making will help us to be more efficient and effective—and they provide a user‐friendly analogy to guide us in this endeavor.     

Computer conferencing and the university community

In this paper, Terry Evans of the Institute of Distance Education at Deakin University (Geelong, 3217, Australia) and Daryl Nation of the School of Social Sciences at Gippsland Institute (Churchill, 3842, Australia) argue that Dialogue is the essence of the practice, research and theory in distance education. Dialogue is crucial for real understanding, and for ‘quality in learning’... students are actively engaged in constructing meaning rather than recipients of information as embodied in mechanistic conceptions of the learner.

The authors hope to develop international dialogue amongst teachers and researchers in distance education. The editors of this journal also want to encourage this dialogue through further publications, and correspondence.     

Beyond phonological skills: broader language skills contribute to the development of reading

This paper reports a study that followed the development of reading skills in 72 children from the age of 8.5 to 13 years. Each child was administered tests of reading, oral language, phonological skills and nonverbal ability at time 1 and their performance on tests of reading comprehension, word recognition, nonword decoding and exception word reading was assessed at time 2. In addition to phonological skills, three measures of non‐phonological oral language tapping vocabulary knowledge and listening comprehension were unique concurrent predictors of both reading comprehension and word recognition at time 1. Importantly, all three measures of oral language skill also contributed unique variance to individual differences in reading comprehension, word recognition and exception word reading four and a half years later, even when the autoregressive effects of early reading skill were controlled. Moreover, the extent to which a child's word recognition departed from the level predicted from their decoding ability correlated with their oral language skills. These findings suggest that children's oral language proficiency, as well as their phonological skills, influences the course of reading development.     

Supplementation of urban home visitation with a series of group meetings for parents and infants: results of a "real-world" randomized, controlled trial

OBJECTIVE: Home visitation has been shown to be effective in reducing rates of child maltreatment and in enhancing psychosocial outcomes in children and their parents. Even when available, however, it is underutilized by parents in some urban settings. We tested a supplemental 10-session group intervention for its ability to increase active participation in home visitation, enhance the quality of caregiving behavior of parents, and improve social developmental outcome in children. METHOD: A randomized controlled design was utilized, involving two separate cohorts of parents of 3- to 18-month old infants, totaling 148 parent-child dyads. The intervention focused on practical experience in promoting parent-infant attachment relationships. RESULTS: At 6 months follow-up, there was a substantial increase in the proportion of intervention group parents participating in home visitation, compared to parents in the control group (Fisher's exact p = .008). Parents in the intervention group exhibited a trend for improvement in their capacity to appropriately interpret infants' emotional cues (p = .08), independent of the effects of home visitation itself. Attrition in both the treatment and control groups was inversely associated with income and level of education. CONCLUSIONS: Group meetings may constitute an effective means of engaging stressed urban families in home visitation.     

Programmed student achievement: A Hawthorne Effect?

Three groups of college students were given instructions using different testing techniques to determine whether the superior performance obtained with Programmed Student Achievement (PA) was due to a Hawthorne Effect. PA students, operating under the consequence of failing the course if they failed to evidence criterion performance (100% mastery) on weekly quizzes, exhibited superior performance, relative to control groups, on the weekly quizzes and on an unannounced retention test. The results seem to preclude any attempt to interpret the effectiveness of Programmed Student Achievement on the basis of a Hawthorne Effect.