Applying the Mastery Learning Model to Sight Word Instruction for Disabled Readers

The present study evaluated the effect of applying a mastery learning model to sight word instruction for learning disabled (LD), elementary school children. A total of 48 LD children were taught 30 sight words in 9 lessons which incorporated mastery learning strategies, and a comparison group (W = 16) with methods that are typically used in the teaching of sight words. While all children could read less than 10% of the words on the pretest, the experimental group achieved over 90% accuracy on the posttest. This was higher than the average posttest performance of the comparison group (72% accuracy). Results of this investigation suggest that a majority of LD children can reach mastery on sight words within a reasonable time framework if sound remedial principles are applied consistently. The procedures described in this paper can serve both as a model of effective sight word instruction and as a diagnostic, trial-remediation technique for a disabled population.     

Preparing Preservice Teachers in a Virtual Space: A Case Study of a Literacy Methods Course

This article describes a case study of an online literacy methods course offered at a small, midwestern university. Formal and informal instruments were used to assess students' backgrounds, interests, and dispositions. Archival course data were analyzed to examine interactions among content, course design, and student characteristics. Despite variations in self-directedness, dispositions toward the content, and prior experience with online/hybrid learning, 19 of 20 students who originally enrolled in the course were able to complete a compacted, fully online version of this introductory methods course. However, course evaluations indicated that for approximately one fourth of the students, there was a perceived mismatch between course objectives and online delivery. Findings suggest the need for design experiments that address immediacy in online courses and grapple with the issue of whether or not methods courses can be successfully delivered in a fully online format.     

Measuring the Interactive Skills of Caregivers in Child Care Centers: Development and Validation of the Caregiver Interaction Profile Scales

Research Findings: High-quality caregiver–child interactions constitute the core of high-quality child care for young children. This article describes the background and development of the Caregiver Interaction Profile (CIP) scales to rate 6 key skills of caregivers for interacting with 0- to 4-year-old children in child care centers: sensitive responsiveness, respect for autonomy, structuring and limit setting, verbal communication, developmental stimulation, and fostering positive peer interactions. Each interactive skill is rated on a 7-point scale based on observation of video-recorded caregiver–child interactions. Together, the 6 scale scores constitute an Interaction Profile for individual caregivers that may serve as a starting point for education and training to improve the quality of caregiver–child interactions. This article also presents the results of a 1st study with the CIP scales, in a sample of 145 caregivers from 75 child care groups in 47 child care centers in The Netherlands. Practice or Policy: Results provide promising preliminary evidence supporting the reliability and validity of the CIP scales.     

Using machine learning to classify reviewer comments in research article drafts to enable students to focus on global revision

Reviewer comments in research articles such as journal papers or dissertations guide students during the revision process to improve the quality of their articles. Our goal is to make the comments more meaningful to the students’ revision process. Revision involves implicit cognitive processes and ICT has the potential to make such processes explicit. Previous research into the cognitive processes involved in revision has shown that novices focus on local, sentence level revision while expert writers focus on global revision of ideas or restructuring of arguments. For better quality writing, students should focus more on global revision. The reviewer comments can either trigger more meaningful global revision (content-related comments) or local revision (non content-related comments). In this paper, a machine learning algorithm was applied to classify the comments in academic drafts in our laboratory as either content-related or not. Reviewer comments in academic article drafts are usually short. Therefore, this research applied a Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm for the classification, which is one of the most common machine learning algorithms for short texts. Performance evaluation was based on the measures of accuracy, precision and recall for the non content-related comments. Using cross validation, highest scores of 86%, 89% and 89% were achieved for accuracy, recall, and precision, respectively. The results demonstrate the success of the automatic classification, which can be applied to filter out non content-related comments so that the students focus first on revising the content-related comments. In this way, the students can increase their awareness of the importance of global revision.     

Reported contact with child protection services among those reporting child physical and sexual abuse: results from a community survey

OBJECTIVE: This study uses results from a large community survey to examine the relationship between a history of child maltreatment and self-reports of contact with Child Protection Services (CPS). METHODS: The Ontario Health Supplement was a province-wide, probability-based survey of household dwellings in the province of Ontario, Canada. A random sample of residents aged 15 and older participated in the Ontario Health Supplement (N=9953). A face-to-face interview included a question about contact with Child Protection Services (CPS), and the Child Maltreatment History Self-Report, a self-administered questionnaire, was used to assess history of child physical and sexual abuse. RESULTS: Only a very small percentage of respondents with a history of child abuse reported contact with CPS; 5.1% of those with a history of physical abuse, and 8.7% of those with a history of sexual abuse. Contact with CPS was associated with younger age of respondent for both types of abuse and female gender for physical abuse. In the case of sexual abuse, younger respondents whose parental employment classification was in the lower socioeconomic group were more likely to have contact with CPS. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions that target only those who come in contact with CPS will not reach most persons exposed to child abuse.     

美国的特殊教育与作为学校管理者的教师

学校的管理者是一个特殊的教师群体。要成为优秀的教育管理者,教师必须接受适当的培训以遵守特殊教育领域的法律和法规。教育管理培训方案必须包括特殊管理教育方面的要求。对教育管理者自我效能感的调查结果表明,教育管理者的自我评价与实际能力之间存在差异。研究结果显示,培训方案需要改进以便更严格地培养教师成为教育管理者,最终他们才能做到“不让一个孩子掉队”。     

An Integrative Perspective on Students’ Proportional Reasoning in High School Physics in a West African Context

This study examines students’ use of proportional reasoning in high school physics problem‐solving in a West African school setting. An in‐depth, constructivist, and interpretive case study was carried out with six physics students from a co‐educational senior secondary school in Nigeria over a period of five months. The study aimed to elicit students’ meanings, claims, concerns, constructions, and interpretations of their difficulty with proportional reasoning as they worked on a series of 18 high school physics tasks. Multiple qualitative research techniques were employed to generate, analyse, and interpret data. Results indicated that several socio‐cultural, psychosocial, cognitive, and mathematical issues were associated with students’ use of proportional reasoning in physics. Students’ capacity to reason proportionally was not only linked to their difficulty with the concept, structure, and strategies of proportional reasoning as a learning and problem‐solving skill, but was also embedded in the social, cultural, cognitive, and contextual elements involved in the learning of physics. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications for teaching high school physics.