MANUALIZATION,FEASIBILITY, AND EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SCHOOL‐BASED SOCIAL COMPETENCE INTERVENTION FOR ADOLESCENTS (SCI‐A)

Despite the movement toward identification of evidence‐based practices (EBPs), there is a discrepancy in the availability of school‐based EBPs targeting the unique needs of students with high functioning forms of autism and related social needs. Based on calls for systematic intervention development and evaluation processes, the current study describes the manualization, feasibility, and effectiveness testing of the school‐based Social Competence Intervention for Adolescents (SCI‐A) curriculum. School personnel were trained to implement SCI‐A to a targeted student population. Fidelity and social validity data indicated curriculum feasibility and acceptability within secondary school settings. Student social functioning, executive functioning, and theory of mind demonstrated postintervention gains with moderate effect sizes. Results are promising for SCI‐A's continued positive trajectory within the phases of EBP evaluation research. Challenges for intervention effectiveness testing within schools and future considerations for evaluating EBPs are discussed.     

Well‐being in the Welfare State: the redistributive capacity of education

Focusing on the macro‐micro interaction between institutional arrangements and individual life outcomes, this article investigates how welfare régime types impact the association between education and well‐being, as measured by satisfaction with life. Theorising with Esping‐Andersen's ideal‐typical welfare régime typology, we hypothesise that decommodified institutional arrangements reduce the association between education and well‐being through compensatory social protections for at‐risk individuals, while stratifying forces strengthen this association. These results are only partly supported; we find that Conservative Welfare States show the most robust association, whilst Liberal and Social‐Democratic Welfare States display weaker relationships. Thus, stratification appears to play a more important role than decommodification in moderating this association. We also examine potential mediating factors and how they differ between welfare régime types, finding that health and income mediate the effects of education on well‐being to varying degrees.     

Tier 3 specialized writing instruction for students with dyslexia

Two instructional experiments used randomized, controlled designs to evaluate the effectiveness of writing instruction for students with carefully diagnosed dyslexia, which is both an oral reading and writing disorder, characterized by impaired word decoding, reading, and spelling. In Study 1 (4th to 6th grade sample and 7th to 9th grade sample), students were randomly assigned to orthographic or morphological spelling treatment but all students were taught strategies for planning, writing, and reviewing/revising narrative and expository texts. Both treatments resulted in improvement on three measures of spelling and one measure of composition. Morphological treatment resulted in better improvement in spelling pseudowords, whereas orthographic treatment resulted in better improvement in rate of reading pseudowords. In Study 2 (4th to 6th grade sample), students were randomly assigned to explicit language treatment (phonological working memory + phonological-orthographic spelling + science report writing training) or nonverbal problem solving treatment (virtual reality-based computer simulation, drawing maps, and building clay models). Both treatments used science content material and resulted in significant improvement in spelling and reading pseudowords (accuracy and rate). The surprising finding was that hands-on, engaging science problem solving led to more improvement in phonological working memory than did specialized phonological instruction. Only when spelling instruction emphasized orthography or morphology (Study 1) did real word spelling improve. Preparation of this chapter was supported by Grant Nos. HD25858 and P50 33812 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). In Study 1 teaching assistants included Sylvia Abbott, Marci Anderson-Youngstrom, Belle Chennault, Kate Eschen, Noelia Garcia, Sandra Hiramatsu, Lynn Junell, Julia Kim, Stephanie King, Shin-Ju (Cindy) Lin, Rebecca Metzger, Heather Murphy, Jennifer Norton, Sue Palewicz, Rebecca Pirie, and Suzanna West. Also on the assessment team were Sylvia Abbott, Belle Chenault, Kate Eschen, and Rebecca Pirie. Certified teachers Diana Hoffer and Christina Johnson implemented the composition lessons written by the first author. In Study 2, teaching assistants included Nicole Alston-Abel, Leah Altemeier, Wade Altom, Marci Anderson-Youngstrom, Annie Boyd, Nicole Garcia, Laura Gould, Marta Holsinger, Yen-Ling Lee, Shin-Ju (Cindy) Lin, Laurie McCarthy, Heather Murphy, Hema O’Shea, Michelle Proux, Kristine Tardiff, and Kari Terjeson. Janine Jones supervised the assessment team. Margaret McShane and Doug Stock served as administrative assistants.     

Les problèmes cognitifs rencontrés par des elèves de l’enseignement secondaire dans l’apprentissage de l’informatique

The purpose of this paper is to develop some theoretical and methodological elements of the study of learning programming by the secondary school students. The attention is focused on different topics: subject’s representations about the informatical device and about the structuration of data (data structuring); acquisition of the variable and iteration concepts.     

The Creation and Evolution of a Co-Teaching Community: How Teachers Learned to Address Adolescent English Language Learners' Needs as Writers

This article reports findings from a four-year formative experiment (Reinking &; Bradley, 2008 Reinking, D., &; Bradley, B. (2008). On formative and design experiments. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. [Google Scholar]) investigating a summer writing institute for ninth graders entering an urban high school. Intended as enrichment, not remediation, for a heterogeneous group of students, and as a learning experience, not just a teaching opportunity, for practitioners, the institute was grounded in multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996 New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66, 60–92. [Google Scholar]) and scholarship on inclusive schooling (Udvari-Solner, 1997 Udvari-Solner, A. (1997). Inclusive education. In C. A. Grant &; G. Ladson-Billings (Eds.), Dictionary of multicultural education (pp. 141–144). Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. [Google Scholar]). Its essential elements included (1) composing by students in both print and digital genres, (2) a small set of instructional approaches effective for heterogeneous populations, and (3) co-teaching and co-planning by institute staff. This article focuses on teachers' efforts to support the writing development of English Language Learners (ELLs), who represented 20–30% of institute participants each year. Findings revealed that as teachers made adjustments to the institute model over time, their efforts to support ELLs' participation became more grounded in collective examination of varied student data. As teachers worked in community with each other (Swanson, 2007 Swanson, D. (2007). Ubuntu: An African contribution to (re)search for/with a “humble togetherness.” Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education, 2(2), 53–67. [Google Scholar]; Venter, 2004 Venter, E. (2004). The notion of Ubuntu and communalism in African educational discourse. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 23, 149–160. [Google Scholar]), they increased their ability to address student writers' diverse needs.     

Communication in Online Learning – How Important is It?

Abstract

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe teacher experiences of teacher-to-student technology-mediated communication (TMC) in secondary virtual school (VS) environments in Alabama. The central research question for this study was: How do virtual school teachers in Alabama describe their experiences of teacher-to-student technology-mediated communication in secondary virtual school environments? Students educated in virtual environments use TMC, so teachers must know what kinds of TMC work best. The problem is that the teacher voice has been ignored in identifying teacher-to-student TMC that is effective in secondary VS environments. Using purposeful sampling of 12 VS teachers in Alabama, this research utilized semi-structured interviews, artifacts, and an asynchronous online focus group to uncover teacher experiences of teacher-to-student interactions in VS environments. In seeking meaning from their experiences, the predominant theme of whatever is best for the students became evident. Four themes developed pertaining to the participants’ experiences: Teacher mindset, teacher presence, integration of technology into instruction, and technology issues.     

A Content Analysis of 10 Years of Clinical Supervision Articles in Counseling

This content analysis follows Borders's (2005) review of counseling supervision literature and includes 184 counselor supervision articles published over the past 10 years. Articles were coded as representing 1 of 3 research types or 1 of 3 conceptual types. Articles were then analyzed for main topics producing 11 topic categories.