Primary prevention of reading failure: Effect of universal peer tutoring in the early grades

Reading is typically considered a survival skill in our technology- and literacy-bound culture. Individuals who struggle with learning to read are at significantly elevated risk for a number of negative outcomes, including school failure, under- and unemployment, and special education placement. Thus, those who do not learn to read fluently will likely be a greater drain on society's resources. The authors examined the effects of a universal (school district-wide) implementation of a well-validated peer-tutoring reading intervention as a system-wide prevention measure in kindergarten through Grade 3 in a small metropolitan area in Canada. Results suggest that nearly all children demonstrated improved reading fluency over time. Yet those at highest-risk for poor outcomes, including those living in poverty and those who face learning challenges due to English as a second-language status or special education enrollment, did not make parallel gains to same-age peers in more affluent schools. Implications for educational policy are discussed.     

Renewed commitments in a time of vigilance: sexuality education in the USA*

Over the past 20 years, the USA has seen more than its fair share of controversy with respect to education about sexuality, sex and intimate relationships. Attention has focused on content (abstinence-only vs. comprehensive instruction), delivery (by teachers, parents, health professionals or community educators) and context (within school and beyond). In recognition of this fact, Sex Education invited the development of a virtual special issue comprising a sample of its most impactful papers on these and related topics. The 2016 Presidential election results and recent legislative action in the USA point to the importance of thinking broadly about teaching and learning about sexuality inside and outside of schools and of considering sexuality as it intersects with categories of difference, privilege and penalty, including ability, age, immigration, race, gender and class. This paper, developed as an introduction to the virtual special issue, opens with a discussion of the journal’s contributions to the ongoing discussion of pleasure and desire in sexuality education. From there, we turn to the question of what is possible given the material and ideological conditions of schooling and then to opportunities for teachers and learners outside the conventional classroom. We follow with a discussion of the place of intersectional analyses in sexuality education research, and conclude with some thoughts on sexuality education research at this political moment.     

My avatar,my self: Virtual harm and attachment

Multi-user online environments involve millions of participants world-wide. In these online communities participants can use their online personas – avatars – to chat, fight, make friends, have sex, kill monsters and even get married. Unfortunately participants can also use their avatars to stalk, kill, sexually assault, steal from and torture each other. Despite attempts to minimise the likelihood of interpersonal virtual harm, programmers cannot remove all possibility of online deviant behaviour. Participants are often greatly distressed when their avatars are harmed by other participants’ malicious actions, yet there is a tendency in the literature on this topic to dismiss such distress as evidence of too great an involvement in and identification with the online character. In this paper I argue that this dismissal of virtual harm is based on a set of false assumptions about the nature of avatar attachment and its relation to genuine moral harm. I argue that we cannot dismiss avatar attachment as morally insignificant without being forced to also dismiss other, more acceptable, forms of attachment such as attachment to possessions, people and cultural objects and communities. Arguments against according moral significance to virtual harm fail because they do not reflect participants’ and programmers’ experiences and expectations of virtual communities and they have the unintended consequence of failing to grant significance to attachments that we take for granted, morally speaking. Avatar attachment is expressive of identity and self-conception and should therefore be accorded the moral significance we give to real-life attachments that play a similar role. A shorter version of this paper was presented at the Cyberspace 2005 Conference at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic     

Developmental change in the ERP responses to familiar faces in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders versus typical development

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show differences in face processing abilities from early in development. To examine whether these differences reflect an atypical versus delayed developmental trajectory, neural responses to familiar and unfamiliar faces in twenty-four 18- to 47-month-old children with ASD were compared with responses of thirty-two 12- to 30-month-old typically developing children. Results of 2 experiments revealed that neural responses to faces in children with ASD resembled those observed in younger typically developing children, suggesting delayed development. Electrophysiological responses to faces were also related to parent report of adaptive social behaviors for both children with ASD and typical development. Slower development of the face processing system in ASD may be related to reduced self-directed "expected" experience with faces in early development.     

Engaging Undergraduates in Science Research: Not Just About Faculty Willingness

Despite the many benefits of involving undergraduates in research and the growing number of undergraduate research programs, few scholars have investigated the factors that affect faculty members’ decisions to involve undergraduates in their research projects. We investigated the individual factors and institutional contexts that predict faculty members’ likelihood of engaging undergraduates in their research project(s). Using data from the Higher Education Research Institute’s 2007–2008 Faculty Survey, we employ hierarchical generalized linear modeling to analyze data from 4,832 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty across 194 institutions to examine how organizational citizenship behavior theory and social exchange theory relate to mentoring students in research. Key findings show that faculty who work in the life sciences and those who receive government funding for their research are more likely to involve undergraduates in their research project(s). In addition, faculty at liberal arts or historically Black colleges are significantly more likely to involve undergraduate students in research. Implications for advancing undergraduate research opportunities are discussed.     

Home–School Literacy Bags for Twenty-first Century Preschoolers

Combining home–school literacy bags with preschool family literature circles provided a strong foundation for family involvement at home and school during this year-long Reading Partners project, and helped parents become essential partners in their children’s literacy development. Using home–school literacy bags, children and parents learned how to combine expressive arts and emergent literacy strategies including alphabet recognition, phonemic and phonological awareness, and oral language fluency. State-of-the-art activities designed for each of the multiple intelligences met the needs of diverse students with many different learning styles and interests. As families participated in fall and spring school-based Festivals in which they shared the literacy bags in small group family literature circles, they demonstrated children’s emerging literacy skills in a relaxed, yet highly engaging atmosphere.     

Von der Lehrerausbildung in den Beruf – Fachbezogenes Wissen als Voraussetzung für Wahrnehmung,Interpretation und Handeln im Unterricht

The transition from teacher training into the teaching profession is seen to be key in the biography of a teacher. Yet there is a lack of enquiry into the development of the content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) held by teachers at the end of their education, and into the significance of this knowledge for situational and behavioural cognition. On the basis of data from the international comparative study TEDS-M 2008 and the Germany-based 2012 follow-up, this contribution investigates the knowledge and skills development of teachers during the transition from teacher training to the teaching profession in a four-year longitudinal study with n = 171 mathematics teachers. Three test formats (paper-and-pencil, video-vignettes and speed tests) are used to examine various indicators for teacher expertise. In addition to the analysis of changes in mathematical CK and PCK levels, path analysis is used to determine the extent to which this knowledge functions as a predictor for the perception and interpretation of classroom situations, the decision-making in these situations, and the quick identification of student mistakes. The results show only small changes in the group mean (for MCK there is a small loss, whereas MPCK remains constant), but high fluctuation (i. e. weak correlation) in the MPCK ranking between the two measurement occasions, pointing to differential learning effects gained from teaching practice. There are also significant differences in predictability: MCK is important for the speed indicators of teacher expertise; MCK and MPCK for the perception and interpretation of situations, and for the generation of action strategies. These findings can on the one hand help to facilitate the evaluation of beginning teachers’ need for support and, on the other hand, they indicate the necessity for the early integration of practice-based elements into teacher training programmes with the aim of developing PCK and related skills.