ALL Kids Can Be Readers: The Marriage of Reading First and Inclusive Education

As schools attempt to address the needs of an ever more diverse student population, many have turned to intensive interventions to improve reading performance. Reading First grants from the United States Department of Education encouraged schools to implement evidence-based instructional practices in elementary schools. However, for many schools, implementation of Reading First and other intensive data-driven reading initiatives has not included students considered to have significant disabilities or has led to increased pull-out or separate remediation services. We consider how Reading First efforts can be integrated into a rich, inclusive education program for all students, including those considered to have the most significant disabilities. We discuss how schools can creatively utilize staff and scheduling to maximize push-in support and encourage interdisciplinary and data-driven problem solving to provide meaningful guidance for reading instruction for the benefit of all students.     

Validity of the children's orientation to book reading rating scale

The present study investigates the validity of a 4‐point rating scale used to measure the level of preschool children's orientation to literacy during shared book reading. Validity was explored by (a) comparing the children's level of literacy orientation as measured with the Children's Orientation to Book Reading Rating Scale (COB) with a teacher's rating of a child's level of attention and effortful control on the Children's Behaviour Questionnaire (CBQ), and (b) computing the predictive validity of a child's COB rating with overall levels of emergent literacy at the end of the preschool school year. This study involved 46 preschool children from low‐income backgrounds; children's literacy orientation was rated during a group teacher‐led book reading. Children's ratings of literacy orientation during shared book reading using the global 4‐point COB scale were significantly correlated with teacher ratings of a child's attention and effortful control as measured on the CBQ. Hierarchical regression results indicated children's literacy orientation significantly predicted children's end‐of‐year alphabet knowledge and overall emergent reading skills above and beyond the variance contributed by children's language skills and family income. The validity of a global rating for indexing children's level of literacy orientation was supported. Educational implications and recommendations for the COB as a component of early literacy assessment are discussed.     

Social moderation,assessment and assuring standards for accounting graduates

Evidencing student achievement of standards is a growing imperative worldwide. Key stakeholders (including current and prospective students, government, regulators and employers) want confidence that threshold learning standards in an accounting degree have been assured. Australia’s new higher education regulatory environment requires that student achievements are benchmarked against intended programme learning outcomes, guided by published disciplinary standards and a national qualifications framework, and against other higher education providers. Here, we report on a process involving academics from 10 universities, aided by professional practitioners, to establish and equip assessors to reliably assure threshold learning standards in accounting that are nationally comparable. Importantly, we are learning more about how standards are interpreted. Based on the premise that meaning is constructed from tacit experiences, social interactions and intentional reflection on explicit information, we report outcomes of three multi-part calibration interventions, situated around judgements of the quality of the written communication skills exhibited in student work and their related assessment tasks. Qualitative data from 30 participants in the calibration process suggest that they perceive that the process both assists them both in developing a shared understanding of the accounting threshold learning standards and in the redesign of assessment tasks to more validly assess the threshold learning standards.     

International Media

AMERICA'S OTHER VOICE: THE STORY OF RADIO FREE EUROPE AND RADIO LIBERTY by Sig Mickelson (New York: Praeger, 1983—price not given).

PRESS CONTROL AROUND THE WORLD edited by Jane Leftwich Curry and Joan R. Dassin (New York: Praeger, 1982—price not given).

METHODS FOR INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION RESEARCH edited by William B. Gudykunst and Young Yun Kim (Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications 1984—S28.00/$14.00).

A STUDY OF FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR THE VOICE OF AMERICA IN THE CHANGING WORLD OF INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING by John E. Ward, et al. (Research Program on Communications Policy, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139—$10.00, paper).     

Fashion in the classroom II: Instructor immediacy and attire

Results of a 2 (immediacy conditions) X 3 (attire conditions) experimental study indicated lesser effects of attire on person perceptions when studied in a live interaction context as opposed to responses to photographs, as has been typical in previous studies. Influence of attire was largely limited to ratings of instructor extroversion, while immediacy influenced perceptions of extroversion, composure, character, competence, homophily, and learning. There was no statistically significant interaction between attire and immediacy; i.e., there was no indication that strategic choice of attire bolsters student ratings of non‐immediate instructors, or that “non professional” attire hurts judgements of immediate instructors.     

Access Pricing to a Digital Broadcasting Platform

This article studies a television market where operators can sell access to programs and to advertising time. First, we determine the retail prices paid by viewers and advertisers to a monopoly platform when there are externalities between these two markets. We compare the prices that an unregulated platform would establish with the welfare maximizing prices. Second, we obtain the access charge that an independent programmer should pay to a television platform for using one of his channels. We show that the optimal access charge takes into account the direct cost of access and the platform's opportunity costs in the viewer and advertiser markets, which are affected by the externalities between the two markets.     

The DDC and OCLC

ABSTRACT

This article highlights key events in the relationship between OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. and the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system. The formal relationship started with OCLC's acquisition of Forest Press and the rights to the DDC from the Lake Placid Education Foundation in 1988, but OCLC's research interests in the DDC predated that acquisition and have remained strong during the relationship. Under OCLC's leadership, the DDC's value proposition has been enhanced by the continuous updating of the system itself, development of interoperable translations, mappings to other schemes, and new forms of representation of the underlying data. The amount of categorized content associated with the system in WorldCat and elsewhere has grown, as has worldwide use of the system. Emerging technologies are creating new opportunities for publishing, linking, and sharing DDC data.     

Passive visitors or independent explorers: Responses of pupils with severe learning difficulties at an Interactive Science Centre

In previous work with mainstream students in a small Interactive Science Centre it was shown that curiosity, followed by identification of cause and effect, were essential for moving on from playing to intentional investigation and so to learning. Here we report studies of students with severe learning difficulties and show that they could, under appropriate conditions, display impressive concentration and curiosity, and often appeared to achieve valuable learning. The paper concludes by describing some of the dilemmas that may arise in developing these kinds of activities for special education.     

Action research for instructional improvement: the Bad,the Ugly,and the Good

In the wake of accreditation cycles stressing student outcomes, we believed the reflective and practitioner-centered philosophy of action research a perfect fit for effecting institutional improvements for a four-year grant-funded effort in our urban–suburban community colleges in California. We learned that things were both worse and better than we had imagined. While we had anticipated what we will call ‘the Bad’, the classic budgetary and institutional forces buffeting us, our project, and our institutions, we had not anticipated what we will call ‘the Ugly’. And perhaps because of our grasp of ‘the Bad’, we also had not anticipated what we will call ‘the Good’. We found ourselves challenged to rethink how to encourage colleagues to become reflective practitioners, yet able to appreciate the power of action research to lead to genuine transformation.