Using the newspaper to support children's emerging literacy

Young children's literacy development involves emerging knowledge, skills, and attitudes about both written and oral language. However, until relatively recent years, children's oral language development has received the lion's share of attention in most early childhood programs. What young children know about written language and their natural ability to learn about writing and reading have been underestimated and misinterpreted and so have received little developmentally appropriate support from early childhood program administrators, teachers, parents, and the public.June Rose Richie is Associate Professor of curriculum and instruction, while Janet E. Foster is Assistant Professor and John M. Johnston is Professor of early childhood education, at Memphis State University, Memphis, TN.     

AN EXAMPLE OF THE APPLICATION OF A BALANCED INCOMPLETE BLOCK DESIGN

A study was conducted to estimate the reliability of oral examinations at the College of Medicine, The University of Iowa. In this paper, a part of the study is presented to provide the reader with an example of the applicability of a Balanced Incomplete Block Design (BIBD). This type of design is used when only fewer than all participating examiners can rate each examinee. Such a design was proposed originally by Yates in 1936.(1 Yates, F. 1936. “Incomplete randomised blocks”. Annals of Eugenics, 7: 121–140. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) The methods for analysing data obtained by BIBD were presented by Fleiss.(2 Fleiss, J. L. 1981. “Balanced incomplete block designs for inter‐rater reliability studies”. Applied Psychological Measurement, 5(1): 105–112. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) The reliability coefficient of the oral examination was .71, higher than some experts would anticipate in a similar situation. When some of the sources of error were eliminated by evaluating students' performances on audio‐tape, the reliability coefficient increased to .88.     

Melvyl联合目录的记录合并机制

联合目录中重复记录的判定和合并是至关重要的。本文介绍美国加利福尼亚大学Melvyl联合目录的系统自动合并记录的机制。     

Historical Analysis of Participation in 161 km Ultramarathons in North America

Participation trends in 100 m (161 km) ultramarathon running competitions in North America were examined from race results from 1977 through 2008. A total of 32, 352 finishes accounted for by 9815 unique individuals were identified. The annual number of races and number of finishes increased exponentially over the study period. This growth in number of finishes occurred through a combination of (1) an increase in participation among runners ≥40 years of age from less than 40% of the finishes prior to the mid-1980s to 65–70% of the finishes since 1996, (2) a growth (p < 0.0001) in participation among women from virtually none in the late 1970s to nearly 20% since 2004, and (3) an increase in the average annual number of races completed by each individual to 1.3. While there has been considerable growth in participation, the 161 km ultramarathon continues to attract a relatively small number of participants compared with running races of shorter distances.     

Facilitating teachers' professional growth through their involvement in creating context-based materials in science

This paper traces the professional growth of science teachers in Trinidad and Tobago through their involvement in the production of context-based resource materials relevant to the lives of their students during workshop sessions. Grounded theory methods were used to analyse pre- and post-workshop questionnaire responses, tape-recorded group discussions and several draft lesson outlines. The findings show that professional growth is indicated by changes in the nature of the contexts chosen as lesson foci, the role of these contexts in the overall lesson design, and teachers' perceptions of contextualised teaching. Conflicts between students' cultural and scientific understandings were not addressed by these teachers.     

EMPIRICAL SYNTHESIS OF THE EFFECT OF STANDARD ERROR OF MEASUREMENT ON DECISIONS MADE WITHIN BRIEF EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSES OF READING FLUENCY

Intervention researchers often use curriculum‐based measurement of reading fluency (CBM‐R) with a brief experimental analysis (BEA) to identify an effective intervention for individual students. The current study synthesized data from 22 studies that used CBM‐R data within a BEA by computing the standard error of measure (SEM) for the median data point from the baseline and intervention data. The median CBM‐R score from the intervention that the authors of each study identified as most effective fell within the SEM (68% confidence interval) of the baseline data approximately 30% of the time, but the ranges for the two author‐identified most effective interventions overlapped over 75% of the time. Extended analyses were consistent with the BEA results for approximately three‐fourths of the instances after considering the SEM of the baseline and intervention phases. Using matched passages did not improve the overlap of the ranges, but there was less overlap when the study used three data points per condition. Results emphasize the importance of considering SEM of CBM‐R data when comparing interventions within a BEA. Further implications for practice and future research are included.     

Faculty Student Interaction at the Community College: A Focus on Students of Color

The present study describes the level of faculty--student interaction on 2-year college campuses, examines student characteristics correlated with faculty contact, and considers how interaction may differ among racial subgroups of students. Using data collected from the Transfer and Retention of Urban Community College Students (TRUCCS) survey, a sample of 2500 students informed this research. The findings reveal generally low levels of interaction, and especially with Asian American/Pacific Islander and Latino students. Having positive perceptions of the college environment and interacting with other members of the institution, from students to academic counselors, glow the strongest positive association with faculty contact among all racial subgroups of students. Prominent among the differences is the negative relationship between perceiving racial difficulties and interacting with faculty for Asian American/Pacific Islander students. The findings provide insight in how to increase and enrich faculty interaction on these campuses to better retain underrepresented students in the educational pipeline.     

Launching the Virtual Academic Center: Issues and Challenges in Innovation

In October 2010, the University of Southern California School of Social Work entered the online education environment with the launch of the first national web-based MSW program. After an initial enrollment of 80 students, in just 3 years this state-of-the-art MSW, offered in a technology-advanced synchronous and asynchronous format, has generated an enrollment of 2,000 students residing in 38 states. The development and rapid growth of the Virtual Academic Center has not been without significant challenges, the most substantial of which has been the creation of a national field education program. This paper describes the MSW courses taught in the online environment, and pedagogical hurdles faced in order to maintain the educational quality that is the hallmark of the School's campus-based MSW program.