COACHING MIDDLE-LEVEL TEACHERS TO THINK ALOUD IMPROVES COMPREHENSION INSTRUCTION AND STUDENT READING ACHIEVEMENT

In an effort to improve student achievement, a group of middle-school teachers at an underperforming school developed a schoolwide literacy plan. As part of the plan, they agreed to model their thinking while reading aloud. Eight teachers were selected for coaching related to think alouds in which they exposed students to comprehension strategies that they used while reading. The achievement of their students was compared with the achievement of students whose teachers participated in the ongoing professional development but who were not coached. Results indicate that the coached teachers changed their instructional practices and that student achievement improved as a result.     

Potentiality for change? Revisiting an action research project with a sociomaterial approach

This article takes as its point of departure an action research project conducted in an upper secondary school in Sweden. The project had a practitioner research approach and was carried out with students in one class. In this article, I elaborate on the tensions that appeared during the project concerning collaboration and action. This is done by revisiting the project with a theoretical approach of sociomaterialism. Revisiting entails critically and creatively exploring how to comprehend collaboration and action differently. It raises question about who or what are involved in the collaborations and what are to be considered ‘good’ actions. Within the elaboration, collaboration and action become intertwined phenomena that are always working together. Furthermore, it proposes how the notion of intervention embraces the distributed and collective disposition of both collaboration and action. By addressing the notions of collaboration and action with a sociomaterial approach changing a teaching practice becomes a relational experiment without preset goals. The potential for change becomes within speculative interventions that affords various encounters and relations.     

Building life world connections during school booktalk

In criticisms of children's literature, notions of 'fantasy' and 'realism' are pivotal. In school 'booktalk' conversations pupils referred to what is 'real' in three different ways: (i) by referring to feelings of or semblance to 'real' life, (ii) by invoking shared facts and (iii) by making references to personal experiences. In cases when teachers or pupils initiated so-called text-to-life or real world connections, two types of dilemmas occurred. First, engagement was at times bought at the cost of quite literal reader responses. At other times, engagement was accomplished at the price of intrusiveness. There was, thus, a delicate balance between life world references, on the one hand, and literal readings or intrusion, on the other. Moreover, students sometimes resisted life world probing, but volunteered privileged information about their parents, displaying different notions from teachers about legitimate information in a school context.     

Serial Argumentation Goals and Their Relationships to Perceived Resolvability and Choice of Conflict Tactics

The present study utilized a scale that measured Bevan, Hale, and Williams' (2004) serial argumentation goals and associated these goals with the perceived resolvability of the serial argument and serial argument conflict tactics. College students reporting on current and former dating partnerships completed a written survey containing close-ended items. Six of Bevan et al.'s (2004) ten original goals again emerged from data analyses, and the four remaining goals combined to form a single goal. These seven serial argument goals were related to perceived resolvability and conflict tactics in generally expected ways.     

A Competency Model for Process Dynamics and Control and Its Use for Test Construction at University Level

This study examined students’ competencies in engineering education at the university level. First, we developed a competency model in one specific field of engineering: process dynamics and control. Then, the theoretical model was used as a frame to construct test items to measure students’ competencies comprehensively. In the empirical application, the reliability of the test was examined. The results confirmed the applicability of the theory-based test. Also, associations between students’ competencies and individual characteristics were explored. Students who showed higher competencies could be identified based on their individual characteristics, such as participation in self-assessments. Finally, we demonstrated how to apply the standards of theory-based testing to everyday routines at the university and also highlighted some challenging issues to be considered when implementing theory-based testing in practice. This approach could be valuable: Tests based on theoretically sound models allow for appropriate measurement of students’ competencies in higher education.     

The economics of music festivals

This paper attempts to explain the rapid growth in the number of classical music and opera festivals. Two secularly increasing demand factors — a rise in real disposable incomes and an increased amount of time and money devoted to holidays — are well met by the supply of music festivals which almost perfectly combine culture and holidays. On the supply side, festivals may profit from low marginal cost of production factors and are considered as an effort to avoid restrictions from government regulations and trade unions.     

An econometric estimate of the demand for MBA enrollment

A demand equation for MBA enrollment was estimated to test the theory of human capital as an explanation of enrollment decisions in higher education. Three of four variables associated with a human capital interpretation were found to be significant. The functional form of the demand equation (log-reciprocal) was of importance in establishing these results. Although the failure of the interest rate to be significant might suggest imperfections in access to capital for potential students, we could not find support for the alternative view that students relied on subsidization by family. Several elasticities proved to be large enough to imply that feasible changes in the rates of change of underlying economic variables could produce noticeable changes in MBA enrollment.     

Tracing the Sources

This article explores health journalists’ sourcing patterns in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium across a range of different media including newspapers, magazines, radio, television and online health news websites. A cross-sectional quantitative content analysis of health news items collected in February 2015 (N?=?981) was established to examine the number and origin (e.g. industry, citizens, experts) of sources (N?=?1998) mentioned in health news stories with particular attention paid to differences across various media types. Despite recent claims of media convergence, cross-media comparisons are scarce and, for a specialized beat such as health, nonexistent. The key findings of this study indicate that ordinary citizens and academic experts constitute the two largest source categories. The small share of industry-related sources confirms journalists’ skeptical attitude towards content provided by the industry. But on closer inspection, large differences can be observed across various media types. On the one hand, ordinary citizens occur with relatively high frequency on television but hardly make an appearance in online news items. Academic sources, on the other hand, are dominant online but nearly absent in television news items. In sum, this analysis demonstrates that health journalists’ source uses differ across various media platforms.