Relations among home literacy environment,child characteristics and print knowledge for preschool children with language impairment

To contribute to the modest body of work examining the home literacy environment (HLE) and emergent literacy outcomes for children with disabilities, this study addressed two aims: (a) to determine the unique contributions of the HLE on print knowledge of preschool children with language impairment and (b) to identify whether specific child characteristics (oral language ability, print interest) moderated these relations. The sample consisted of 119 preschool children with language impairment. HLE was conceptualised as frequency of storybook reading and literacy teaching during book reading. Frequency of storybook reading was a unique predictor of print knowledge, which is consistent with research on children with typical language. Literacy teaching did not predict print knowledge, which diverges from research on children with typical language. No interactions between the HLE and child characteristics were significant, but language ability and print interest play a role in understanding individual differences in literacy development.     

“Truth or consequences”: a feminist critical policy analysis of the STEM crisis

STEM education has received significant attention in the USA and is largely fueled by rhetoric suggesting the USA is losing its global competitive edge and that there is a lack of qualified workers available to fill growing STEM jobs. However, a counter discourse is emerging that questions the legitimacy of these claims. In response, we employed feminist critical policy analysis as both a theory and a method to further critique the STEM crisis discourse. We argue that the nature of the current discourse is misleading at worst and incomplete at best and show who is fueling the crisis discourse and who stands to win or lose as a result. We reveal how the crisis discourse draws attention away from the multi-layered complexity of the issue and surface what is missing in the discourse to re-center public attention on protracted problems that still need dismantling.     

Toward Intentional,Reflective, and Assimilative Classroom Practices with Students with FASD

The value of research-informed classroom practices is well recognized and thus this qualitative study was designed to explore, from multiple perspectives, the experiences and influences of classroom practices for students with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). The inductive analysis of 11 focus groups and three interviews involving 60 individuals working closely with this student population—31 teachers, seven administrators, 16 allied professionals, and six caregivers—generated three themes: understanding the whole student, responding within dynamic environments, and optimizing student-centered programming. This study provides an essential step toward better-prepared educators for meeting the learning and developmental needs of students with FASD as well as other complex populations. The implications for developing professional learning opportunities reflective of intentional, reflective, and assimilative classroom practices are discussed.     

Head Start and child care providers’ motivators,barriers and facilitators to practicing family-style meal service

This paper presents a qualitative investigation of the motivators, barriers, and facilitators for practicing family-style meal service (FSMS) from the perspective of 18 child care providers serving preschool children in Head Start (HS), Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) funded, and non-CACFP child-care centers. Providers were selected based on maximum variation purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews were conducted until saturation was reached. Provider responses were systematically coded using thematic analysis. HS and CACFP providers reported being motivated to practice FSMS because it created pleasant mealtimes, opportunities to role model healthy eating, and healthful child development. CACFP and non-CACFP providers reported not using FSMS because it was resource intensive, messy, and seemed to violate CACFP policy. HS and CACFP providers offered suggestions to overcome these barriers. They suggested that FSMS eventually becomes easier with practice, children can self-regulate their energy intake, and teaching children self-help skills during play time can avoid messes during mealtimes. Findings from this study have implications for programming, policy, and research.     

Trust: A Master Teacher's Perspective on Why It Is Important: How to Build It and Its Implications for MBE Research

Teaching is an interaction. It is a relationship between my students and myself. For successful interactions to take place there needs to be trust. In order for my students to be successful I have to be successful as well. My students and I have to have a variety of interactions. These interactions build trust, which leads to bonding. I believe these are the core components to success for myself and therefore my students. The environment that I work in also has to be about trust. I have to feel trusted to do my job in order to be successful. My experiences hopefully will lead to more research and the understanding of trust in the cognitive process of learning.     

Neither Fish nor Fowl: Feminism,Desire, and the Lesbian Consumer Market

This article addresses gay marketers’ tardy and ambivalent attempts to imagine and organize lesbians as a viable target marketing niche. Practical considerations make lesbians less attractive as a market: They have a lower average household income than gay male and heterosexual couples and they are hard to reach for market research purposes and with advertising. But the lesbian market is also dogged by the popular image of lesbians as lacking both erotic and acquisitive desire, embodied in the stereotype of anti-consumption, parsimonious, unsexy feminists who resist marketers’ interest in them as consumers.     

Foreign/International

James D. Halloran and Michael Gurevich (eds.) Broadcaster/Researcher Co-Operation in Mass Communication Research (Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, England, 1971 -- price not known, paper)

Global Communications in the Space Age (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1972 -- $1.00, paper)

Katherine Shervis (comp.) Satellite Teleconferencing: An Annotated Bibliography (Edsat Center, Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706 -- $2.00, paper)

0.J. Firestone's The Public Persuader: Government Advertising (Toronto: Methuen, 1970 -- $12.70)

Telenation (Canadian Broadcasting League, Box 1504, Ottawa, Canada KIP 5R5 -- $8.00 per year/12 issues)     

Temporal effects of leadership style on state communication anxiety in small task‐oriented groups

This investigation reports a typology of maintenance behaviors that were derived through inductive analyses of papers students wrote about their strategies for maintaining various relationships. Ten major strategies were inductively derived: positivity; openness; assurances; sharing tasks; social networks; joint activities; cards/letters/calls; avoidance; anti‐social; and humor. These strategies extend the previous research on relational maintenance strategies. More specifically, the latter five strategies and the subcategories of all the strategies are additions to Stafford and Canary's (1991)typology. In addition, analyses revealed the positivity, openness, assurances, sharing tasks, and cards/letters/calls differed in their frequency of use among lovers, relatives, friends and others.     

The role of assertiveness,personal control,and participation in the prediction of nurse Burnout

The research reported here considered a critical problem facing today's hospital: burnout and commitment of nurses. A review of the literature revealed that nurse communication, particularly participation or collaboration in patient care decisions, had rarely been considered in models of nurse commitment. A model was proposed in which nurse participation and assertiveness were key predictors of emotional exhaustion, commitment and intent to remain, and the theoretical construct of personal control was used as a moderating variable in predicting these outcomes. The model was tested on a sample of nurses from a large hospital Results were generally supportive of the proposed model. Implications of the model for theory were discussed in terms of the role of personal control and the importance of nurse assertiveness, and applications for nurse and physician training were considered.     

Cultural differences in cognitive responding to ads: a comparison of young American and Chinese consumers

This study explored the differences in young consumers' cognitive responses to visual ads across two cultures. In an experiment, 120 college students from the USA and 120 college students from China were exposed to different types of visual ads, and subsequently participants were instructed to recall objects from the ads, and to list thoughts regarding the product/brand meanings. It was found that compared with Chinese participants, participants from the USA recalled more salient objects and generated more product/brand thoughts elicited by salient objects from the ads. Moreover, Chinese participants were more likely to assign a social role to a person recalled from the ads than their American counterparts. These findings suggested that young Americans attended more to salient objects in the ads, and therefore are more analytic than their Chinese participants. Implications for international advertising were provided.