Collaborative teacher education: forging tangible connections between field and classroom

This paper describes a collaboration between the authors, a university course instructor for an introductory Learning Sciences course in a university-based teacher education program, and a site coordinator for its paired practicum experience. Drawing on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, the collaborators found that their weekly conversations focused on supporting novice teacher learning had the potential to (1) lead to more strategic support of pre-service teachers, and (2) lend greater insights into the nature of the larger teacher education activity system in which they both worked. They consider the ways the seemingly simple addition of weekly conversations across sites of teacher learning can create spaces that collapse traditional theory/practice divides in teacher education.     

Child Care Decision Making: Understanding Priorities and Processes Used by Low-Income Families in Minnesota

Research Findings: Few studies have described parents' child care decision-making process, yet understanding how parents make child care choices is fundamental to developing effective services to promote the selection of high-quality care. This study used latent profile analysis to distinguish subgroups of low-income parents identified as having commonalities in the number of options, duration, and sources of information sought as part of their child care decision-making process. Study participants included 260 parents who participated in the baseline wave of the Minnesota Child Care Choices study, a longitudinal phone survey of welfare applicants. Two subgroups of parents were identified. The majority of parents (82%) made choices within 2 weeks and considered on average 2 arrangements. Fewer than half of these parents considered information from experts, public lists, or family members/friends when making a child care choice. The remaining 18% of the sample took on average 11 weeks to make a child care choice, considered on average 3 options, and relied more heavily on information from experts and family members/friends. Practice or Policy: Findings from this study have implications for the marketing of resource and referral counseling services, Quality Rating and Improvement Systems, and consumer education aimed at facilitating the selection of high-quality care.     

Do Language‐Based Processing Tasks Separate Children with Language Impairment from Typical Bilinguals?

We report results from 2 language‐based processing tasks designed to investigate the performance of linguistically diverse learners. The tasks were the Competing Language Processing Task (CLPT) and Non‐Word Repetition (NWR). Participants were 100 school‐age children in 1 of 3 different experimental groups: monolingual English‐speaking children with specific or primary language impairment (LI), typical English‐only‐speaking children (EO), or typical Spanish–English bilingual children (BI). On both CLPT and NWR, EO group performance was best and LI group performance was poorest, with BI group performance falling in between. Likelihood ratios indicated that performance on these tasks does not provide compelling diagnostic power for separating typically developing bilinguals from monolingual children with LI. One exception is that children who obtained an NWR score of 93 percent or higher could be ruled out of the LI group with a high degree of confidence.     

Comparing ethnographies of teaching when comparison seems impossible

ABSTRACT

This essay examines comparison in a double sense. Focusing on ethnographies of teachers’ work in the published literature, I ask whether it is possible to compare ethnographic studies across national borders without losing the particularities of local context, and also without losing the distinctive theoretical perspective of ethnographers operating within different national traditions. Building on the volume Comparing ethnographies, I explore as a tool an expansion of Noblit and Hare’s ‘meta-ethnographic’ approach. Because meta-ethnography aims to remain faithful to local contexts, it works for cross-national comparison; because it is meant as an interpretation of the ethnographers’ interpretations, it can allow for national differences in scholarly traditions. I illustrate with a comparison of ethnographies of practices in Danish and in Japanese preschools, identifying ‘reciprocal’ translations, ‘refutational synthesis’ and ‘line-of-argument synthesis’. The essay demonstrates that meta-ethnography’s interpretive approach does permit comparison across national contexts and scholarly traditions, and that it actually encourages ‘theoretical generalisation’, the ability to expand our understanding, without obscuring local context.     

Teachers’ Perspectives on a Professional Development Intervention to Improve Science Instruction Among English Language Learners

Our 5-year professional development intervention is designed to promote elementary teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and practices in teaching science, along with English language and mathematics for English Language Learning (ELL) students in urban schools. In this study, we used an end-of-year questionnaire as a primary data source to seek teachers’ perspectives on our intervention during the first year of implementation. Teachers believed that the intervention, including curriculum materials and teacher workshops, effectively promoted students’ science learning, along with English language development and mathematics learning. Teachers highlighted strengths and areas needing improvement in the intervention. Teachers’ perspectives have been incorporated into our on-going intervention efforts and offer insights into features of effective professional development initiatives in improving science achievement for all students.

Layers of reading intervention in kindergarten through third grade: changes in teaching and student outcomes

In this study, students and their teachers participated in a layered approach to reading intervention in kindergarten through third grade that included professional development for teachers in scientifically based reading instruction, ongoing measurement of reading progress, and additional small-group or individual instruction for students whose progress was insufficient to maintain grade-level reading achievement. Reading outcomes were compared with historical control groups of students in the same schools. The findings revealed overall improvements in reading, improved reading for students who began the study in high-risk categories, and decreases in the incidence of reading disability at the end of third grade. Implications for scaling up are discussed.     

Beginning the cycle of equitable teaching: The pivotal role of cooperating teachers

Cooperating teachers are prominent people in influencing the next generation of teachers because they interact daily with student teachers. This paper discusses the impact of gender-sensitive cooperating teachers on student teachers' teaching strategies, questioning patterns and interactions during their teaching practicum. Student teachers working with these gender-sensitive cooperating teachers were more equitable in their questioning patterns and more likely to ask students (of both genders) higher-order questions than their peers. Concord High School Caesar Rodney High School Glasgow High School Middletown High School Hanby Middle School     

Counseling and Building Communities of Peace: The Interconnections

This article introduces Kurt Lewin's (1948) concept of force field analysis as a useful method of diagnosing the current global crisis and in conceptualizing points of intervention, advocacy, and activism in relation to peace work. Perspectives on counseling and building cultures of peace and justice are discussed. An overview of the contributions of this special issue is also provided.