Rural Kindergarten Teachers' Perceptions of School Readiness: A Comparison with the Carnegie Study

This study examines the construct of school readiness as understood by rural kindergarten teachers. Kindergarten teachers in 11 rural Missouri communities were surveyed to assess their perceptions of the readiness levels of their incoming children. These data were then compared to the results of the national Carnegie study of 7000 kindergarten teachers' perceptions of school readiness. The rural Missouri sample judged their students as generally more ready than did the national sample; they viewed the incoming kindergarten students as having fewer language, social, and physical problems. A greater portion of the rural sample believed that children are more ready now than 5 years ago (36% vs. 25%). They attribute the improvement to high quality early preschool programs. The diversity within the rural sample as well as the rural/urban distinctions are discussed.     

School social work and the human right to education

The education rankings of Australian students continue to slide further down the international scale, yet the dominant discourse in relation to both the cause and solution to this perceived decline remains focused on funding, curriculum and teacher quality whilst failing largely to take account of the broader social contexts in which education takes place. Drawing on findings from recent research in primary schools in regional Australia, this paper raises the question of Australian school students’ human right to an education and explores the role that school social workers can play in upholding this right. Discussion draws on international research, including studies that examine the outcomes of employing suitably qualified School Social Workers who can foster links and networks between student, family, school and community. It is argued that these networks create social capital that can serve to enable students to benefit from both the education to which they are entitled, and the connections that may empower them, as they move into adult life.     

Another look at the “C” in CBM: Does it really matter if curriculum‐based measurement reading probes are curriculum‐based?

This study investigated differences between two types of reading probe material to monitor students' oral reading fluency over time. Thirty‐six second‐grade students participated in this study. Twice each week for 5 weeks, participants read two passages from each of two sources. One source was the curriculum in which the child was being instructed at school, and the second source was the “Tests of Reading Fluency,” a set of generic (curriculum‐independent) passages. Standardized curriculum‐based measurement administration and scoring procedures were used. Level and rate of improvement (slope) of oral reading fluency were the dependent measures. Level and slope data were analyzed using two, two‐tailed t‐tests. Also, readability of passages was calculated using two readability formulas. Correlational analyses were used to examine the relation between the readability and reading fluency. Correlations among readability and words read correct were not significant. Results of the analyses examining level and slope indicated that students read significantly more words correct in the generic reading passages than in the curriculum‐based passages. However, rate of progress was not significantly different. These results suggest that practitioners could use either set of passages to gauge students' reading progress over time. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Curriculum Alignment with a Mission of Social Change in Higher Education

Institutions of higher education frequently acknowledge their role in contributing to the common good through their mission statements. The current literature suggests that in order to be effective mission statements must be clearly articulated and reflected in all the activities of the institution including its curriculum. Faculty members at Walden University developed a Curriculum Guide for Social Change that could serve as a tool for reviewing current course offerings and developing new courses to reflect its mission of “creating positive social change.” Those involved in piloting the Guide report on the process in this article. The general consensus is that it was time-consuming and frequently subjective; but the Guide gave substance to the institution’s mission, opening the way for its fuller implementation.     

Redrafting at Key Stage 1

Redrafting is clearly a crucial part of the writing process and teachers are currently required to teach children to redraft writing at Key Stage 2 in the National Curriculum. For Kathy Durkin this is much too late and she reports here on her investigations into introducing redrafting to Key Stage 1 children. From her work it seems there are many dangers in under-estimating children’s abilities in this regard.     

Golden times of writing: the creative compliance of writing journals

This paper examines the history, rationale, uses and abuses of writing journals in primary classrooms. We argue that writing journals form part of a pedagogy derived from an understanding of how children can be motivated to express themselves, independently of teachers. Moreover, they demonstrate the power of welcoming children's home cultures into the classroom. However, we also wish to argue that the use of writing journals is part of the teaching profession's ‘creative compliance’ that can still contribute to the marginalisation of effective educational practice. We document how, in some schools in England, writing journals have been reduced to token gestures towards creativity and independence and in effect collude with and support what is increasingly becoming a pedagogical hegemony.     

Change or Durability? The Contribution of Metaconceptual Awareness in Preservice Early Childhood Teachers’ Learning of Science Concepts

This longitudinal study examined the role of metaconceptual awareness in the change and the durability of preservice teachers’ conceptual understandings over the course of several months. Sixteen preservice early childhood teachers participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to reveal the participants’ conceptual understandings of lunar phases (pre, post, and delayed-post) and level of metaconceptual awareness (delayed-post only). Based on the change and stability in participants’ conceptual understandings from pre to post and from post to delayed-post interviews, participants’ conceptual understandings were assigned into three groups that described the profile of their long-term conceptual understandings: “decay or stability”, “continuous growth”, and “growth and stability”. The results indicated that participants in the “continuous growth” and “growth and stability” groups had significantly higher metaconceptual awareness scores than participants in the “decay or stability” group. The results provided evidence that metaconceptual awareness plays a more decisive role in the restructuring of conceptual understandings than the durability of conceptual understandings.