Strategic and bonding effects of enhancing the student feedback process

In order to produce distinctiveness that leads to competitive advantage, higher education institutions must remain cognizant that students are co-creators. Thus, to create genuine value in educational service delivery, there is a need for a more highly developed understanding of the student-institutional intersection. The present research contributes to the marketing of higher education by developing and testing a model related to the antecedents of a broader conception of student feedback as part of student/customer orientation and co-creation. Conceived as customer feedback, student feedback to an educational institution can be positive (compliment), negative (complaint), or be an idea for an improvement to any person, or service group of the institution. Perceived ease of the feedback process and perceived usefulness, customer orientation and affective commitment are found as antecedents to intention to provide feedback. The result is a model with conceptual and managerial implications for strategically bonding students to universities.     

Defining family engagement among Latino Head Start parents: A mixed-methods measurement development study

Given the increasing numbers of Latino children and, specifically, of dual-language learning Latino children, entering the U.S. educational system, culturally contextualized models are needed to understand how parents construct their involvement roles and support their children's educational experiences. Current measures of parenting and family engagement have been developed primarily with European American families and, thus, might not capture engagement behaviors unique to other ethnic groups. Lacking culture-appropriate measurement limits our ability to construct programs that adequately incorporate protective factors to promote children's successful development. The present mixed-methods investigation employed an emic approach to understand family engagement conceptualizations for a pan-Latino population. One hundred thirteen parents from 14 Head Start programs in a large, northeastern city participated in the first study, in which domains of family engagement were identified and specific items were co-constructed to capture family engagement behaviors. Then, 650 caregivers participated in a second study examining the construct validity of the resulting 65-item measure across two language versions: Parental Engagement of Families from Latino Backgrounds(PEFL-English) and Participación Educativa de Familias Latinas (PEFL-Spanish). Four theoretically meaningful dimensions of family engagement among Latino Head Start families were identified empirically. The measure was then validated with teacher report of family involvement and parent report of satisfaction with their experiences in Head Start.     

Providing Consultation About Boundary Dilemmas to Paraprofessional Staff Working With People With Severe Psychiatric Disabilities

ABSTRACT

Social justice has been suggested as a possible global moral framework for school psychology. It is, however, culturally understood and research suggests that the engagement with “social justice” in school psychology has been largely limited to a U.S. context. This project sought to extend international understandings and practices of social justice in school psychology. A thematic analysis of nine interviews with educational psychologists based in England was conducted. Social justice was defined as complex, and participants suggested it is important to educational psychology practice in part because of current cuts to public services and educational reforms. Findings also indicated a role for social justice consultation, building relationships, and engaging with broader macrolevel work to enact a social justice agenda. We discuss these findings in relation to previous literature, concluding that our research begins to document the seeds of a broader social justice agenda in school psychology.     

Connecting Academic Criminal Justice to the Practitioner Perspective: The Efficacy of the Professional Interview

This paper details the use of the professional interview as an active learning assignment for students enrolled in criminal justice and social science classes. Numerous ways in which the professional interview enhances the advising and career selection process are identified. The authors present the results of a content analysis of the “summary and reflections” section of assignments from more than 100 professional interviews completed by students enrolled in several criminal justice classes. The results are used to illustrate students’ perceptions of the utility of the assignment. Lastly, the text includes a version of the interview instrument the authors have utilized with great success for a number of years.     

Recent Changes Leading to Subsequent Changes: Extensions of Multivariate Latent Difference Score Models

Latent difference score models (e.g., McArdle & Hamagami, 2001 McArdle, J. J. 2001. “A latent difference score approach to longitudinal dynamic structural analysis.”. In Structural equation modeling: Present and future Edited by: Cudeck, R., du Toit, S. and Sorbom, D. 342–380. Lincolnwood, IL: Scientific Software International..  [Google Scholar]) are extended to include effects from prior changes to subsequent changes. This extension of latent difference scores allows for testing hypotheses where recent changes, as opposed to recent levels, are a primary predictor of subsequent changes. These models are applied to bivariate longitudinal data collected as part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging on memory performance, measured by the California Verbal Learning Test, and lateral ventricle size, measured by structural MRIs. Results indicate that recent increases in the lateral ventricle size were a leading indicator of subsequent declines in memory performance from age 60 to 90.     

Efficacy of ACA strategies in biography-driven science teaching: an investigation

This study explored the biography-driven approach to teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students in science education. Biography-driven instruction (BDI) embraces student diversity by incorporating students’ sociocultural, linguistic, cognitive, and academic dimensions of their biographies into the learning process (Herrera in Biography-driven culturally responsive teaching. Teachers College Press, New York, 2010). Strategies have been developed (Herrera, Kavimandan and Holmes in Crossing the vocabulary bridge: differentiated strategies for diverse secondary classrooms. Teachers College Press, New York, 2011) that provide teachers with instructional routines that facilitate BDI. Using systematic classroom observations we empirically demonstrate that these activate, connect, affirm, strategies are likely to be effective in increasing teachers’ biography-driven practices. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

The Limits of Aesthetic Separatism: literary education and Michael Oakeshott's philosophy of art

Abstract

The belief that literature can teach us something about life is intuitively plausible but there is a view of literary education that would preclude a teacher from making a direct link between imaginative literature and life. A comprehensive epistemological position that supports this view is to be found in the work of Michael Oakeshott. In challenging this theory of literary education and the philosophy of knowledge that informs it, the article discloses in Oakeshott's work evidence of a more nuanced and defensible view of the role of literature in education.