Critical Literacy,Disciplinary Literacy: Reading the Engineering-Designed World

Globally, many people spend most of their time interacting with the products of engineering design as they wear clothes, drink clean water, use transportation systems, and more. Given the omnipresence of engineering design, whose material results are felt daily in people’s lives, it seems especially important that students learn to recognize and question how certain designs promote the welfare and interests of some while remaining inaccessible to others. In this article, we outline a vision for critical literacy instruction in engineering that simultaneously incorporates and challenges professional standards. We—an associate professor of literacy, an engineer, and a teacher at an engineering-focused high school—illustrate how critical literacy instruction might be enacted in the context of engineering design instruction in high schools. We describe how critical literacy can complement disciplinary literacy instruction in engineering as students use critically-focused, disciplinary lenses to move toward social justice.     

Teacher candidates’ mastery of phoneme-grapheme correspondence: massed versus distributed practice in teacher education

Matching phonemes (speech sounds) to graphemes (letters and letter combinations) is an important aspect of decoding (translating print to speech) and encoding (translating speech to print). Yet, many teacher candidates do not receive explicit training in phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Difficulty with accurate phoneme production and/or lack of understanding of sound-symbol correspondence can make it challenging for teachers to (a) identify student errors on common assessments and (b) serve as a model for students when teaching beginning reading or providing remedial reading instruction. For students with dyslexia, lack of teacher proficiency in this area is particularly problematic. This study examined differences between two learning conditions (massed and distributed practice) on teacher candidates’ development of phoneme-grapheme correspondence knowledge and skills. An experimental, pretest-posttest-delayed test design was employed with teacher candidates (n?=?52) to compare a massed practice condition (one, 60-min session) to a distributed practice condition (four, 15-min sessions distributed over 4 weeks) for learning phonemes associated with letters and letter combinations. Participants in the distributed practice condition significantly outperformed participants in the massed practice condition on their ability to correctly produce phonemes associated with different letters and letter combinations. Implications for teacher preparation are discussed.     

Shift of meaning and students' alternative concepts

The purpose of the study was to establish a relationship between the shift of meaning of the concept oxidation that has taken place during the historical development, and students' alternative concepts. First Examination Board papers were examined. The result enabled us to specify the research question. In the main part of the study, multiple‐choice items were given to 3074 senior high school students. They were asked to select the correct answer and to justify their choices. Additional illustrative material was collected in four interviews with senior high school students. The analysis of the data revealed the mechanism that some students used to interpret the reactions from NO₃ ^? to NO and from CO₃ ^2? to CO₂. Students' interpretations were based on the concept of a transfer of oxide ions. The mechanism explains some correct and incorrect answers to the problems. The interview study also revealed that students were reluctant to accept water as a Brønsted base. It is suggested to use students' alternative concepts about oxidation reactions in class, helping them to better understand the half‐reaction method. Students should also understand that the meaning of the concept oxidation has shifted in the course of time. In the area of acid‐base reactions, further research is needed.     

TV's distorted vision of poverty

Avoiding almost entirely the depiction of poverty during prime‐time broadcasts, television networks present a sentimentalized vision of economic deprivation that omits or minimizes hardship while idealizing the supposed benefits of a spartan way of life. Much happier than the harried members of middle‐ and upper‐income groups, poor and working people on television seldom strive against their economic fates or against the system. Conclusions are based on a monitoring of prime‐time entertainment broadcast by the three commercial networks during “ratings month.”     

Looking Back on Lessons Learned: Gifted Adults Reflect on Their Experiences in Advanced Classes

The purpose of this study was to learn about gifted adults' experiences in advanced classes and attitudes about advanced classes or gifted programs for their children. Participants were 88 adults (33 men and 55 women) who have been participating in a longitudinal study of academically talented individuals since their high-school graduation in 1988. Participants responded to open-ended questions via mailed surveys. Eighty-five percent of participants described their academic experiences in advanced classes as positive, whereas slightly fewer participants (59%) described their interpersonal experiences in advanced classes as positive. Seventy-five percent of participants with children described signs of giftedness in their children, and 88% of participants indicated that they would support advanced placement for their children if it were recommended by the school. Implications of the findings were discussed and directions for future research were provided.     

Not All Past Events Are Equal: Biased Attention and Emerging Heuristics in Children's Past‐to‐Future Forecasting

Four‐ to 10‐year‐olds and adults (N = 265) responded to eight scenarios presented on an eye tracker. Each trial involved a character who encounters a perpetrator who had previously enacted positive (P), negative (N), or both types of actions toward him or her in varying sequences (NN, PP, PN, and NP). Participants predicted the character's thoughts about the likelihood of future events, emotion type and intensity, and decision to approach or avoid. All ages made more positive forecasts for PP > NP > PN > NN trials, with differentiation by past experience widening with age. Age‐related increases in weighting the most recent past event also appeared in eye gaze. Individual differences in biased visual attention correlated with verbal judgments. Findings contribute to research on risk assessment, person perception, and heuristics in judgment and decision making.     

The Effect of Individual Differences in Cognitive Style and Motives in Solving Insight Problems

The relationship between cognitive style, achievement motives and problem solving performance was investigated. Two insight problems of the practical construction type were employed as criterion variables in Study 1, and five analytic insight problems were used as criterion variables in Study 2. In Study 1, 44 males and 43 females, aged 17 to 21 years, from a senior high school participated as subjects. In Study 2, 179 female and 96 male students from the same population were employed as subjects. In both studies, Assimilators profited from having high Ms scores, while there was a decrease for Explorers with higher Ms scores. The pattern of findings supports Atkinson's hypothesis (1980) of optimal motivation.     

Educational and psychological counselling in Slovakia: Keeping continuity

The Slovak counselling system playedan important role in the development of Europeancounselling, especially in the Central Europeanregion. This article presentsa short excursion on the history of the creation ofthe educational counselling system.The author presents the latest information on thecontemporary development of educational andpsychological counselling in Slovakia. The resultsof a study made recently by the Research Institute onChild Psychology and Patopsychology describing changesin working conditions of the Counsellors inEducational and Psychological Counselling Centres arealso discussed.