Reliability and concurrent validity of the DUSO affectivity assessment device

Forms M and L of The DUSO Affectivity Assessment Device were administered to 23 first-grade children. Alternate form reliability was significant at the .02 level of confidence. Forty-five first-grade children were administered Form L of The DUSO AAD and one week later the California Test of Personality. Concurrent validity correlations were significant for the total group and for subgroups differentiated by sex.     

Lessons from the Nursery: Children as Writers in Early Years Education

This paper considers the rationale of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) for changing approaches to the teaching of writing in the early years. Existing pedagogy and practice are summarised and mapped against the NLS requirements. It is suggested that there are tensions both in ideology and practice which are particularly striking for the Reception year. Research in early years classrooms in three primary schools in Southern England draws attention, in particular, to the ways in which the NLS is prompting changes in contexts for writing and in the nature of teacher intervention, with an increasingly early emphasis on the didactic teaching of writing conventions. The paper concludes that developmentally appropriate, affirming strategies need not contravene the educational ideals of the NLS, providing the professionalism of early years practitioners is genuinely nurtured and respected.     

Looking for Professor Right: mentee selection of mentors in a formal mentoring program

Finding a suitable mentor is crucial to the success of mentoring relationships. In the mentoring literature, however, there is conflicting evidence about the best ways to support the pairing process in organisational mentoring programs. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the pairing process in an academic mentoring program that has implications for building a mentoring culture in higher education. The program which began with a pilot and has continued for five years with one hundred and twenty one participants, was conducted with mentees selecting their own mentor from a pool of mentors who volunteered to be part of the program. In the pilot program, where mentors and mentees first met as one group, some mentees reported that the process of selecting and approaching a mentor was uncomfortable and intimidating. Nine of twenty-three potential mentees did not form mentoring relationships. Analysis of subsequent program evaluation data pointed to the importance of two factors in the pairing process: personal connections and facilitation of the selection process. This study at a research-intensive university demonstrates that when the pairing process is tailored to individual mentees, they are comfortable selecting a mentor and to then develop a successful mentoring relationship.     

COLLABORATION BY DESIGN: INTEGRATING CORE PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT AND SPECIAL EDUCATION METHODS COURSES IN A PRESERVICE SECONDARY EDUCATION PROGRAM

In this article the authors describe a collaboratively designed secondary teacher education program focused on the preparation of preservice general education teachers to work effectively with children who have diverse learning needs in inclusive classrooms. The focus of the article is on the collaborative development and initial evaluation of the program by secondary teacher education faculty and special education faculty. The instructional design emphasized a co-teaching model where principles of Universal Design for Learning and instructional adaptation were integrated and assessed in multiple courses by collaborating university faculty. Data from the initial evaluation included student teaching portfolios, formal teacher observations, and 6th- through 12th-grade student assessments. The data suggest that preservice teachers appropriately used strategies for adapting their instruction to meet the needs of students with exceptionalities.     

Figuring “Success” in a Bilingual High School

Using the concept of figured worlds, this article demonstrates how the faculty, staff, and students of Gregorio Luperón High School in New York City figured “success” by prioritizing the students’ linguistic and cultural resources. “Success” was constructed specifically through granting Spanish high status, developing positive teacher–student relationships, and relying upon the cultural artifact of the opportunity narrative. This qualitative ethnographic study focuses on the school-related social interactions that took place among students, teachers and staff, to explore the socially and locally constructed model of success within this bilingual high school for newly arrived, Spanish-speaking immigrant youth. Ali Michael is a PhD candidate in Teaching Learning, Curriculum and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. Her academic and research interests include whiteness studies, multicultural education and anthropology of education. Norma Andrade is the Language and Latin American Coordinator and Advocate for a non-profit organization, Refugee Women’s Alliance, located in Seattle, Washington. She advocates for the immigrant and refugee communities in Washington State. Lesley Bartlett is an assistant professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research and teaching interests include anthropology of education, comparative and international education, sociocultural studies of literacies, transnationalism, and schooling across the Americas.     

What Really Matters in Synagogue Education: A Comparative Case Study of a Conventional School and an Alternative Program

This article examines case studies of two part-time synagogue education programs, a conventional “Hebrew School” and an alternative program modeled after Jewish summer camp. Using the lens of teaching of Bible to children in Grades 3–5, the study provides insight into similarities and differences between the two types of programs and the impact of the program structure on the proliferation and/or staying power of one or the other. I found that factors of success in synagogue education may not be dependent on a program’s structure (“school”/“camp”) but, rather, on factors such as professional learning and content knowledge, among others.     

Case studies of learning disabled students with deficient syntactic control in English as a foreign language

This paper discusses a mini‐experiment; an exercise was devised to investigate the effects of repeated articulation on the acquisition of syntax. The main participants of the experiment are two Hebrew‐speaking students, one formally assessed as having reading disabilities, one female age 14 (Q) and one dyslexic male age 16 (W). Q has been learning English at school for 4 years; she is in eighth grade. She is in the group for weak learners of English and does not show signs of a reading disability. She has taken private tuition once a week for approximately 5 months. She had not previously studied the target structure in the experiment. The results are discussed in light of the literature review findings, and some applied implications and conclusions were drawn for learning disabilities (LD) teaching.     

Developing partnership with parents in special schools: parental perspectives from Northern Ireland

From the 1960s, the development of home–school relationships in special schools has become increasingly important, culminating in the current official understanding of parents as partners. This paper traces the development of the relationship, setting out the challenges to partnership development from professional perspectives within education. A professionally located investigation was undertaken into parental experiences and perspectives to identify factors inhibiting and promoting effective partnerships. Using a mixed-methods approach, the views were explored of parents with children attending a special school in Northern Ireland. Findings strongly indicated the need for educators to pursue and engage with the views of parents, and to recognise the emotional context of these relationships at an interpersonal and organisational level, so that home–school relations can be realigned to support partnership. Implications are set out that will be instrumental in achieving this reconfiguration between the current official understanding of parents as equal partners and actual practice in some schools.