The mathematics skills of children with reading difficulties

Although many children with reading difficulty (RD) are reported to struggle with mathematics, little research has empirically investigated whether this is the case for different types of RD. This study examined the mathematics skills of third graders with one of two types of RD: dyslexia (n = 18) or specific reading comprehension difficulty (n = 22), as contrasted to a comparison group (n = 247). Children's performance on arithmetic fact fluency, operations, and applied problems was assessed using standardized measures. The results indicated that children with dyslexia experienced particular difficulty with arithmetic fact fluency and operations: they were 5.60 times and 8.54 times more likely than other children to experience deficits in fact fluency and operations, respectively. Our findings related to arithmetic fact fluency were more consistent with domain-general explanations of the co-morbidity between RD and mathematics difficulty, whereas our findings related to operations were more consistent with domain-specific accounts.     

How Levels of Interactivity in Tutorials Affect Students' Learning of Modeling Transportation Problems in a Spreadsheet

Do students learn to model OR/MS problems better by using computer‐based interactive tutorials and, if so, does increased interactivity in the tutorials lead to better learning? In order to determine the effect of different levels of interactivity on student learning, we used screen capture technology to design interactive support materials for modeling and solving the transportation problem in a spreadsheet. A controlled experiment was carried out and the results indicate a general support for the effectiveness of interactive tutorials in enhancing students’ learning of modeling concepts. However, the study also found that excessive interactivity increased the cognitive load for the students and hindered their learning by making it difficult for them to consolidate concepts, integrate previous knowledge, and create meaningful mental models of the process.     

Hospital library foreign language labs: the experiences of two hospital libraries

Increasingly, hospital-based physicians, residents, and medical students are welcoming into their care foreign-born patients, who do not speak English. Most hospitals today have an Interpretive Services Department, but many of the physicians, residents, and medical students want to become more proficient in the most frequently spoken foreign languages in their respective locales. To help recruit and retain a diverse workforce, some hospitals sponsor English programs for staff. The Treadwell Library at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Grady Branch Library at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, have developed a special collection and hospital library-based language laboratories in order to meet this need.     

Mothers' and fathers' racial socialization in African American families: implications for youth

Mothers' and fathers' cultural socialization and bias preparation with older (M=13.9 years) and younger (M=10.31 years) siblings were studied in 162 two-parent, African American families. Analyses examined whether parental warmth and offspring age and gender were linked to parental practices and whether parents' warmth, spouses' racial socialization, or youth age or gender moderated links between racial socialization and youth outcomes. Parental warmth was linked to parents' socialization. Mothers engaged in more socialization with older offspring, and fathers more with sons. Mothers' cultural socialization was positively related to youth ethnic identity and fathers' was negatively related to youth depression symptoms. Youth exhibited a lower locus of control when mothers were high but fathers were low in racial socialization.     

Effects of Junior Kindergarten on Emerging Literacy in Children from Low-Income and Linguistic-Minority Families

We study the benefits of junior kindergarten for linguistic-minority 4-year-olds compared to their linguistic-majority classmates from the same low-income neighborhoods. At the end of the school year, linguistic-minority children made significantly greater improvements in language skills than their host society classmates. At the mid-year point, junior kindergarten teachers made efforts to help linguistic-minority children overcome the challenges of the school environment of their new host society by adapting their pedagogical strategies to those showing difficulty in their receptive vocabulary skills. They also offered greater means of contact to parents of linguistic-minority children having difficulty attaining language proficiency than to parents of children showing better improvements. Parents of linguistic-minority students showing smaller gains were more likely to use a larger proportion of the communication methods offered by teachers and participate in the parent–school relationship for the well-being of their children. Long-term results suggest that linguistic-minority children continued to make significant improvements.

Scenario planning: a tool for academic health sciences libraries

Objective: Review the International Campaign to Revitalise Academic Medicine (ICRAM) Future Scenarios as a potential starting point for developing scenarios to envisage plausible futures for health sciences libraries. Method: At an educational workshop, 15 groups, each composed of four to seven Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) directors and AAHSL/NLM Fellows, created plausible stories using the five ICRAM scenarios. Results: Participants created 15 plausible stories regarding roles played by health sciences librarians, how libraries are used and their physical properties in response to technology, scholarly communication, learning environments and health care economic changes. Conclusions: Libraries are affected by many forces, including economic pressures, curriculum and changes in technology, health care delivery and scholarly communications business models. The future is likely to contain ICRAM scenario elements, although not all, and each, if they come to pass, will impact health sciences libraries. The AAHSL groups identified common features in their scenarios to learn lessons for now. The hope is that other groups find the scenarios useful in thinking about academic health science library futures.     

HPT roots and branches: Analyzing over 45 years of the field's own citations. Part 1: Journal citations

This article is the first of a series of three that reviews the citation patterns of references cited in the entire collection of International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) journal articles (1962–2007) and all chapters published in the three editions of Handbook of Human Performance Technology (1992, 1999, and 2006). It includes an analysis of journal articles cited and lists which journals and particular articles are cited most frequently, both overall and by decade. Part 2 in this series will present an analysis of books cited in the entire ISPI literature collection, and part 3 will report on the most cited authors, both overall and by type of reference (e.g., journal articles, books, sections of books, reports, conference papers, dissertations).     

The education of women for citizenship: the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and the British Federation of Business and Professional Women 1930–1959

This article focuses on how citizenship education was built into the organisational practices as well as the formal instructional programmes of women’s organisations in Britain in the pre‐ and post‐Second World War period. It compares the efforts of two such organisations, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI) and the British Federation of Business and Professional Women (BFBPW), to train women in the skills of citizenship. Despite their differences in constituency and structure, these two organisations had remarkably similar views on citizenship education and shared similar educational approaches until the end of the 1950s. This article argues that the NFWI and BFBPW’s understanding of political engagement and their efforts to educate the woman citizen are important historical examples of how women have negotiated issues of involved versus informed citizenry. The educational model they used is relevant today given the renewed interest in the strengthening of civic society as a key mechanism for political engagement.