Adapting Strategies of Effective Instruction for Culturally Diverse Preschoolers

This article describes collaboration between preschool and university educators focused on adapting the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE) standards for Effective Pedagogy for use in early childhood (EC) settings. The CREDE standards are strategies of best practices for culturally diverse K–12 students. Teachers and teacher educators worked together to adapt the CREDE standards for use with young children. Participants included 13 preschool teachers and 2 administrators serving 2- to 5-years-olds at a university-based EC center. Data sources included participant observations and video-recordings of the teachers' instruction. Criteria for measuring use of the standards were changed to be more developmentally appropriate, including adjustments for language development and a focus on goals that included self-management and social skills. The adapted CREDE EC standards may provide a useful framework for high-quality EC instruction for diverse children. This partnership may have been successful because the project drew on the strengths of both the university and EC collaborators, minimizing the hierarchical relationship that is often experienced in such an arrangement.     

Sensory, cognitive, and linguistic factors in the early academic performance of elementary school children: The Benton-IU project

Standardized sensory, perceptual, linguistic, intellectual, and cognitive tests were administered to 470 children, approximately 96% of the students entering the first grade in the four elementary schools of Benton County, Indiana, over a 3-year period (1995--1997). The results of 36 tests and subtests administered to entering first graders were well described by a 4-factor solution. These factors and the tests that loaded most heavily on them were reading-related skills (phonological awareness, letter and word identification); visual cognition (visual perceptual abilities, spatial perception, visual memory); verbal cognition (language development, vocabulary, verbal concepts); and speech processing (the ability to understand speech under difficult listening conditions). A cluster analysis identified 9 groups of children, each with a different profile of scores on the 4 factors. Within these groups, the proportion of students with unsatisfactory reading achievement in the first 2 years of elementary school (as reflected in teacher-assigned grades) varied from 3% to 40%. The profiles of factor scores demonstrated the primary influence of the reading-related skills factor on reading achievement and also on other areas of academic performance. The second strongest predictor of reading and mathematics grades was the visual cognition factor, followed by the verbal cognition factor. The speech processing factor was the weakest predictor of academic achievement, accounting for less than 1% of the variance in reading achievement. This project was a collaborative effort of the Benton Community School Corporation and a multidisciplinary group of investigators from Indiana University.     

The conscience clause in religious education and collective worship: conscientious objection or curriculum choice?

The ‘conscience clause’ allows parents to withdraw their children from religious education and collective worship; however, the reasons why parents might wish so to do are not stated in the legislation. This article looks briefly at the legal issues to do with the place of religious education in the school curriculum, the type of religious education to be provided in schools without a religious affiliation (including an exploration of the meaning of the ‘Cowper‐Temple’ clause), and at the grounds on which parents may wish to exercise the conscience clause. It shows conclusively that withdrawal may only occur on the grounds of conscientious objection, not as a matter of choice.     

Missing link: Integrated individual leadership development,employee engagement,and customer value‐added improvement

Long‐term care is a key public issue that affects all of us in some way at some time of our lives. Nowhere is performance improvement and quality management more imperative. Through an 8‐month field study and follow‐up case study, we discuss how using an integrated approach to individual leadership development, employee engagement, and customer value‐added improvement might provide the missing link toward sustaining and growing organizational culture change in a very demanding environment.     

Transformative learning approaches for public relations pedagogy

Public relations educators are frequently challenged by students' flawed perceptions of public relations. Two contrasting case studies are presented in this paper to illustrate how socially-oriented paradigms may be applied to a real-client project to deliver a transformative learning experience. A discourse-analytic approach is applied within the case studies as a technique for identifying changes in students' understandings of the ideological structures, power relations and knowledge systems that underpin public relations and for determining whether transformative learning has taken place. The discourse engagement and normative/critical/ethical paradigmatic orientations examined in this paper provide conceptual foundations for developing civic responsibility that needs to be underpinned by salient social theory.     

Serial Arguments in Classrooms

Serial arguing has mainly been studied in the context of close relationships. This study generalizes those theories and findings to the context of classrooms. Respondents (N = 348) reported on serial arguments they had experienced either in college or in high school classes. High school serial arguments were more brutish than those in college. Resolvability was positively associated with classroom climate and arguers' civility. Approach and avoidance motives predicted the degree to which a range of arguers' goals come into play, and the goals predicted the tactics in use. The tactics, in turn, predicted the resolvability, climate, and civility of the serial arguments.