First-grade cognitive abilities as long-term predictors of reading comprehension and disability status

In a sample of 195 first graders selected for poor reading performance, the authors explored four cognitive predictors of later reading comprehension and reading disability (RD) status. In fall of first grade, the authors measured the children's phonological processing, rapid automatized naming (RAN), oral language comprehension, and nonverbal reasoning. Throughout first grade, they also modeled the students' reading progress by means of weekly Word Identification Fluency (WIF) tests to derive December and May intercepts. The authors assessed their reading comprehension in the spring of Grades 1-5. With the four cognitive variables and the WIF December intercept as predictors, 50.3% of the variance in fifth-grade reading comprehension was explained: 52.1% of this 50.3% was unique to the cognitive variables, 13.1% to the WIF December intercept, and 34.8% was shared. All five predictors were statistically significant. The same four cognitive variables with the May (rather than December) WIF intercept produced a model that explained 62.1% of the variance. Of this amount, the cognitive variables and May WIF intercept accounted for 34.5% and 27.7%, respectively; they shared 37.8%. All predictors in this model were statistically significant except RAN. Logistic regression analyses indicated that the accuracy with which the cognitive variables predicted end-of-fifth-grade RD status was 73.9%. The May WIF intercept contributed reliably to this prediction; the December WIF intercept did not. Results are discussed in terms of a role for cognitive abilities in identifying, classifying, and instructing students with severe reading problems.     

The relationship of supportive communication to sex discussion in the home

Supportive communication was examined as a component of mothers’ sex discussion with children. Results demonstrated that mothers who communicated supportively were more open and disclosing when discussing sex and were more likely to provide sons with birth control information and instruction than mothers who communicated nonsupportively. The study concludes by raising several issues for future research and sex education pro‐ams for parents.     

Foreign and domestic news content of Chinese television

A sample from 10 weeks of the major Chinese national television news program was content analyzed; 559 news stories were coded according to duration, topic category, position in the newscast, and geographic origin. The 189 international stories clustered at the end of the broadcast and were significantly shorter than domestic stories. A plurality of domestic stories was from the capital, Beijing, and covered different topics than those that originated outside of China. Foreign and domestic stories were brief and provided little interpretation or background.     

Family sex communication orientation

The United States leads all industrialized countries in unintended teenage pregnancies, teenage births, teenage abortions. Despite the seriousness of this problem, family communication researchers so far, for all practical purposes, have excluded it from the discipline's research agenda. Our study was designed to consolidate and examine a measure of children's attitudes toward family sex communication on the dimensions of comfort, information, and value — the Family Sex Communication Quotient scale (FSCQ) — and to test this orientation against other potential mediators of sex discussion in the family. Our tentative findings suggest: (1) family sex communication in general is infrequent and ineffective, (2) frequent and effective family sex communication may serve as a contextual model for children's communication patterns, (3) a strong family sex communication orientation, particularly as measured by the FSCQ which tested out to be a reliable measure and a significant and consistent mediator, seems to facilitate children's open discussion with dating partners and with parents and to develop responsible pre‐parenting attitudes, (4) discussing sex in the family does not promote an attitude of sexual license.     

Floating on the fringe: College of education students’ discourse about diversity

Abstract

This phenomenological research study focused on how education students perceived diversity in their academic lives, as well as the language they used when they talked about diversity. Focus groups with 36 undergraduate and graduate students in a college of education were conducted to explore these areas. Three themes were identified through a two-phase analytical approach. These were: (a) limited or inconsistent exposure to diversity at the college; (b) instances of othering and exclusion that took place in various spaces; and (c) divergent ways of talking about the diversity climate. The article concludes with a renewed call for increased attention to diversity in colleges of education.     

A Comparison of Exposure Control Procedures in CAT Systems Based on Different Measurement Models for Testlets

The purposes of the study were twofold: (a) to test for evidence of construct validity related to social and academic (general, English, mathematics) competencies, as measured by self, teachers, parents, and peers, for children in Grades 3 (n = 175), 7 (n = 193), and 11 (n = 159), and (b) to examine the extent to which ratings by significant others were concordant with self-ratings for these four constructs. Based on a comparison of nested multitrait-multimethod covariance structure models, results demonstrated that despite evidence of global convergent and discriminant validities, method effects were instrumental in attenuating trait variances. In particular, self-ratings for early preadolescents and peer ratings for all ages were the most vulnerable to this anomaly. Overall, results suggest that researchers consider making greater use of parent ratings in the measurement of social and academic competencies for elementary children.     

Student teaching: perceived confidence at attaining teaching competencies during preservice courses

Summaries

English

Many trainee teachers have learned through bitter experience those teaching competencies experienced teachers hold most important. This paper describes the confidence at which fifty‐five science method students would approach sixty developmental tasks at strategic points during the preservice course of teacher education. The end‐of‐course outcomes are compared with the views of heads of school science department on the importance of these competencies for beginning science teachers.     

"This won't take long…": Interviewing,ethics and diversity

In this paper, the focus is on one particular research project, conducted in the UK, which studied the role of parent groups and organizations in relation to the mainstream education system. The authors seek to analyze and evaluate access to the different "structures of feeling" inhabited by the various respondents involved in the project. Using the project as a lens, a critical case, the relationships between respondents and researchers are problematized, highlighting a number of issues with broad applicability. These include negotiating access, securing informed consent, the debates around symmetry and asymmetry between researcher and respondent, the processes of interviewing, data analysis and dissemination. The authors also comment on the formation and development of relationships with respondents, trying to tease out the differences and similarities of age, race, social class, language, and gender, and to suggest how these disjunctions and connections affected the process of datacollection and analysis. Finally, the article concludes with a brief consideration of the implications for future research design and conduct of the arguments put forward.