Editorials

This article discusses historical and contemporary influences on changes in special education assessment, with emphasis on three persistent themes: accurate classification, fairness to minority students, and special education outcomes. Dunn's contributions to each of the themes are discussed, along with other influences such as legislation and litigation. Current dynamics leading to significant changes in special education assessment are discussed, particularly in the disability category of specific learning disabilities.     

GERONTOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AND ELDERLY HEALTH CARE SERVICES IN ALASKA: AGING IN THE LAST FRONTIER

The current research assessed Alaskan health and mental health care professionals’ perceptions regarding Alaska's elderly health care services as well as professional educational and training needs. Fifty‐four percent of community professionals sampled indicated that preexisting services in their community were not adequate to meet the needs of the elderly population. In addition, 55% indicated that the knowledge level of community professionals regarding the elderly and the aging process was insufficient and 51% believed they were not well educated in meeting the needs of Alaskan native elders. An overall 91.8% indicted that they were in need of further training in the field of aging and geriatrics. They noted in particular the lack of knowledge and training opportunities in mental health and Alzheimer's disease. The significance of these findings is discussed in terms of the broader social implications associated with meeting gerontological and geriatric education and training needs, as well as the specific education and training problems of Alaskan health care professionals in keeping up with the recent trend of “aging in the last frontier.”     

Cognitive-Training Programs for Older Adults: What Are they and Can they Enhance Mental Fitness?

ABSTRACT

People are living longer, and in better physical health, than at any other time in history. But what of their mental health? Does it decline with age, offsetting the gains made in physical health and longevity? Can it be maintained? Can it improve? A review of the literature suggests that cognitive decline is not universal, pervasive, or irreversible. It also demonstrates that older adults can benefit from cognitive training. The challenge, however, is to provide such training in ways that are acceptable to older adults. The answer is to be found, firstly, in research that identifies best practices for cognitive skill development in ecologically valid activities involving older adults, psychologists, and adult educators. These best practices can then serve to assist educators to design continuing education programs and other activities that are readily accessible, affordable, and enjoyable.     

Persist or withdraw: the importance of external factors in students' departure intentions

The role of institutional factors in students' intentions to persist with or withdraw from their studies is well established in the literature. More recently, the influence of factors external to the institution has been highlighted as well. This study investigates the relationship between levels of engagement of first-year students undertaking a core business subject at a large university in Australia and their departure intentions. It was found that their propensity to persist was positively associated with their reported involvement and engagement with their studies but negatively associated with certain external factors – time spent on paid work, commuting and caring for others. One important implication of these results is that factors that sit largely outside the ambit of an institution's control may be placing significant, but perhaps unrecognised, constraints on the ability of that institution to improve retention rates.     

Structural Communications: An Instructional Strategy for the Language Arts

The ranking of the United States in major international tests such as the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is used as the driving force and rationale for the current educational reforms in the United States. Through current reforms, the United States is preparing to “race to the top” of the international rankings. However, using international test results as the ultimate indicator of a country's educational achievement might not be an appropriate measure. Additionally, replicating some aspects of high-achieving countries’ education systems or standards may not guarantee success for U.S. public schools. In this article, four reasons are presented explaining why there is no guaranteed success in comparing the United States to other countries’ educational standards and to their achievement in international tests. In order to successfully implement reforms in U.S. public schools, educational leaders and reformers should carefully consider the four points discussed in this article and use tests to inform their reforms, rather than to create uniformity.     

Caregiver–child verbal interactions in child care: A buffer against poor language outcomes when maternal language input is less

Recent research has suggested that high quality child care can buffer young children against poorer cognitive and language outcomes when they are at risk for poorer language and readiness skills. Most of this research measured the quality of parenting and the quality of the child care with global observational measures or rating scales that did not specify the exact maternal or caregiver behaviors that might be causally implicated in the buffering of these children from poor outcomes. The current study examined the actual language by the mother to her child in the home and the verbal interactions between the caregiver and child in the child care setting that might be implicated in the buffering effect of high quality childcare. The sample included 433 rural children from the Family Life Project who were in child care at 36 months of age. Even after controlling for a variety of covariates, including maternal education, income, race, child previous skill, child care type, the overall quality of the home and quality of the child care environment; observed positive caregiver–child verbal interactions in the child care setting interacted with the maternal language complexity and diversity in predicting children's language development. Caregiver–child positive verbal interactions appeared to buffer children from poor language outcomes concurrently and two years later if children came from homes where observed maternal language complexity and diversity during a picture book task was less.     

Interviewing objects: including educational technologies as qualitative research participants

This article argues the importance of including significant technologies‐in‐use as key qualitative research participants when studying today’s digitally enhanced learning environments. We gather a set of eight heuristics to assist qualitative researchers in ‘interviewing’ technologies‐in‐use (or other relevant objects), drawing on concrete examples from our own qualitative research projects. Our discussion is informed by Actor‐Network Theory and hermeneutic phenomenology, as well as by the literatures of techno‐science, media ecology, and the philosophy of technology.     

Revealing,reinterpreting, rewriting mujeres

This paper reanalyzed research previously conducted with Spanish-speaking childcare providers who participated in an educational literacy program. The women in the program were generally framed as the deficient other – illiterate, immigrant women. The authors used a critical framework and Chicana/Latina feminist methodologies, namely pláticas y encuentros (talks and encounters), to investigate, reanalyze, and reinterpret the data. Through the process, the authors not only revealed the inner flame of the participants in the study, but through the collision of their own worldviews, they also exposed more deeply the assumptions buried within their epistemologies, methodologies, and positionalities. The results speak to the importance of critical examinations of power and discourses in education that often reside unexamined, or perhaps examined but largely unpublished, in our research.