Can Middle School Students with Serious Reading Difficulties Help Each Other and Learn Anything?

This investigation was intended to examine the effects of teaching middle school students with learning disabilities and mild mental retardation to tutor one another in reading comprehension strategies. All students were reading significantly below grade level and many students exhibited behavior problems in addition to their primary disability area. Students were randomly assigned to a tutoring or traditional reading instruction condition. Within the tutoring condition, students were matched into tutoring dyads, trained in the tutoring procedures, and taught specific reading comprehension strategies. Reciprocal tutoring was employed, such that students assumed roles of both tutor and tutee during daily reading periods. Performance on reading comprehension tests following tutoring yielded significant performance advantages for students involved in tutoring. Observational, survey, and interview data revealed that students enjoyed tutoring more than their traditional instruction, appeared to see the value and benefits of the tutoring, and wanted to include tutoring as part of their other classes, such as science and social studies. Findings are discussed with respect to the strengths and challenges associated with the use of tutoring to provide strategic instruction to students with special learning needs.     

‘NO WAR THIS YEAR’

The London Daily Express proclaimed the maxim ‘No War this Year’ on its front pages as late as 7 August 1939. Newspaper historian Stephen Koss has suggested that the ‘no war’ slogan was a ‘delusion’ on the part of the proprietor, Lord Beaverbrook. Berlin chief correspondent, R. Selkirk Panton, was instrumental in ensuring that the policy line was observed through both his news stories and opinion pieces throughout 1938 and 1939. This paper aims to explore the extent to which Panton shared his employer's views, as well as tracing the divergent path of the Express from the rest of Fleet Street and Panton's position as a political outsider within the ‘foreign press colony’ of Berlin. Through the examination of several key stories during the last year before the outbreak of war, in his copy and personal correspondence, a critical evaluation of how Panton negotiated the space between the policy of the paper and the European crises on which he reported can be achieved.     

New books

The Literacy Test for Immigrants: A Debate. University of Chicago, Chapter of Delta Sigma Rho, Chicago, 1916. Paper, pp. 62, $1.00.

The Brief‐Maker's Notebook. By WARREN CHOATE SHAW. New York: Ginn & Co., 1916. Cloth, $1.00.

The Elements of Public Speaking. BY HARRY GARFIELD HOUGH‐TON. New York: Ginn and Co., 1916. Cloth, $1.50.

Thinking as a Science. By HENRY HAZLITT. New York: E. P. Button & Co., 1916. Cloth, pp. 251. $1.00.

Universities Debaters’ Annual. Edited by EDWARD C. MABIE. White Plains, N. Y. The H. W. Wilson Company, 1916. Cloth, pp. 294. $1.80.

American Merchant Marine. Edited by E. M. PHELPS. White Plains, New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1916. Cloth, pp. xxviii+2180 $1.00.

Debaters’ Manual. Edited by E. M. PHELPS. White Plains, New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1916. Cloth, pp. x+181. $1.00.

Lessons in Public Speaking and Oral Reading for Class and Private Drill. By JOHN R. PELSMA. Austin, Texas, 1916. Published by the author. Cloth, pp. 58. $0.40.

Community Drama and Pageantry. By MARY PORTER BEEGLE and JACK RANDALL CRAWFORD. New Haven, Conn. Yale University Press, 1916. Cloth and boards, pp. 370. $2.50.     

How gifted students learn: Implications from recent research 1

A review of several recent investigations into the nature of how gifted students learn and the conditions under which they learn most effectively indicates that gifted learners spontaneously produce more effective learning strategies than comparison groups and benefit from the use of more complex, externally provided strategies. Implications from this research for the teacher of the gifted include the use of slower presentation rates for new information, spatial organization of prose content, and teacher provided mnemonic strategies.     

Parental Nurturance Promotes Reading Acquisition in Low Socioeconomic Status Children

Research Findings: Children require cognitive skills (e.g., phoneme awareness, verbal intelligence) and environmental resources (e.g., stimulation, print exposure) to acquire reading. This investigation examined the additional contribution of parental nurturance to literacy development during the transition from preschool to elementary school. Participants were 77 children attending Head Start, their primary caregivers, and their teachers. A variety of methods were used to measure nurturance (e.g., self-report, laboratory observation, home observation) and reading achievement (e.g., standardized testing and teacher report). Approximately 3½ years later, 52 families and 39 teachers were available for repeat assessments of children's reading achievement. After controlling for the variance accounted for by prior reading ability, phonological awareness, verbal reasoning ability, and home academic stimulation, parental nurturance made a significant unique contribution to children's growth in reading achievement. Results supported the hypothesis that caregiver nurturance can be an important ingredient in the recipe for literacy.

Practice: The findings have important implications for the design of interventions for children with low reading achievement. By understanding the various ways in which parents foster reading, interventions can be developed to bolster parental nurturance and support the role of nurturance in promoting children's development in all areas, including intellectual and academic functioning.     

Increased delivery stride length places greater loads on the ankle joint in elite male cricket fast bowlers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect stride length has on ankle biomechanics of the leading leg with reference to the potential risk of injury in cricket fast bowlers. Ankle joint kinematic and kinetic data were collected from 51 male fast bowlers during the stance phase of the final delivery stride. The bowling cohort comprised national under-19, first class and international-level athletes. Bowlers were placed into either Short, Average or Long groups based on final stride length, allowing statistical differences to be measured. A multivariate analysis of variance with a Bonferroni post-hoc correction (α = 0.05) revealed significant differences between peak plantarflexion angles (Short-Long P = 0.005, Average and Long P = 0.04) and negative joint work (Average-Long P = 0.026). This study highlighted that during fast bowling the ankle joint of the leading leg experiences high forces under wide ranges of movement. As stride length increases, greater amounts of negative work and plantarflexion are experienced. These increases place greater loads on the ankle joint and move the foot into positions that make it more susceptible to injuries such as posterior impingement syndrome.     

Consumer Awareness and Willingness to Pay for High-Pressure Processing of Ready-to-Eat Food

ABSTRACT:  Commercial, nonthermal processing of food, such as high hydrostatic-pressure processing (HPP), has increased. The safety and quality of foods produced by HPP has not been well communicated to the public. An online, nationwide consumer survey was implemented to assess awareness of alternative food processing technologies, consumer food safety attitudes and knowledge, and willingness to pay (WTP) for HPP products. The consumer survey was administered by Zoomerang™, an online survey clearinghouse. The survey was completed by 1204 adults. Frequencies and crosstabs were calculated on Zoomerang and SPSS used for one-way ANOVA and chi-square analyses. The survey assessed knowledge of HPP, attitudes about new food processing techniques, WTP for HPP foods and demographics. Overall, many demographic characteristics reflected U.S. census population. While traditional methods, that is, canning, freezing, and microwaving were all well recognized by over 80% of respondents, only 8% recognized HPP. Trends indicated an increase in age, education, and income reflected greater food safety knowledge. Regardless of demographics, no survey respondent exhibited knowledge mastery (80%). Given an explanation of HPP and its benefits, 39% of respondents indicated they would be WTP an additional cost, with higher income and education having the most impact. Majority of respondents indicated a WTP of $0.25 to $0.50 regardless of the value of the food product. More respondents were WTP slightly more for a more expensive product. New technologies often encounter a stumbling block in consumer acceptance and processing costs. A consumer's WTP, once they were informed, could encourage industry to look favorably on this technology.     

Performance-based university research funding systems

The university research environment has been undergoing profound change in recent decades and performance-based research funding systems (PRFSs) are one of the many novelties introduced. This paper seeks to find general lessons in the accumulated experience with PRFSs that can serve to enrich our understanding of how research policy and innovation systems are evolving. The paper also links the PRFS experience with the public management literature, particularly new public management, and understanding of public sector performance evaluation systems. PRFSs were found to be complex, dynamic systems, balancing peer review and metrics, accommodating differences between fields, and involving lengthy consultation with the academic community and transparency in data and results. Although the importance of PRFSs seems based on their distribution of universities’ research funding, this is something of an illusion, and the literature agrees that it is the competition for prestige created by a PRSF that creates powerful incentives within university systems. The literature suggests that under the right circumstances a PRFS will enhance control by professional elites. PRFSs since they aim for excellence, may compromise other important values such as equity or diversity. They will not serve the goal of enhancing the economic relevance of research.     

“Whose World is This?”: A Composite Counterstory of Black Male Elementary School Teachers as Hip-Hop Otherfathers

From a critical race theory lens, the author shares data from a yearlong study on Black male elementary school teachers from the Hip-Hop generation. In this article, the author represents the data from said study as a composite counterstory which highlights how Black males are alienated, adultified, and criminalized in American public schools. Furthermore, in this article, the concept of otherfathering is comprehensively defined as it relates to how Black male teachers mentor and support their students.     

The North Carolina Child Care Corps: The role of National Service in Child Care

The purpose of the present study is to document the impact of training and ensuing experience on the knowledge, beliefs, and practices of AmeriCorps national service volunteers in child care classrooms. The North Carolina Child Care Corps (NCCCC) combined federal (AmeriCorps) and state (Smart Start) dollars in the state of North Carolina to improve existing teacher-child ratios by providing trained teachers for child care centers. Participants (Corps members) in the project received four weeks of intensive training in child development and early childhood education and were then assigned to child care classrooms in counties receiving Smart Start funding in five regions of the state. Corps members did not replace existing staff, but were added as assistant teachers above and beyond the mandated teacher-child ratios. Results from Year One of the project indicate that the NCCCC was successful in training Corps members in the areas of child development and early childhood appropriate practices. However, Corps members showed a decline in the appropriateness of their interactions with children after nine months of service in child care classrooms. Implications concerning the use of AmeriCorps volunteers to improve the quality of child care are discussed.