Questioning to scaffold: an exploration of questions in pre-service teacher training feedback sessions

The purpose of this research was to explore trainer questioning strategies which aimed to scaffold development and learning in teacher training feedback sessions. Research was conducted with a group of Turkish pre-service English teacher trainees at an English-medium university in Turkey. Findings include a categorisation of different question types which seemed to prompt reflection and construction of knowledge. The data also suggest that trainees need varying levels of support through different question types to better scaffold their understanding of teaching. This study concludes with a data-driven framework of questioning strategies which can be a potential guide for trainers working with pre-service English teacher trainees.     

More Effective Consolidation of Episodic Long‐Term Memory in Children Than Adults—Unrelated to Sleep

Abilities to encode and remember events in their spatiotemporal context (episodic memory) rely on brain regions that mature late during childhood and are supported by sleep. We compared the temporal dynamics of episodic memory formation and the role of sleep in this process between 62 children (8–12 years) and 57 adults (18–37 years). Subjects recalled “what–where–when” memories after a short 1‐hr retention interval or after a long 10.5‐hr interval containing either nocturnal sleep or daytime wakefulness. Although children showed diminished recall of episodes after 1 hr, possibly resulting from inferior encoding, unlike adults, they showed no further decrease in recall after 10.5 hr. In both age groups, episodic memory benefitted from sleep. However, children's more effective offline retention was unrelated to sleep.     

Intervention in the motor domain: A training study with first- and second-grade slow readers

A burgeoning interest in learning disabilities during the past five years has aroused educational interest in the hypothesized sequence of motor, perceptual, and symbolic development. The present research was undertaken to test the effectiveness of beginning training at the motor level for children having difficulty with the symbolic system of reading. First- and second grade children were screened on the Gates Primary Reading Test and all motor subtests of the Purdue Perceptual-Motor Survey. The final sample comprised 35 children randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: Motor Training, Physical Education, and Reading Control. Variables of teacher differences, adult-child ratio, amount of physical activity, and Hawthorne effect were controlled for in the design. Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance and an analysis of covariance on a parallel form of standardized reading test showed a consistent pattern of greater gains following motor training and reading activities, and minimal progress after the physical education treatment. It was hypothesized that this may reflect effects of structured experiences and more equal distribution of teacher-child interaction. Reading gains of the first-grade children were significantly greater than those of the second-graders beyond the 0.01 level, a result not explainable by ceiling effects. Implications of the slower progress of the older children were explored in terms of a need for focus on particular reading subskills across perceptual-motor-symbolic systems.     

Education in the Context of Structural Injustice: A symposium response

What an honor to have political and educational theorists of such caliber take up ideas from my work! What a daunting task to try to respond! My remarks will touch on the following questions: What are some key issues of distributive justice in education today? Why does defining justice in terms of oppression and domination imply that issues of justice cannot be reduced to distribution? How does normalization constitute a major process enacting oppression, and what does this imply for education? What does it mean to include marginalized groups in economic opportunity and democratic process, and how can educational institutions foster such inclusion? Why do issues of religion and other forms of cultural expression belong to a distinct category of justice? Are values of freedom of expression and tolerance in tension with the project of democratic inclusion? How shall we consider transnational issues of educational justice?     

Mothers’ and Fathers’ Reports of Their Supportive Responses to Their Children’s Negative Emotions Over Time

Objective. Parents’ emotion socialization practices are thought to be moderately stable over time; however, a partner’s socialization practices could initiate change. Design. We examined mothers’ and fathers’ reports of their supportive responses to their children’s negative emotions when the target child was 7 years old and again at age 10. We tested a dyadic, longitudinal path model with 111 mother–father pairs. Results. Significant actor and partner effects emerged: Parents’ age 7 responses predicted their own age 10 responses and their partners’ later responses. Conclusions. Parents’ reported responses to children’s negative emotions during middle childhood are predicted by their own earlier responses and by their partners’ responses.