Sustaining High-Quality Teaching and Evidence-Based Curricula: Follow-Up Assessment of Teachers in the REDI Project

Research Findings: Recent research has validated the power of evidence-based preschool interventions to improve teaching quality and promote child school readiness when implemented in the context of research trials. However, very rarely are follow-up assessments conducted with teachers in order to evaluate the maintenance of improved teaching quality or sustained use of evidence-based curriculum components after the intervention trial. In the current study, we collected follow-up assessments of teachers 1 year after their involvement in the REDI (REsearch-based, Developmentally Informed) research trial to evaluate the extent to which intervention teachers continued to implement the REDI curriculum components with high quality and to explore possible preintervention predictors of sustained implementation. In addition, we conducted classroom observations to determine whether general improvements in the teaching quality of intervention teachers (relative to control group teachers) were sustained. Results indicated sustained high-quality implementation of some curriculum components (the Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies curriculum) but decreased implementation of other components (the language/literacy components). Sustained intervention effects were evident on most aspects of general teaching quality targeted by the intervention. Practice or Policy: Implications for practice and policy are discussed.     

A Modified NEP/DSP Environmental Attitudes Scale

Abstract

The relationship between people and the rest of nature is central to the debate concerning the management of natural resources. An understanding of how environmental concern is reflected in people's attittudes and value systems is important for the development of responsive environmental management. Effective attitude measures already exist, most notably the New Environmental Paradigm scale. Since this measure was produced, however, certain issues not addressed by the scale have become increasingly important within the environmental debate. These include concepts such as the intrinsic value of nature, or the moral duties of humans to the rest of nature-issues that surface repeatedly in the environmental literature. The study has shown that it is possible to include references to the intrinsic value of nature, as well as the moral duties people have to the rest of nature and to other human beings, within a reliable and unidimensional attitude scale.     

The Intersection Between Deep Moral Frames and Rhetorical Style in the Struggle over U.S. Immigration Reform

This essay highlights and explores a point of tension between theoretical writings on style and moral frames. Past political communication scholarship points to the importance of the feminine style in today's televisual era of politics. In this same political era, the conservative strict parent moral frame has dominated most policy debates. Surprisingly, this highly successful moral frame appears squarely at odds with the feminine style so closely connected with political success. This essay attempts to unravel this tension between styles and frames by examining discourse drawn from the 2007 debate over comprehensive immigration reform. To account for the success of conservative messages within this debate, this essay both (a) calls into question the nature of the relationship between the television medium and the feminine style and (b) expands our understanding of the discursive operation of deep moral frames by drawing a distinction between intra-familial and extra-familial policy discourse.     

Letters to the editor

This study examines editorial photography in nine major erotica magazines to determine how pictures vary as a function of the social class, gender and sexual preference of the intended readership. The analysis reveals that upwardly‐mobile, heterosexual men are treated to idealized images, whereas working‐class, heterosexual men are presented with more mundane yet highly‐sexualized images. Heterosexual women are provided with photographs of nude males in a low‐sexual context. Magazines for homosexual men present images, except for gender, very similar to those created for upwardly‐mobile, heterosexual men. These patterns are discussed from a functionalist perspective to show how erotica magazines contribute to social‐order maintenance.     

Teaching the language of mathematics at three levels of an English-medium primary school

This study, situated in a multilingual, English-medium educational context, draws on theory from mathematics and language education to capture teachers’ perspectives on the place of language in their mathematics pedagogy. The benchmark study explored this topic through surveying and interviewing teachers. Additionally, it sought to relate teachers’ views to their practice by focusing on observing three teachers’ mathematics lessons at primary one, three, and five. Findings are that mathematics teachers placed importance on teaching language, being specifically concerned with language as input and comprehension. They taught vocabulary and reading skills in supportive ways explicitly yet differently at the three grade levels. Particularly at the lower levels, teachers contextualised language in the concrete examples employed for mathematics teaching. At all three levels, prominence was given to teaching pupils how to read word problems as well as how to solve them. However, at primary three, a tension was observed between the two aims of teaching mathematical vocabulary and teaching the reading skills for word problems. This paper illustrates the tension and discusses its possible causes.     

“The Coat Traps All Your Body Heat”: Heterogeneity as Fundamental to Learning

This article explores heterogeneity as fundamental to learning. Inspired by Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia, a design team consisting of an experienced classroom teacher and 2 researchers investigated how a class of 3rd and 4th graders came to understand disciplinary points of view on heat, heat transfer, and the particulate nature of matter. Through a series of planned and unplanned encounters, official versions of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the particulate view of matter were juxtaposed with varied domains of experience of heat transfer and phase change in water. We analyze the children's discourse to examine how they populated these phenomena with meaning and what they learned in the process. We conclude by describing key principles and a conundrum that emerged from this research.     

The Role of Set for Variability in Irregular Word Reading: Word and Child Predictors in Typically Developing Readers and Students At-Risk for Reading Disabilities

ABSTRACT

In a quasiregular orthography like English, children inevitably encounter irregular words during reading. Previous research suggests successful reading of an irregular word depends at least partially on a child’s ability to address the mismatch between decoded form and stored word pronunciation, referred to as a child’s set for variability, and the word’s relative transparency, measured here using a spelling to pronunciation transparency rating. Item-level analyses were used to explore the relationship between general child performance on the set for variability mispronunciation task, word specific set for variability (predicting reading of that word), spelling to pronunciation transparency rating, and irregular word reading. Significant predictors included general word reading, general set for variability performance, and item-specific set for variability performance; word frequency and spelling to pronunciation transparency rating; and an interaction between word reading and the transparency rating. Results underscore the importance of considering both general and item-specific factors affecting irregular word reading.     

Action research: A situated perspective

Rigoberta Menchú has become an icon for the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination. For many academics and activists around the world, the accusations of lying made against Ms. Menchú by David Stoll brought into sharp focus the politics of "truthmaking" and the absolutist categories of fact and fiction. In this attempt to discredit Ms. Menchú, and through her, the Mayan experience of genocide by the Guatemalan military and its U.S. sponsors, important questions have been raised about how and when Third World women can speak, the conditions under which they will be heard, and the strategies used to silence them. In this paper, the author draws upon some of the lessons of the Rigoberta Menchú case to examine the politics of truth making in Canada in a recent controversy regarding a speech she made criticizing American foreign policy and urging the women's movement to mobilize against America's War on Terrorism. The highly personalized nature of the attacks on the author by political and media elites sought to accomplish a closing down of public space for informed debate about the realities of U.S. foreign policy and to silence dissent. Repeatedly emphasizing her status as an immigrant outsider, this controversy also contributed to the (ongoing) racialization of people of color as a treacherous "enemy" within the nation's geographical borders, against whom "Canadians" had to be mobilized.     

Primary school children's health-enhancing physical activity patterns: the school as a significant environment?

The moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) of 70 children (age 8.6 years; 40 boys) was measured and gender and age differences were compared. Boys spent 28 minutes per day more than girls in MVPA (p=0.02, d=0.54), and younger children accumulated 24 minutes more MVPA than older peers (p=0.0001, d=0.91). Similar gender and age-related trends were apparent during segmented periods of the day. The majority of daily MVPA was accrued during school-related time (56.4±9.1%; p=0.0001, d=1.57). The findings reinforce the significance of schools as key environments for MVPA participation and promotion.