Early Literacy Measures for Improving Student Reading Achievement: Translating Research Into Practice

The importance of early literacy instruction and its role in later reading proficiency is well established; however, measures and procedures to screen and monitor proficiency in the area of early literacy are less well researched. The purpose of this study was to (a) examine the technical adequacy and validity of early curriculum-based literacy measures, Letter–Sound Correspondence, Onset Phoneme Identification, and Phoneme Segmentation, developed for use within the problem-solving model in the Minneapolis Public Schools and (b) describe the district-wide implementation of these measures. In general, these measures were found to have adequate reliability and validity, have moderate to moderately high correlations with criterion measures (oral reading, report cards), and be sensitive to growth across the school year. A case study of how these measures are used for screening and progress monitoring to improve reading achievement within 1 school is included. Limitations and future directions are also presented.     

The Effect of Bilingualism on the Measured Intelligence of Elementary School Children of Italian Parentage

The recency of the community college movement has prevented large scale organization and dissemination of knowledge concerning the processes and steps required to establish a community college. There is, therefore, a need for means to incorporate contemporary evidence into the curriculum of prospective administrators of higher education. The purpose of this study was to compare Higher Education Administration students’ peceptions of a logical sequence of events for establishing a community college with a sequence of events for establishing a community college as determined by practice. The Edwards’ matched-pair technique was used to rank the perceptions of the students. A sequence of twenty-nine events was selected from the literature. Each event was matched with every other, thus providing 406 decision situations. From these decisions an ordering was obtained. Using the Spearman rho correlation technique, a coefficient of 0.82 was found between the sequence of events taken from the literature and rank ordering of these events as determined by the Edwards’ matched-pair technique.     

Effects of knowledge and display design on comprehension of complex graphics

In two experiments, participants made inferences from weather maps, before and after they received instruction about relevant meteorological principles. Different versions of the maps showed either task-relevant information alone, or both task-relevant and task-irrelevant information. Participants improved on the inference task after instruction, indicating that they could apply newly acquired declarative knowledge to make inferences from graphics. In Experiment 1, participants spent more time viewing task-relevant information and less time viewing task-irrelevant information after instruction, and in Experiment 2, the presence of task-irrelevant information impaired performance. These results show that domain knowledge can affect information selection and encoding from complex graphics as well as processes of interpreting and making inferences from the encoded information. They also provide validation of one principle for the design of effective graphical displays, namely that graphics should not display more information than is required for the task at hand.     

Book review

Philosophy of Educational Research Richard Pring (2000), London and New York: Continuum.     

The textbook problem: Investigating one possible solution

This article explores the inherent problems for academic libraries in providing access to textbooks to students, the growing demand for such access by students, and presents the findings of a reserve pilot project conducted at a major Midwest university. Findings indicate the pros and cons of the pilot attempted as well as demonstrating the need for continued research and collaborative work with appropriate organizations on the campus and beyond.     

Perceptions of nurses and mothers in four studies of the peripartum period

How individuals perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others are an important part of the relationships between childbirth educators, nurses, other health-care providers, and the families they serve. In this paper, four studies are reviewed. One study focused on labor nurses' perception of their roles. Three other studies, each using a different research strategy, examined mothers' perceptions of their experiences during the peripartum period.