Why Is This So Hard?: Ideologies of Endangerment,Passive Language Learning Approaches,and Ojibwe in the United States

This paper describes 3 language learning approaches common in many urban and rural Ojibwe communities, as well as the ideologies of endangerment that drive and sustain them. Drawing from collaborative language revitalization work with teachers, learners, and community leaders, we analyze some of the teaching and learning practices that lead to the common mismatch between language learner goals and expectations, on the one hand, and the outcomes of language learning, on the other. We outline how these 3 approaches to language learning relate to cultural identities and place-based notions of authenticity as well as to current findings in the field of second language acquisition. We then profile 2 speakers who have learned Ojibwe successfully as adults to illustrate how their success was possible largely because they were able to engage with the Ojibwe language in interactive ways that run counter to common language learning approaches. We suggest that for language revitalization efforts, and individual learners, to experience higher levels of success, greater attention needs to be paid to how ideologies of endangerment impact language learning approaches.     

Statewide Initiative to Embed Consumer Health Librarians in Public Libraries: A Case Study

In 2004 a collaborative, statewide outreach project in Delaware was undertaken where consumer health librarians were embedded in public libraries. In order to explore the effect of the embedded librarians on the quality of health information provision, unobtrusive reference visits were made to half of the public libraries in the state. The query “Do vaccines cause autism?” was posed to library staff; resources provided were recorded. In 67 percent of visits, public library staff provided authoritative health information resources. It appears the embedded librarians had a positive residual effect on the provision of authoritative health resources for addressing an ambiguous query.     

Predictors of developmentally appropriate classroom practices in kindergarten through third grade

This study was designed to (a) test the psychometric properties of a new observation measure of developmentally appropriate classroom practices in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, and (b) determine how well classroom and teacher characteristics predict developmentally appropriate classroom practices. Teacher-reported and observational data from 69 classrooms provided support for construct validity, internal consistency, and interrater agreement of the Assessment of Practices in Early Elementary Classrooms (APEEC) measure. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that classroom characteristics (grade, class size, number of children with disabilities), teacher characteristics (education level, years of experience) and teacher beliefs (developmentally appropriate beliefs and developmentally inappropriate beliefs) accounted for 42% of the variance in observed classroom practices. With all variables in the model, teacher education, grade, and beliefs in developmentally appropriate and inappropriate practice accounted for most of the variance in observed classroom practices.     

Psychometric reevaluation of the scientific attitude inventory‐revised (SAI‐II)

The central purposes of this study were to review the development and evolution of the Scientific Attitude Inventory (SAI) and then reevaluate the psychometric properties of the revised form of the SAI, the Scientific Attitude Inventory II (SAI‐II). The SAI‐II was administered to a convenience sample of 543 middle and high school students from five teachers in four schools in four school districts in San Antonio, Texas, at the beginning of the 2004–2005 school year. Confirmatory factor analysis on the full data set failed to support the existence of a 12‐factor structure (as proposed by the scale developers) or a one‐factor structure. The data were then randomly divided into exploratory [exploratory factor analysis (EFA)] validation and confirmatory [confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)] cross‐validation sets. Exploratory and confirmatory models yielded a three‐factor solution that did not fit the data well [χ² (321) = 646, p < .001; RMSEA = .061 (.90 CI = .054–.068); and CFI = .81]. The three factors were labeled “Science is About Understanding and Explaining” (13 items), “Science is Rigid” (6 items), and “I Want to Be a Scientist” (8 items). The α‐coefficients for these three factors ranged from 0.59 to 0.85. Whether these identified subscales are valid will require independent investigation. In this sample, and consistent with prior publications, the SAI‐II in its current form did not have satisfactory psychometric properties and cannot be recommended for further use. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 600–616, 2008