Cultural Capital: A Thesaurus for Teaching Design

This article seeks to unravel what is hypothesised as being at the root of design education: the cultural capital of design educators. The premise is that capital is developed within the design learning environment: that is, designers‐to‐be and educators‐to‐be are encultured into design while studying, the same way that parents enculture children into families, or families and friends enculture young people into society. This article begins by introducing the concept of cultural capital, a body of knowledge that acts as an asset in particular situations; our study focuses on knowledge that is useful to being a designer and design educator. We continue by exploring what kinds of capital designers have and what role this capital plays in the educational setting. Four key themes are identified across the cultural capital of 19 design educators from different geographical locations in the Western world. These themes result from analysing educators' intimate narratives, which reveal some of the values, beliefs and actions inherent to design. Furthermore, the themes illustrate a sampling of the design educators’ thesaurus: that is, what design educators draw upon for teaching and designing.     

Practices that support the transition to public preschool programs: Results from a National Survey

The number of children participating in public school preschool programs has steadily increased over the last two decades. While the use of specific practices to support the transition to kindergarten has received a great deal of attention, there are little data on the use of transition practices by public school preschool teachers to support children's entry into the public school preschool setting. This article presents findings from a national sample of 2434 public school preschool teachers on the use of 25 transition practices to support the transition of young children into public school preschool programs. The study represents a collaborative extension of the National Center for Early Development and Learning (NCEDL) Kindergarten Transition Survey [Pianta, R. C., Cox, M. J., Taylor, L., & Early, D. (1999). Kindergarten teachers’ practices related to the transition to school: Results of a national survey. Elementary School Journal, 100(1), 71–86]. Public school preschool teachers reported using an average of 12.81 of the 25 transition practices included in the survey, with a total of 12 of the 25 transition practices reportedly in use by 70% or more of teachers responding to the survey. Findings from this study indicate that three variables – training on the use of specific transition practices, classroom composition, and school context – were related to the use of transition practices by public school preschool teachers.     

Examining the Validity of Behavioral Self-Regulation Tools in Predicting Preschoolers' Academic Achievement

Research Findings: The current study investigated the predictive utility of teacher-rated, observed, and directly assessed behavioral self-regulation skills to academic achievement in preschoolers. Specifically, this study compared how a teacher report (the Child Behavior Rating Scale), an observer report (the Observed Child Engagement Scale), and a direct assessment (the Head–Toes–Knees–Shoulders task) relate to early math and literacy skills. The sample consisted of 247 children from 31 preschool classrooms. Trained research assistants observed a subsample of 104 children. Results indicated significant positive relationships for teacher-rated and directly assessed behavioral self-regulation for early math and literacy skills. Teacher ratings were the strongest predictors of literacy, and the direct assessment emerged as the strongest predictor of math. Observed behavioral self-regulation was not significantly related to either academic domain. Practice or Policy: Discussion focuses on the domain specificity of behavioral self-regulation assessments and the importance of utilizing multiple measurement tools when assessing behavioral self-regulation and its relations to early achievement.     

Validation of a brief measure of teachers’ perceptions of school climate: relations to student achievement and suspensions

Based on theory and research on learning environments, the Delaware School Climate Survey–Teacher/Staff (DSCS–T/S) was developed to provide schools with a brief, psychometrically sound measure of teachers’ perceptions of school climate. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses, conducted on a sample of 5,781 teachers, support staff, administrators and other staff in 132 schools, showed that a bifactor model consisting of seven specific factors best represented the data. Those factors were Teacher–Student Relations, Student–Student Relations, Teacher–Home Communication, Respect for Diversity, School Safety, Fairness of Rules, and Clarity of Expectations. Measurement invariance was found across grade levels (i.e., elementary, middle, and high schools) and subgroups of respondents (i.e., teachers, instructional support staff and noninstructional staff). As evidence of concurrent validity across grade levels, nearly all scores, aggregated at the school level and correlated significantly and negatively with suspensions/expulsion rates and positively with academic achievement. The DSCS–T/S is likely to be useful to schools interested in assessing school climate and the effects of various programs, such bullying prevention programs, that target the seven dimensions of school climate measured.     

Causality dilemma: creating a twenty-first century university archive

For its fifteenth anniversary, the Jay Sexter Library at Touro University Nevada (TUN) sought ways to capture its institutional history by founding an archive. Among many challenges, the library struggled to convince the administration of the importance of an archive. To generate interest in TUN''s history, a task force comprising library, executive administration, and advancement staff hosted and recorded a panel event with some of the university''s original faculty, staff, and administration. By having this event, new TUN employees were able to experience the shared knowledge of TUN''s early days, and the library was able to create and preserve its own institutional history.     

Exploring library service models at Fudan University and Appalachian State University: Experiences from an International Librarian Exchange program

In 2008, Fudan University Library (FDUL) in Shanghai and Belk Library and Information Commons at Appalachian State University (ASU) in Boone, North Carolina created a three-year librarian exchange program. The first pair of librarian exchanges occurred during the 2009–2010 academic year, with the Appalachian State librarian traveling to Fudan for five weeks during the Fall of 2009, and the first librarian from Fudan traveling to Appalachian State for five months in the spring and summer of 2010. This paper documents how the first exchanges revealed interesting similarities and differences in the academic library service models between the two universities which are illustrative of general similarities and differences between Chinese and American academic library services. The paper also discusses how any academic library can benefit from the experience of a librarian exchange program with a partner library in another country.

The experience gained from these first exchanges confirms on an international level the basic assertion that a major role of an academic library is to support the university’s curriculum.

Moreover it can be extrapolated from discussions held between librarians of the two institutions that in both the United States and China the curriculum evolves in response to reforms on campus and to changing trends within the country’s education system. It was also determined that the modes of library services in both cultures change as new technologies arise and that the pace of technological change within academic libraries is rapid and ongoing. Participants in the exchange discovered that there are strengths and weaknesses in both the ASU and FDUL service models and that the librarians from both systems can learn from one another and absorb best practices from their exchange partners. This paper reflects the views and experiences of the exchange librarians (Shi and Johnson) and also author Shao, who is a Chinese national working as a faculty fellow librarian at Appalachian State University.