Distinct Factors Associated With Head Start Mothers’ Self-Report of Perceived Low Positive and High Negative Maternal Expressiveness

Research Findings: There is growing acknowledgment of the need for parenting interventions to address early-onset behavior and emotional concerns. Favorable child outcomes have been linked to parents’ responsiveness and positive expressiveness. Given the theoretical and empirical link between perceptions and actual behavior, Head Start mothers (n = 114) participated in an investigation to examine factors that may be associated with level of self-reported maternal expressiveness. Participants completed the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (Halberstadt, Cassidy, Stifter, Parke, & Fox, 1995). Analysis suggested that self-reported high negative expressiveness was linked with raising a preschooler with perceived internalizing and externalizing behaviors, high parenting stress, and obtaining a post–high school degree. A perceived view of being low in positive expressiveness, in contrast, correlated with different variables, including raising a preschooler with a diagnosed delay, not having any child receive specialized services, raising only 1 child, dropping out of high school, and not receiving behavior advice from Head Start staff. Practice or Policy: Implications for examining self-reported low positive and high negative expressiveness as separate constructs with possibly different intervention pathways are discussed.     

Implementing web 2.0 tools in the classroom: Four teachers’ accounts

In this paper, four teachers shared their experiences using the following free Web 2.0 tools with their students: Jing, Wix, Google Sites, and Blogger. The teachers found that students reacted positively to lessons in which these tools were used, and also noted improvements they could make when using them in the future.     

The Impact of GEAR UP on College Readiness for Students in Low Income Schools

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program (GEAR UP) on college readiness outcomes using a quasi-experimental design. GEAR UP is designed to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education by providing 6-year grants to states and district partnerships to provide services at high-poverty middle and high schools. Specifically, this study sought to evaluate whether 173 schools that participated in GEAR UP showed increases in the percentages of students who were prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education, as compared to students from similar, non-GEAR UP schools. Seven years (2003–2009) of matched cohort data were compiled to include all regular (e.g., nonspecial education) high schools with grade 12 enrollment as documented by the National Center for Educational Statistics. Participation in and performance on three College Board assessments that measure college readiness at the high school level (SAT, PSAT/NMSQT, and AP) as well as percent free/reduced-price lunch were used to identify comparable schools. Results showed that, overall, the GEAR UP program showed positive evidence of improving college readiness outcomes for low income students using a variety of college readiness measures.     

Collaboration to teach English language learners: opportunities for shared teacher learning

This study examines collaboration between English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers and content-area elementary school teachers, and makes the case for conceptualising teacher collaboration as an opportunity for shared teacher learning. Using a sociocultural theoretical lens, this study examines how three pairs of elementary teachers and ESOL specialists used and constructed tools for collaboration, which mediated and made visible teachers’ learning processes. Employing interpretive enquiry and cross-case analysis, we examined data from classroom observations, teacher co-planning sessions and interviews with teachers. Findings demonstrated that collaborating teachers used tools to articulate and reconceptualise teaching goals, co-construct knowledge and ultimately transform teaching practices to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. This study has implications for teacher education and ongoing professional development, by shedding light on the potential affordances of collaborative tools for teacher learning. Findings suggest that teacher education could harness these opportunities for learning by incorporating collaboration between ESOL specialists and content-area teachers as an integral part of preparing more qualified teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students.     

Sinfully Delicious Apples That You Should Never Try to Eat

Last weekend,I went apple picking.It’s one of my favorite fall traditions,and I have been going every year since I can remember.When I was a kid,my mother made a trip to the apple orchard a magical thing.She taught me how to gently twist an apple, so that it would pop off the branch without others plunking to the ground.She would point out the sun-kissed fruits at the tippy top of the trees while I climbed to get them.     

Bhupinder and Tarrant: players of the game

Abstract

Financier Maharaja Bhupinder Singh and tour manager Frank Tarrant are the two key protagonists of the inaugural Australian cricket tour to India in 1935/36 and the historical figures in this article. Their culturally atypical relationship was anomalous to the conventional imperialist paradigm and openly defied racist notions of Western supremacy and cultural incompatibility that informed and underpinned the initial expectations of the touring party. Despite their relationship being primarily driven by mutually beneficial professional and financial objectives, a genuine rapport that challenged the archetypal servant/master paradigm is evident. Press reportage from Australia, India and Britain supports the argument. The minute books of the Middlesex Cricket Club (1908–16) and the Melbourne Cricket Club (1907 and 1908) have been integral in locating information on Tarrant’s movements. Discovering the Tarrant scrapbooks (c.1918–51) at the Melbourne Cricket Club has answered many questions that have plagued previous research into the man who has remained an enigmatic mystery in cricket history. The post-colonial theories of Homi Bhabha (2012), specifically his analysis of mimicry, are employed to argue that the political agendas of the Indian royalty were evolving. Cricket, an English institution, was embraced and reconstructed by the Indian community. Indian society was rejecting the British template and opted to operate according to an increasingly nationalistic and indigenous ideology and through this process appropriated cricket, the bastion of Englishness, as its own. The Australians’ contribution to this process is interrogated, and the liberal influence of Tarrant and the Maharaja in minimizing the racial and social divide throughout the tour is evident.