Classifying the Context Clues in Children's Text

This study aimed to determine which types of context clues exist in children's texts and whether it is possible for experts to identify reliably those clues. Three experienced coders used Ames’ clue set as a foundation for a system to classify context clues in children's text. Findings showed that the adjustments to Ames’ system resulted in 15 clues that can be used to capture the majority of clues found in children narrative and expository text. This study adds to the limited empirically validated systems available for classifying different context clues. A usable classification of context clues has application to reading research that considers or controls for text factors as well as teaching reading strategies in K–12 classrooms.     

Characteristics of Early Care and Education Collaboration Associated with Success

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: In this non-experimental study, the research team analyzed data from a randomly selected sample of child care programs in Maryland and Vermont to understand what characteristics contribute to collaboration success. The team also examined the relationship between collaboration success and measures of child care program quality. We found positive correlations between collaboration success – defined as programs’ use of collaborative strategies, structural indicators of quality, and QRIS ratings – and programs’ collaboration administration and collaboration relationships. In addition, programs that used more collaboration strategies had higher ratings on the state’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). Policy or Practice: Policies designed to encourage early childhood collaborations should support strong administrative processes among collaborators and provide specific guidance on building strong relationships among child care and early education administrators. Future research is needed to determine the causes of the associations. Research should focus on how policies can broaden the reach of federal and state programs that promote collaboration to include programs that have lower QRIS ratings or programs that opt out of these state systems.     

Component skills affecting elementary students’ informational text comprehension

This study was conducted to examine the factors that influence informational text comprehension and to determine how these vary for students with higher and lower component skills. The sample included 177 students in grades 3–5. Regression analyses were used to predict informational text comprehension with decoding efficiency, vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge, and intrinsic motivation. This model, that also included age and grade as control variables, explained 62.5 % of the variance in informational text comprehension. Each component skill explained unique variance, and vocabulary knowledge accounted for the largest portion. Next, we examined whether the factors contributed differently to informational text comprehension for students with higher and lower component skills. Overall, the regressions were better predictors for students with higher than those with lower component skills. For students with lower component skills, motivation and vocabulary were consistent predictors, whereas vocabulary and decoding efficiency were consistent predictors for students with higher component skills. The findings indicate multiple factors are important for informational text comprehension, particularly vocabulary, and research should examine this topic for different types of readers.     

Bringing Total Quality Improvement into the college classroom

This paper describes a recent effort to infuse the Total Quality Improvement (TQI) approach, popularized by Deming and others, into an upper-division, junior-senior economics course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The process of infusing TQI into instruction has received relatively little attention. Most efforts to bring TQI into higher education focus on improving administrative operations and establishing courses and programs for students to learn how to apply TQI in their future jobs. The challenge is in using TQI to help students realize their potential for learning in traditional courses.The TQI instruction approach developed for use in the course had three major elements. Customer Focus is represented by the proficiencies emphasized in the course and expected of graduating economics majors. Student Involvement is represented by team-centered research projects whose purpose is to enhance the proficiency of creating new knowledge. Continuous Improvement is represented by ongoing student evaluations of the course and instructor, carried out by a student team.After discussing the motivation for adopting this approach and the independent development of the concept of proficiencies in the economics major, the paper moves on to discuss the planning, implementation, and execution of the course. Particular attention is given to discussing the operation of the teams and the development of a multi-faceted ongoing evaluation process to assess the effectiveness of the TQI Instructional Approach.The evaluation results indicate strong student satisfaction with the TQI orientation of the course, while at the same time pointing out ways of improving what was done.The author is grateful to Jacob O. Stampen and Mark Finster for helping him learn about TQI, and to Ian Hau whose seminar stimulated this effort to infuse TQI into the classroom. Helpful comments on a draft of this paper came from Jacob O. Stampen, Maury J. Cotter, Charles A. Liedtke, Paul Weiss, and Michael L. Williamson. Special thanks for generating much of the underlying data go to the Evaluation Team of Kevin Brumm, Kimberly Klatt, and John Kittilstad, and to the Proficiency Team of Evan Anderson, Deana Lynn Grobe, and Tom Yale. Ilona Loser and Kris Feggestad assisted in assembling the results of the surveys. Suzanne Vinmans handled the typing, Vicki Szypulski made the visuals, and Elaine Moran provided helpful editorial suggestions. Laura A. Guy, Data and Program Library Service, facilitated access to the Current Population Survey tape used by several teams, and Kurt Neuwirth, Social Science Microcomputer Laboratory, created a user-friendly approach to the Current Population Survey data.     

Motion detection, letter position encoding, and single word reading

Recent research has shown that many people with dyslexia find it unusually difficult to detect flickering or moving visual stimuli, consistent with impaired processing in the magnocellular visual stream. Nonetheless, it remains controversial to suggest that reduced visual sensitivity of this kind might affect reading. We first show that the accuracy of letter position encoding may depend on input from the magnocellular pathway. We then suggest that when children read, impaired magnocellular function may degrade information about where letters are positioned with respect to each other, leading to reading errors which contain sounds not represented in the printed word. We call these orthographically inconsistent nonsense errors letter errors. In an unselected sample of primary school children, we show that the probability of children making “letter” errors in a single word reading task was best explained by independent contributions from motion detection (magnocellular function) and phonological awareness (assessed by a spoonerism task). This result held even when controlling for chronological age, reading ability, and IQ. Together, these findings suggest that impaired magnocellular visual function, as well as phonological deficits, may affect reading.     

Critical perspectives on Danish early childhood education and care: between the technical and the political

This paper discusses trends in contemporary Danish early childhood education and care (ECEC). Data are sourced from various policy documents, along with material from ongoing research projects in which the authors are involved. It is claimed that contemporary policy on Danish day care services has a tendency to emphasize narrow curriculum improvements and standardized testing. The democratic dimensions are still relatively strong, but at the moment these dimensions are interpreted within a skills‐and‐testing framework, which is leading to a situation where the political masquerades as the technical.     

Educational consequences of orphanhood and poverty in western Kenya

During the past decades, many developing countries have been severely hit by a combination of poverty and the HIV pandemic. However, there has been a debate about the relative contribution of these two factors. This study showed that poverty and orphanhood were two separate but interrelated factors contributing to poor schooling. There were no differentials shown based on double orphanhood or gender. We recommend that educational policies should put into consideration both poverty and orphanhood in order to increase schooling access for children affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty.