Using Personal Narratives for Curriculum Development about Substance Abuse and Older Adults

This article reports on a project to sensitize graduate social work students taking courses in substance abuse to the needs of older adults. Graduate social work students at a major urban school of social work in the Northeast were recruited and trained to interview older adults with a history of substance abuse problems regarding their life experiences. The authors developed educational vignettes based on the interviews and curriculum units based on these vignettes to be incorporated into the substance abuse curriculum. The challenges and rewards of engaging students in the process of developing educational vignettes based on older adults lived experiences are also discussed.     

Innovative activities for teaching anatomy of speech production

Courses in anatomy have traditionally relied on lectures and cadaver dissection laboratories. In speech and hearing sciences, there tends to be less access to cadavers than in medical schools and other allied health professions. It is more typical to use anatomical models, diagrams and lecture slides. Regardless of the resources available, anatomy is a subject that lends itself to hands‐on learning. This article briefly reviews teaching methods and describes a variety of innovative activities to enhance learning of anatomical concepts and clinical relevance of anatomy for speech production. Teaching strategies and activities were developed to capitalize on students' multimodal learning preferences as revealed by responses to a survey administered to 49 undergraduates in the beginning of an anatomy of speech production course. At the end of the semester, students completed a second survey. A five‐point Likert scale was used to assess the usefulness of each activity as a learning tool or level of clinical relevance and the level of enjoyability. The responses were overwhelmingly positive with level of usefulness and level of clinical relevance rated higher on average than the level of enjoyment. Anat Sci Educ 3:234–243, 2010. © 2010 American Association of Anatomists.     

The role of feedback from phonology to orthography in orthographic learning: an extension of item‐based accounts

Skilled readers were trained to recognise either the oral (n=44) or visual form (n=40) of a set of 32 novel words (oral and visual instantiation, respectively). Training involved learning the ‘meanings’ for the instantiated words and was followed by a visual lexical decision task in which the instantiated words were mixed with real English words and untrained pseudowords, and the instantiated words were to be considered as words. The phonology‐to‐orthography consistency (feedback consistency) of the instantiated words was manipulated to investigate the role of feedback from phonology in orthographic learning. Masked consonant and vowel‐preserving form primes were used in the lexical decision task as probes of orthographic learning. Feedback‐consistent instantiated words were recognised significantly faster in lexical decision than feedback‐inconsistent instantiated words, and facilitation was significantly greater from consonant‐preserving than vowel‐preserving primes for orally but not visually instantiated words. The results support the hypothesis that orthographic representations based on a consonant frame can be generated from the speech signal before encountering the printed forms, and that feedback from phonology is involved in the early stages of orthographic learning.     

Children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship and their school adjustment: the mediating role of attention difficulties

This study examined the role of attention difficulties as a mediator of associations between children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship and their school adjustment in a sample of two hundred and sixteen 6-year-old children. Consistent with hypotheses, findings from structural equation models indicated that observer ratings of children's insecure representations of interparental relationships in a story completion task predicted computerized task assessments and parent reports of children's attention difficulties 1 year later. Children's attention difficulties, in turn, were associated with concurrent levels of school problems and increases in school problems over a 1-year period as indexed by teacher reports. Attention difficulties accounted for an average of 34% of the association between insecure internal representations and school problems.     

Social Class Dialogues and the Fostering of Class Consciousness

How do critical pedagogies promote undergraduate students’ awareness of social class, social class identity, and social class inequalities in education? How do undergraduate students experience class consciousness-raising in the intergroup dialogue classroom? This qualitative study explores undergraduate students’ class consciousness-raising in an intergroup dialogue on social class at a large, private Northeastern university. Analyses of weekly student journals are offered to expand upon our knowledge of undergraduate students’ social class experiences in higher education contexts, as well as illuminate positive impacts that intergroup dialogue pedagogy has on students’ class consciousness-raising in the intergroup dialogue classroom.     

Harnessing Teacher Potential as Israel Education Curriculum Developers

In this article I investigate how one group of teachers deliberated about Israel education with the intention to “modify the myth” as they engaged in curriculum reform. I begin from the idea that curriculum development should be an in-house endeavor that encourages faculty to embrace their roles as curricular decision-makers. Participants readily shared insights and suggestions from personal experiences and practices and explored goal language for teaching a critical Israel. However, moving from individual reflection to practical decision-making proved complicated due to factors stemming from personal and professional identities, school structure and culture. I consider implications for harnessing teacher potential as Israel education curriculum developers.