Teachers and Polish children: capturing changes in the linguistic field

This article presents original insights into the English learning experiences of Polish children and contributes a longitudinal perspective on teachers’ relationships with them. Data from interviews conducted in 2016 with primary school teachers, Polish children and their parents are compared with outcomes from an earlier study ending in 2009, in order to examine whether teachers’ practice for their Polish children has persisted or changed. Previously, findings suggested that teachers in England are constrained by a monolingually-oriented curriculum and that they identify Polish children as a ‘model minority’. In the current study, interviews with teachers, parents and children were used to develop and question these findings. Using Bourdieuian notions of linguistic field, habitus and capital, data analysis illuminates: the changing responses of teachers to migration; the ways in which teachers’ pedagogy has adapted for children who have English as an additional language; and the fluid nature of children’s linguistic identities.     

Air Toxics Under the Big Sky: examining the effectiveness of authentic scientific research on high school students’ science skills and interest

Air Toxics Under the Big Sky is an environmental science outreach/education program that incorporates the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) 8 Practices with the goal of promoting knowledge and understanding of authentic scientific research in high school classrooms through air quality research. This research explored: (1) how the program affects student understanding of scientific inquiry and research and (2) how the open-inquiry learning opportunities provided by the program increase student interest in science as a career path. Treatment students received instruction related to air pollution (airborne particulate matter), associated health concerns, and training on how to operate air quality testing equipment. They then participated in a yearlong scientific research project in which they developed and tested hypotheses through research of their own design regarding the sources and concentrations of air pollution in their homes and communities. Results from an external evaluation revealed that treatment students developed a deeper understanding of scientific research than did comparison students, as measured by their ability to generate good hypotheses and research designs, and equally expressed an increased interest in pursuing a career in science. These results emphasize the value of and need for authentic science learning opportunities in the modern science classroom.     

Providing transparency and credibility: the selection of international students for Australian universities. An examination of the relationship between scores in the International Student Admissions Test (ISAT), final year academic programs and an Australian university’s foundation program

Throughout 2003–04 five cohorts of students in their final year of school studies in various Malaysian colleges and a group of students completing an Australian university foundation year in Malaysia sat the International Student Admissions Test (ISAT). The ISAT is a multiple‐choice test of general academic abilities developed for students whose first language is not English. Both sets of scores were examined to investigate the relationship between skills measured by the academic programs and the generic reasoning skills measured by the ISAT. The data were examined by looking at correlations and patterns of the ISAT scores, and the total academic program scores and individual subject scores. As well, multiple regression was used to examine if the ISAT could act as a predictor for academic program scores. Although the ISAT and measures of achievement in the academic programs are two completely different instruments, the study showed that: (i) the scores were positively and significantly correlated; (ii) patterns of co‐variation of the ISAT and academic program scores demonstrate a positive relationship; and (iii) there is evidence that achieving a high score in the academic programs requires high reasoning skills, as measured by the ISAT. The findings of this study indicate that the ISAT is a useful predictor of student ability for use in the university selection process for international applicants.     

Bilingual education for majority english-speaking children

A variety of second-language program options are available to anglophone children in Montreal’s public schools: French-as-a second-language (FSL), delayed and early French immersion, and full French-medium schooling. In this research, the achievement in French, English, and mathematics of two cohorts of anglophone students in each of these program options was evaluated longitudinally through grade 6 (12 years of age). The performance of these students was compared to that of comparable anglophone and francophone control groups who were attending conventional all-English and all-French schools, respectively. In terms of approximations to native-like command of French, the French-medium option was the most effective followed by the early immersion option: students in these programs were generally indistinguishable from the French Controls on all written French language tests and in mathematics. On tests of French oral skills, however, they scored below the French Controls, the extent of disparity depending on the opportunities available for social interaction with francophones. As well, no retardation in English language development was found for any of the options, even those that provided little instruction time in English. To the contrary, anglophone students scored significantly higher than English Controls on tests of English and mathematics, and in general the more concentrated the second language component, the better they performed relative to the controls on first language skills and mathematics. The apparent transfer of competence from second language to first and the bilingual advantages involved in these results are discussed in terms of time spent on the target language, the mode of instruction, and the opportunities provided for interaction with native-speaking peers.     

Secure Base Representations in Children With Asthma: Links With Symptoms,Family Asthma Management,and Cytokine Regulation

Children's perceptions of caregivers as a secure base have been linked with socioemotional outcomes, but little is known about connections to physical health. We examined whether secure base representations are associated with children's symptoms, family management strategies, and inflammatory processes in children with asthma. Participants included 308 children (ages 8–17) and one parent. Children completed a blood draw to measure asthma-related immune functions and reported on perceptions of their mothers as a secure base and their asthma symptoms. Dyads completed interviews about asthma management. Analyses revealed that children's secure base perceptions were associated with better family asthma management and lower Type 2 T-helper cell cytokine production. These findings suggest that secure base representations may be protective for children with asthma.     

Three- to Four-Year-Old Children Rapidly Adapt Their Predictions and Use Them to Learn Novel Word Meanings

Adults create and update predictions about what speakers will say next. This study asks whether prediction can drive language acquisition, by testing whether 3- to 4-year-old children (n = 45) adapt to recent information when learning novel words. The study used a syntactic context which can precede both nouns and verbs to manipulate children's predictions about what syntactic category will follow. Children for whom the syntactic context predicted verbs were more likely to infer that a novel word appearing in this context referred to an action, than children for whom it predicted nouns. This suggests that children make rapid changes to their predictions, and use this information to learn novel information, supporting the role of prediction in language acquisition.     

A review of handwriting research: Progress and prospects from 1980 to 1994

Contemporary handwriting research has focused on skilled performance, the developing capabilities of children, atypical development, the effectiveness of various letter forms, instructional techniques, and the construction and evaluation of assessment instruments. This paper critically reviews and synthesizes research conducted between 1980 and 1994 in each of these areas, providing suggestions for future research. Considerable progress was made during this time period in understanding the processes involved in handwriting control and development as well as in teaching students with handwriting difficulties. In addition, advances in theory, experimental procedures, on-line recording devices, and computerized instructional programs resulted in an increased level of sophistication. Thus, the prospects for future research in this area are promising.     

Children''s Beliefs about Listening: Is It Enough to Be Still and Quiet?

This study examined children's conception of listening and their performance as listeners, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children were interviewed for their conceptions of good listening, their beliefs about appropriate actions for confused listeners to take, their attributions of responsibility for a listener's confusion, their reports of how speakers and listeners feel during communication breakdown, and their ability to detect inconsistencies during a comprehension-monitoring task. Results indicated that older children relied less on behavioral orientation and more on attempts to comprehend and other criteria in their definitions of good listening. Children believed that appropriate listening responses depend on the situation, and there was a developmental increase in asking the speaker a question and listening more carefully. With age, children also tended to report more complex negative emotions for listeners and speakers experiencing a breakdown in understanding. Children recalled incongruent material more than congruent material on the comprehension-monitoring task.     

Comparing first- and third-person perspectives in early elementary learning of honeybee systems

Prior literature has begun to demonstrate that even young children can learn about complex systems using participatory simulations. This study disentangles the impacts of third-person perspectives (offered by traditional simulations) and first-person perspectives (offered by participatory simulations) on children’s development of such systems thinking in the context of the emergent complexity of honeybee nectar foraging. Specifically, we worked with three first-grade classrooms assigned to one of three conditions—instruction through use of a first-person perspective only, third-person perspective only, and integrated instruction—to engage ideas of complex systems thinking. In each condition, systems concepts were targeted through instruction and assessment. The integrated and third-person classrooms demonstrated significant gains while the first-person classroom showed gains that were not statistically significant, suggesting that third-person perspectives play a critical role in how children learn systems thinking. This work also puts forth a novel assessment design for young children using multiple-choice questions.

     

Analyzing Instructionally Focused Education Systems: Exploring the Coordinated Use of Complementary Frameworks

ABSTRACT

Public school districts have been operating under a decade’s long press to move beyond functioning as engines of access-oriented mass public schooling to functioning as instructionally focused education systems pursuing educational excellence and equity. This press has researchers developing analytic frameworks useful for examining different ways that districts are responding. Even so, limitations in individual frameworks suggest a need to explore the coordinate use of complementary frameworks to support more comprehensive examinations of districts. This analysis explores the coordinated use of a “coupling framework” and a “systems framework” to analyze efforts in two districts to improve educational quality and to reduce disparities. Findings suggests that the coordinated use of the coupling and systems frameworks supports deeper analyses of instructional organization and management than either framework would on its own, and that further incorporating quality and equity frameworks would support still-deeper analyses. From the perspective of this issue of the Peabody Journal of Education (PJE), the implication is that elaborating new institutional theory to capture micro-level variation in response to macro-level dynamics is but one challenge faced by organizational researchers in education, and that the deeper challenge lies in considering alternative world views—paradigmatic assumptions—underlying the use of singular and complementary analytic frameworks.