Influences on teacher education student attitudes toward youth who are HIV+

The expectations, attributions, and reactions toward children and youth who have contracted HIV/AIDS warrant close attention from parents, teachers, related service personnel, and others who will interact with these students in the schools. Those who are misinformed or unaware of their beliefs may inadvertently discriminate against children and youth with the disease. This study examined factors that influence judgments about children and youth with HIV/AIDS in a sample of teacher education students. Course of infection of HIV accounted for significant differences in the participants' judgments about responsibility and blame for contracting the disease and also fearfulness and attitudes reflecting isolation for these youth. Educational professionals should be aware of the many negative attributions placed on adolescents who are diagnosed as HIV⁺ and be prepared to act as facilitators when designing appropriate interventions to assist these students. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 211–219, 2004.     

Becoming Teachers for Social Justice: Raising Critical Consciousness

This article shares processes and practices which foster students’ critical consciousness. Critical consciousness, the core of social justice teaching, is a heightened awareness of the world and the power structures that shape it. Teachers can become forces for equity and change by: challenging students to reflect critically on their beliefs and the sources of these beliefs; using text to guide students to look outwards and discover the perspectives and challenges of others; selecting texts purposefully to heighten student awareness of issues of power and equity; teaching students to read texts critically, listening carefully for the points of view of others often ignored or silenced; creating space for dialogue beyond text; and finally, making the world their classroom, blurring the boundary between schools and communities as students research the world and take steps toward change in ways that recognize and re-value our common humanity. Becoming teachers for social justice entails moving students through intentional processes and practices to foster critical consciousness in the hope of effecting change.     

Revisiting the Model Size Effect in Structural Equation Modeling

Fitting a large structural equation modeling (SEM) model with moderate to small sample sizes results in an inflated Type I error rate for the likelihood ratio test statistic under the chi-square reference distribution, known as the model size effect. In this article, we show that the number of observed variables (p) and the number of free parameters (q) have unique effects on the Type I error rate of the likelihood ratio test statistic. In addition, the effects of p and q cannot be fully explained using degrees of freedom (df). We also evaluated the performance of 4 correctional methods for the model size effect, including Bartlett’s (1950), Swain’s (1975), and Yuan’s (2005) corrected statistics, and Yuan, Tian, and Yanagihara’s (2015) empirically corrected statistic. We found that Yuan et al.’s (2015) empirically corrected statistic generally yields the best performance in controlling the Type I error rate when fitting large SEM models.     

Imaginary Indians: Representations of Native Americans in Scholastic Reading Club

Scholastic Reading Clubs are a popular and inexpensive way for teachers to build classroom libraries and for parents to purchase books for their children. The books made accessible to children through the order forms are assumed to be suitable for young readers in terms of their content, popularity, currency, and curricular relevance. Multicultural books occupy a small fraction of the selections, and books about Native Americans are essentially absent. This study examines Scholastic Reading Club order forms available over the course of a year. The quantitative and qualitative findings show that stereotypical misrepresentations of Native Americans persist and literature by Native authors and illustrators is completely lacking.     

A focused analysis of TVET: unique opportunities and strategies for investing in and engaging youth in Nicaraguan society

Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is increasingly emphasised by international education organisations. In Nicaragua, particularly, this type of engagement is viewed as a potential for boosting the economy, improving employment and building the infrastructure and sustainability of remote and marginalised communities. To date, one specific region in Nicaragua has thoughtfully engaged multiple sectors to support TVET through public–private partnerships (PPPs) and community-level networks. The data for this article were collected through in-person interviews with TVET stakeholders over a two-week site visit in support of a USAID evaluation. In addition to interviews, data collection included analyses of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of TVET providers in the region. This study considers the demographics, economics and educational realities of Nicaragua and the potential for PPPs to enhance opportunities for youth and community development.     

在线学习的理论与实践

本刊今年第3期刊登了记者对国际知名远程教育专家、加拿大阿萨巴斯卡大学特里·安德森教授的专访。安德森教授在专访中提及他和同事法希·埃劳米的新著《在线学习的理论与实践》,“希望能得到我们中国朋友的青睐和欣赏”。该书收录了16篇论文,作者全部是阿萨巴斯卡大学的教师和研究者,也都是20世纪90年代中期以来阿萨巴斯卡大学为了应对日益裁减的政府资助和生源的锐减而进行大规模教育改革的实践者和见证人,这些论文既有经验总结又有前瞻性的思考,对我国的远程教育事业不无借鉴价值。鉴于此,本刊特邀肖俊洪先生谨将该书两位主编所撰写的“引言”中的有关全书内容概要的部分译成中文,以飨读者。     

Dialect variation,dialect-shifting,and reading comprehension in second grade

The purpose of this study was to examine second graders’ (n = 680) changing spoken nonmainstream American English (NMAE) use in relation to their oral language and reading comprehension achievement. Fall NMAE production was negatively associated with fall achievement scores. NMAE production generally decreased from fall to spring. Students who qualified for the US Free and Reduced Lunch program (FARL) and who had stronger language skills were more likely to decrease their NMAE use (i.e., dialect shifting) than their peers who did not qualify for FARL or their peers with weaker language skills. Dialect shifting for a sub-sample of 102 students who used substantial amounts of NMAE at the beginning of the school year was predicted by school context, controlling for reading and language skills—in general, students who attended more affluent schools dialect shifted to a greater extent than did their peers who attended higher poverty schools. Greater dialect shifting in this group predicted gains in reading comprehension from fall to spring.