Cultures of Undergraduate Teaching at Research Universities

Teaching-oriented faculty have received scant attention as a distinctive cultural force. Even among those who would speak on their behalf, undergraduate teachers have been treated as little more than a dependable workforce whose interests are best served by top-down proposals for enhanced recognition and reward. Findings from a five-campus study suggest a more complex reality. Of particular interest is an explicitly oppositional culture that questions both the Scholarship of Teaching model and the ethos of competitive achievement. These views echo the longstanding populist tradition within American higher education and represent a potential counterforce to the recent narrowing of faculty roles.     

Themes and Variations in Validity Theory

Should the Standards reflect the perspective that construct validity is central to all validation efforts? Is the construct-/content-/criterion-related categorization of validity evidence now obsolete? Should the definition of validity include consideration of the consequences of test use?     

A Collaborative Approach to Planning in the Content Areas for Students with Learning Disabilities: Accessing the General Curriculum

The purpose of this article is to describe a collaborative approach to planning in the content areas to include and allow students with learning disabilities access to the general education curriculum. Procedures for selecting and organizing content, determining activities, identifying accommodations and modifications necessary to enhance content learning, and assessing student performance are presented. In addition, a sample unit plan and a lesson plan are included to illustrate the outcomes of collaborative planning based on effective teaching practices.     

Generalized Discrimination of Positive Facial Expressions by Seven- and Ten-Month-Old Infants

The ability of 7- and 10-month-old infants to generalize their discrimination of facial expressions lacking featural consistency was investigated in a series of 4 experiments. Infants were habituated to models posing either prototypically positive displays (e.g., happy expressions) or positive expression blends (e.g., mock surprise). They were then tested for their ability to recognize a positive expression on the face of a novel model and to discriminate positive and negative facial expressions. Only in Experiment 1, in which infants were familiarized to a mix of happy and surprised facial expressions, did 10-month-olds demonstrate generalized discrimination of positive affect. When positive blends or happy expressions alone served as familiarization stimuli, both 7- and 10-month-old infants failed to dishabituate to a change in affective tone. 7-month-olds, in particular, showed consistent recovery of looking to the introduction of novel models. The pattern of results suggests that it is not until sometime after 7 months of age that dependence on the presence of expression-specific features for affect recognition and discrimination diminishes. By 10 months of age, however, infants are beginning to recognize the affective similarity of familiar positive facial expressions.     

Supported playgroups in schools: bonding and bridging family knowledge about transition to formal schooling

Supported Playgroups in Schools (SPinS) are a new initiative in the Australian early childhood education landscape. SPinS are playgroups hosted by a playgroup coordinator co-located on a local school site. Research has identified positive benefits of playgroup participation for children and families. However, little is known about the potential for SPinS to contribute to families’ knowledge about transition to formal schooling. This paper uses the social capital concepts of ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ to examine caregivers’ perspectives on their participation in a SPinS with potential to build parental knowledge about their child’s transition to formal schooling. Three main elements of caregivers’ participation in SPinS with such potential are identified, and these elements are mapped into a continuum of low-to-high bonding and bridging relationships to illustrate the potential for SPinS to contribute to the development of increased knowledge about transition to formal schooling by families of young children.     

Examining the Relations of the Home Literacy Environments of Families of Low SES with Children’s Early Literacy Skills

This study examined variability of the home literacy environment (HLE) using multiple measures among families of low SES. The relations of the measures to each other and to children’s early oral language skills and print knowledge were reported. Considerable variability of the self-reported HLE items and the Children’s Title Checklist (CTC) but low correlations were found among items. Children’s expressive language skills were predicted by the CTC. The number of storybooks in the home predicted variance within children’s receptive vocabulary. Concepts about Print (CAP) scores were predicted by the primary caregivers’ frequency of shared reading and the age when parents began reading to children. Children’s letter name scores were not associated with any of the HLE measures in this study. The research provides additional information about the HLE within the homes of low SES using multiple measures and how they relate differentially to children’s early language and literacy skills.