The effects of three school psychological consultation modes on selected teacher and pupil outcomes

Six Kansas school psychologists structured their teacher consultation in terms of three consultative modes which varied primarily in the number of follow-up contacts. The findings indicated that follow-up contacts led to greater teacher implementation of recommendations, greater perceived pupil behavior improvement, and greater sense of cooperative planning by the teachers. These outcome differences occurred between follow-up contacts and no follow-up contacts, with outcome differences not occurring between more and less extensive contacts.     

Being ‘nice’ or being ‘normal’: girls resisting discourses of ‘coolness’

In this paper we consider discourses of friendship and belonging mobilised by girls who are not part of the dominant ‘cool’ group in one English primary school. We explore how, by investing in alternative and, at times, resistant, discourses of ‘being nice’ and ‘being normal’ these ‘non-cool’ girls were able to avoid some of the struggles for dominance and related bullying and exclusion found by us and other researchers to be a feature of ‘cool girls’ groupings. We argue that there are multiple dynamics in girls' lives in which being ‘cool’ is only sometimes a dominant concern. There are some children for whom explicitly positioning themselves outside of the ‘cool’ group is both resistant and protective, providing a counter-discourse to the dominance of ‘coolness’. In this paper, which is based on observational and interview data in one school in the south of England, we focus on two main groupings of intermediate and lower status girls, as well as on one ‘wannabe’ ‘cool girl’. While belonging to a lower status group can bring disadvantages for the girls we studied, there were also benefits.     

Disentangling the Role of Domain-Specific Knowledge in Student Modeling

Research in Science Education - This study explores the role of domain-specific knowledge in students’ modeling practice and how this knowledge interacts with two domain-general modeling...     

Creating Collaborative Partnership With Local Churches to Improve Academic Performance of K-12 Public Schools

Since their founding, the Black churches have strived to implement and fulfill their missions. These institutions acknowledge the importance to become actively involved in the community as well as engaged in the lives of young people. Black churches are faced with unique challenges every day, however, they provide significant number of resources to the communities at large. In this study, we examine the role of partnerships through local churches and its impact on low performing schools using qualitative methodology. Research shows that low performing schools are influenced positively by partnerships with Black churches.     

Succeeding in the city: Challenges and best practices on urban commuter campuses

Students who make the daily commute to urban campuses face academic and nonacademic issues not typically experienced by their suburban or rural counterparts. A veteran of multiple types of campus environments offers insight into the lives of these students and suggests strategies for helping college urbanites thrive.     

Access to postsecondary education through sign language interpreting

Despite the importance of sign language interpreting for many deaf students, there is surprisingly little research concerning its effectiveness in the classroom. The limited research in this area is reviewed, and a new study is presented that included 23 interpreters, 105 deaf students, and 22 hearing students. Students saw two interpreted university-level lectures, each preceded by a test of prior content knowledge and followed by a post-lecture assessment of learning. A variety of demographic and qualitative data also were collected. Variables of primary interest included the effects of a match or mismatch between student interpreting preferences (interpreting vs. transliteration) and the actual mode of interpreting, student-interpreter familiarity, and interpreter experience. Results clarify previous contradictory findings concerning the importance of student interpreting preferences and extend earlier studies indicating that deaf students acquire less than hearing peers from interpreted college-level lectures. Issues relating to access and success in integrated academic settings are discussed as they relate to relations among student characteristics, interpreter characteristics, and educational settings.