The Importance of Making the Well-Being of Children in Poverty a Priority

Hurricane Katrina exposed to the world the side of America that is often ignored or forgotten—the side of America where people live in poverty and struggle to meet their most basic needs. This article focuses primarily on children in Mississippi and highlights the effect that poverty has on children’s well-being at an early age and future academic success. It also provides evidence for the importance of funding high-quality pre-k programs and parental training to ensure they begin the process of preparing their children for success, not only in Mississippi but in the other states that are leaving their children behind. Finally, with the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind in 2007, recommendations are made for refocusing the premise of the law from accountability and high stakes testing to meeting the needs of all children so they can truly be successful in school.     

Write Now! Using reflective writing beyond the humanities and social sciences

Writing is an important teaching and learning tool that fosters active and critical thinking. There are multiple pressures for disciplines outside the humanities and social sciences to integrate writing in their courses. The shift from teaching solely discipline-specific skills to including writing in a meaningful way can be a daunting process. An instructor and education reference librarian at a public, four-year research university infused an urban planning course with reflective writing exercises. The collaboration proved effective in increasing students’ perceived writing abilities and active thinking via increased immediacy, frequency of writing and active learning.     

How do Students Feel about Grammar?: The Framework and its Implications for Teaching and Learning

Grammar's place in English teaching seems to be constantly under review. This paper reflects on the status and methods of grammar teaching at the moment. In particular, it explores both the positive and negative impact of the Key Stage 3 Framework for Teaching English on teaching and learning. It goes on to analyse the writer's experiences of teaching grammar as a student teacher, and asks whether the methods we are using today are adequate for the needs of young writers.     

Entering and exiting a teacher preparation program: What happens in between?

In determining whether graduates of the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program at Southern Oregon University were developing the necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions to teach, faculty members found themselves examining their own practice. This is just what Goodlad (1988) suggested we do: clarify our own beliefs in order to better understand our teacher preparation program. We discovered that the development of the MAT program is primarily shaped by the people who teach within the program. Who we are as people, influences who we are as teachers and, who we are as teachers influences the nature of the teacher preparation program. This discovery underscored the importance of our efforts to steward the development of our students’ personhood as well as their knowledge and skills.     

The PhD – is it out of alignment?

ABSTRACT

Globally there is recognition that doctoral programmes need to offer the opportunity for career pathways beyond academia, as PhD graduates are entering a range of careers. Consequently, some doctoral programmes now provide opportunities to develop a broader skill set. However, most PhD programmes in the United Kingdom and Australasia still concentrate on disciplinary knowledge and developing research skills. Moreover, the assessment has remained narrowly focused on a written thesis and an oral examination. Here we apply the notion of ‘constructive alignment’ to doctoral education and find that, even in terms of preparing PhD graduates for academic and research careers, the curriculum lacks opportunities to develop and assess relevant skills. The situation is even more extreme for wider careers beyond academia. To achieve alignment, we suggest providing more structured learning opportunities and personalised professional development plans with formative portfolios. If wanting true alignment in the PhD, a portfolio would be the summative assessment, but this is likely a step too far for a conservative academy.     

What’s in a word? Practices associated with ‘feedforward’ in higher education

Abstract

The term ‘feedforward’ is increasingly employed in higher education, and this paper focuses on the way in which it fits into contemporary debates about feedback and its impact on practitioners. Semi-structured interviews were used to investigate the practices academics associate with feedforward and the ways in which their intentions and understandings varied. The term resulted in practices being framed as a process and prompted academics to consider the points in the future when students were expected to deploy information and improve. Three future horizons were identified: the ‘within-module’ future horizon dominated, while the challenges of ‘beyond-module’ and ‘beyond-programme’ horizons became apparent. Written comments, guidance, formative assessment and design practices were associated with feedforward, comprising both transmission and student-focused approaches. It is concluded that the modular system restricts longer-term future horizons and sustainable practices, and more must be done to address the divide between theoretical and practitioners’ perspectives.     

Training in phonological strategies improves Chinese dyslexic children’s character reading skills

This study investigated Chinese dyslexic children’s efficiency in employing phonological strategies (i.e. the use of orthography-phonology correspondence rules) in reading and the effectiveness of training phonological strategies in improving Chinese dyslexic children’s reading performance. An Experimental Group of 15 Chinese dyslexic children received a five-day intensive training in phonological strategies while a comparable Control Group did not. The results showed that Chinese dyslexic children did not use the phonological strategies as efficiently as Chinese average readers, and the training programme was effective in significantly improving the Experimental Group’s reading performance. This suggests that Chinese dyslexic children can benefit from training in phonological strategies.     

The synergy of minority student persistence and faculty renewal

In response to increased student assessment and accountability concerns, colleges and universities have been called on to increase their efforts to improve the retention rates of an increasingly diverse student body. This article outlines a synergistic strategy for promoting minority student persistence through faculty renewal efforts that encourage faculty to question their cultural beliefs and academic values concerning the teaching and learning enterprise.Dr. Kay F. Norman is currently with Delaware State University where she is Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching. She also teaches graduate courses in Educational Assessment and Special Education Administration and Supervision. She holds an Ed.D. in Higher Education Administration with emphasis in Student Services from Texas Southern University. Her research interests are in student retention, assessment, and effective teaching. James Norman, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Education at Delaware State University's School of Education. He is a graduate of Ohio State University. Dr. Norman's research interest include special education monitoring and compliance issues, and behavioral management systems.     

The Long and Winding Road from Promise to Fulfilment in Science Among Gifted Females in Israel

A long and winding road awaits gifted females in Israel in their quest to actualize their potential in the sciences. The present state of affairs can be pieced together from a series of studies on various aspects related to the development in the sciences of females in general and gifted females in particular. Gender differences observed in the participation of students in challenging science programs and in their consequent achievement can be attributed to cognitive differences, to environmental and cultural emphasis, or to an interaction between cognitive and environmental factors, reflected in different preferences for methods of inquiry and differences in styles of problem solving. Examples of recent efforts in Israel that attempt to deal with observed gender differences and encourage females to fulfil their talents include group counseling programs, such as “Trapped in Blue and Pink” and instructional programs integrating counseling, such as “Na'aleh — Girls toward degrees in engineering” and a crosscultural intervention program for enhancing gifted females' achevement in the sciences via reattribution training.