Family Engagement Practices as Sites of Possibility: Supporting Immigrant Families through a District-University Partnership

In this article, we consider the ways in which family engagement practices foster sites of possibility for immigrant families in the public schools. As demographic change leads to a growing number of new immigrant destinations and amidst increasing hostility toward immigrant communities, educational institutions play an increasingly important role in supporting these students and their families. Drawing on a study of one school district’s partnership with a local university to identify and resolve engagement gaps between immigrant and nonimmigrant families, our article discusses asset-based approaches to family engagement practices. In addition to discussing district initiatives to engage immigrant families in 2-way communication and minimize barriers to participation, we also consider the role of university partners in building sites of possibility for immigrant youth and their families. We conclude with implications for expanded efforts to develop equitable family engagement practices in districts serving immigrant communities.     

Sustaining High-Quality Teaching and Evidence-Based Curricula: Follow-Up Assessment of Teachers in the REDI Project

Research Findings: Recent research has validated the power of evidence-based preschool interventions to improve teaching quality and promote child school readiness when implemented in the context of research trials. However, very rarely are follow-up assessments conducted with teachers in order to evaluate the maintenance of improved teaching quality or sustained use of evidence-based curriculum components after the intervention trial. In the current study, we collected follow-up assessments of teachers 1 year after their involvement in the REDI (REsearch-based, Developmentally Informed) research trial to evaluate the extent to which intervention teachers continued to implement the REDI curriculum components with high quality and to explore possible preintervention predictors of sustained implementation. In addition, we conducted classroom observations to determine whether general improvements in the teaching quality of intervention teachers (relative to control group teachers) were sustained. Results indicated sustained high-quality implementation of some curriculum components (the Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies curriculum) but decreased implementation of other components (the language/literacy components). Sustained intervention effects were evident on most aspects of general teaching quality targeted by the intervention. Practice or Policy: Implications for practice and policy are discussed.     

Choice of Reading Comprehension Test Influences the Outcomes of Genetic Analyses

Vowel representations are particularly difficult for children to learn because most vowel phonemes can be spelled in several different ways. Children in Grades 1, 2, and 3 spelled nonwords with an ambiguous vowel and reported their spelling strategies. Analysis of the children's spellings and strategy reports revealed a shift in relying solely on phonological information to considering orthographic information for making vowel letter choices. Implications for vowel spelling development are discussed.     

An investigation of oral language and writing proficiency in third-grade students

Over the years, professionals have hypothesized that a positive relationship exists between children's oral language proficiency and their written language performance. This study examined the following two aspects of the relationship between oral and written language: (a) Are specific linguistic components of language more closely related than others? (b) Do groups rated high, medium, or low on written language measures differ significantly in oral language proficiency? Measures of oral and written language were administered to 77 third-grade students. Results indicated that moderate relationships existed between grammatical aspects of oral and written language. Oral language proficiency was significantly different for groups rated high, medium, and low on the basis of written language performance.     

How We Used to Build the Future: 30 Years of Collection Development Trends

This session highlighted trends in continuing resource collections and collection management throughout the 30-year period from 1985 through 2015. Electronic resources became available in the 1990s and grew in prevalence from the 2000s through the present, changing the make-up of library collections and also how libraries measure collections and collection usage. Two librarians and two vendors shared their perspectives on these changes in collection development, describing how library collections now contain a combination of older formats and older ways of collecting data, and new, electronic content and automated ways of collecting and disseminating data about collections.     

Writing and Reading Subjects: Fixing and Unfixing Identity through Close Literary Practices

For a number of years, Rebecca Luce‐Kapler and Dennis Sumara have been investigating the ways in which literary practices of close reading can help change how we think and how we remember. They have also considered how such practices might help make us more critical of normative representations of remembered experience. More recently, they have been joined by Claire Robson, who works with and investigates memoir writing. In 2009, Robson and Sumara were joined by their six older lesbian research participants at a conference held at the University of British Columbia entitled ‘Queerly Canadian: Changing Narratives’. The six women performed extracts from memoirs they had written as part of the research data and joined the researchers in offering theories and insights about the writing processes in which the group had engaged. That presentation and this paper represent the evolution of a two‐year collaboration between these researchers and the six women, who are listed as co‐authors on both the presentation and this paper.     

Classroom justice: Perceptions of fairness as a predictor of student motivation,learning, and aggression

The present study examined the relationship between students’ perceptions of distributive and procedural justice in a college course and student motivation concerning the course, affective learning in the course, and aggression toward the course instructor. Although student perceptions of both distributive and procedural justice were positively correlated with student motivation and affective learning and negatively correlated with student aggression toward the course instructor, multiple regression analyses indicated that only perceptions of procedural justice predicted the three criterion variables at a statistically significant level while distributive justice perceptions did not. Implications and suggestions for future research in classroom justice are offered.     

Routes into English teaching: beginning teachers' reflections on college‐based and school‐based Initial Teacher Education programmes

This article compares student and trainee teachers' experiences of three different routes into secondary English teaching: the standard one‐year PGCE; the newer ‘flexible’ PGCE; and the employment‐based Graduate Teacher Programme. As part of a two‐year study involving over 80 beginning teachers the authors invite students and trainees to reflect on the perceived advantages and disadvantages of their chosen route. This article focuses on a small number of interviews with individuals from the sample as they near completion of their training. It sets the findings of the study in the wider political context of New Labour's agenda for school reform and the future development of Initial Teacher Education.     

Carnosine in health and disease

Abstract

Carnosine was originally discovered in skeletal muscle, where it exists in larger amounts than in other tissues. The majority of research into the physiological roles of carnosine have been conducted on skeletal muscle. Given this and the potential for muscle carnosine content to be increased with supplementation, there is now a large body of research examining the ergogenic effects (or otherwise) of carnosine. More recent research, however, points towards a potential for carnosine to exert a wider range of physiological effects in other tissues, including the brain, heart, pancreas, kidney and cancer cells. Taken together, this is suggestive of a potential for carnosine to have therapeutic benefits in health and disease, although this is by no means without complication. Herein, we will provide a review of the current literature relating to the potential therapeutic effects of carnosine in health and disease.