At the heart of child care: Predictors of teacher sensitivity in center-based child care

This study examined the extent to which characteristics of early childhood teachers and settings predicted observed teacher sensitivity. Participants included 41 head teachers at child care centers located in Northern California. Accreditation status, center size, and program quality were uniquely associated with teacher sensitivity. Accreditation was also associated with a number of other teacher (training, ethnic minority status, and depression) and setting characteristics (program quality, subsidies, and child ethnic minority enrollment). Other unique predictors included more teacher training, smaller center size, and perceived organizational health. Having a greater number of depressive symptoms or working in a larger center were identified as risks to teacher sensitivity, and were moderated by higher levels of teacher training and observed program quality The current study provides preliminary support for the importance of examining the ways that teacher and setting characteristics are related to teacher interactions with young children.     

Visual and orthographic information in learning to read and the influence of phonics instruction

In the Jackson and Coltheart theory of acquisition of word reading it is claimed that, near the beginning of the partial alphabetic phase of development, children have full use of abstract letter units (ALUs). This claim and less exclusive alternatives were examined. In Experiment 1, normal progress children with on average 9 months of school reading instruction, either with or without explicit phonics, read with moderate accuracy (orthographically) familiar words in upper-case letters (e.g., AND) that are visually dissimilar from their lower-case forms. Lower-case forms were read with greater accuracy but only for familiar words, there being no letter-case effect for less familiar words. Children with explicit phonics showed less impairment in reading accuracy when words were presented in upper-case form than children without such phonics. Children with on average 22 months of instruction, in Experiment 2, read relatively unfamiliar words that required some phonological mediation. Those without explicit phonics instruction read words with digraphs in unfamiliar upper case less accurately than in lower case, while those with explicit phonics showed no such letter-case difference. The results supported the view that children do not have full use of ALUs in early alphabetic reading, both children with and without explicit phonics to some extent using letter identities specific to lower case for representation of familiar words.     

Accelerating the development of reading,spelling and phonemic awareness skills in initial readers

In Experiment 1, it was found that 5-year-oldnew school entrants taught by a syntheticphonics method had better reading, spelling andphonemic awareness than two groups taughtanalytic phonics. The synthetic phonicschildren were the only ones that could read byanalogy, and they also showed better reading ofirregular words and nonwords. For one analyticphonics group the programme was supplemented byphonological awareness training; this led togains in phonemic awareness but not reading orspelling compared with the other analyticphonics group. The synthetic phonics programmewas taught to the analytic phonics groups aftertheir initial programmes had been completed andpost-tested. The group that had hadphonological awareness training did not performbetter than the other two groups when tested 15months later; this was also the case when thesame comparison was made for the the subset ofchildren that had started school with weakphonological awareness skill. Speed of letterlearning was controlled for in Experiment 2; itwas found that the synthetic phonics groupstill read and spelt better than the analyticphonics group. It was concluded that syntheticphonics was more effective than analyticphonics, and that with the former approach itwas not necessary to carry out supplementarytraining in phonological awareness.     

Developing Reading,Spelling and Phonemic Awareness Skills in Primary School Children

Phonemic awareness is beginning to become rather a buzz term in discussions about methods of teaching reading and there is widespread agreement that children need to develop this awareness in order to read effectively. It is not yet clear exactly how they should be taught this awareness and Rhona Johnston and Joyce Watson here describe their research into this issue.     

How does phonological awareness relate to nonword reading skill amongst poor readers?

This study examined phonological awareness at the level of phonemes and rhyme and related this to nonword naming ability. Poor readers were compared with 11 year old chronological-age controls and 8 year old reading-age controls. The poor reader group was impaired for chronological age in all tasks, and impaired for reading age at nonword naming and phoneme deletion. The poor readers' rhyming skills, however, were commensurate with reading age. Individual variation was observed together with exceptions to the group findings; most poor readers performed within the range of the reading-age controls on the phonological tasks and in nonword naming. Dissociations in phonological skills were evident, including indications that intact awareness of rhyme may not be a prerequisite for the development of phoneme awareness. Furthermore, phoneme awareness correlated significantly with poor readers' word and nonword reading ability, whereas rhyming skill did not. Therefore, phoneme awareness may be more important than rhyming skill in understanding reading disorders.     

难堪的沉默

I watched her draw while the dust from the country road billowed around the passenger seat window. She held the red felt-tipped pen in her slight hand like it was an extension of her self. Small squares of yellow memo pad paper were scattered in her lap.     

The development and consequences of stereotype consciousness in middle childhood

Two studies including an ethnically diverse sample of 202 children ages 6 to 10 examined the development and consequences of children's awareness of others' stereotypes ("stereotype consciousness"). Study 1 revealed that between ages 6 and 10, children's ability to infer an individual's stereotype increases dramatically. Children's awareness of broadly held stereotypes also increases with age, and children from academically stigmatized ethnic groups (African Americans and Latinos) are at all ages more likely be aware of broadly held stereotypes than children from academically nonstigmatized ethnic groups (Whites and Asians). Study 2 revealed that among children from stigmatized ethnic groups aware of broadly held stereotypes, on 1 of 2 challenging cognitive tasks and self-reported effort, diagnostic testing conditions led to stereotype threat effects.     

Two failures in computer-mediated textcommunication

The low uptake of computer text conferencing, despite its unique functionality, suggests that developers of this technology have paid insufficient attention to human factors. In Ergonomics (Human Factors Engineering) the study of untoward events such as user errors, systems failures and disasters is a widely-used and fruitful research strategy. Anomalous and unexpected events and actions likewise constitute an important source of data and insights for sociological, ethnographic and linguistic studies of human communication. In the present paper we combine these traditions, applying qualitative failure analysis to computer-mediated text conferencing. The data is drawn from two episodes of communication failure involving geographically dispersed groups engaged in different types of task. In one episode a consultative discussion aimed at the development of professional expertise collapsed in rancour. In the other, a design error was propagated, through misunderstanding, into the implementation stage of a project. The analysis has substantive implications for user training in new types of writing and reading skill and for the functional and interface design of textcommunication systems. There are also methodological implications for studies of computer mediated communications. It is argued that a surface analysis of the episodes is insufficient for full understanding of the communication failures: the record must be interpreted in the context of the practices, institutions and structures that exist in the social world outside the computerised textcommunication system.     

Educational Homogeneity in French Primary Education: a double case study

This paper reports evidence from an ethnographic study of two primary schools in a large town in Northern France. The schools are located in markedly different socio‐economic settings. One is in an affluent area near the centre while the other is situated on a run down municipal housing estate on the outskirts in an officially designated educational priority zone. Despite their widely divergent social situations the two schools are strikingly similar and can be seen to be providing homogeneous educational experience for two socially heterogeneous populations. In the second half of the paper the notion of ‘national context’ is explored and its usefulness as an explanatory theoretical concept for analysing this educational homogeneity is suggested.