LONGITUDINAL PREDICTION OF 1ST AND 2ND GRADE ENGLISH ORAL READING FLUENCY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS: WHICH EARLY READING AND LANGUAGE SKILLS ARE BETTER PREDICTORS?

This study investigates the relation between Spanish and English early literacy skills in kindergarten and first grade, and English oral reading fluency at the end of first and second grade in a sample of 150 Spanish‐speaking English language learners. Students were assessed in kindergarten, first, and second grades on a broad bilingual academic battery that included phonological awareness, letter knowledge, vocabulary, word reading, and oral reading fluency. These measures were analyzed using hierarchal multiple regression to determine which early reading skills predicted English oral reading fluency scores at the end of first and second grade. Predictive relationships were different between English and Spanish measures of early literacy and end of year first grade and second grade English oral reading fluency. This study has important implications for early identification of risk for Spanish‐speaking English language learners as it addresses the input of both Spanish and English early reading skills and the relation between those skills and English oral reading fluency.     

“What’s the Middle Ground? Am I Ever Going to be the Perfect Teacher?:” Self-Study of a Doctoral Student’s Acculturation Process

In higher education, doctoral training has been identified as a process of stewardship development whereby individuals learn the knowledge and skills required to advance their respective disciplines. Self-study of teacher education practices is one approach that has gained the interest of doctoral students to help them understand their own development whilst also forging recommendations for others in publications. In this self-study, we worked to understand the experiences of Shrehan, a teacher from England beginning doctoral study in the USA. Shrehan had no experience teaching at the college level prior to moving to the USA, and she saw self-study as an opportunity to understand her development and acculturation into an unfamiliar system of higher education. Data were collected through journaling, critical-friend discussions, and artefacts, as well as student data in the form of surveys, exit slips, and focus-group interviews. Qualitative data analysis of Shrehan’s experiences was guided by the four stages of acculturation theory – honeymoon, culture shock, adjustment, and recovery. Shrehan’s journey emphasizes the importance of getting to know undergraduate students and building rapport as key aspects of teaching at the college level. Self-study provided Shrehan with a heightened personal-identity awareness that increased her cultural sensitivity and broadened her worldview. Results are discussed with reference to acculturation theory and future directions for research are provided.     

Personal and contextual factors related to teachers’ experience with stress and burnout

Teaching has been characterised as a stressful profession that is prone to burnout. Less is known about the specific ways in which teachers experience and navigate stressors associated with their work. This study aimed to qualitatively understand how teachers who perceive high and low levels of burnout characterise their lived experiences in school environments. Data were collected through interviews with 28 inservice teachers (11 male, 17 female) from the US Midwest who reported high- or low-burnout on a psychometric survey. Data were analysed by two experienced qualitative researchers. Results indicated that (a) low-burnout teachers perceived nurturing teaching environments, (b) high-burnout teachers perceived combative and constraining teaching environments, and (c) all teachers had to manage workplace stress. Building from these findings, we present a model for understanding how the school environment influences teacher burnout. This model highlights the importance of developing optimal working conditions that nurture teacher development.

Abbreviation: MBI-ES = Maslach Burnout Iventory-Educators Survey; IEP = Individualized Education Plan     

Remote electronic examinations: student experiences

This paper presents the findings from a small–scale experiment investigating the presentation of a synchronous remote electronic examination. It discusses the students' experiences of taking such an examination. The study confirms that the majority of participants found the experience at least as good as a conventional written examination. In addition, typing answers does not prevent students from producing answers in the time available. However, the pressure of time continues to be a major cause of anxiety for students. The paper discusses technical issues, particularly those related to the loss of communications during the 3–hour duration of the exam. Although software processes were available to save and restore students' answers throughout the examination, problems still occurred and more robust software is required.     

Extended visual fixation and distractibility in children from six to twenty-four months of age

Distractibility during extended visual fixations in children 6 months to 2 years of age was examined. A children's Sesame Street movie (Follow That Bird) was presented to children (N = 40) for a minimum of 20 min while fixation was videotaped and heart rate was recorded. Distractors (computer-generated patterns or another Sesame Street movie) were presented on an adjacent television screen. Consistent with prior research with older preschool-age children, the latency to turn toward the distractor was a function of the length of the look occurring before distractor onset. For the period immediately before distractor onset, children had a greater sustained lowered heart rate for the trials on which they continued looking at the center television monitor than for the trials on which they looked toward the distractor. This pattern of distractibility suggests attention increases over the course of a look toward the television, and that heart rate changes reflect this increase in attention.     

A theory of change for student-led academic integrity

Breaches in academic integrity are a pervasive and enduring international concern to the overall quality of higher education. Despite students being the group most affected by academic integrity policies, organisational culture is such that students tend to be passive recipients of change initiatives, rather than the drivers. To deliver a paradigm change, a theory of change framework was designed, implemented and applied to explore the viability of a student-led academic integrity society. To achieve this, a national research project involving three stages of data collection (surveys, interviews and focus groups) was conducted to obtain the perspectives of students and student representatives. The key outcome of the project has been the recent launch of an academic integrity student society, a novel initiative outside the United States of America. The theory of change framework presented here seeks to offer guidance to other institutions contemplating the viability of student-led change to academic integrity and the establishment of academic integrity student societies, in particular.     

Cleaning data: guess the olympian

This article tackles the problem of what should be done with real textual data that are contaminated by errors of recording, particularly when the data contain words that are misspelt, unintentionally or otherwise.     

School Choice and Stratification in a Regional Context: Examining the Role of Inter-District Choice

Despite the growing popularity of interdistrict choice plans over the past decade, the policy assumptions underlying their adoption have been subjected to very little empirical research. This study situates school choice within one metropolitan region, Denver, and examines the ways in which choice patterns relate to existing patterns of stratification between school districts. This regional focus offers insight into the patterns of interdistrict choice and the influence these patterns have on equity within a metropolitan region. Findings from this study indicate that relatively higher income students were more likely to take advantage of interdistrict choice, and that choice was more often used by students to exit from a less advantaged context (as measured by socioeconomic status) to a relatively more advantaged one. The article concludes with recommendations for policymakers in designing more equity-minded choice policies.     

Physical education teachers’ perceptions of perceived mattering and marginalization

Background: In many countries around the world, physical education (PE) has been identified as a marginalized subject. PE teachers have been found to feel negative consequences associated with marginality, such as stress, burnout, and early career attrition. Recent evidence also indicates that physical educators can develop a sense of perceived mattering both in relation the subject of PE and their role as that teacher of that subject. Less is known, however, about the relationship between perceived mattering and marginalization, and how teachers navigate social messages associated with each that they receive while teaching. Role socialization theory has emerged as an approach to studying teachers’ experiences in school environments, and can be used to understand their experiences with marginality and mattering.

Aims: The purpose of this study was to understand how the social environment of schools influences PE teachers’ perceptions of marginalization and perceived mattering, and how these two constructs interact.

Method: The investigation was conceptualized as an interview study, and framed using a social constructivist epistemology. Participants included 30 in-service PE teachers (16 males, 14 females) from the Midwest region of the US. Data were collected using in-depth qualitative interviews, and analyzed through a collaborative approach to data analysis that drew upon both inductive and deductive forms of analysis.

Results: Participants identified experiences with both perceived mattering and marginalization in their work, and noted that sometimes these messages were contradictory. Some participants felt the effects of marginalization as their discipline was viewed as a dispensable commodity that is only meaningful for the service it provides to other teachers (e.g. gives elementary classroom teachers a break for planning). Some of the teachers internalized their marginal status and began to see their primary function as supporting the work of teachers in other subjects. Nevertheless, the participants derived a sense of mattering by building relationships with colleagues, administrators, and students, and by advocating for the discipline. Teachers also felt validated when colleagues acknowledge their attempts to implement effective practices, but struggled when working with colleagues who are resistant to change.

Conclusions: PE teachers experience both marginalization and perceived mattering, which are shaped largely by social interactions within the school environment. This study specifically lends to the view of marginalization and perceived mattering as two constructs at opposite ends of a continuum, rather than a binary conceptualization. This suggests that it could be the summation of marginalizing experiences and those that promote mattering that lead physical educators to develop overall impressions of their role in schools. Furthermore, this study adds to the literature indicating that physical educators may eventually internalize feelings of marginalization when consistently told that they do not matter. This has implications related to the washout effect whereby teachers who no longer feel as if they are making meaningful contributions to children’s education may compromise their teaching practice.