Examining the impacts of the structures writing intervention for teaching fourth-grade students to write informational text

Reading and Writing - Expository writing may be especially difficult for elementary grade students due to lack of background knowledge and unfamiliar text structures. A text structure writing...     

Testing the efficacy of team teaching

This study examines differences between team-taught and solo-taught sections of a graduate introductory course on research and statistics in terms of student perceptions and achievement. Factor analysis of survey data confirmed three factors: comfort with research and statistics; the relationship of research and statistics to work; and interest in research and statistics. Pre- and post-survey and achievement data were gathered, as were demographic data. T-test and MANCOVA results indicated: no significant achievement differences based on teaching format; a significant pre-post difference for all students on one factor (comfort with research and statistics); and only one significant difference (relationship between work and research and statistics) based on learning environment.     

The role of word decoding,vocabulary knowledge and meta‐cognitive knowledge in monolingual and bilingual low‐achieving adolescents' reading comprehension

In this study, we analysed the relationships between word decoding, vocabulary knowledge, meta‐cognitive knowledge and reading comprehension in low‐achieving adolescents and examined whether the strength of these relationships differed between Grade 7 and 9 students and between monolingual and bilingual students. Tests were administered to 328 students in Dutch prevocational education. Multilevel analyses showed positive effects of vocabulary and meta‐cognitive knowledge on reading comprehension that were consistent across grades and across monolinguals and bilinguals. Additionally, we found a positive effect of word decoding for seventh graders, but no effect for ninth graders. There was also a positive effect of bilingualism on reading comprehension when vocabulary differences were controlled. This finding suggests that for bilingual students, reading comprehension is hampered by limited second‐language vocabulary knowledge and that these students will profit more from an increase in vocabulary knowledge than their monolingual peers. The results underline the importance of vocabulary and meta‐cognitive instruction for low‐achieving adolescents.     

Multidisciplinary Decision Making Through Experiential Learning: Perspectives from Practical Trials

Recently many business management programs in institutions of higher learning have undergone significant change in orientation, content, and delivery. In order to ensure that the graduates acquire the education and skills needed in the organizations of the future, these institutions have attempted to bridge theoretical underpinnings with practical content. In so doing, administrators and instructors have given more emphasis to deliberate integration of discipline-specific material. In this article we draw on previous research in both adult and experiential learning to develop an innovative approach for role-playing using case studies in management education. However, unlike the traditional use of cases, our approach builds an experience around the case study company by surrounding learners with additional props to use in the decision-making process. We describe an experiential learning process that provides an opportunity for integration while capitalizing on the characteristics of adult learners. We have used the approach successfully in MBA programs in both Canada and the United Kingdom to challenge students to resolve some of the complex, multi-dimensional issues facing today's organizations. We have also found this approach to be transferable to other learning situations.     

Effects of antibullying programs on teachers’ interventions in bullying situations. A meta‐analysis

Even though teachers are key figures of a program's effectiveness, most intervention studies have not focused explicitly on the effects of antibullying programs at teacher level. We conducted a meta‐analysis into the effects of school‐based antibullying programs on determinants of teacher intervention, including teachers’ attitudes towards bullying, their self‐efficacy and knowledge regarding intervention strategies, and the effects on teachers’ bullying intervention itself. Following the PRISMA guidelines, 13 peer‐reviewed papers were retrieved that reported outcomes on teachers, staff, and students (N = 948, 2,471, and 138,311, respectively). Antibullying programs had a significant moderate effect on determinants of teacher intervention (g = 0.531) and a significant small to moderate effect on teacher intervention in bullying situations (g = 0.390). Results of the meta‐analysis indicate that the effectiveness of antibullying programs may increase when components are included to reinforce teachers’ attitudes, subjective norms, self‐efficacy, knowledge, and skills towards reducing bullying in the school.     

Authentic Tasks Online: A synergy among learner,task, and technology

Fostering synergies amongst learner, task, and technology to create innovative and immersive distance learning environments runs counter to the widespread practice of incorporating traditional classroom pedagogical strategies into Web‐based delivery of courses. The most widely accepted model of online higher education appears to be one of reductionism, whereby learning management systems facilitate the design of easily digested packets of information, usually assessed by discrete stand‐alone tests and academic assignments. This article describes a model for the development of authentic tasks that can assist in designing environments of increased, rather than reduced, complexity. It provides a robust framework for the design of online courses, based on the work of theorists and researchers in situated learning and authentic learning. It describes the characteristics of a task's design that facilitates the requirements of an entire course of study being readily satisfied by its completion, where the students make the important decisions about why, how, and in what order they investigate a problem. The article describes several learning environments that were investigated in depth in the study, and explores the synergies that exist between the learners, tasks, and technology engaged in authentic learning settings. The article leads readers to a conceptual understanding of the role of authentic tasks in supporting knowledge construction and meaningful learning, and illustrates the principles of authentic task design for online learning environments.     

Why the timing deficit hypothesis does not explain reading disability in adults

It has been proposed that the phonological coredeficit that is linked to reading failure hasas its underlying cause a deficit in temporalprocessing. In a multivariate investigationdesigned to examine the temporal processingdeficit hypothesis, thirty reading-disabled(RD) adults, thirty-two normally achievingadults and thirty-one normally achievingchildren (reading-level controls) wereadministered a comprehensive battery thatincluded a wide range of timing tasks, inaddition to reading and phonological measures. Although adults with RD displayed overallperformance that was below that of normallyachieving adults on most of the timing tasks,their performance was not differentiallyinfluenced by rate of stimulus presentation. Although the RD adults displayed the typicalpattern of impaired phonological awareness andpseudoword reading relative to reading-levelmatched children, the reading-disabled adultsoutperformed the children on the timing tasks. Finally, with the exception of continuousnaming, the timing tasks shared little variancewith phonological sensitivity and contributedlittle unique variance to word reading. Although these findings undermine the timingdeficit hypothesis, they do provide evidencefor the involvement of naming deficits inreading disability.     

A Study of Home Emergent Literacy Experiences of Young Latino English Learners

This empirical study explored the home environment literacy practices of young Latino English learners and their families. The participants were 217 incoming Kindergarten Latino EL students and parents. The data collection included a completed HLEQ by the parents. In addition, children were administered the PPVT, the preLAS, the PALS-K screening, the Woodcock Reading Mastery assessment, and the Wide Range Achievement test. All of the literacy assessments given to the children provided the researchers with comprehensive look at their literacy knowledge base. The results of this study indicate that there were two significant paths for students’ achievement: availability of books and child initiated literacy factors that were directly related to the phonological processing efforts of students.