Statewide Initiative to Embed Consumer Health Librarians in Public Libraries: A Case Study

In 2004 a collaborative, statewide outreach project in Delaware was undertaken where consumer health librarians were embedded in public libraries. In order to explore the effect of the embedded librarians on the quality of health information provision, unobtrusive reference visits were made to half of the public libraries in the state. The query “Do vaccines cause autism?” was posed to library staff; resources provided were recorded. In 67 percent of visits, public library staff provided authoritative health information resources. It appears the embedded librarians had a positive residual effect on the provision of authoritative health resources for addressing an ambiguous query.     

Predictors of developmentally appropriate classroom practices in kindergarten through third grade

This study was designed to (a) test the psychometric properties of a new observation measure of developmentally appropriate classroom practices in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, and (b) determine how well classroom and teacher characteristics predict developmentally appropriate classroom practices. Teacher-reported and observational data from 69 classrooms provided support for construct validity, internal consistency, and interrater agreement of the Assessment of Practices in Early Elementary Classrooms (APEEC) measure. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that classroom characteristics (grade, class size, number of children with disabilities), teacher characteristics (education level, years of experience) and teacher beliefs (developmentally appropriate beliefs and developmentally inappropriate beliefs) accounted for 42% of the variance in observed classroom practices. With all variables in the model, teacher education, grade, and beliefs in developmentally appropriate and inappropriate practice accounted for most of the variance in observed classroom practices.     

Distance education in an era of eLearning: challenges and opportunities for a campus‐focused institution

The growth of eLearning technologies has blurred the boundaries of educational modes to a point where distance education programs can be offered without drawing particular notice on campus. The experience of distance education staff working in campus‐focused universities and their perceptions of their chances of successfully planning and teaching by distance should inform evaluation of a university’s quality framework. In this case study, we report on the experience of distance educators at an Australian campus‐focused university. We identify organisational structure and culture as critical success factors for quality in distance education, with technology a, perhaps surprisingly, minor consideration. While the eLearning era has opened the door to a distance education cottage industry, eLearning strategy has failed to comprehensively prepare the way for the issues unique to distance education. The paper recommends that campus‐focused universities must protect their reputation by systematically assuring the quality of their (inevitable) distance offerings.     

The Role of Education in Agricultural Projects for Food Security and Poverty Reduction in Kenya

Agricultural development projects have been promoted in many places as a feature of poverty-reduction strategies. Such projects have often been implemented without a strong in-built education component, and hence have had little success. Agricultural projects seek to improve food security by diversifying a household’s resource base and facilitating the social and economic empowerment of women. The present study presents a survey designed to assess the relationship between education level and ability to benefit from dairy-development projects in Kenya. Results reveal higher occupation and employment levels among beneficiary than non-beneficiary households. On the other hand, beneficiaries of poverty-reduction schemes require specialized training. Apart from project-specific training, the level of general education alone cannot predict the attainment of project objectives.     

Letter names, letter sounds and phonological awareness: an examination of kindergarten children across letters and of letters across children

In this study 149 kindergarten children were assessed for knowledge of letter names and letter sounds, phonological awareness, and cognitive abilities. Through this it examined child and letter characteristics influencing the acquisition of alphabetic knowledge in a naturalistic context, the relationship between letter-sound knowledge and letter-name knowledge, and the prediction of Grade 1 phonological awareness and word identification from these variables. Knowledge of letter sounds was better for vowels and for letters with consonant–vowel names than for those with vowel–consonant names or names bearing little relationship to their sounds. However, there were anomalies within each category reflecting characteristics of the individual letters. Structural equation modelling showed that cognitive ability, comprising receptive vocabulary, non-verbal reasoning, rapid automatized naming of colours, and phonological memory significantly contributed to alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness. In turn, letter-name knowledge but not phonological awareness predicted letter-sound knowledge and subsequent reading skill.This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to the first author. Thank you is extended to the participating schools and children and to Ian Newby-Clark for his orientation to AMOS. Michelle Bell, Shelly Moretti and Jodi Page have since graduated from the University of Guelph     

‘The danger of a single story:’ a reflection on institutional change,voices, identities,power, and outcomes

ABSTRACT

What role does academic development have to play in responding to radical cultural shifts in the global landscape? Whose voices and identities are contributing to institutional change? This reflective essay encompasses the perspectives of the four international panellists in the opening plenary of the International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) 2018 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, USA – Torgny Roxå on ideologies; Chng Huang Hoon on agency and empowerment; Joy Mighty on voices and identities; and Mary Deane Sorcinelli on evidence and outcomes. These perspectives set the stage for the conference, and, brought together in this paper now, they address key conference themes, offer coordinates for reflection, and pose further questions about our profession.