Validity Evidence of an Electronic Portfolio for Preservice Teachers

This study applied Messick's unified, multifaceted concept of construct validity to an electronic portfolio system used in a teacher education program. The subjects included 128 preservice teachers who recently completed their final portfolio reviews and student teaching experiences. Four of Messick's six facets of validity were investigated for the portfolio in this study, along with a discussion of the remaining facets examined in two previous studies. The evidence provided support for the substantive and generalizability aspects of validity, and limited support for the content, structural, external, and consequential aspects of validity. It was suggested that the electronic portfolio may be used as one requirement for certification purposes, but may not be valid for the purpose of assessing teacher competencies .     

A synthesis of fluency interventions for secondary struggling readers

Previous research studies examining the effects of fluency interventions on the fluency and comprehension outcomes for secondary struggling readers are synthesized. An extensive search of the professional literature between 1980 and 2005 yielded a total of 19 intervention studies that provided fluency interventions to secondary struggling readers and measured comprehension and/or fluency outcomes. Findings revealed fluency outcomes were consistently improved following interventions that included listening passage previewing such as listening to an audiotape or adult model of good reading before attempting to read a passage. In addition, there is preliminary evidence that there may be no differential effects between repeated reading interventions and the same amount of non-repetitive reading with older struggling readers for increasing reading speed, word recognition, and comprehension.     

Preschool outcomes of children of depressed mothers: role of maternal behavior,contextual risk,and children's brain activity

Children of depressed mothers are at risk for behavioral and emotional problems. Infants of depressed mothers exhibit behavioral disturbances and atypical frontal brain activity. The mechanisms by which children develop such vulnerabilities are not clear. Three-year-old children of mothers with (N = 65) and without (N = 59) a history of depression were assessed in terms of behavior problems and brain electrical activity. Children of mothers with chronic depression exhibited lower frontal and parietal brain activation compared with children of mothers without depression and those whose depression remitted. Depressed mothers reported higher contextual risk (e.g., marital discord and stress) and their children had more behavior problems. Children's frontal brain activation and contextual risk level mediated the relation between maternal depression and child behavior problems.     

Preschool emotional competence: pathway to social competence?

Preschoolers' (N = 143) patterns of emotional expressiveness, emotion regulation, and emotion knowledge were assessed. Their contributions to social competence, as evidenced by sociometric likability and teacher ratings, were evaluated via latent variable modeling, both concurrently and across time. Moderation of key results by age and sex was also explored. Emotional competence assessed at 3 to 4 years of age contributed to both concurrent and kindergarten social competence. Even early in the preschool period, contributions of emotional competence to social competence have long-term implications.     

Reading skill components and impairments in middle school struggling readers

This study investigated how measures of decoding, fluency, and comprehension in middle school students overlap with one another, whether the pattern of overlap differs between struggling and typical readers, and the relative frequency of different types of reading difficulties. The 1,748 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students were oversampled for struggling readers (n = 1,025) on the basis of the state reading comprehension proficiency measure. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses showed partial invariance among struggling and typical readers (with differential loadings for fluency and for comprehension), and strict invariance for decoding and a combined fluency/comprehension factor. Among these struggling readers, most (85 %) also had weaknesses on nationally standardized measures, particularly in comprehension; however, most of these also had difficulties in decoding or fluency. These results show that the number of students with a specific comprehension problem is lower than recent consensus reports estimate and that the relation of different reading components varies according to struggling versus proficient readers.     

Images in mirrors: Recollections,alternative explanations and modes of cognitive functioning

Students' conceptions of how objects are seen directly, and in mirrors, were explored in an analysis of their written and drawn responses to common visual phenomena depicted in cartoons with brief text. Students in Grades K-10 (n=214) completed a questionnaire and some were interviewed. Evidence was sought to support an hypothesis for increasingly sophisticated responses related to the concepts of sight, light, reflection and image. The developmental model used in this analysis was the updated SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1991; Collis & Biggs 1991). It appears from the results that different modes of functioning can interfere to produce factually incorrect recollections of experience particularly in the age group 7 to 13 years approximately. Also, this is associated with the common spurious conception that mirrors have a lateral inversion property. Explanations involving light were extremely rare and its role related to the production of an image ‘in the mirror’ but not to the perception of an image in the eyes. Specializations: science education, students' understandings of phenomena in science. Specializations: cognitive development, evaluation, mathematics and science education. Specializations: mathematics education, students' understanding of chance and data concepts.     

A synthesis of read-aloud interventions on early reading outcomes among preschool through third graders at risk for reading difficulties

A synthesis and meta-analysis of the extant research on the effects of storybook read-aloud interventions for children at risk for reading difficulties ages 3 to 8 is provided. A total of 29 studies met criteria for the synthesis, with 18 studies providing sufficient data for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Read-aloud instruction has been examined using dialogic reading; repeated reading of stories; story reading with limited questioning before, during, and/or after reading; computer-assisted story reading; and story reading with extended vocabulary activities. Significant, positive effects on children's language, phonological awareness, print concepts, comprehension, and vocabulary outcomes were found. Despite the positive effects for read-aloud interventions, only a small amount of outcome variance was accounted for by intervention type.     

Support,belonging, motivation,and engagement in the college classroom: a mixed method study

This explanatory sequential mixed methods study examined how belonging perceptions, academic motivation, and engagement might mediate the relationship between academic contextual characteristics and achievement using structural equation modeling and qualitative follow-up interviews with college students from a large, Midwestern university. In the first, quantitative phase, two hypothesized models of student belonging and motivation were tested. In line with the Self-System Model of Classroom Support for Motivation (Connell and Wellborn, in: Gunnar and Sroufe (eds.) Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology: Self-processes and Development, 1991), Model 1 hypothesized student belonging and motivation to be directly predicted by supportive classroom environment perceptions, and to directly predict engagement, which was hypothesized to predict achievement. Model 2 elaborated on the traditional self-system model and hypothesized student belonging to mediate the relationship between supportive classroom environment perceptions and student motivation. Quantitative findings revealed support for Model 2. Supportive classroom environment perceptions predicted students’ belonging beliefs, which in turn predicted students’ motivation, engagement, and achievement in the course. The second, follow-up qualitative phase suggested ways in which contextual characteristics might influence student belonging beliefs in the classroom. Taken together, the quantitative and qualitative data illustrate the influential role of classroom contextual characteristics on student outcomes, as well as the role student belonging plays in college student motivation and success.     

Let’s Draw a Picture

In an undergraduate analysis course taught by one of the authors, three prompts are regularly given: (i) What do we know? (ii) What do we need to show? (iii) Let’s draw a picture. We focus on the third prompt and its role in helping students develop their confidence in learning how to construct proofs. Specific examples of visual models and their impact on student work are presented.