Relations between early family risk, children's behavioral regulation, and academic achievement

This study examined relations among early family risk, children's behavioral regulation at 54 months and kindergarten, and academic achievement in first grade using data on 1,298 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Family risk was indexed by ethnic minority status, low maternal education, low average family income from 1 - 54 months, and high maternal depressive symptoms from 1 - 54 months. Results of structural equation modeling indicated that minority status, low maternal education, and low family income had significant negative effects on reading, math, and vocabulary achievement in first grade. Modest indirect effects were also found from ethnicity, maternal education, and maternal depressive symptoms, through 54-month and kindergarten behavioral regulation to first-grade achievement. Discussion focuses on the importance of behavioral regulation for school success especially for children facing early risk.     

Tensions in Community Health Improvement Initiatives: Communication and Collaboration in a Managed Care Environment

Between the years 1993 and 2000, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation sponsored the Comprehensive Community Health Models (CCHMs) Initiative in three Michigan counties. CCHMs was comprised of three closely related community initiatives carried out in the midst of a failed national health care reform effort and the continued penetration of managed care arrangements into many health care systems. This experimental initiative set out to test the hypothesis that traditional healthcare system animosities and exclusionary practices could be overcome by stakeholder participation in an ongoing, structured, collaborative dialogue about improving access to health services. In the process of collecting data through surveys, interviews, content analysis, and observation, we were struck by the occurrence of several overarching tensions that we perceive to exist in our data. The present article elucidates five such tensions and suggests how third parties such as communication researchers, evaluators, and practitioners can facilitate community health improvement initiatives and better their own data interpretation by acknowledging and understanding these tensions.     

Disseminating Standards in Higher Order Learning: Systemically Valid Instruments for Standards-Based Education Reform

A decade of British experience in assessing and reporting higher order learning using a scale of national standards has important lessons for countries currently embarking on programmes of standards-based education reform. The architects of the British National Curriculum envisaged that the reliability of measures of higher order learning could be assured through a comprehensive auditing programme involving expert teachers. However, plans for a national auditing programme in Britain were never realised for financial reasons. This article argues that, in the absence of orthodox auditing procedures, modern information handling techniques have an important role to play in enhancing the technical fidelity of instruments for measuring higher order learning, by making the combined professional wisdom of experienced teachers available to the assessor at the time of marking. The higher order skill of creative writing is used to illustrate the calibration of a systemically valid computerised assessment tool, applicable to any standards-based assessment framework.     

Enacting policy: the capacity of school leaders to support early career teachers through policy work

Early career teachers often feel overwhelmed by the complex, intense and unpredictable nature of their work. Recently, policy initiatives have been introduced to provide new teachers with extra release-time from face-to-face classroom teaching duties to assist them in their transition to the workforce. This paper reports on a critical policy study that investigated the enactment of this policy initiative. A data set was created from a larger qualitative study which investigated early career teacher resilience. Drawing on a policy enactment theoretical ‘toolbox’, the findings indicate that school leaders can empower early career teachers to move beyond being ‘receivers’ of policy to assume a more active policy role. This paper argues that school leaders are very powerful in their capacity to enact policy to ensure strategic access to appropriate on-going learning opportunities to support early career teachers.     

Preschool teachers’ beliefs and practices related to child-centred education in Turkey

This study describes the beliefs, self-reported practices and actual practices related to child-centred education of five female preschool teachers in Ankara, Turkey, and assesses the consistency between the participants’ beliefs and practices. Data were collected through interviews, classroom observations and document review. The results indicated that the participant teachers’ beliefs and practices as expressed through instructional activities, relationships, behaviour management, assessment, parental involvement and self-reporting were partially parallel to the child-centred education philosophy. Also, there was only partial consistency between teachers’ beliefs about, self-reported practices of and actual practices of child-centred education.     

Tensions in Community Health Improvement Initiatives: Communication and Collaboration in a Managed Care Environment

Between the years 1993 and 2000, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation sponsored the Comprehensive Community Health Models (CCHMs) Initiative in three Michigan counties. CCHMs was comprised of three closely related community initiatives carried out in the midst of a failed national health care reform effort and the continued penetration of managed care arrangements into many health care systems. This experimental initiative set out to test the hypothesis that traditional healthcare system animosities and exclusionary practices could be overcome by stakeholder participation in an ongoing, structured, collaborative dialogue about improving access to health services. In the process of collecting data through surveys, interviews, content analysis, and observation, we were struck by the occurrence of several overarching tensions that we perceive to exist in our data. The present article elucidates five such tensions and suggests how third parties such as communication researchers, evaluators, and practitioners can facilitate community health improvement initiatives and better their own data interpretation by acknowledging and understanding these tensions.     

Screening for reading problems: The utility of SEARCH

To evaluate the accuracy of SEARCH as a screen for identifying children at risk for developing learning problems, 1107 kindergarten children were evaluated with SEARCH and 284 (26 percent) were classified as at risk. At-risk children were of average intelligence and SEARCH scores were significantly correlated with sequential and simultaneous information processing skills. Children whose group preacademic achievement scores were at or below the third stanine at the end of kindergarten were classified as having inadequate skills for learning how to read; those scoring above the third stanine formed the adequate skills group. Using this criterion, SEARCH predicted children who had adequate or inadequate preacademic reading skills with 77 percent accuracy. However, approximately half of the children identified as at risk by SEARCH performed adequately. A reading test was individually administered to a group of at-risk children at the end of first (N=49) and second (N=35) grade. Of those children identified at risk by SEARCH at kindergarten, 39 percent at first grade and 66 percent at second grade performed at grade level. Fewer children from the upper SES were identified by SEARCH as being at risk.     

Everyday environmental education: five practices of ecologically minded teachers

Abstract

In this article, I report the findings from a qualitative study involving seven ecologically minded teachers who participated in a Critical Friends Group. Ecologically minded teachers are not necessarily trained or required to teach about environmental issues, yet they do so because of their values and beliefs. The participants shared the following five practices: exposing externalities, emphasizing active learning, providing multiple perspectives, asking critical questions, and collaborating with others. I describe these practices and make recommendations for future research.