Challenging School Segregation in the Twenty-first Century: How Districts can Leverage Dual Language Education to Increase School and Classroom Diversity

Nationally, schools are increasingly segregated by race and poverty as a result of demographic shifts and a changing legal and political landscape. Based on evidence that students benefit academically and socially from attending integrating settings, many school districts are exploring options for providing diverse learning experiences. We examine dual language education as a means for promoting ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse learning experiences. First, we describe the various advantages of dual language both in general and specifically to the creation of diverse schools and classrooms. Next, we provide recommendations for how districts can effectively implement dual language education in a manner that also advances diversity goals.     

Prompting undergraduate students’ metacognition of learning: implementing ‘meta-learning’ assessment tasks in the biomedical sciences

To succeed at post-secondary education, it’s essential that students develop an understanding of their own knowledge and learning processes. This metacognition of learning, or ‘meta-learning’, helps students to become more effective learners, as they become more aware of their self-regulatory processes and recognise the effectiveness of their study strategies. To increase biomedical science students’ self-awareness, we have designed and implemented meta-learning assessment tasks across our biomedical science courses. Most students reported that meta-learning tasks had a positive impact on their learning, as they prompted self-regulatory processes of forethought and self-reflection. We found that students were equally likely to change or not change their study strategies across subsequent semesters. Those students that did not change were generally high achievers, believing their study approaches were most effective, but their performance did not improve across semesters. In contrast, students who adapted, mostly by modifying how they appraised and rearranged records or improved planning and time management, performed less well overall but significantly improved their performance across semesters. Meta-learning tasks may prompt students to become more self-reflective and independent learners by affecting their approach to learning, enabling them to reflect on their study strategies, adapt and improve performance, and may enable the development of lifelong learning skills.     

Assessing the importance of cultural capital on post-secondary education attendance in Canada

This paper extends the current literature on access to post-secondary education by investigating the role played by various family background characteristics related to the home environment and family habits and behaviours. Exploiting the extraordinary richness of the Youth in Transition Survey in this regard, we include whether the family ate dinner together, whether they discussed current affairs, and how often their children went to concerts – and if so, what kind of concerts. Many of these factors are found to have a significant relationship with attending post-secondary education, university in particular. Furthermore, these factors are in addition to – and at least to some degree independent of – more conventional influences such as parental education and family income. With appeal to the paradigm of ‘cultural capital’ – which refers to the knowledge, experiences, and connections which help individuals succeed in life – these results indicate how advantages in accessing higher levels of education accrue to those from families that are rich in this kind of asset, while others are left behind.     

Teachers’ emotional labour,discrete emotions,and classroom management self-efficacy

Extending research on teachers’ emotions beyond general educational contexts and Western samples, we examined how teachers’ emotions correlated with their emotional labour strategies and classroom management self-efficacy with an East-Asian sample in an English teaching context (127 Korean English teachers). Surface acting (emotional expressions modification) correlated positively with anxiety and frustration, whereas deep acting (internal feelings modification) correlated positively with enjoyment and pride and negatively with anxiety. Enjoyment and anger correlated positively and frustration negatively with classroom management self-efficacy. Enjoyment and frustration were documented as mediators in the relationship between emotional labour strategies and classroom management self-efficacy. The results suggest that deep acting is linked to experiencing positive emotions, which in turn is positively related to classroom management self-efficacy, whereas surface acting is linked to experiencing negative emotions, which in turn relates negatively to classroom management self-efficacy. Theoretical and educational implications will be further discussed.     

Interacting with People who have Severe Communication Problems: Ethical considerations

People who have severe speech and communication problems have difficulties making themselves heard both in everyday communications and society at large. In spite of the positive results which have followed the development of non-vocal intervention strategies, this group of people is at risk for being left out of the social common and being alienated. It is important to realise that one cannot do in the technical what one cannot do in the ethical. Unless both social interaction and intervention with people who have severe communication impairments are based on ethical reflection, the moral standards that are applied to this group may be lower than for other people. True communicative interaction depends on the acceptance that the other partner has something of value to communicate, even if the means for expressive communication are limited and the messages are vague and difficult to understand. A moral requirement for autonomy, that is, an equal footing or right to expression, places an ethical imperative on the more competent communication partner to strive to overcome the asymmetrical relationship and help the disabled person create authentic messages. Ethics is awareness based on the reflection on moral phenomena, grounded in the norms and values of the society and typically the result of discourse and co-constructive reflection, in the form of everyday discussions as well as of public philosophical scrutiny. Communication is a vehicle of reflection and discourse may be regarded as joined reflection. Thus, time for discourse in professional work may be a prerequisite for ethical practice.     

The link: Addressing the problems of higher education through the core curriculum

Three major national reports on the status of American Higher Education have surfaced seven distinct problems common to many colleges and universities. Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College anticipated these problems in 1981 and has undertaken to address them through the development of a sixty-hour, developmentally arranged general studies sequence entitledThe Link. The success ofThe Link illustrates that the core curriculum can be an effective medium for dealing with these problems when approached by faculty in a spirit of innovation and cooperation.     

Strategic Assistance in Toddler Disputes: II. Sequences and Patterns of Teachers' Message Strategies

Adopting the view that peer conflict is a zone of proximal development in which adults may provide strategic assistance in negotiating interactional opposition, this study analyzed message strategies used by 13 teachers in the course of intervening in 135 toddler disputes. Spontaneous oppositional episodes precipitating teacher intervention were transcribed and analyzed with lag sequential techniques. The teachers used one of three message strategies to begin processing the toddlers' disputes: (a) summon disputants' attention (CALL); (b) physical restraint or removal of objects (STOP); or (c) ask the disputing toddlers to identify the problem (ASK). Each strategy was associated with certain act-to-act sequences suggesting unique patterns for terminating peer opposition. The predominant pattern began with STOP, in which teachers exercised high control over the intervention and adjudicated its outcome. Dispute negotiation failed to develop, however, from the CALL entry strategy. The process of negotiating peer opposition was more information-based and child-involving when teachers intervened with an ASK strategy, but this strategy was used in only 10.4% of the episodes. Findings are considered relative to evaluating day-to- day teacher practices and refining curriculum models for dealing with toddler disputes in the classroom.     

Using the Millon College Counseling Inventory to Assess Student Mental Health Needs

Students visiting college counseling centers experience a broad range of complex and sometimes severe concerns that are often not adequately addressed by existing clinical measures. In response, the Millon College Counseling Inventory (MCCI; T. Millon, S. N. Strack, C. Millon, & S. Grossman, 2006) was specifically designed for use with contemporary college populations. The authors introduce the MCCI, briefly explain its development, discuss its utility for everyday use in counseling centers, and offer a fictional case illustration.