Exploring the Metafictive in Elementary Students' Writing

Although some researchers have examined students' literary understandings of and responses to books with metafictive characteristics, few have explored how elementary students incorporate metafictive devices into their writing. In this article I analyse the stories and books created by a class of Grade 5 students and discuss the metafictive devices evident in their work. In addition to considering how the literature students read and how the classroom interpretive community influenced the students' stories/books, I discuss some broader issues about the significance of students reading and writing metafictive texts.     

Effectiveness of Spanish intervention for first-grade English language learners at risk for reading difficulties

The effectiveness of an explicit, systematic reading intervention for first-grade students whose home language was Spanish and who were at risk for reading difficulties was examined. Participants were 69 students in 20 classrooms in 7 schools from 3 districts who initially did not pass the screening in Spanish and were randomly assigned within schools to a treatment or comparison group; after 7 months, 64 students remained in the study. The intervention matched the language of instruction of their core reading program (Spanish). Treatment groups of 3 to 5 students met daily for 50 min and were provided systematic and explicit instruction in oral language and reading by trained bilingual intervention teachers. Comparison students received the school's standard intervention for struggling readers. Observations during core reading instruction provided information about the reading instruction and language use of the teachers. There were no differences between the treatment and comparison groups in either Spanish or English on any measures at pretest, but there were significant posttest differences in favor of the treatment group for the following outcomes in Spanish: Letter-Sound Identification (d = 0.72), Phonological Awareness composite (d = 0.73), Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised Oral Language composite (d = 0.35), Word Attack (d = 0.85), Passage Comprehension (d = 0.55), and two measures of reading fluency (d = 0.58-0.75).     

Acquisition of Complex Systemic Thinking: Mental Models of Evolution

We investigated the impact of introducing college students to complex adaptive systems on their subsequent mental models of evolution compared to those of students taught in the same manner but with no reference to complex systems. The students' mental models (derived from similarity ratings of 12 evolutionary terms using the pathfinder algorithm) were significantly similar to their teachers' mental models and were correlated to their performance on an essay on evolution. Introducing students to complex systems facilitated their understanding of the mechanism of inheritance, the mechanism of evolution, and the role of chance in evolution.     

Improving the Measurement of Cognitive Skills Through Automated Conversations

Open-ended, short-answer questions, referred to as constructed responses (CR), allow students to express knowledge and skills through their own words. While CRs can reduce the likelihood of guessing correct answers, they also enable students to provide errant responses due to a lack of knowledge or a misunderstanding of the question. Conversation-based assessments (CBAs) require constructing responses to open-ended prompts (similar to CRs), but also leverage natural-language processing to provide adaptive follow-up prompts that target particular information. This work describes an investigation into potential benefits of CBAs as they are compared to a CR approach. Results from 632 middle schoolers indicate that, when compared to CRs, the CBA items allowed 41% of students to provide a more complete response and improve their score.     

The Dynamic between Knowledge Production and Faculty Evaluation: Perceptions of the Promotion and Tenure Process across Disciplines

This study sought to understand predictors of faculty satisfaction with promotion and tenure processes and reasonableness of expectations in the context of a striving institution. The factors we investigated included discipline (high-consensus [science and math] vs. low-consensus [humanities and social sciences]); demographic variables; and institutional support including mentoring, collegiality, work-life integration, and college commitment to faculty members’ fields. High-consensus faculty members were less satisfied with promotion and tenure processes than were low-consensus faculty members (p?<?.01). Faculty members who were more satisfied with collegiality (p?<?.001) and with college commitment to their fields (p?<?.05) were more satisfied with promotion and tenure processes. Faculty members who were more satisfied with work-life integration and mentoring were more satisfied with reasonableness of expectations (p?<?.05).     

VI. Patogenia

De la exposición histórica que hemos dado ya, se desprenden dos concepciones principales que pueden resumir los mecanismos patogenéticos de la afasia. Una es la neurológica y la otra la psicológica.