Effects of psycholinguistic instruction on spelling performance

Two studies were conducted in which phonology‐based instructional strategies designed for improving spelling skills of elementary school children were compared against instruction strategies that relied only on visual exposure of words. The first study involved a total of 93 children. Of these, 46 were instructed by drawing their attention to the psycholinguistic nature of their spelling errors. The remaining 47 children in the comparison group were shown the correct version of all the words. In study II 15 children were placed in a treatment group and were taught phoneme awareness, and 15 children were placed in a comparison group and were exposed to printed words only. In both studies, posttests showed that children taught through psycholinguistic and phoneme awareness methods significantly outperformed the visual training groups. Further, these gains were retained after a period of 2 weeks. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Explaining common variance shared by early numeracy and literacy

How can be explained that early literacy and numeracy share variance? We specifically tested whether the correlation between four early literacy skills (rhyming, letter knowledge, emergent writing, and orthographic knowledge) and simple sums (non-symbolic and story condition) reduced after taking into account preschool attention control, short-term memory, speed of processing, visual-spatial skills, vocabulary, and shared book reading. 228 Dutch native preschoolers (mean age 54.25; SD = 2.12 months) participated. The results revealed that 1) all literacy skills were related to sums (non-symbolic and story condition), 2) rhyming was the strongest predictor of non-symbolic sums, and letter knowledge of sums in story context, 3) visual-spatial skills explained part of the shared variance in the non-symbolic condition and visualspatial skills, vocabulary and short-term memory explained part of the shared variance in sums in story context. Implications for the preschool curriculum and early interventions are discussed.     

A Qualitative Study of the Experiences of Counseling Students Who Participate in Mindfulness-Based Activities in a Counseling Theory and Practice Course

This study explored the lived experiences of two cohorts of counselors in training (CITs) who experienced mindfulness-based activities in a counseling theory and practice course. Utilizing Merriam’s Interpretive Qualitative Approach (Merriam 1988, 2002), the data suggested that students perceived the activities to have enhanced their experiences as students and development as counselors. Implications for improving counselor preparation are considered.     

First-generation college students: Characteristics,experiences, and cognitive development

This study sought answers to three questions: (1) Do the precollege characteristics of first-generation students differ from those of traditional students? (2) Do first-generation students' college experiences differ from those of other students? (3) What are the educational consequences of any differences on first-year gains in students' reading, math, and critical thinking abilities? Answers come from 2,685 students (825 first-generation and 1,860 traditional students) who entered 23 diverse institutions nationwide in Fall 1992 and who completed one year of study. First-generation students differ from their traditional peers in both entering characteristics and college experiences. Although traditional students make greater net gains in reading during their first year, the two groups gain to about the same degree in math and critical thinking skills. Those gains, however, appear to result from somewhat different experiences.     

Fractals and the large-scale structure in the Universe

In Part 1 of this article, we had introduced the reader to some basic concepts of fractals and some operational algorithms to characterize them. We had also pointed out and clarified some common misconceptions about fractals. In this part we apply the fractal concepts to large-scale structures in the Universe. In particular we discuss the claim by some investigators that the distribution of galaxies in the Universe is a fractal. This is contrary to the standard view that the Universe is homogeneous and isotropic on large scales. Also discussed is the controversy as to whether the matter distribution in the Universe is a fractal on large-scales.     

Self-regulation of assessment beliefs and attitudes: a review of the Students’ Conceptions of Assessment inventory

How students understand, feel about and respond to assessment might contribute significantly to learning behaviour and academic achievement. This paper reviews studies that have used a relatively new self-reported survey questionnaire (Students’ Conceptions of Assessment – SCoA) about student perceptions and understandings of assessment. Confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modelling results have shown, consistent with self-regulation theory, that the SCoA inventory has meaningful relations with academic performance among New Zealand high school students. Further, German, Hong Kong, American, and New Zealand studies have shown that the SCoA has relations to motivational constructs (e.g. effort, learning strategies, interest, self-efficacy and anxiety) that are also consistent with self-regulation. The SCoA inventory extends our understanding of how student conceptions of assessment are an integral part of self-regulation and provide a warrant for use in research studies investigating test-taker responses to assessment practices and innovations at both university and high school levels.     

Does teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge affect their fluency instruction?

The relation is studied between teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge of reading and the quality of their subsequent classroom behaviour in teaching fluent reading. A confirmatory factor analysis model with two latent variables is tested and shows adequate goodness-of-fit indices. Contrary to our expectations, the results of structural equation modelling reveal a small but significant γ-value of .29, indicating that only 8% of the variance in teachers’ classroom behaviour in teaching fluent reading is accounted for by teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge of reading. Presumably teacher knowledge is not as stable and conclusive as one might think. More research is needed in determining the factors that work restricting for teachers in putting their knowledge into classroom practice. It is recommended that preservice and in-service teacher training should not be limited to transfer of knowledge, but should also assist teachers in designing and performing effective fluent reading instruction.     

Informal interaction and faculty projections of student ratings of the institutional climate

This study employed the Semantic Differential technique to investigate the relationship between informal interaction with students and the accuracy with which faculty members project students' perceptions of the institutional climate at two colleges of Arts and Sciences. When subdivided into nominal categories of high, moderate, and low interactors on the basis of their frequency of informal, out-of-class contacts with students, high interactors were found to project consistently more accurate student ratings of the climate on a bureaucracy factor than low interactors. A similar, though not consistent, relationship was found between high and low interactors on an intellectualism/scholarship dimension.