Online self-assessment and peer-assessment as a tool to enhance student-teachers’ assessment skills

Self-assessment and peer-assessment are strategies employed to encourage students to take more responsibility for the learning process. Although the advantages are not obvious, the process has the potential to empower learning and to assist the development of assessment skills, which are so important for future teachers. The research aimed to identify student-teachers' attitudes concerning the contribution of self-assessment and anonymous peer-assessment to the quality of their assignments and improvement of their assessment skills, using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The sample included 300 students studying for bachelor’s or master’s degrees. Texts that were analysed included: responses to a questionnaire, self and peer-assessments, word comments on the assignments and written blog content relating to students’ activities and their performance of peer evaluations. The students noted that they significantly benefitted from the process, learned various methods of assignment and assessment performance and it positioned them in relation to others, noticing how others evaluated them. Anonymous evaluation allowed students to overcome inhibitions in evaluating peers' works and improved their assessment skills.     

Fostering Global Citizenship Education for Teachers Through Online Research

Abstract

This article is based on a study involving 126 International Baccalaureate (IB) teachers in more than 30 countries who, through the use of asynchronous online discussion forums, shared how they teach and simultaneously reflected upon how they conceptualize global citizenship. Data analysis revealed that participants developed new understandings about open-mindedness, interconnectedness, and cross-cultural learning experiences. Online data collection in educational research offers great opportunity for furthering professional development in global citizenship education.     

The role of reading self-concept and home literacy practices in fourth grade reading comprehension

This study examined the relationships among reading comprehension, reading self-concept, and home literacy environment (HLE) in a sample (n = 67) of fourth grade children enrolled in an urban school district. Children’s reading comprehension, word reading, and verbal ability were assessed using standardized measures. Reading self-concept was assessed with a child-administered survey that is comprised of three subscales (i.e., competence in reading, perception of ease with reading, attitude towards reading). Information on child and family literacy practices was collected via a questionnaire administered to parents of participating children. Bivariate correlations and multiple regression analyses demonstrated that all three reading self-concept subscales were positively related to reading comprehension after controlling for verbal ability and word reading skills, and aspects of HLE were positively related to aspects of reading self-concept. The findings support the inclusion of psychosocial and family literacy measures in future studies designed to investigate the process of reading comprehension for children beyond the primary grades.

Community of Inquiry (CoI): A Framework for Social Work Distance Educators

ABSTRACT

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, a research-based seminal work, provides a structure for integrating a collaborative constructivist approach in course design, implementation, and evaluation. The CoI framework suggests that by fostering three essential elements – social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence – a community of inquiry can be created to promote student engagement and learning. This paper will present the concepts of the CoI framework for social work educators to consider for distance education course design, implementation, and evaluation.     

The Universal and the unique in dyslexia: A cross-linguistic investigation of reading and reading fluency in Hebrew-and English-speaking children with reading disorders

Cross-linguistic studies provide a unique tool for the identification of universal processes in oral and written language, both in development and in breakdown (Annual Review of psychology, 52, 369–396). Examining the differential strengths and weaknesses of children with dyslexia in contrasting orthographies can help illumine both the more universal aspects of reading disabilities, as well as their individual language-specific attributes. The aim of this study, was to investigate the shared and distinctive characteristics of readers with dyslexia on reading and reading fluency across Hebrew and English orthographies. Differences between 60 Hebrew and English-speaking children with dyslexia on a battery of cognitive, linguistic, and reading measures will be discussed along with theoretical implications.     

School Counsellors’ Involvement in the Process of Inclusion in Israel

The purpose of the research was to identify variables affecting the attitudes and involvement of school counsellors in the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classrooms. The sample included 220 primary and middle school counsellors in Israel. Two specially constructed questionnaires (i.e., the Involvement in Inclusion Questionnaire and the Personal and Institutional Characteristics Questionnaire) and an adaptation of the Shechtman, Reiter, and Schanin (1993 Shechtman, Z., Reiter, S. and Schanin, M. 1993. Intrinsic motivation of teachers and the challenge of mainstreaming: An empirical investigation. Special Services in the Schools, 7: 107–124. [Taylor & Francis Online] [Google Scholar]) Attitude Questionnaire were employed in the research. The findings indicated that counsellors have positive attitudes towards inclusion and allocated about 36% of their time to inclusion activities. Special education training and attitudes toward inclusion were the variables that explained the greatest amount of variance in the counsellors’ involvement.     

The varieties of pathways to dysfluent reading: comparing subtypes of children with dyslexia at letter, word, and connected text levels of reading

The majority of work on the double-deficit hypothesis (DDH) of dyslexia has been done at the letter and word levels of reading. Key research questions addressed in this study are (a) do readers with different subtypes of dyslexia display differences in fluency at particular reading levels (e.g., letter, word, and connected text)? and (b) do children with dyslexia identified by either low-achievement or ability-achievement discrepancy criteria show similar differences when classified by the DDH? To address these questions, the authors assessed a sample of 158 children with severe reading impairments in second and third grades on an extensive battery and classified them into three reader subtypes using the DDH. The results demonstrated that the three DDH subtypes exhibited differences in fluency at different levels of reading (letter, word, and connected text), underscoring the separate reading profiles of these subtypes and the different possible routes to dysfluency in reading disabilities. Furthermore, the results suggest that the different patterns among DDH subtypes are primarily driven by the ability-achievement discrepancy group. The implications of these findings are discussed for intervention, reading theory, and a more refined understanding of heterogeneity.