Shared Reading by Cambodian Mothers and Children Learning English as a Second Language: Reciprocal Gains

Subjects were five Cambodian mother‐child pairs. Three mothers (Group One) had received one year's schooling, and two (Group Two) had had no schooling in Cambodia; all children were participating in regular primary school class reading programs and receiving individual help from an ESL teacher. Group One was introduced to Shared Reading in a multiple baseline across‐subjects design, while an AB design was used for Group Two. Probes were taken of mothers and children reading individually from unseen books at the same level as those used in Shared Reading. During the Shared Reading program the Group One mothers and children markedly increased their rate of progress through book levels as did the Group Two children, but the Group Two mothers did not, although there was some evidence of minor progress in word recognition. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of the interactive social context for acquiring literacy skills.     

Organizational responses to the labor market

Shifts in the labor market require adaptive responses on the part of formal organizations. Such organizational responses are shown in changes in recruitment strategies. This study examines how departments in comprehensive colleges and universities formulate their faculty recruitment strategies and set standards for new faculty personnel. Comprehensive institutions are neither research universities nor liberal arts colleges. Even though most offer graduate degrees at the master's level in such areas as teacher training and business programs, they are predominantly devoted to undergraduate education. Lacking strong ties to distinctive beliefs and identities, these institutions have become increasingly vulnerable to environmental changes.Based on extensive fieldwork at four institutions, this paper focuses on twenty faculty searches conducted over a period of substantial changes in academic labor markets. Several common search episodes are identified.The general pattern of recruitment strategies is shaped by the rule of status competition in a prestige hierarchy: less prestigious organizations compete for institutional legitimacy by adopting the norms of more prestigious organizations. Search-related practices in these comprehensive institutions are, therefore, organized around the institutional rituals that conform to the standards of more prestigious research universities and elite liberal arts colleges. Search and recruitment practices often reflect a ritualized form of preoccupation with credentials, specialities, and procedures. Despite their initial emphasis on specific goals, those involved in the search were less concerned about search outcomes than about processes.     

Using Kinesthetic Activities to Teach Ptolemaic and Copernican Retrograde Motion

This paper describes a method for teaching planetary retrograde motion, and the Ptolemaic and Copernican accounts of retrograde motion, by means of a series kinesthetic learning activities (KLAs). In the KLAs described, the students literally walk through the motions of the planets in both systems. A retrospective statistical analysis shows that students who participated in these activities performed better on examination questions pertaining to retrograde motion than students who did not. Potential explanations for this result, including the breaking of classroom routine, the effect of body movement on conceptual memory, and egocentric spatial proprioception, are considered.     

Evoking the World of Poetic Nonfiction Picture Books

An increasingly prevalent and accessible form of hybrid nonfiction picture books blends factual information with poetry or poetic devices to create literary nonfiction. This important form of hybrid text has been sparsely examined. This article addresses three questions about poetic nonfiction picture books: first, how might we categorize picture books that represent this hybrid text?; second, by what criteria might we evaluate the quality of these books?; third, based in Rosenblatt’s concept of reader’s stance, how might we read these books? The author develops a typology of six categories along a continuum from poetry to narrative or expository prose. He examines well-established criteria in the fields of picture books, children’s nonfiction, and poetry that can apply to poetic nonfiction picture books. He argues that in the best of these books, the poetry or poetic devices are synergistic with the content and raise the overall reading experience. The author also argues that, depending where along the continuum each of these books is located, a reader’s stance moves along the continuum of efferent to aesthetic experience. All these books demand a dynamic and recursive reading process. He suggests ways to work with teachers to teach deep readings of these books.     

The Inevitable Shift to Cloud-Based Book Publishing: The Next Step in the Digital Transformation of Book Publishing May be Closer than You Think

Software used by book publishers to manage contracts, royalties, production workflow, sales, and marketing have begun to migrate from relatively closed systems that are internally maintained, to cloud-based platforms on the Web. Business drivers behind this migration include a highly dynamic market for ebooks and other digital products, pressures to cut costs, and a shrinking ROI horizon for technology investments. While questions remain as to how quickly the transition will take, the possibility of cloud-based book publishing promises to change the nature of publishing infrastructure and with it the role of the IT professionals in publishing.     

The Changing Structure of British Higher Education: How diverse is it?

With the passage of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act the British system of higher education formally moved from a binary to a unitary structure. However, ever since successive governments have argued for a diversified model of higher education within which institutions should pursue contrasting goals. This article offers an interpretation of the key ingredients of institutional diversification and constructs alternative structural models of higher education. It proceeds by exploring the changing structure of British higher education since the creation of the unitary model. The argument is that there has been a steady emergence of flexible sectors, which both converge and diversify. However, there is a danger that the 2011 White Paper, rather than sustaining flexible sectors, could intensify the nascent shift in the direction of stratification marked by increasing differentiation between sectors as they converge internally.

     

Taking Political Autonomy Seriously: a reply to Ian Gregory

This paper raises some questions about academic authorial honesty under the headings of Plagiarism (including self‐plagiarism), Theft, and Collusion. Compared with the medical sciences, the social sciences in general and education specifically, lag behind in terms of critical attention being paid to the problem of plagiarism, the peer review process and academic authorial ethics. The ubiquity of the Internet, the ever intensifying demand to publish or perish, and maybe, a general shift in perceptions of what constitutes ‘bad’ plagiarism and collusion which challenge traditional notions of what constitutes authorial honesty, mean that the time may be ripe for a consideration by academic writers and journal editors of how they regard and deal with the whole area. This paper makes an early contribution to the discussion.     

A new approach to an old problem

Applying theories of cognition and affect that predict emotional responses to a stimulus on the basis of prior affect toward specific cues included in that stimulus, a study was conducted assessing individuals' fear and enjoyment reactions to horror films. Prior fear of specific cues included in each film was a significant predictor of overall fear reactions, after controlling for prior exposure to the film, fear of specific cues not included in the film, and manifest anxiety. Prior liking of specific cues included in each film did not emerge as a significant predictor of overall enjoyment. The contributions of gender and of level of forewarning about the film's content were also assessed.     

The hypothesis testing knowledge blend

The creation of several forms of knowledge that would enable organizations to ask and say the right things during complex diagnoses is proposed. Based on the concept of knowledge combustion, the hypothesis testing knowledge blend (HTKB) is the cognitive equivalent of petrol for the combustion engine. The HTKB requires the creation of a knowledge hybrid that uses existing technologies to ask and say the right things. In addition to timing mechanisms and problem space maps, two forms of declarative knowledge (directions and explanations) are integrated to create the HTKB. These directions and explanations would be obtained directly from the video recordings of diagnosticians conducting teleconsultations. By providing these profound dialogues during the conduct of complex diagnoses, the HTKB should increase the knowledge capital of organizations. Formal analyses are beginning to validate the conceptual structure (blue print) presented in this paper, and the results will be provided in the future.