Rural adolescents' reading motivation,achievement and behavior across transition to high school

The authors examined 1,781 rural students' reading motivation and behavior across the transition from middle to high school. Using expectancy-value theory, they investigated how motivational variables predicted changes in reading behavior and achievement across the transition in terms of their expectancies, values, and out-of-school reading behaviors. A repeated measures analysis of variance indicated significant increases in vocabulary, intrinsic value, and out-of-school reading, whereas significant decreases were found in attainment value. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated students' subjective expectancy for success was a significant predictor of increases in both comprehension and vocabulary scores. Students' utility value interacted with intrinsic value in predicting reading comprehension scores. In terms of change in students' reading behavior, their perceptions of intrinsic value and utility value were significant predictors. Gender interacted significantly with expectancies in predicting behaviors. Findings have implications for instructional support, particularly as it relates to reading motivation across the transition from middle to high school.     

The war of the words: The rhetoric of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ (an informal survey)

The political, military and media rhetoric of the March–April 2003 invasion of Iraq is interpreted as a phenomenon of power in relation to an understanding of culture as a site of denegation. Patterns of tautology, euphemism and equivocation are identified and their rhetorical appeal analysed in terms of the denegational structure of each of these figures. The essay is thus governed by an understanding of figuration as instrumental, not ornamental; it shows how rhetoric can be studied as a cultural phenomenon and argues by example that a pragmatics of troping is crucial to such a study.     

Do as we do and not as we say: teacher educators supporting student teachers to learn on teaching practice

This paper reports data from a larger study into the ways in which Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) students engaged in professional learning during teaching practice (TP) in Ireland. The study comprised one umbrella case study of Greendale University, schools and PETE students that consisted of five individual cases: tetrads of PETE student teacher, cooperating teacher (CT), University tutor (UT) and School Principal (SP). Each tetrad was defined as a unique community of practice located within the wider structures of school, education and university policies on teacher education. Data were collected over one academic year using qualitative research methods and grounded theory as a systematic data analysis tool.

Findings indicate that in each of the five cases, support for PETE student learning was, to some degree, dysfunctional. In particular, it became evident that there were two conflicting teacher-learning curricula in operation. The official curriculum, expressed in policy and by SPs, UTs and CTs (also referred to as mentors), valued a PETE student who cared for pupils, had a rich pedagogical content knowledge, knew how to plan for and assess pupils’ learning, valued reflection, and was an active member of a community of practice. The unofficial but essentially more powerful enacted curriculum, encouraged PETE students to draw upon their own resources to learn pedagogical content knowledge in an isolated and unsupported manner.

The data highlight the force of the unofficial curriculum and the ways in which PETE students were guided to the core of the dysfunctional community of practice by untrained CTs (mentors) and untrained UTs. PETE students in this study learned to survive in a largely unsupportive professional learning environment and, just as theories of social reproduction intimate, indicated that they would reproduce this practice with PETE students in their care in the future.

The findings suggest that in cases similar to those studied, there is a need for teacher educators in Ireland, (in both universities and schools) to critically interrogate their personal practices and implicit theories of teacher education and to engage in training for their role. There is also evidence to suggest that PETE students in Ireland could benefit from the development of school–university partnerships that act as fundamental units of high quality professional learning. In the cases studied, this may have led to a stronger focus on the intended or official curriculum of TP, led by the revised maxim: ‘Do as we say and as we do’.     

Age, Prior Opinions, and Peer Interactions in Opinion Restructuring

A sample of 160 6-, 8-, and 11-year-old children and adults expressed their opinion on a topic alone (pretest), jointly with a peer (test), and then alone (posttest). Opinion restructuring was measured by view-change type and the addition of reasons incorporated from 6 types of peer interactions (agreements and disagreements with 3 levels of complexity). Prior opinion was examined by comparing performances for pairs holding congruous or noncongruous pretest views of the topic. Age affected the number, type, and elaboration level of pretest reasons; the complexity level of peer interactions and the type of peer interactions that led to the incorporation of reasons; and the type of view change. Prior opinion affected the likelihood of view change and the kind of reasons added. The findings are related to developmental models of peer influences on cognitive restructuring and to models of persuasion and children's suggestibility in eyewitness memory.     

Post-secondary educators' professional development: Investigation of an online approach to enhancing teaching and learning

Faculty in post-secondary institutions must continually reassess, refine, and revise their teaching, yet it is a challenge for them to gain this professional development with heavy teaching responsibilities and high demands on their time. Creating Optimum Learning Environments (CREOLE) is a collaborative project between one community college and one university to develop an online training program for post-secondary education faculty on the basic principles of teaching and learning and the development of online courses. Four independent modules were developed and taught in a one semester format for educators throughout the U.S. The goal of this research was to identify the strenghts and challenges of this course; determine the changes in pedagogical practice of the participating faculty members; and to examine the resulting changes in participants' course materials to reflect learning and motivation theories, and appropriate online learning strategies. Methods included pre- and post-surveys of the participants, interviews, document analysis, and instructors' reflections. Results demonstrated high expectations from all participants, difficulty in forming a sustained learning community, continuing challenge in technological aspects, and requirement for intense instructor involvement to maintain morale.     

Preschoolers modulate contrastive inferences during online language comprehension

This study examined 4- and 5-year-olds' incremental interpretation of size adjectives, focusing on whether contrastive inferences are modulated by speaker behavior. Children (N = 120, 59 females, mostly White, tested between July, 2018 and August, 2019) encountered either a conventional or unconventional speaker who labeled objects in a correspondingly typical or atypical way. Critical utterances contained size adjectives (e.g., “Look at the big duck”). With conventional speakers, gaze measures indicated that children rapidly used the adjective to differentiate members of a contrasting pair, indicating that even 4-year-olds derive contrastive inferences. With unconventional speakers, contrastive inferences were delayed in processing. The findings demonstrate that preschoolers adjust their use of pragmatic cues when presented with evidence disconfirming their default assumptions about a speaker.