A history of New York state literacy test assessment: Historicizing calls to localism in writing assessment

Drawing upon archival materials, I describe the history, design, and assessment of literacy tests from early 20th century New York state. Practitioners working with these early standardized writing tests grappled with tensions created by public Nativist sentiment, the legislation of “literacy,” and calls to score the tests in standardized yet locally appropriate ways. These practitioners developed their own constructs for “reading,” “writing,” and “literacy” as they administered and scored the tests. These practitioners were enacting writing assessment theories and methods that are currently valorized in calls to local writing assessment, disrupting some assumptions about writing assessment history as a move from strict standardization to more contextualized, local approaches. Practitioner efforts also provide a way forward as we continue to negotiate between calls to localism and standardization.     

Thinking styles: teaching and learning styles in graduate education students

This study investigated the relationship between two intellectual styles approaches: Sternberg’s thinking styles of teachers and Felder and Silverman’s learning styles. Ninety‐five graduate students majoring in special education, reading, educational leadership and curriculum, and elementary education completed the Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory (TSTI) and the Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire (ILS). Several thinking styles from Sternberg’s theory of self‐government were highly to moderately correlated with Felder’s learning styles. The TSTI did not differentiate between master’s and doctoral students, but the ILS did so. Participants differed in their thinking styles in teaching and in their learning styles, based on their educational major.     

Looking at Eye Gaze Processing and Its Neural Correlates in Infancy—Implications for Social Development and Autism Spectrum Disorder

The importance of eye gaze as a means of communication is indisputable. However, there is debate about whether there is a dedicated neural module, which functions as an eye gaze detector and when infants are able to use eye gaze cues in a referential way. The application of neuroscience methodologies to developmental psychology has provided new insights into early social cognitive development. This review integrates findings on the development of eye gaze processing with research on the neural mechanisms underlying infant and adult social cognition. This research shows how a cognitive neuroscience approach can improve our understanding of social development and autism spectrum disorder.     

Inferential talk during teacher–child interactions in small-group play

This study examined teachers’ questions and children's responses during a play-based activity implemented in small groups within preschool classrooms. The first aim of this study was to describe teachers’ questions in terms of four levels of abstraction (i.e., a continuum of literal to inferential questions) and children's responses to these questions. The second aim was to examine the relations between teachers’ questions and children's responses using sequential analyses, to include children's level of abstraction and mean length of utterance (MLU). Participants were 39 teachers and up to six children from their preschool classroom. We found that teachers’ questions made up an average of 25% of their talk to children during play, and were relatively balanced between literal and inferential questions. Furthermore, significant sequential associations were found between the level of abstraction of teachers’ questions and the level of abstraction of children's responses (e.g., teachers’ inferential questions tended to elicit children's inferential responses). Finally, we found that teachers’ inferential questions were not related to children's MLU; that is, teachers’ more abstract questions did not elicit longer utterances from children. These findings suggest that play is a valuable context in which teachers may promote children's use of inferential language.     

Tacit Knowledge in Expert Coaching: Science or Art?

Effective coaching is a mixture of pedagogy and principles of sciences, e.g., motor skill acquisition, sociology, and physiology, often referred to as the science of coaching. Instinctive or intuitive coaching has often been incorrectly viewed as the art of coaching. More important should be how coaches develop knowledge, how they access that knowledge at the appropriate times and how this affects their decision-making process. The study of expert coaches should allow inferences to be drawn from their development and applied to coach education. This article intends to clarify coaching expertise and examine the role of tacit knowledge within coaching. The lack of a clear development pathway for aspiring expert coaches is a clear indicator that the current coach education system needs review. Any effective education system should be based on knowledge and understanding rather than mimicry and the implications for the future of coach education are considered.     

Predicting Participation in Environmental Education by Teachers in Coastal Regions of Tanzania

Theories of responsible environmental behavior (REB) have most often been applied in developed countries and to direct forms of REB such as recycling and conserving water. This study applied a model of REB to a developing country setting in Tanzania based in part on variables from a Hungerford and Volk (1990) Hungerford, H. R. and Volk, T. L. 1990. Changing learner behavior through EE. Journal of Environmental Education, 21: 8–21. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] model and targeting an indirect form of behavior: teaching environmental education (EE) to youth. A quantitative survey was developed and administered to 397 teachers from schools in coastal regions of the country. Regression analyses revealed a sequential model in which entry level variables predicted ownership variables, and ownership variables predicted empowerment variables. In addition, cognitive variables were particularly strong in predicting behavioral intent compared to affective variables.     

Examining the Impact of Interdisciplinary Programs on Student Learning

We investigated how learning outcomes of students majoring in interdisciplinary fields differ from those of students in discipline-based majors. We found that students in interdisciplinary majors report less change in Critical Thinking and Need For Cognition than their peers in disciplinary majors, but no difference in change in Positive Attitude Toward Literacy. Students’ gains in Critical Thinking and Need For Cognition do not vary by the characteristics of the interdisciplinary major, but some program characteristics influence modest changes in Positive Attitudes Toward Literacy. Future research should address selection effects, develop measures of interdisciplinary learning, and further explore curricular and instructional patterns in interdisciplinary programs.     

Effects of a Brief Tiered Language Intervention for Prekindergartners at Risk

Research Findings: Multitiered instructional frameworks are becoming a recommended approach for enhancing prevention and intervention efforts targeting early literacy and language skills. However, few studies to date have studied the feasibility of tiered oral language interventions before kindergarten; therefore, this pilot study explored the effectiveness of such an approach in prekindergarten. Teachers in 39 classrooms were randomly assigned to an experimental or comparison condition that contrasted the implementation of an intervention that had both Tier 1 (whole group) and Tier 2 (small group for at-risk children) components. The pilot study included only 4 weeks of teacher-administered intervention. Despite this short duration, a significant and large effect size (d = .81) was observed for the experimental group on a receptive target vocabulary assessment. No significant changes were found on measures of vocabulary fluency, expressive target vocabulary, or listening comprehension. It is important to note that teachers’ fidelity in implementing the intervention as designed was a significant predictor of children's learning. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest the potential promise of the multitiered instructional framework, especially when teachers can be supported in ways that ensure adequate fidelity of implementation. Implications for use in prekindergarten response-to-intervention models are discussed.     

The strong poetry of place: a co/auto/ethnographic journey of connoisseurship,criticality and learning

Through a co/auto/ethnographic approach informed by a theoretical bricolage of critical pedagogy, place-based education, science education, human geography, feminism, and indigenous ways of knowing, the authors demonstrate the power of place in and as pedagogy. Using rich personal narratives, they reclaim their stories as an urban island-dweller and nomadic music-dweller, and they illuminate place as an epistemological, ontological and axiological anchor for the Self in the neoliberal wasteland. Specifically, the authors attend to their familial lineages and reasons for migrating from Southern Europe to the USA’s Northeast section, the Northern Mid-Western and to the Southeast. They examine their and their families’ connections with place in relation to the ideological fictions embedded within their shared narrative of “for a better life,” which is the story that was told to them about their families’ migrations. They probe under the surface by asking, “better than what,” “according to whom,” and “why?” In doing so, they peel back the veil of hegemony and expose the ways that economic disadvantage impacted their families’ relationships with their homelands. The article concludes by conceptualizing critical connoisseurship as a means for guiding students to tap into the embodied knowledge of place in order to notice, question, appreciate and critically reflect upon curricular content and subject matter and resist neoliberalism’s removal of person from place and local knowledge.     

Those Hands

When examined cross-culturally, the formal incorporation of sport by American colleges and universities is rather unique. Although higher education in the United States is largely the result of European influences, only in America has sport become an official responsibility of the educational organization. The openness of the “charter” of higher education was the primary factor in the formal incorporation of sport responsibilities within American institutions. Without an agreed upon understanding of the role of American higher education, the business-minded leadership of its colleges and universities was allowed to use sport as a survival mechanism in response to financial and enrollment exigencies.