Findings From a Multiyear Scale-Up Effectiveness Trial of Open Court Reading

This multiyear scale-up effectiveness study of Open Court Reading (OCR) involved approximately 4,500 students and more than 1,000 teachers per year in Grades K–5 from 49 elementary schools in seven districts across the country. Using a school-level cluster randomized trial design, we assessed the implementation and effectiveness of Open Court Reading over two years. Implementation study results demonstrated adequate to high levels of fidelity across the treatment schools. Intent-to-treat analyses revealed no statistically significant main effects on students’ reading performance in Year 1 and a small negative effect (d = – .09) in Year 2. There were positive impacts for particular subgroups, including kindergarten (d = .12) and Hispanic (d = .10) students in the first year. However, there were negative impacts for first grade (d = –.13), females (d = –.11), students who were not eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (d = –.19), and non-English language learners (d = –.10) in the second year of the study. Thus, relative to the “business-as-usual” reading curricula, no positive overall impacts of OCR and mixed impacts for student subgroups were found.     

Improvisations around the National Literacy Strategy

This article is an account of how a group of Year 1 children (age 5/6 years) responded to and appropriated aspects of the National Literacy Strategy. In each of the three episodes of the account they worked with a different aspect of the Strategy. Displaying increasing literacy and collaborative skills they worked with consonant blends, alphabetical order and spelling. Led by a child who disliked the discourse of public display, the children collaborated over extended periods of time, transforming the style of the NLS to achieve their own literacy purposes and showing that the NLS is not the whole story when it comes to learning about literacy.     

Transfer of learning in Swedish technical vocational education: student experiences in the energy and industry programmes

One of the most important issues in vocational education is the interaction between learning at school and at different workplaces. Students need to transfer what they have learned in and between these different learning arenas. However, little agreement exists among researchers on how to conceptualise and empirically study transfer of learning. This article aims to enhance our understanding of this process in technical vocational education by adding a new perspective on transfer: the phenomenological lifeworld approach. Eleven interviews with students enrolled in the Energy and Industry programmes at a Swedish upper-secondary school were conducted. Three transfer themes emerged from the data: learning for new situations, variation and integration of theory and practice. The student perspective, based on the lifeworld approach shows that the different learning arenas – the school and workplaces – can complement each other. The learning arenas offer different opportunities for learning, and learning in both arenas is necessary in order to prepare for an unknown future, according to the students in this study.     

Never riding the tide Seymour Benzer — The founder of neurogenetics

Seymour Benzer pioneered the use of the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster as a model system for the study of nervous system function and development. His research spanned a range of topics from identification of mutations resulting in temperature-induced paralysis to neurodegenerative diseases and circadian rhythm. Benzer’s indomitable style as a scientist is well worth emulating; his work was driven by his curiosity rather than public pressure or fashion trends.     

Activity-related typologies and longitudinal change in physical activity and sedentary time in children and adolescents: The UP&DOWN Study

BackgroundChildren and adolescents can be distinguished by different typologies (clusters) of physical activity and sedentary behavior. How physical activity and sedentary behaviors change over time within different typologies is not known. This study examined longitudinal changes in physical activity and sedentary time among children and adolescents with different baseline typologies of activity-related behavior.MethodsIn this longitudinal study (3 annual time points) of children (n = 600, age = 9.2 ± 0.4 years (mean ± SD), 50.3% girls) and adolescents (n = 1037, age = 13.6 ± 1.7 years, 48.4% girls), participants were recruited in Spain in 2011–2012. Latent class analyses identified typologies based on self-reported screen, educational, social and relaxing sedentary behaviors, active travel, muscle strengthening activity, and sport at baseline. Within each typology, linear mixed growth models explored longitudinal changes in accelerometer-derived moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and sedentary time, as well as time by class interactions.ResultsThree typologies were identified among children (“social screenies”, 12.8%; “exercisers”, 61.5%; and “non-sporty active commuters”, 25.7%) and among adolescents (“active screenies”, 43.5%; “active academics”, 35.0%; and “non-sporty active commuters”, 21.5%) at baseline. Sedentary time increased within each typology among children and adolescents, with no significant differences between typologies. No changes in physical activity were found in any typology among children. In adolescents, physical activity declined within all typologies, with “non-sporty active commuters” declining significantly more than “active screenies” over 3 years.ConclusionThese results support the need for intervention to promote physical activity and prevent increases in sedentary time during childhood and adolescence. Adolescents characterized as “non-sporty active commuters” may require specific interventions to maintain their physical activity over time.     

Preparing Site Supervisors of Counselor Education Students

Counselor educators maintain a responsibility for providing site supervisors with professional development opportunities (Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. 2009 ). The goal of this study was to evaluate a model for providing preparation to site supervisors. Significant differences were observed from pretest to posttest on the Supervisory Self‐Efficacy Scale (Johnson & Stewart, 2008 ).     

Microfluidic impedance cytometry of tumour cells in blood

The dielectric properties of tumour cells are known to differ from normal blood cells, and this difference can be exploited for label-free separation of cells. Conventional measurement techniques are slow and cannot identify rare circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in a realistic timeframe. We use high throughput single cell microfluidic impedance cytometry to measure the dielectric properties of the MCF7 tumour cell line (representative of CTCs), both as pure populations and mixed with whole blood. The data show that the MCF7 cells have a large membrane capacitance and size, enabling clear discrimination from all other leukocytes. Impedance analysis is used to follow changes in cell viability when cells are kept in suspension, a process which can be understood from modelling time-dependent changes in the dielectric properties (predominantly membrane conductivity) of the cells. Impedance cytometry is used to enumerate low numbers of MCF7 cells spiked into whole blood. Chemical lysis is commonly used to remove the abundant erythrocytes, and it is shown that this process does not alter the MCF7 cell count or change their dielectric properties. Combining impedance cytometry with magnetic bead based antibody enrichment enables MCF7 cells to be detected down to 100 MCF7 cells in 1 ml whole blood, a log 3.5 enrichment and a mean recovery of 92%. Microfluidic impedance cytometry could be easily integrated within complex cell separation systems for identification and enumeration of specific cell types, providing a fast in-line single cell characterisation method.     

Children's Conceptions About the Origin of Species: A Study of Italian Children's Conceptions With and Without Instruction

Investigations of people's understanding of the evolution of species have focused mainly on secondary school and university students. Very few investigations have taken into consideration younger students, and none have related children's ideas about the origin of species to formal instruction on this topic. To help fill this gap, the present study examines the effect of this instruction in elementary school children by comparing Italian second graders (n = 21; age = 7 years, 1 month, to 8 years, 7 months) with third graders (n = 18; age = 8 years, 1 month, to 9 years, 4 months) who had been taught about “the earth before humans” for several months in keeping with the Italian National Syllabus for this grade level. Semistructured interviews were used to examine children's thoughts about speciation. The majority of second graders used a creationist framework, whereas most third graders used a mixed framework (referring to both creation and evolution) or an evolutionary framework. However, children did not know about the mechanism of evolution and considered it to be the result of the passage of time, the use and disuse of body parts, or the need to adapt to a changing environment, as suggested by their teacher and textbooks.