The Importance of Demographic,Social, and Political Context for Estimating Policy Impacts: Comment on “Implementing New York's Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program”

Morrissey, Leikes, and Cochran (this issue) raise concerns about potential negative effects of state pre-kindergarten (pre-K) on the early care and education system. To put their study in context, I reviewed national demographic and enrollment trends. I found little evidence of negative effects from state pre-K policy. One reason may be that population growth and child care policies mitigated potential negative impacts of pre-K expansion. However, national averages could conceal important local variations or even nationwide variations when there are offsetting gains and losses. Children under age 5, their families, and their teachers all likely gained from increases in public pre-K. Infant/toddler care in private programs expanded as quickly as public pre-K. Morrissey and colleagues' small data set from New York has serious limitations, but some of the most salient findings are consistent with the national picture. The study offers lessons and suggests topics for future research on the influence of pre-K policy on the early care and education system.     

Mediation of Consultee's Conceptual Development in New Teacher Groups: Using Questions to Improve Coherency

This qualitative study applied methods used in discourse analysis to investigate how a consultant's questioning supported the goal of group consultation to empower beginning teachers to become effective problem solvers in their work environment. The focus of the study was on the process of questioning and communicative coherency as the group evolved over the course of the school year. The participants in this study were 7 White elementary school teachers in their first year of teaching. There were 12 sessions held over an 8-month period. The investigators found evidence of a parallel process between the coordinate consultation process and coherency in consultative discourse, such that as the coordinate process developed and improved, so did the coherency of group discourse. Implications for practice, training, and future research are discussed.     

Educational effects of the Tools of the Mind curriculum: A randomized trial

The effectiveness of the Tools of the Mind (Tools) curriculum in improving the education of 3- and 4-year-old children was evaluated by means of a randomized trial. The Tools curriculum, based on the work of Vygotsky, focuses on the development of self-regulation at the same time as teaching literacy and mathematics skills in a way that is socially mediated by peers and teachers and with a focus on play. The control group experienced an established district-created model described as a “balanced literacy curriculum with themes.” Teachers and students were randomly assigned to either treatment or control classrooms. Children (88 Tools and 122 control) were compared on social behavior, language, and literacy growth. The Tools curriculum was found to improve classroom quality and children's executive function as indicated by lower scores on a problem behavior scale. There were indications that Tools also improved children's language development, but these effects were smaller and did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance in multi-level models or after adjustments for multiple comparisons. Our findings indicate that a developmentally appropriate curriculum with a strong emphasis on play can enhance learning and development so as to improve both the social and academic success of young children. Moreover, it is suggested that to the extent child care commonly increases behavior problems this outcome may be reversed through the use of more appropriate curricula that actually enhance self-regulation.     

THE LOST PROFESSION

In the United Kingdom, the higher education community is being deprived of components of its professionalism just when it is clarifying to itself the nature of that professionalism. Historically, academics were not required to define their obligations to society. Now, they must function in an age of accountability in which public services are being asked to demonstrate their wider value. Behind this shift stands a changing relationship between higher education and the state in which the state has moved to assess the quality of what was on offer and is now playing a direct part in influencing the shape of graduate formation. Currently, academic life is becoming so subject to external control that the autonomy required as a necessary component of professionalism is being lost. In Halsey's terminology, academics are changing from being a status group to being a proletariat but without ever having properly been a profession.