High school peer tutors teach MedlinePlus: a model for Hispanic outreach.

OBJECTIVES: The objective was to introduce the MedlinePlus Website to the predominantly Hispanic residents of the Lower Rio Grande Valley region of Texas by partnering with a health professions magnet high school (known as Med High). METHODS: Community assessment was used in the planning stages and included pre-project focus groups with students and teachers. Outreach methods included peer tutor selection, train-the-trainer sessions, school and community outreach, and pre- and posttests of MedlinePlus training sessions. Evaluation methods included Web statistics; end-of-project interviews; focus groups with students, faculty, and librarians; and end-of-project surveys of students and faculty. RESULTS: Four peer tutors reached more than 2,000 people during the project year. Students and faculty found MedlinePlus to be a useful resource. Faculty and librarians developed new or revised teaching methods incorporating MedlinePlus. The project enhanced the role of school librarians as agents of change at Med High. The project continues on a self-sustaining basis. CONCLUSIONS: Using peer tutors is an effective way to educate high school students about health information resources and, through the students, to reach families and community members.     

Examining Differences in Predictors of African American,Caucasian, and Latino Young Adults’ Intentions to Register as an Organ Donor

To date, African Americans and Latinos consent to organ donation at lower rates than Caucasians and are disproportionately represented on transplant waiting lists. However, limited work has investigated racial differences in predictors of organ donation registration. In this study, we examined racial differences in the antecedents of African American, Caucasian, and Latino young adults’ registration intentions using the theory of planned behavior, the noncognitive model, and perceived realism. Non-donors (N = 307) were recruited in a stratified random telephone survey. Results indicate that for African Americans, subjective norm, bodily integrity, and medical mistrust were the strongest predictors of registration intention. For Caucasians, attitude and subjective norm arose as key determinants of registration intention. For Latinos, attitude, subjective norm, and medical mistrust were the strongest predictors of registration intention. Consistent evidence for the independent predictive validity of perceived realism was also documented. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, as well as avenues for future research.     

The effects of kinetic structure and micrograph content on achievement in reading micrographs by college biology students

The effects of kinetic structure and micrograph content on student achievement of reading micrograph skills were examined. The purpose of the study was to determine which form of kinetic structure, high or low, and/or micrograph content, unified or varied, was most effective and if there were any interactive effects. Randomly assigned to four treatment groups, 100 introductory college biology students attended three audiovisual presentations and practice sessions on reading light, transmission electron, and scanning electron micrographs. The micrograph skills test, administered at two points in time, assessed knowledge acquisition and retention. The test measured general concept skills and actual reading micrograph skills separately. All significant tests were considered with an α = 0.05. High kinetic structure was found to be more effective than low kinetic structure in developing general concepts about micrographs. This finding supports Anderson's kinetic theory research. High kinetic structure instruction does not affect actual reading micrograph skills, but micrograph content does. Unified micrograph content practice sessions were more effective than varied micrograph content practice sessions. More attention should be given to the visual components of perceptual learning tasks.     

Using a Standardized Task to Assess the Quality of Teacher–Child Dyadic Interactions in Preschool

Research Findings: This study explored the quality of teacher-child interactions within the context of a newly developed standardized task, Teacher-Child Structured Play Task (TC-SPT). A sample of 146 teachers and 345 children participated. Children who displayed the highest disruptive behaviors within each classroom were selected to participate. Teacher-child dyads (n=345) participated in a play session that included free play and clean-up tasks. We adapted two coding schemes to assess the quality of both teachers’ and children’s interactive behaviors during these two tasks. The coding schemes exhibited internal and inter-rater reliability. Significant associations with classroom-level teacher-child interactions and children’s observed classroom engagement provide support for the measure’s validity. Differences in teacher and child-interactive behaviors across the two tasks (free play versus clean-up) suggest that task features may affect the quality of teacher-child interactive behaviors. Practice and Policy: Examining the interactions of different teacher-child dyads within the same standardized context will allow researchers to better understand the child and teacher factors that contribute to the quality of those interactions. Thus, use of this task in future field-based research may help to assess the impact of early interventions and professional development efforts that target improvement in the quality of teacher-child interactions.     

Phoneme awareness and pathways into literacy: A comparison of German and American children

Where American kindergartners are taughtletters and letter sounds, Germankindergartners are not; where American firstand second graders receive an eclectic blend ofwhole language, whole word and phonics-basedapproaches, their German counterparts aretaught by an intensive synthetic phonicsapproach. As a probe to the consequences ofthese pedagogical differences on the emergenceof phoneme awareness, this study administeredtwo tests of phoneme awareness tokindergarten-, first- and second-grade childrenin Germany and America, along with readingtests, the digit span test and a test of RANcolor naming ability. The American kindergartenchildren excelled on a phoneme identityjudgement and a phoneme deletion task that theGerman kindergartners found difficult. Theiradvantage held equally whether the manipulatedsound was a syllable onset or the initial partof a consonant cluster. The first and secondgraders surpassed the kindergartners in bothcountries; however, the German first and secondgraders equaled their American peers on bothtasks and both types of units. In addition,the German children were more accurate decodersof pseudowords by the end of second grade, andthe association between phoneme awareness andGerman decoding ability was weaker. Anincreased emphasis on phonics and the greatertransparency of the German alphabet arediscussed as possible factors in the decodingexcellence of the German second graders and itsdecreased association with phoneme awareness.The contrast between the American and Germankindergartners and the equivalence of the firstand second graders in the two countries areconsistent with a view that phoneme awarenessdevelops primarily as a product of literacyexposure.     

Learning Communities: Beliefs Embedded in Content-Based Rituals

This article addresses the underlying beliefs needed by teachers of young children if their learning communities are to be successful and self-sustaining. The relationships of language arts and social studies content to specific academic, social and literary rituals are discussed in the context of classroom examples in the United States. Trust and respect are treated as critical components supported by the work of Parker Palmer, Alfie Kohn and others. Relevant resources are also provided.     

Does Infant Carrying Promote Attachment? An Experimental Study of the Effects of Increased Physical Contact on the Development of Attachment

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that increased physical contact, experimentally induced, would promote greater maternal responsiveness and more secure attachment between infant and mother. Low-SES mothers of newborn infants were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 23) that received soft baby carriers (more physical contact) or to a control group (n = 26) that received infants seats (less contact). Using a transitional probability analysis of a play session at 31/2 months, it was demonstrated that mothers in the experimental group were more contingently responsive than control mothers to their infants' vocalizations. When the infants were 13 months old, the Ainsworth Strange Situation was administered. Significantly more experimental than control infants were securely attached to their mothers. We infer from these results that for low-income, inner-city mothers, there may be a causal relation between increased physical contact, achieved through early carrying in a soft baby carrier, and subsequent security of attachment between infant and mother.     

Computers in 2001: Preparing educational administrators

Conclusions These findings are important to educational leaders, especially those in higher education, who are responsible for allocating resources for microcomputers. Recommendations for the selection of appropriate hardware can be derived from this analysis of current computer use and of expected changes. That computer facilities need upgrading in the next decade is clear. The purchase of new Macintosh and MS-DOS microcomputers would fit the needs of a majority of educational administration students. Of the program coordinators and professors with computer expertise who responded to the survey, 43 percent believe that their graduate students are gaining more access to computers in places other than the university. College of Education computer laboratories should be more open to students in educational leadership programs, and these programs should make the availability of appropriate hardware and software a priority. Understanding the extent to which educational administration programs train their students in computer use is of paramount importance in assessing curriculum development and its concomitant hardware demands. She has published reviews and articles on various aspects of computers in education.