Consultants and Coteachers Affecting Student Outcomes with Numbered Heads Together: Keeping All Engaged

General education teachers, special education teachers, social workers, psychologists, and a myriad of specialists are responsible for delivering content to all students within inclusive environments. These educational teams continue to search for strategies that can be recommended or used in an inclusive environment. Researchers have discovered that an instructional strategy such as Numbered Heads Together (NHT) increases both academic and behavioral outcomes for students with and without disabilities. This article provides consultants, Response to Intervention (RtI) team members, and coteaching teams with a specific strategy of NHT that can be used by two or more professionals to develop lessons or deliver instruction using a coteaching or consultant approach with both professionals (consultant and general education teacher) assessing learner outcomes after the completion of the activity.     

漫谈计算机化对就业的冲击

纽约Putnam县的Rober Beardand先生在一家出版公司干了20年，在其中最后的7年中，确实是人在曹营心在汉，辞职的打算始终在心头。随着软件技术的进步，Beanland办公室的电脑变得越来越聪明、能干和快捷。很快，电脑替代了他与同事们的统计分析工作：处理信息、组合数据、设计表格。利用电脑几乎可以在一小时内搞定一切工作。     

Multi-informant assessment of maltreated children: convergent and discriminant validity of the TSCC and TSCYC

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the convergent and discriminant validity of two trauma symptom measures, the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC) [Briere, J. (1996). Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources] and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children (TSCYC) [Briere, J. (2005). Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children (TSCYC). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources]. METHODS: Children's scores on the TSCC and their caretakers' ratings on the TSCYC were analyzed in a study of 310 children presenting to one of two child abuse treatment centers. RESULTS: TSCC and TSCYC scales generally converged in their assessment of symptomatology in maltreated children. Equivalent scales measuring anxiety, depression, anger, dissociation, and sexual concerns were generally most correlated with one another. Similarly, the Posttraumatic Stress-Intrusion (PTS-I) scale of the TSCYC correlated highest with the Posttraumatic Stress (PTS) and Anxiety (ANX) scales of the TSCC, the TSCYC Posttraumatic Stress-Arousal (PTS-AR) scale was correlated with the TSCC ANX scale, and the TSCC PTS scale was most correlated with the TSCYC ANX, PTS-I, and Sexual Concerns (SC) scales. The TSCYC Posttraumatic Stress-Avoidance scale was unrelated to any TSCC scale. Discriminant function analysis revealed that the TSCC PTS scale was the best single predictor of sexual abuse-related PTSD status as identified by the TSCYC. CONCLUSIONS: The TSCC and TSCYC display moderate convergent and discriminant validity with respect to one another, despite different information sources. Nevertheless, the relatively small association between relevant TSCC and TSCYC scales indicates that different symptom informants may have different perspectives on the child's symptomatology; an outcome that may be beneficial when both measures are administered simultaneously. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: These results reinforce the notion that both child- and parent/caretaker report measures should be used in the evaluation of traumatized children, so that multiple sources of information can be considered simultaneously. In the current context, administration of the TSCC to the child and the TSCYC to the caretaker, when appropriate (i.e., in children 8-12 years of age) may yield more clinical information on the child's symptomatology than either measure would alone-perhaps especially in cases when one of the two respondents under- or over-reports the child's distress.     

Racial identity and academic attainment among African American adolescents

In this study, the relationships between racial identity and academic outcomes for African American adolescents were explored. In examining race beliefs, the study differentiated among (a) importance of race (centrality), (b) group affect (private regard), and (c) perceptions of societal beliefs (public regard) among 606 African American 17-year-old adolescents. Using cluster analysis, profiles of racial identity variables were created, and these profile groups were related to educational beliefs, performance, and later attainment (high school completion and college attendance). Results indicated cluster differences across study outcomes. Also, the relationships between academic attitudes and academic attainment differed across groups. Finally, the paper includes a discussion on the need to consider variation in how minority youth think about group membership in better understanding their academic development.     

Fostering Distributed Science Learning Through Collaborative Technologies

TACTICS (French and Spanish acronym standing for Collaborative Work and Learning in Science with Information and Communications Technologies) is an ongoing project aimed at investigating a distributed community of learning and practice in which information and communications technologies (ICT) take the role of collaborative tools to support social construction of knowledge. This community is composed of researchers, graduate students, and high-school teachers and their students, from six schools and four universities in Canada and Mexico. It set out in fall 2000 to develop a community around the general topic of integrating concepts in science school subjects. Once a prototype community is established, it can become a terrain where different aspects could be studied. Subsequently, researchers could gradually take a back seat allowing as well as ensuring the autonomy of the school members involved and, thereby, the viability of the learning community. The set up of the proposed prototype distributed science learning community was therefore an essential yet far from trivial first step. This paper discusses the process of setting up the community and the lessons learned.     

Preschool Teachers' Perceptions about Conflict Resolution, Autonomy, and the Group in Four Countries: United States, Colombia, El Salvador, and Taiwan

Preschool teachers (N = 160) in four countries (U.S., Colombia, El Salvador, and Taiwan) were surveyed about their views of conflict resolutions for moral and social-conventional conflicts, providing choice in the classroom (autonomy), maintaining a sense of the group, and general pedagogical aims of early childhood education. The findings revealed cultural similarities regarding conflict resolution intervention techniques and providing choice in the classroom. Cultural differences were found for maintaining the group and encouraging traditional group values. The items regarding the general pedagogical aims revealed a mixture of cultural differences and similarities. The results have implications for formulating generalizable goals for facilitating social and moral development in early childhood development and education.     

Visualization and Representation of Physical Systems: Wavemaker as an Aid to Conceptualizing Wave Phenomena

An understanding of wave mechanics is essential to making the leap from classical to quantum systems. Wavemaker is a simulation environment developed to reveal graphically the behavior of periodic systems using a series of increasingly sophisticated visualization tools. Individual particles in a many-particle system can be instrumented for study of kinematic behavior. Parametric representations reveal time-independent behaviors. Problems dealing with propagation, reflection, and Fourier synthesis are easily studied. Use with students has revealed that many students have preconceptions about the behavior of waves and that use of this software is helpful in connecting real to simulated systems, separating holistic behaviors from those of individual elements, identifying critical parameters, and making connections between variables that are used to describe and measure periodic systems.     

IQ and neuropsychological predictors of academic achievement

Word reading and math computation scores were predicted from Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence Full Scale IQ, 10 neuropsychological tests, and parent attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) ratings in 214 general population elementary school children. IQ was the best single predictor of achievement. In addition, Digit Span contributed significantly to reading prediction, and the Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI) and Coding contributed to math prediction. The remaining neuropsychological test scores did not significantly improve achievement prediction. Exploratory factor analysis yielded a general ability factor (comprising the four IQ subtests, Digit Span, VMI, reading, and math), five factors made up solely of subtests from single measures (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Stroop Color and Word Test, Gordon Diagnostic System, California Verbal Learning Test, and ADHD ratings), a factor consisting of Grooved Pegboard Test and Coding, and a factor consisting of Symbol Search and Animal Naming Test.     

Class-first analysis in a continuum: an approach to the complexities of schools, society, and insurgent science

This essay addresses Katherine Richardson Bruna’s paper: Mexican Immigrant Transnational Social Capital and Class Transformation: Examining the Role of Peer Mediation in Insurgent Science, through five main points. First, I offer a comparison between the traditional analysis of classism in Latin America and Richardson Bruna’s call for a class-first analysis in the North American social sciences where there has been a tendency to obviate the specific examination of class relations and class issues. Secondly, I discuss that a class-first analysis solely cannot suffice to depict the complex dimensions in the relations of schools and society. Thus, I suggest a continuum in the class-first analysis. Third, I argue that social constructions surrounding issues of language, ethnicity, and gender necessarily intersect with issues of class and that, in fact, those other constructions offer compatible epistemologies that aid in representing the complexity of social and institutional practices in the capitalist society. Richardson Bruna’s analysis of Augusto’s interactions with his teacher and peers in the science class provides a fourth point of discussion in this essay. As a final point in my response I discuss Richardson Bruna’s idea of making accessible class-first analysis knowledge to educators and especially to science teachers.