Bien Educado: Measuring the social behaviors of Mexican American children

Young children's expected social behaviors develop within particular cultural contexts and contribute to their academic experience in large part through their relationships with their teachers. Commonly used measures focus on children's problem behaviors, developed from psychopathology traditions, and rarely situate normative and positive behaviors in context. Building from the literature on parenting goals and socialization expectations in Latino families and a preliminary ethnographic study (Proyecto Educando Niños), we constructed a survey in English and Spanish that measures the expected social behaviors of Mexican-heritage children, ages 3–6 years, using parent and teacher reports. Use of the BEAR Assessment System facilitated the refinement of this instrument to assess the socialization of young, Mexican American children. We report on the psychometric properties of the Mexican American Socialization (MAS) Scale, utilizing item-response theory. Analyses indicate the MAS Scale is reliable and an ecologically valid indicator of multiple constructs of the expected social behaviors of young Mexican American children. In particular, the 41-item Bien Educado subscale showed good reliability and is consistent with socialization constructs described in the literature. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Reluctant mediator: Hong Kong,the two Koreas and the Tokyo Olympics

This essay examines the complex, and ultimately unsuccessful, negotiations between North and South Korea, undertaken with the encouragement of the International Olympic Committee during 1962–63 to form a united Korean team to participate in the Tokyo Olympics of 1964. In particular, it focuses on the role of Hong Kong, chosen as a ‘neutral’ site for the two Korean delegations to meet. It shows how the IOC's optimism for a ‘sporting’ solution was to founder on continued mutual suspicion and recriminations between the two Koreas and how the Hong Kong government's reluctance to get involved, the US political intervention, and North Korean participation in the GANEFO Games were all to complicate the process.     

Correlates of Reading Fluency in Arabic: Diglossic and Orthographic Factors

Arabic native speaking children are born into a unique linguistic context called diglossia (Ferguson, word, 14, 47–56, [1959]). In this context, children grow up speaking a Spoken Arabic Vernacular (SAV), which is an exclusively spoken language, but later learn to read another linguistically related form, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Forty-two first-grade Arabic native speaking children were given five measures of basic reading processes: two cognitive (rapid automatized naming and short-term working memory), two phonological (phoneme discrimination and phoneme isolation), and one orthographic (letter recoding speed). In addition, the study produced independent measures of phonological processing for MSA phonemes (phonemes that are not within the spoken vernacular of children) and SAV phonemes (phonemes that are familiar to children from their oral vernacular). The relevance of these skills to MSA pseudoword reading fluency (words correct per minute) in vowelized Arabic was tested. The results showed that all predictor measures, except phoneme discrimination, correlated with pseudoword reading fluency. Although phonological processing (phoneme isolation and discrimination) for MSA phonemes was more challenging than that for SAV phonemes, phonological skills were not found to affect reading fluency directly. Stepwise regression analysis showed that the strongest predictor of reading fluency in vowelized Arabic was letter recoding speed. Letter recoding speed was predicted by memory, rapid naming, and phoneme isolation. The results are discussed in light of Arabic diglossia and the shallow orthography of vowelized Arabic.     

Strengthening the Early Childhood Workforce: How Wage Incentives May Boost Training and Job Stability

Research Findings: Aiming to raise the quality of early childhood teachers and caregivers and to reduce turnover, government and professional associations are pursuing 2 intervention strategies. The 1st mandates higher credential levels, as seen with Head Start and state preschool reforms. Here we examine the efficacy of the 2nd strategy: offering wage incentives to encourage in-service training and to reduce job turnover. We followed 2,783 preschool center directors, teachers, and classroom aides who participated in California's Child-care Retention Incentive (CRI) program during a 3-year period. County-designed programs offered differing combinations of wage supplements and professional development to participants who pursued college-level training. We found a priori low levels of staff turnover among those who selected into the CRI program. This conditioned the modest program effects that we observed and revealed the segmented character of the early childhood labor force, which appears to shape selection patterns. Demographic attributes of staff and the auspice in which staff worked were significantly related to the number of college units acquired and to job stability. Specific features of local CRI programs were less influential. Staff completed more college courses when participating in programs that provided stronger career advising and professional activities in addition to their college coursework. Practice or Policy: Implications for incentive programs nationwide are discussed.     

Philosophy and Educational Research: a reconsideration of epistemological boundaries

This paper examines what logically is or ought to be the relationship between philosophy and educational research. It explores the sense in which philosophising itself constitutes a form of research and notes the role of philosophy in addressing the ethical, epistemological and political issues which underpin other forms of educational research of an empirical character. The paper goes on to examine more fully the role of philosophy in empirical research. It explores the complex interplay of logic and psychology in the history and biography of the development of ideas and suggests that this picture argues for freedom of movement between the two in academic lives and institutions. It then takes a step further and, drawing on Quine and Kuhn, challenges the epistemological status of the dichotomy between a posteriori and a priori reasoning.