The Relationship between Parenting Types and Older Adolescents' Personality, Academic Achievement, Adjustment, and Substance Use

The purpose of the present study was to examine Baumrind's T3 conceptual framework using a multiple informant design and an older adolescent population. With 178 college students and their families as participants, the present study found many of the predicted relations between parents' child-rearing style (Authoritative, Democratic, Nondirective, Nonauthoritarian-Directive, Authoritarian-Directive, and Unengaged) and their adolescent children's behavior in the 4 domains assessed: personality, adjustment, academic achievement, and substance use. The differences between parenting types on the criterion measures were not as large as reported in Baumrind's study, and significant effects were predominantly due to the poor scores from children with Unengaged and Authoritarian-Directive parents. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the Authoritative parenting type, the utility of using a typology, and areas for future research.     

A Professional Development System as a Catalyst for Changing Science Teachers

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Evaluating the efficacy of a small-group oral narrative intervention programme for pre-primary children with narrative difficulties in a mainstream school setting

This study designed and evaluated the efficacy of a manualised programme for children in mainstream school with delays in narrative discourse. Efficacy was evaluated using a Phase 1 non-randomised single-subject across multiple-baselines design. The programme was delivered by a speech pathologist with 11 mainstream children aged 5;0–5;11 years, in small groups, three times a week for 6 weeks. Intervention focused on explicit teaching of narrative macrostructure using icons, graphic organisers and repeated story retellings. Microstructure (morphosyntax and vocabulary) was targeted using implicit language facilitation procedures including modelling, recasting, expansion and vertical structuring. Participation in the programme resulted in significant changes with moderate to large effect sizes for most participants in the number of macrostructure elements, and conjunctions and adverbs. Analysis of pre-post standardised narrative data revealed clinically significant improvements for 9 of the 11 participants. The findings add to the research supporting the effectiveness of small-group oral narrative intervention.     

A Facilitator's guide to career transition workshops for educators

Conclusions The teaching profession is in a state of flux which will continue until changes in salaries, security, and class size are adjusted and overall attractiveness of the profession increases. The CPPC is committed to offering the Career Alternatives for Educators workshop and encourages other career centers to do so. Assisting educators in choosing to remain in teaching, or to enter another field, may help to reduce teacher burnout, enhance teacher job satisfaction, and increase their effectiveness in the classroom. In addition, the workshop provides educators with a better understanding of their University system, increases their awareness and attention to the career development process, and provides better understanding of career opportunities. Career Centers' involvement in this is particularly logical given the role which educators play in their daily interaction with potential university students as teachers or parents. For a variety of reasons, an Alternative for Educators workshop is an important outreach effort for Career Centers, and is a rewarding role for them to play.     

Longitudinal Genetic Analysis of Early Reading: The Western Reserve Reading Project

We examined the genetic and environmental contribution to the stability and instability of reading outcomes in early elementary school using a sample of 283 twin pairs drawn from the Western Reserve Reading Project. Twins were assessed across two measurement occasions. In Wave 1, children were either in kindergarten or first grade. Wave 2 assessments were conducted one year later. Results suggested substantial genetic stability across measurement occasions. Additionally, shared environmental influences also accounted for stability, particularly for variables more closely tied to direct instruction such as phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and word knowledge. There was also evidence for independent genetic and shared environmental effects, suggesting that new sources of variance may emerge as the demands of school change and children begin to acquire early reading skills.     

Writing flexibility in argumentative essays: a multidimensional analysis

Reading and Writing - The assessment of argumentative writing generally includes analyses of the specific linguistic and rhetorical features contained in the individual essays produced by students....     

Developing Mentors: An Analysis of Shared Mentoring Practices

Understanding how experienced teachers share and articulate effective mentoring practices can guide efforts to prepare quality mentors. This qualitative study focused on mentoring practices within a teacher-designed student-teaching program conceptualized while the mentor teachers within the program were students in a graduate-level mentoring course and implemented upon the mentors’ completion of their graduate studies. Data sources included interviews and field notes from meetings with mentors and student teachers. The results detail specific mentoring practices: explicit instruction through scaffolding, developing the whole teacher, student-teacher-directed learning, fostering student teachers’ individual practice, explicit mentoring of one another, and reflecting on mentoring. These practices were enabled by program structures such as mentor meetings, an online forum, and mentors’ observation of all student teachers in the program.     

The Role of Reform Curricular Materials in an Internship: The Case of Alice and Gregory

This report describes a case study of asecondary school mathematics internship wheremost of the elements of the internship ecologywere aligned with calls by the National Councilof Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM] for reform.Much research has been done on the lack ofimpact of teacher education programs on teacherclassroom behavior. Often this results fromdissonance between the philosophy and goals ofuniversity teacher education programs and thoseof schools. The case documented here offers aninstance of alignment between the universityprogram and the school internship site. Thefindings showed that within this supportiveatmosphere the reform curricular materialsbeing used in the classroom had a strong andlargely positive influence on the character ofthe internship experience, and on the intern'slearning. The form and content of the materials– Core-Plus Mathematics Project'sContemporary Mathematics in Context –supported reform-oriented development for theintern by providing particular foci to theplanning discussions between the intern and thementor. These areas of focus were: (a) themathematics content itself, (b) conceptualunderstanding as a main goal for instruction,and (c) the use of questioning as the bestmeans of guiding students to thatunderstanding. The findings highlight theimportance of developing reform-supportiveenvironments for intern teaching placements.     

Context-sensitive rules and word naming in Italian children

The present study examines the role of orthographic complexity on Italian children’s word reading. Two experiments are reported in which elementary school children (3rd and 5th graders) read aloud words containing simple or contextual letter-sound conversion rules. In Experiment 1, both groups of participants read words containing contextual rules more slowly and less accurately than words containing simple, non-contextual rules. Experiment 2 showed that the effect of rule complexity held for low but not high frequency words, on both reading speed and accuracy. No interactions with grade were found. This pattern is in line with previous findings on the effects of rule contextuality on adult performance [Burani, C. Barca, L. & Ellis, A. W. (2006). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 346–352]. Despite the regularity of the Italian orthography, the presence of complex rules influences both reading speed and accuracy of young readers. Moreover, the reading system of readers of a shallow orthography seems efficient from the first years of reading instruction.