Extending Responsiveness to Intervention to Mathematics at First and Third Grades

Responsiveness to intervention (RTI) is an innovative approach to the identification of learning disabilities (LD). The central assumption is that RTI can differentiate between two explanations for low achievement: poor instruction versus disability. If the child responds poorly to validated instruction, then the assessment eliminates instructional quality as a viable explanation for poor academic growth and instead provides evidence of a disability. For children who do respond nicely, RTI serves a critical prevention function. Most of RTI research has been focused on early reading. In this article, we describe two ongoing programs of research on RTI in the area of mathematics: one on a comprehensive mathematics curriculum at first grade and the other focused on word problems at third grade. For each research program, we describe the sample, explain how students are identified as at risk for mathematics disability, provide an overview of the interventions to which responsiveness is gauged, and describe some results to date.     

Skills, Socrates and the Sophists: Learning from History

The Sophists, and the Socratic response they provoked, are considered in order to elucidate issues raised by present-day skill-talk. These issues include: whether skills avoid questions of ends and truth; the existence of general skills, such as critical thinking; the importance of knowledge; skills and the personality; and some implications for teaching and philosophy.     

Academic Self‐Perceptions,Effort, and Strategy Use in Students with Learning Disabilities: Changes Over Time

This study investigated changes in teachers' and students' perceptions of students' effort, strategy use, and academic difficulties when strategy instruction was infused into the classroom curriculum. The sample consisted of 201 students with learning disabilities, 210 average achievers, and 57 teachers from Grades 4–9 in two urban and suburban communities. After six months of classroom‐based strategy instruction, students with learning disabilities reported more consistent use of strategies with their schoolwork and perceived themselves as struggling less in reading, writing, and spelling. Teachers perceived the students with learning disabilities as more strategic and as applying more effort to their schoolwork. Teachers also perceived their students as showing significant improvements in spelling, regardless of whether they had learning disabilities. These findings extended the results of previous investigations and indicated the small, positive impact of classroom‐based strategy instruction. Further investigations are critical to evaluate the generalizability of these findings.     

Assimilation, Faith and Identity: Educational Implications of Change and Continuity

In England, the presence of an established church places its adherents within the social mainstream. Other religious groups have been tolerated though suffering social and educational disadvantages. With the passage of time through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, minority religious groups such as Irish Catholics have been assimilated into the host culture, and allowed to have their own schools.
However, it would appear that contemporary movements of people to the United Kingdom have retained loyalties not only to their own religion, but, in some instances to their own language, which they perceive as a vital element of their own culture and identity. Demands for schools, within the state-funded system, for minority religious groups have not lessened. As faith schools in England increase in number, their role in a multicultural society becomes increasingly problematic. Lessons about changing models of assimilation and identity can be learnt from a brief review of the historic Irish Catholic experience that, in turn, can illuminate the current experience of a Greek Orthodox school in south London.     

Continuities and Discontinuities in Children and Scholarship

This article introduces a collection of essays on continuity and discontinuity in cognitive development. In his lead essay, J. Kagan (2008) argues that limitations in past research (e.g., on number concepts, physical solidarity, and object permanence) render conclusions about continuity premature. Commentaries respectively (1) argue that longitudinal contexts are essential for interpreting developmental data, (2) illustrate the value of converging measures, (3) identify qualitative change via dynamical systems theory, (4) redirect the focus from states to process, and (5) review epistemological premises of alternative research traditions. Following an overview of the essays, this introductory article discusses how the search for developmental structures, continuity, and process differs between mechanistic‐contextualist and organismic‐contextualist metatheoretical frameworks, and closes by highlighting continuities in Kagan’s scholarship over the past half century.     

美国国家体育课程标准的历史流变与特点分析

课程标准是引领学校教育发展的纲领性文件,美国在课程标准的可持续发展方面一直走在世界前列。本研究采用文献资料法、比较研究法和逻辑分析法,对美国近二十年来三个不同版本(1995年版、2004年版和2013年版)国家体育课程标准进行了分析。结果表明,大规模的教育变革、解除学校体育危机的需求、对“什么是受过良好体育教育个体”问题的探索引导了美国国家课程标准的流变,具体体现在课程标准框架、课程标准的具体内容和课程标准的评价三个方面,表现出越来越关注对“完整的人”的培养、语言表述更加简洁清晰、可操作性逐步提升、更加强调研究成果的渗透等特点。这种流变对于我国《体育与健康课程标准》的不断修订与完善,促进体育与健康课程的可持续发展具有较强的启发意义。