The Ohio Career Education Association: Providing leadership in a changing society

Summary Founded in 1975, the Ohio Career Education Association has grown and matured into a vital, action-oriented professional organization of 1,700 members. Major initiatives include an outstanding annual conference, a quarterly newsletter, legislative relations activities, partnerships, publicity campaigns, and professional development seminars.CEA's dual mission is to promote the growth and expansion of career education in Ohio and to serve the interests of career education practitioners — teachers, counselors, career program personnel, and other local supporters.The key to CEA's success is that it functions as an active member of Ohio's career education network.Curt Heady is Director, Tri-County Education Program, Nelsonville, Ohio. He is also currently serving as Immediate Past President of the Ohio Career Education Association.     

School Trouble: A mother's burden

ABSTRACT The desire for parent involvement in children's schooling is based on the assumption that parents play a significant role in children's educational achievements. As a policy goal, parent involvement includes the participation of both mothers and fathers. However, in practice, parent involvement refers more often to the work of women in support of children's schooling. The coordination and supervision of children's educational activities often demands a significant portion of mothers' waking hours, particularly in the case of mothers whose children are doing poorly in school. This article draws on interviews with parents of children who struggled academically in school to examine the effects of 'school troubles' on mothers who, among the parents interviewed for this study, were much more likely to assume the material and emotional burdens for school troubles.     

The Flunk Heard Round the World

In April 1998, the state of Massachusetts implemented its first-ever high-stakes teacher test, requiring a pass of all those who sought a teaching license. Fifty-nine percent of teacher candidates failed, and their flunk was heard in newspaper and television stories around the world. This article presents brief highlights from a study of the impact of the Massachusetts test on teacher education at five higher education sites in the state. Contrary to expectations based on research about the impact of high stakes tests in K-12 schools, the study indicated that the teacher test had little impact on teacher education curriculum or program structures. Drawing on a market-policy lens, the article suggests that, instead, one of the major impacts of the test was its contribution to the grand narrative about teaching and teacher education as culprits in what is wrong with public schools and public education, which in turn supports a larger political agenda for privatization and a market approach to educational reform.     

What lexical decision and naming tell us about reading

The lexical decision (LD) and naming (NAM) tasks are ubiquitous paradigms that employ printed word identification. They are major tools for investigating how factors like morphology, semantic information, lexical neighborhood and others affect identification. Although use of the tasks is widespread, there has been little research into how performance in LD or NAM relates to reading ability, a deficiency that limits the translation of research with these tasks to the understanding of individual differences in reading. The present research was designed to provide a link from LD and NAM to the specific variables that characterize reading ability (e.g., decoding, sight word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) as well as to important reading-related abilities (phonological awareness and rapid naming). We studied 99 adults with a wide range of reading abilities. LD and NAM strongly predicted individual differences in word identification, less strongly predicted vocabulary size and did not predict comprehension. Fluency was predicted but with differences that depended on the way fluency was defined. Finally, although the tasks did not predict individual differences in rapid naming or phonological awareness, the failures nevertheless assisted in understanding the cognitive mechanisms behind these reading-related abilities. The results demonstrate that LD and NAM are important tools for the study of individual differences in reading.     

Averting Role Confusion Between Doctoral Students and Major Advisers: Adviser Disclosure Statements

Doctoral students in counselor education programs and their major academic advisers may unfortunately encounter role confusion in their relationships, affecting both parties personally and professionally. To mitigate misunderstandings, the authors recommend the use of adviser disclosure statements. Advantages for faculty members and students are discussed, and an example of an adviser disclosure statement is presented.     

Random and blocked practice of movement sequences: differential effects on response structure and movement speed

Three similar six-element key press sequences were practiced under blocked or random practice schedules with acquisition conducted on one day and retention and transfer on the next day. The task required participants to type, as quickly as possible, one of three 6-element sequences as observed on a computer monitor. In blocked practice, participants completed all practice in one repeated sequence before the next repeated sequence was introduced. In random acquisition practice, the three repeated sequences were randomly presented to the participants. The data suggest that random practice results in participants adopting a uniform response structure, while blocked practice allows participants to exploit unique sequential aspects of the individual tasks. This finding suggests that random practice may not be as effective as blocked practice when one of the tasks being practiced together can be optimized through the development of a unique response structure.     

Do High-Quality Kindergarten and First-Grade Classrooms Mitigate Preschool Fadeout?

Prior research shows that short-term effects from preschool may disappear, but little research has considered which environmental conditions might sustain academic advantages from preschool into elementary school. Using secondary data from two preschool experiments, we investigate whether features of elementary schools, particularly advanced content and high-quality instruction in kindergarten and first grade, as well as professional supports to coordinate curricular instruction, reduce fadeout. Across both studies, our measures of instruction did not moderate fadeout. However, results indicated that targeted teacher professional supports substantially mitigated fadeout between kindergarten and first grade but that this was not mediated through classroom quality. Future research should investigate the specific mechanisms through which aligned preschool-elementary school curricular approaches can sustain the benefits of preschool programs for low-income children.     

Web 2.0 and Information Literacy Instruction: Aligning Technology with ACRL Standards

The purpose of this article is to report on how Web 2.0 tools in an online information literacy instruction course aligned with ACRL's Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. A qualitative case study was undertaken on an online graduate course related to information literacy instruction. Data collected included: course activities, assignments, emails, online discussions, and surveys. The educational theory of constructivism and its adherence to reflection, active learning, and social interaction was used to find patterns in the data. Activity theory provided a framework for data analysis and interpretation related to the patterns of activities that took place while students used each Web 2.0 tool. Web 2.0 was found to enhance all five information literacy standards. These standards related to collaboration, information organization, creativity, discussion, and technology education.     

‘Speaking’ deficit into (or out of) existence: how language constrains classroom teachers’ knowledge about instructing diverse learners

This article explores the talk among novice teachers who participated in an inquiry project designed to rethink the instruction for their struggling students by drawing upon competence rather than deficiencies. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) based on theories of systemic functional linguistics and CDA provided tools to explore how their use of language afforded or constrained their efforts to better serve diverse learners in their urban elementary classrooms. The analysis indicates the power of normative and deficit discourses that continue to predominate within educational culture. It reflects on this analysis and discusses potential benefits of centralising language awareness and a social/critical lens to ongoing professional development.