Embodied moments: revisiting the field and writing vulnerably

In this essay, I revisit past dissertation fieldwork to interrogate the presence and absence of my pregnancy in performances and textual accounts. I return to time spent in the former Yugoslavia working with the Swedish organization Kvinna till Kvinna (Woman to Woman) and their local partner organizations. Through a series of brief flashbacks, I work through ongoing moments of tension surrounding reflexive research, emerging subjectivities, and vulnerable writing. This essay contributes to conversations on how feminist ethnographers locate themselves within the field in relation to participants and on reflexivity as an evolving practice that expands across temporal and spatial boundaries.     

I’m New…Again: Reconceptualizing the Socialization Process Through Rotational Programs

Communication scholars have studied how organizations socialize new employees in breadth, but we know less about how employees adapt to multiple roles rather than just one position. With the rise of rotational programs, which introduce newcomers to several different jobs within a brief time, socialization theory should be expanded. This study focused on people’s experiences in rotational programs to provide a more accurate picture of this complex socialization process. Longitudinal, qualitative data from employees during their first and second job rotation revealed that such employees’ socialization differs from traditional employees’ experiences. The results suggested a Model of Rotational Socialization that more accurately portrays the socialization process by accounting for the contrast between role and organizational socialization.     

Charting the development of sport expertise: challenges and opportunities

This review poses three key issues that will progress our understanding of the sport expertise literature and its translational scientific impact. Primarily relying on research conducted in interceptive sport tasks, and to a lesser extent team sports, we review the perceptual-cognitive skills of sports experts and explore the challenge of designing a sufficiently representative task to examine expertise. We focus on the methodological challenges presented by the reciprocal relationship between players’ action capabilities and their perceptual-cognitive skill. Second, we consider the need for a paradigm shift in the experimental approach used when examining the development of sport expertise. In short, a shift from traditional expert-novice designs to more prospective longitudinal designs that cross-sectionally track the development of expertise is discussed. The final issue considers how the volume of in situ data now collected provides a rich source of information that sport expertise researchers have only begun to consider and integrate with more traditional sport psychology research. We demonstrate how statistical approaches that have described the likely trajectories of expert performers on their journey toward expertise coupled with more traditional qualitative experimental approaches can provide useful insights into the development of psychological performance skills and more broadly sport expertise.     

Individual Differences in Fifth Graders’ Literacy and Academic Language Predict Comprehension Monitoring Development: An Eye-Movement Study

In this study, we investigated fifth graders’ (n = 52) fall literacy, academic language, and motivation and how these skills predicted fall and spring comprehension monitoring on an eye movement task. Comprehension monitoring was defined as the identification and repair of misunderstandings when reading text. In the eye movement task, children read two sentences; the second included either a plausible or implausible word in the context of the first sentence. Stronger readers had shorter reading times overall suggesting faster processing of text. Generally fifth graders reacted to the implausible word (i.e., longer gaze duration on the implausible vs. the plausible word, which reflects lexical access). Students with stronger academic language, compared to those with weaker academic language, generally spent more time rereading the implausible target compared to the plausible target. This difference increased from fall to spring. Results support the centrality of academic language for meaning integration, setting standards of coherence, and utilizing comprehension repair strategies.     

Differentiating the neural response to intervention in children with developmental dyslexia

Developmental dyslexia is associated with functional abnormalities within reading areas of the brain. For some children diagnosed with dyslexia, phonologically based remediation programs appear to rehabilitate brain function in key reading areas (Shaywitz et al., Biological Psychiatry 55: 101–110, 2004; Simos et al., Neuroscience 58: 1203–1213, 2002). However, a non-trivial number of children diagnosed with dyslexia fail to respond to these interventions (Torgesen, Learning Disabilities Research & Practice 15: 55–64, 2000). A cross-sectional fMRI study investigating post-treatment effects was conducted in an effort to better understand differences in brain function between treatment responders and non-responders. Educational testing and brain activation measured after treatment suggested that the reading intervention used in the present study rehabilitated several basic level reading processes in all participants diagnosed with dyslexia. However, activation in the left inferior parietal lobe differentiated treatment responders and non-responders in comparison to non-impaired readers. Children with persistent deficits in single word decoding (treatment non-responders) demonstrated significantly less activation in the left inferior parietal lobe when compared to non-impaired readers.     

Children born at risk: What's happening in kindergarten?

Many studies examine the development of infants born at risk for medical and developmental problems during the early years of life, but far fewer follow these children into their school years. This project compared high-risk vs. low-risk children in their performance on the WPPSI at pre- and postkindergarten levels. In general, both groups of children demonstrated increases in performance; however, their patterns of performance were different. The high-risk children showed increases predominantly in the Performance areas of the test, whereas the low-risk children demonstrated increases predominantly in the Verbal areas.     

Language,literacy, attentional behaviors,and instructional quality predictors of written composition for first graders

We had two primary purposes in the present study: (1) to examine unique child-level predictors of written composition which included language skills, literacy skills (e.g., reading and spelling), and attentiveness and (2) to examine whether instructional quality (quality in responsiveness and individualization, and quality in spelling and writing instruction) is uniquely related to written composition for first-grade children (N = 527). Children's written composition was evaluated on substantive quality (ideas, organization, word choice, and sentence flow) and writing conventions (spelling, mechanics, and handwriting). Results revealed that for the substantive quality of writing, children's grammatical knowledge, reading comprehension, letter writing automaticity, and attentiveness were uniquely related. Teachers’ responsiveness was also uniquely related to the substantive quality of written composition after accounting for child predictors and other instructional quality variables. For the writing conventions outcome, children's spelling and attentiveness were uniquely related, but instructional quality was not. These results suggest the importance of paying attention to multiple component skills such as language, literacy, and behavioral factors as well as teachers’ responsiveness for writing development.     

Teaching Supply Chain Management Complexities: A SCOR Model Based Classroom Simulation

The SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference) Model Supply Chain Classroom Simulation is an in‐class experiential learning activity that helps students develop a holistic understanding of the processes and challenges of supply chain management. The simulation has broader learning objectives than other supply chain related activities such as the Beer Game. Competing supply chains work to produce and sell two products, each experiencing differential demand. Seasonal demand, time delays, quality defects, and disruptions offer complexities that are part of actual supply chain management. The behavioral dynamics of collaboration between various functional nodes is illustrated through students’ interactions as they try to achieve their role's objectives. Through their decisions and actions, students develop a practical understanding of the processes and complexities of supply chain management. The classroom simulation actively engages students, and has been used successfully in multiple courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels at multiple universities and by a major corporation during a manager training session. Assessments indicate that the simulation is an effective experiential learning activity. While it offers learning outcome flexibility, common debrief themes are SCOR model processes, supply chain relationships, information flow, seasonal demand, quality defects, reverse logistics, and supply chain disruptions.     

Schools for the deaf and the No Child Left Behind Act

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) emphasizes educational accountability for all students. Twenty-eight states have policies to aggregate student participation and proficiency data for schools for the deaf in NCLB reports. The remaining states account for these students in other ways: referring student data to "sending" schools and aggregating data to the district or state level are most prominent. In reports of student assessment results for academic year 2002-2003, three schools for the deaf made "Adequate Yearly Progress" under NCLB: These schools demonstrated at least a 95% participation rate in assessments, and at least 95% of their students met or surpassed state proficiency benchmarks in reading and mathematics. Proficiency levels for other schools varied by report, but were often comparable to those of students with disabilities. Challenges and strategies for capturing the impact of NCLB accountability policies on deaf students are discussed.