To Me It’s Like Having a Kid,Kind Of: Analysis of Student Reflections in a Developmental Mentoring Program

This qualitative longitudinal study focuses on analyses of journals written by 31 sixth grade students who participated in the Chapel Buddy program. The Chapel Buddy program is a developmental mentoring program that pairs sixth graders with kindergarten students. Mentors responded to guided writing prompts three times during the course of the year. Prompts were designed to encourage mentors to explore their role as mentors and their understanding of the mentor–mentee relationship. Results indicated that the program presented a rich, experiential learning opportunity for the sixth graders to develop a relationship with a younger child, to reflect on what it means to be in a helping relationship, and to examine their experiences as “big kids.” Sixth graders varied in their ability to successfully engage and manage their kindergarten mentees, which in turn meaningfully affected the mentors’ satisfaction. Strategies to maximize the educational value of developmental mentoring programs with younger mentors are discussed.     

Prediction of academic performance prior to intersections within a multi-tiered school system

Diagnostic information is a centrepiece of educational decision making. Far-reaching decisions like placements within multi-tiered school systems may have a huge long-term impact on the achieved level of education. Therefore, such decisions should be substantiated or complemented by objective and prognostically valid information. To this end, we assessed academic self-concept, reading comprehension, orthographic abilities, and geometric and problem-solving skills prior to the selection of subsequent school forms in Grade 4 in order to model the pedagogical decisions of the teachers (Lenhard, Hasselhorn, & Schneider, 2011 Lenhard, W., Hasselhorn, M., & Schneider, W. (2011). Kombiniertes Leistungsinventar zur allgemeinen Schulleistung und für Schullaufbahnempfehlungen in der vierten Klassen (KLASSE 4) [Combined performance inventory for the determination of school performancy and schooling recommendations in Grade 4]. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe. [Google Scholar]). The article describes the longitudinal results of an independent sample of 76 students and how well their academic performance was predicted 18?months later by the psychometric approach compared to teacher recommendations. Standardized tests had a high prognostic validity and predicted the choice of higher educational levels in subsequent school years. Teachers were more successful in determining grouping decisions for students with lower educational attainments.     

The Rivalry of Nonverbal Cues on the Perception of Politicians by Television Viewers

The current study examines how a politician's “active” or “passive” nonverbal behavior can influence recipients' perception of his/her image in TV talk shows. In addition, the effects of different host and studio audience reaction shots towards the politician were analyzed. To do so, an experiment with a 2 × 3 × 3 factorial design was conducted (n = 356). The stimulus material was produced in a TV studio. The results indicate a clear influence of a politician's nonverbal behavior style and the TV host's nonverbal reactions on the recipients' image-perception.     

Extra‐credential experiences and social closure: Working‐class students at university

Human capital theorists perceive of educational expansion as beneficial to individuals, corporations and national economies, while social closure theorists have claimed that inflation of credential requirements maintains traditional status inequalities. In this paper I argue that status inequalities are not only maintained by credential inflation, but also the inflation of extra‐credential experiences. As undergraduate degrees become more common, access to employment and further education opportunities increasingly depend on extra‐curricular and ‘enriching’ educational experiences. Using qualitative data from a longitudinal study of working‐class university students in Canada, I will address the mechanisms by which they have gained or were denied access to such experiences. The data suggest that working‐class students’ relative lack of financial resources and social networks are barriers to the development of extra‐credential experiences, which in turn leads to the change of educational and career plans for some.     

Integrating multi‐tiered measurement outcomes for special education eligibility with sequential decision‐making methodology

Changes to federal guidelines for the identification of children with disabilities have supported the use of multi‐tiered models of service delivery. This study investigated the impact of measurement methodology as used across numerous tiers in determining special education eligibility. Four studies were completed using a sample of inner‐city children (N = 150) who were administered a reading screener twice and a reading measure adapted from the state high‐stakes reading test. A sub‐sample of children identified as At‐Risk were administered a comprehensive reading assessment and compared with a randomly selected control group, who were also administered a comprehensive reading assessment (n = 14). A model was developed to estimate the likelihood of special education eligibility based on both theoretical and empirical measurement parameters. Depending on the measurement assumptions of the multi‐tiered model, special education eligibility outcomes varied from a low of 0.2% to as high as 11%, depending on the type of measure used, decision‐making criteria used at each tier, and the number of tiers in the model. This study highlights the importance of measurement specification, explicit decision‐making criteria, and empirical investigation to fully understand outcomes associated with the implementation of multi‐tiered models. Implications for special education eligibility policy and practical implications for implementing comprehensive measurement practice in multi‐tiered systems at the school level are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Editorial

WAPOR's Berlin conference in September 2007 has produced importantnews for this journal. The WAPOR Council and the PublicationsCommittee Chair have nominated Peter Neijens of the Universityof Amsterdam as Editor, along with Wolfgang Donsbach and MichaelW. Traugott, who will continue their work for the journal. TheEditors then decided to charge Peter Neijens with the responsibilitiesof the journal's Managing Editor. At the time of writing, Peter     

The Max Planck Guest Laboratory at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology

It has become a unique link between Europe and China in the field of modern biology and has fulfilled its purpose not only in science education, but also with respect to establishing reliable contacts between Europe and China.     

Longitudinal effects of verbal ability,memory capacity,and phonological awareness on reading performance

This study addresses the longitudinal relationship among verbal ability, memory capacity, phonological awareness, and reading performance. Data from 92 German children were used to explore the exact relation among these variables. Indicators of verbal ability, memory capacity, and phonological awareness were assessed in kindergarten and again after the first grade. The interrelationships among these factors, and the subsequent influence they have on decoding speed and reading comprehension during the second grade were examined via structural equation modeling procedures. Overall, the results of the longitudinal analyses show that the relationship of memory capacity and phonological awareness remains stable over time, and that memory capacity predicts performance on phonological awareness tasks in both kindergarten and second grade. Phonological awareness proved to be a significant predictor of decoding speed, which in turn considerably influenced reading comprehension.     

The impact of early metalinguistic competencies and memory capacity on reading and spelling in elementary school: Results of the Munich Longitudinal Study on the Genesis of Individual Competencies (LOGIC)

This paper reports on a longitudinal study dealing with the development of literacy in young children. A total of 163 children were first tested during their last year in kindergarten using a variety of tasks that tapped phonological processing, memory capacity, early literacy, and intelligence. Children’s word decoding, reading comprehension, and spelling skills were assessed in elementary school several years later. As a main result, all of the predictor domains had a significant impact on the acquisition of literacy in elementary school, although the contribution of each domain differed as a function of the criterion measure. An attempt to identify children-at-risk using a kindergarten screening test provided encouraging results. Nonetheless, it was shown that whereas group predictions of reading and spelling performance can be quite accurate, the individual prognosis of school problems is far from perfect.