The Role of the Community College in Providing Language,Speech, and Hearing Services

Abstract

A survey of community college personnel in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey was conducted to determine (1) the extent and type of services in speech, hearing, or language screening, remediation, and improvement, (2) the extent and type of instruction in speech and language improvement, and (3) the extent and type of bilingual services in speech, hearing or language presently offered to students and community members within the community college setting. In addition, the existence of plans to offer these services in the future was ascertained. Responses indicated the existence of some services but a general unavailability of comprehensive screening, evaluation, and rehabilitation programs despite the widespread needs of the growing community college constituency. The results of the survey can assist community college personnel in needs assessment and planning within their own institutions by offering a context for consideration of the priority for providing language, speech, and hearing services within the community college setting.     

Strategies to regulate content development and interactivity in the classroom

The teaching-learning process is an interactive process controlled by a series of regulatory mechanisms. This article reports on a study of teacher regulation of classroom activity and teacher-student behavior. The analysis of this behavior can provide a better understanding of what happens during a class session, the context in which students construct meaning and progressively acquire greater control of their own learning process. The strategies employed by the teacher to regulate, the teaching-learning can be classified in two categories: those directed primarily towards regulating the social structure of participation and those directed primarily towards regulating content development and the learning task. This article identifies and analyzes instances of the second kind of strategy, though both kinds are often simultaneous, inter-related and mutually supportive. The investigation reported here was based on the observation, recording and analysis of teacher-student interaction in Social Studies classes in a secondary school in Spain.     

Systems,ideologies and history: a three-dimensional absence in the study of assessment reform processes

This paper makes the case for the need to study assessment reform processes from a broader and more complex perspective that takes the historical, ideological and systemic aspects of assessment policies into account. It draws on a larger study to demonstrate how the understanding of Assessment for Learning (AfL) reforms is enriched by such a perspective, taking the Chilean case as an illustrative example. The study draws on polysystems theory as an overarching theoretical tool and on critical discourse analysis and intertextuality as a means to reconstruct the polysystem of assessment reforms. These tools are used to analyse two types of sources: documents from different periods of Chilean history of education where reforms relevant to assessment were carried out, and interviews with policy authorities involved in the AfL reform as well as with teachers from different backgrounds and contexts.