Supporting the Siblings of Young Children with Disabilities

In this article, Lynda Warren Dodd, who is senior educational psychologist for early years and the Portage Service supervisor in Stockport LEA, discusses the development of a support group for the brothers and sisters of young children with a wide range of disabilities. The group has been running, as an annual event, for eight years and offers a mix of socialising, games and group work. Through the group, the Portage Service aims to address some of the isues that emerge for families when there is a child with a disability. In order to evaluate the support offered to siblings, as well as to the child with special needs and their parents or carers, members of the Portage team gathered views from children and adults. Several key themes emerged from the comments made by children. All the participants enjoyed attending the sibling group. The children had varying degrees of understanding about their brothers' and sisters' disabilities. Some reported positive attitudes while others described the negative feelings they experienced in relation to their siblings' special needs. The parents also tended to value the sibling group and most of them asked for the provision to be extended. Lynda Dodd sets her account of this evaluation in the context of a constructive review of the literature on the sibling experience. She closes her article with a valuable summary of the implications of her work for future policy and practice in this important and often neglected area.     

Wechsler short forms: A brief status report

Numerous attempts to develop short forms of Wechsler scales of measurement have been proposed in the psychological literature over the last three decades. In this paper, the three major strategies for development of short forms are described, and an overview of the available validity data is presented. Cautions for the clinical use of short forms and related recommendations for future validity research are offered. It is concluded that while Wechsler short forms may be useful as research instruments, their clinical applications are extremely limited at this time.     

Supporting novice elementary mathematics teachers’ induction in professional communities and providing innovative forms of pedagogical content knowledge development through information and communication technology

This paper reports on the needs identified as important to 27 novice elementary mathematics teachers and examines how Connect-ME, an online mathematics community, provides these supports. Qualitative data were collected using two focus groups and 16 telephone interviews. Findings validate the need for alternative teacher professional development (TPD) models and the value of professional communities and knowledge acquired through technology-facilitated learning. The results indicate that teachers actively seek formal and informal TPD experiences, opportunities for sharing and communicating, and access to quality resources. This study provides educational researchers and administrators with essential elements for effectively supporting novice elementary mathematics teachers.     

Assessment literacy and student learning: the case for explicitly developing students ‘assessment literacy’

In this paper, we report on a study to quantify the impact on student learning and on student assessment literacy of a brief assessment literacy intervention. We first define ‘assessment literacy’ then report on the development and validation of an assessment literacy measurement instrument. Using a pseudo-experimental design, we quantified the impact of an assessment literacy-building intervention on students’ assessment literacy levels and on their subsequent performance on an assessment task. The intervention involved students in the experimental condition analysing, discussing and applying an assessment rubric to actual examples of student work that exemplified extremes of standards of performance on the task (e.g. poor, excellent). Results showed that such a procedure could be expected to impact positively on assessment literacy levels and on student performance (on a similar or related task). Regression analyses indicated that the greatest predictor of enhanced student marks (on the assessment task that was the subject of the experiment), was the development of their ability to judge standards of performance on student work created in response to a similar task. The intervention took just 50 minutes indicating a good educational return on the pedagogical investment.     

Viewing students consistently: how stable are teachers’ expectations?

ABSTRACT

Over the past 50 years, research has shown that teacher expectations can influence student outcomes. Many studies have examined within-year effects. There is, however, a paucity of research that has investigated the stability of teachers’ expectations across a single year, and there are no studies that have examined stability beyond 1 year. The current study examined the stability of 94 teachers’ expectations within 3 separate years and across 3 years in mathematics and reading. In both subject areas, teachers’ expectations remained relatively stable from beginning to end-of-year for each separate year and also across 3 years. Additionally, teachers who under- or overestimated their students by more than half a standard deviation continued to do so across all periods in the study. This was despite the teachers having different students each year. The study suggests that teachers view students’ capabilities similarly despite having different student cohorts.     

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