Living Un/Grammatically in a Grammatical World: The Pedagogic World of Teachers and Students

In my work with preservice teachers I face daily a dilemma. My student-teachers come to me with an urgent practical agenda: What do I need to know in order to survive in the world of school? In effect they want me to tell them how to fit into a world that they assume is structured like a grammar, with traditions and conventions and rules and patterns. They are seeking ways to conform to the pedagogic world as it has been written, but I hope they will seek ways to transform the pedagogic world, always written and always in the process of being written. I hope my student-teachers will seek ways to write, actively and deliberately and imaginatively, the pedagogic world of students and teachers. I want them to learn to live un/grammatically, to challenge the ways in which the world has been written for them, to know that they are not only written by the world, but that they also write the world. I invite my students to write the unwritten sentences, the sentences that interrogate and subvert syntax and semantics, the sentences that create spaces where my students can live un/grammatically.     

The basal as an aid to decision making: A senior author’s view

Basal readers must serve as a resource for teachers in making decisions about curricular goals, community expectations, and student needs. If readers are to be used as resources, teachers must decide what to include, what to exclude, and how to combine their options with personal, school, and community resources. Carl B. Smith is director of the ERIC Center on Reading and Communication Skills, professor of education at Indiana University, and senior author for the Macmillan Reading Program.     

Change in strategy: The relationship of attribution,expectancy, performance,and satisfaction

The purpose of the study was to examine the degree to which change in examination preparation is related to measures of attribution, expectancy, prior performance, perceived success/failure, and satisfaction. Subjects were students in an intermediate graduate statistics course. Although performance is the single best predictor of change in preparation, three attribution measures and satisfaction contributed unique predictive variance. While expectancy was significantly related to change in preparation, it did not add uniquely to the multiple correlation.     

The University in Environmental Perspective

Abstract

The Canadian Children's Environmental Response Inventory (CERI) was translated and administered to a group of Finnish schoolchildren aged between 10 and 15 years. The Directing Traits Test (DTT), which was developed in Finland, was given at the same time. Similar factors on the CERI and the DTT correlated positively and significantly. The Finnish results from the CERI test confirmed the age and sex distribution that was previously noted in Canada.