“Ready,Set, Grow!” Nurturing Young Children Through Gardening

This editorial describes one class’ experience of participating in a community-funded gardening project entitled “Ready, Set, Grow!” Children at risk who lived in an urban setting were encouraged to plant fruits, vegetables, and flowers in order to learn about healthy eating and active living. Numerous easy to implement strategies for how educators can replicate this program and engage young children in a container gardening program in their own classrooms are included throughout the text.     

Intervention Provided to Linguistically Diverse Middle School Students with Severe Reading Difficulties

This study investigated the effectiveness of a multicomponent reading intervention implemented with middle school students with severe reading difficulties, all of whom had received remedial and/or special education for several years with minimal response to intervention. Participants were 38 students in grades 6-8 who had severe deficits in word reading, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Most were Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) with identified disabilities. Nearly all demonstrated severely limited oral vocabularies in English and, for ELLs, in both English and Spanish. Students were randomly assigned to receive the research intervention (n = 20) or typical instruction provided in their school's remedial reading or special education classes (n = 18). Students in the treatment group received daily explicit and systematic small-group intervention for 40 minutes over 13 weeks, consisting of a modified version of a phonics-based remedial program augmented with English as a Second Language practices and instruction in vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension strategies. Results indicated that treatment students did not demonstrate significantly higher outcomes in word recognition, comprehension, or fluency than students who received the school's typical instruction and that neither group demonstrated significant growth over the course of the study. Significant correlations were found between scores on teachers' ratings of students' social skills and problem behaviors and posttest decoding and spelling scores, and between English oral vocabulary scores and scores in word identification and comprehension. The researchers hypothesize that middle school students with the most severe reading difficulties, particularly those who are ELLs and those with limited oral vocabularies, may require intervention of considerably greater intensity than that provided in this study. Further research directly addressing features of effective remediation for these students is needed.     

图书馆馆际间的合作：全球性的进展

作者鼓励图书馆专业人员,不单要为自己的图书馆尽心尽力,也要走出自己的图书馆,贡献才智与全世界数字图书馆链接。为了达到提供更快的服务,把好的资源信息送到更边远的地区,作者列举近年来图书馆界馆藏数字化的多项工程的进展,说明图书馆馆际间合作的必要性,因为工程浩大,影响深远,需要靠跨国界、跨行业、跨机构的参与、精诚地合作、克服挑战和经费的大力支持。作者更鼓励图书馆专业人员,贡献一己之力,来完成服务无围墙的世界图书馆的宏愿,做一个真正的世界图书馆人。参考文献43。     

Organisational culture and values and the adaptation of academic units in Australian universities

This study explores connections between the organisational culture and values of academic units in Australian universities and their efforts to adapt to external environmental pressures. It integrates empirical findings from case studies with theories of organisational culture and values and adaptation. It identifies seven dimensions of academic unit’s organisational culture and values that influenced how case study academic units adapted. Then patterns of heterogeneity and homogeneity within these dimensions are noted and their associations with different modes of adaptation are discussed.     

The Relative Merits of Different Types of Overall Evaluations of Teaching Effectiveness

An unresolved issue in student evaluations of teaching effectiveness (SETE) literature is what type of overall evaluation of teaching effectiveness should be used in personnel decisions. The objective of this study is to compare the merits of: (a) an overall evaluation made by students, (b) a weighted average overall evaluation with the weights determined by students, (c) a weighted average overall evaluation with the weights being determined by the individual instructors teaching their respective classes, (d) an unweighted average overall evaluation, and (e) a second-order factor that proxies for an overall evaluation. Our results indicate that: (a) all of these overall evaluations were very highly intercorrelated, (b) the unweighted and weighted average overall evaluations measured virtually the same thing, and (c) the second-order factor that served as an overall evaluation was most highly correlated with the other overall evaluations and had the advantage of being most understandable to the faculty.     

On Models and Mickey Mouse

The re‐issue of a nineteenth‐century French Drawing Course is the occasion for an examination of issues of ‘models of good practice’ in current art teaching. These are listed as an expanded set of student‐centred pedagogical paradigms, which embrace the forceful popular imagery of electronic games and comic strips. The formalist adaptations of comic‐strip imagery by artists in the 1970s which challenged traditional divisions between high and popular art, are contrasted with the scathing Marxist analysis by Dorfman and Matterlart, Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, which still has political resonance. The darkly ambivalent, if much theorised, appropriations of popular imagery by contemporary artists Pettibon and Murakami are adduced as part of an on‐going problematic, where ideological readings are glossed over for fear of jeopardising the liberal consensus in art and education.     

Secure Base Representations in Children With Asthma: Links With Symptoms,Family Asthma Management,and Cytokine Regulation

Children's perceptions of caregivers as a secure base have been linked with socioemotional outcomes, but little is known about connections to physical health. We examined whether secure base representations are associated with children's symptoms, family management strategies, and inflammatory processes in children with asthma. Participants included 308 children (ages 8–17) and one parent. Children completed a blood draw to measure asthma-related immune functions and reported on perceptions of their mothers as a secure base and their asthma symptoms. Dyads completed interviews about asthma management. Analyses revealed that children's secure base perceptions were associated with better family asthma management and lower Type 2 T-helper cell cytokine production. These findings suggest that secure base representations may be protective for children with asthma.     

Choose Your Evidence

Science & Education - Schooling traditionally affords students more experience in learning and practicing procedures than in identifying what a situation calls for. When asked to choose...     

Children born from artificial reproductive technology: Implications for children,parents, and caregivers

One in six couples in the United States suffer infertility. Reproductive technology has been advancing at an astonishing rate. Thousands of children are being born from artificial reproductive technology (ART) that has existed for only a few years. These children are in your classrooms-as teachers do you know who they are? This article summarizes information on infertility treatments and the needs of parents and children, and it provides examples of what child care providers can do to assist in the healthy development of these families.