Reading comprehension and strategy use in fourth- and fifth-grade French immersion students

Reading and Writing - Reading comprehension performance is predicted by decoding skill and linguistic comprehension (e.g., Hoover & Gough, 1990; Joshi & Aaron, 2012; Scarborough,...     

Effects of Visual Activity Schedules on Independent Classroom Transitions for Students with Autism

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of visual activity schedules on the behaviour of four students with moderate autism during transitions within a self-contained classroom. Generalisation measures included pre-tests and post-tests with novel stimuli and novel visual activity schedule pictures. This A-B-A-B withdrawal design study replicated and expanded parts of a study by MacDuff, Krantz, and McClannahan and another by Bryan and Gast. Students were trained to use visual activity schedules using the system of least prompts. Results indicated that, in the presence of visual activity schedules, all participants increased independence during transitions. Pre-test/post-test data revealed generalisation of visual activity schedules with novel stimuli and novel visual activity schedule pictures across participants. Implications for practitioners and for future research are discussed.     

A Moral and Legal Obligation

The Commission on Preservation and Access and the Research Libraries Group (both US organizations) created a task force to study the requirements for preserving digital information. The report, published in May 1996, recommends a certification process for digital archives and calls for a legal authority to rescue digital files in danger of being lost. The paper reviews the reactions of the library, archival, and educational communities and describes the current actions being taken.     

Popular Culture and Advertising

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MADISON AVENUE? ADVERTISING IN THE '90s by Martin Mayer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991—$22.95, ISBN 0-316- 55154-6, 269 pp.)

THE CODES OF ADVERTISING: FETISHISM AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MEANING IN THE CONSUMER SOCIETY by Sut Jhally (New York: Routledge, 1990—price not given, paper, ISBN 0-415-90353-X, 225 pp.)

ROCK AROUND THE BLOCK: A HISTORY OF ROCK MUSIC IN EASTERN EUROPE AND THE SOVIET UNION by Timothy W. Ryback (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990—$21.95, ISBN 0-19-505633-7, 272 pp.)

MUSIC AT THE MARGINS: POPULAR MUSIC AND GLOBAL CULTURAL DIVERSITY by Deanna Campbell Robinson, Elizabeth B. Buck, and Marlene Cuthbert (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991—$39.95/19.95, ISBN 0-8039- 3192-1 hard, 0-8039-3193-X paper, 312 pp.)

THE MANY LIVES OF THE BATMAN: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO A SUPERHERO AND HIS MEDIA edited by Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio (New York: Routledge, 1991—$39.95/13.95, ISBN 0-415-90346-7 hard, 0-415-90347-5 paper, 213 pp.)

BROADCAST ADVERTISING: A COMPREHENSIVE WORKING TEXTBOOK by Sherilyn K. Zeigler and Herbert H. Howard (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991—$34.95, ISBN 0-8138-0072-2, 358 pp.)

FUNDAMENTALS OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH by Alan Fletcher and Thomas Bowers (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1991—price not given, ISBN 0-534-14778-X, 364 pp.)

THIS BUSINESS OF MUSIC by Sidney Shemel and M. William Krasilovsky (New York: Billboard/Watson-Guptill, 1991—$27.50, ISBN 0-8230-7706-3, 688 pp.)     

The Strategic Rhetoric of an “At-Risk” Educational Identity: Interviewing Jane

This essay explores how communication research on “at-risk” students relies on under-theorized understandings of identity as seemingly stable traits and characteristics. In this sense, “at-riskness,” as a cultural identity, is dangerous precisely because it encourages researchers to link identity difference with failure, rather than to explore the presence and perpetuation of particular ideologies. We illuminate such ideological tensions through our analysis of a complex educational identity—an in-depth interview with an “at-risk” student—where we locate strategic rhetorics (i.e., discursive constructions that reify normalized assumptions about educational success and failure) that demonstrate how ideology constitutes the phenomenon of educational risk.     

Into the Unknown: Examining Neural Representations of Parent–Adolescent Interactions

The parent–adolescent relationship is important for adolescents’ emotion regulation (ER), yet little is known regarding the neural patterns of dyadic ER that occur during parent–adolescent interactions. A novel measure that can be used to examine such patterns is cross-brain connectivity (CBC)—concurrent and time-lagged connectivity between two individuals’ brain regions. This study sought to provide evidence of CBC and explore associations between CBC, parenting, and adolescent internalizing symptoms. Thirty-five adolescents (mean age = 15 years, 69% female, 72% Non-Hispanic White, 17% Black, 11% Hispanic or Latino) and one biological parent (94% female) completed an fMRI hyperscanning conflict discussion task. Results revealed CBC between emotion-related brain regions. Exploratory analyses indicated CBC is associated with parenting and adolescent depressive symptoms.     

Dialogic argumentation as a bridge to argumentative thinking and writing / La argumentación dialógica como puente para el pensamiento y la escritura argumentativa

Abstract

Argumentation has been claimed to be ‘the more general human process of which more specific forms of reasoning are a part’. The educational context in which argument is most often practised and assessed is individual expository writing — a skill that teachers routinely report as their most challenging to teach and one in which students typically perform poorly. It becomes increasingly important with advancing grade and by the post-secondary level is crucial to academic success. We describe the dialogic method we have developed to foster young adolescents’ argument skills. Its essence is to engage students in rich and extended dialogues with one another on significant topics. We review evidence that the method, implemented in extended form over two or more years, produces positive outcomes in argumentative discourse, in individual writing and in meta-level understandings of argumentative discourse and evaluations of argument. In this study, we elaborate on these results and on the promise and challenges the method poses.