Psychosocial Adjustment Over a Two–Year Period in Children Referred for Learning Problems: Risk,Resilience, and Adaptation

Children with learning difficulties have an increased prevalence of psychosocial adjustment problems. We hypothesized that within the context of a risk and resilience model contextual variables influence adjustment, over and above any effects of academic performance. The Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC) was used to evaluate the relationship between psychosocial adjustment, changes in academic skills, and contextual factors longitudinally over a two–year period in 100 children (ages 7 to 11) referred for learning problems. Although there was little improvement in academic skills, contextual factors contributed to observed psychosocial outcome. Different factors were salient for parents, teachers, and children. Context–derived vulnerability and protective factors can be important determinants of adjustment in children with learning problems, even though the academic difficulties can remain chronic.     

A Synthesis of Morphology Interventions and Effects on Reading Outcomes for Students in Grades K–12

This article synthesized the morphology intervention studies conducted in English with students in kindergarten through 12th grade between 1986 and 2006. Seven studies were identified as focusing primarily on morphology instruction, including roots and affixes, and measuring one or more reading‐related outcomes (e.g., word identification, spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension). Of those studies meeting the criteria, three studies were focused on word identification, three were focused on vocabulary acquisition, and one was focused on spelling. Although there was a wide range in effect sizes computed for the various outcome measures (?.93 to 9.13), findings indicated that stronger effects were associated with root word instruction (as opposed to affixes alone) and with morphology instruction that targeted students' reading developmental level in an age of acquisition pattern. In addition, results suggested that morphology could successfully be combined with training in other skills without adding instructional time.     

My journey to become a teacher educator

Purpose: Social theory of learning speaks to the social nature of our lives and our attempts to understand both what and how we learn from it. My experiences are built upon and reside with the social context in which they evolved. In this lecture, I will focus on my own experiences and how I interpreted them through social theory of learning that resulted from my collaboration between colleagues, mentoring that I received and shared and the pedagogical communities within which I grew.

Main outcomes and results: Within each of these contexts my experiences resulted from the dialogue in which I took part. Johnston-Parsons suggests that dialogue of pedagogies provides a means of coming to know yourself and your teaching. She describes ‘a mirror as one way of describing dialogue-as-learning’ as ‘when dialogue occurred we were sharing ideas at the same time we were, as a group and as individuals, recognizing and changing our minds’ (69). The types of dialogue experienced by this teacher educator have taken place over four decades in several contexts and have resulted in my own interpretations that have shaped my practices and pedagogies.

Conclusion: Through my own developing and changing teaching metaphor I will tell the story of my development as a teacher educator and the lessons I have learned that shape my practices and interactions with prospective and practising teachers.     

Practitioners as professors: Experiential learning in the distance digital liberal arts classroom

ABSTRACT

Archives and digital collections have traditionally supported undergraduate research experiences or existed in the syllabus as neat, packaged projects or assignments. Now these artifacts are taking center stage in the digital liberal arts classroom. Librarians and archivists are also realizing new opportunities to teach undergraduates their professional tools and methodologies, and they are forging new ground in the classroom teaching students how to curate and create digital scholarly projects. This case study reveals the experiences of two information professionals who cotaught a distance digital liberal arts seminar. It seeks to expand the pedagogy of the digital liberal arts and explore its viability via distance education.     

Impact of Learned Resourcefulness and Theories of Intelligence on Academic Achievement of University Students: An integrated approach

This was the first study to integrate Rosenbaum's concept of learned resourcefulness with Dweck's implicit theories of intelligence in predicting university students' academic self‐control behaviour and year‐end grades. Rosenbaum highlights the prominent role that learned resourcefulness skills play in promoting mastery responses and goal attainment during difficult situations. Dweck, on the other hand, describes how students' beliefs about intelligence direct their goal‐setting preferences and correspondent reactions to disappointing performance outcomes. Students completed self‐report measures assessing their learned resourcefulness skills, academic self‐control skills, academic self‐efficacy, theories of intelligence, goal orientation, and attributions for academic failure. Our findings supported the integrated approach to understanding academic goal attainment. Students who reported engaging in academic self‐control behaviours possessed a better‐developed repertoire of general self‐control skills, believed in their academic ability to succeed, applied more effort in response to academic setbacks, valued learning something new in class more than merely getting good grades, and actually obtained higher grades. Theories of intelligence had an indirect association with academic self‐control through ability attributions. Directions for future research are noted.     

A Probability Model for Golf Putting

We derive a model, using trigonometry and the Normal distribution, for the probability that a golf putt is successful. We describe a class activity in which we lead the students through the steps of examining the data, considering possible models, constructing a probability model and checking the fit. The model is,of necessity, oversimplified, a point which the class discusses at the end of the demonstration.     

The Dorothy Howard Collection: revealing the structures of folklore archives in museums

In 2015–16 researchers from the University of Melbourne and Museums Victoria undertook a collaborative project which sought to visualise archival data from the museum as a means to investigate the structure and context of the Dorothy Howard Collection. This article introduces Dorothy Howard’s work, which is part of the internationally significant Australian Children’s Folklore Collection, and looks at the project’s processes and outcomes, including the initial visualisations produced. In doing so, the authors highlight the data-intensive nature of such work, suggest the potential of visualisations to reveal collection structures, and outline possibilities for future projects and collaborations.     

Career Plateauing among Senior Librarians

Using an online survey and semi-structured interviews, senior academic librarians were asked to reflect on the factors that keep them personally fulfilled and on how they remain motivated to make positive contributions to their organization. Motivations include esteem of colleagues and supervisors, variety in their work, salary, opportunities to learn new skills, increasing responsibility, and working with students and faculty. 59% percent of the survey respondents ranked their job satisfaction at 8 (on a scale of 1—10, with 10 the most satisfied). Using Bardwick's definitions of plateauing, 60% of the 20 librarians interviewed did not feel that they were content-plateaued.