Literacy Instruction in Multiple‐Language First‐Grade Classrooms: Linking Student Outcomes to Observed Instructional Practice

This study examined literacy instruction in 14 first‐grade classrooms of English learners (ELs) in three schools in a large urban school district in southern California over a two‐year period. Pre‐ and posttest measures of oral‐reading fluency for 186 first graders, representing 11 native languages, were the outcome data. Reading‐fluency data were examined in reference to ratings of literacy practices using the English Learners Classroom Observation Instrument (ELCOI). Results indicated a moderately strong correlation (r= 0.65) between ELCOI rating and gain in oral‐reading fluency at the end of first grade. We report patterns of ELs who read below the oral‐reading fluency benchmark thresholds and patterns of students who were ultimately labeled with learning disabilities. Instructional practices of teachers rated “high” and “low” are discussed. Educational implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Humor in middle management: women negotiating the paradoxes of organizational life

Women in middle management continue to face multiple paradoxes arising from their structural and gendered locations that add to the uncertainty of negotiating organizational life. Investigating the lived experiences of women middle managers can illuminate the constraints and paradoxes endemic to organizing, for such experiences foreground tensions at the intersection of structure, identity, agency, and power. Specifically, this contextual investigation of conversational humor explores links between organizational status, gender, and paradox. In so doing, it demonstrates how women can use humor to negotiate managerial identities and to navigate organizational life. This study uncovers nuanced and important communication tactics of middle management women. This study also reveals the value of investigating the complex convergence of humor, gender, and organizational communication theory.     

Books are silent ambassadors: The Noma award for the translation of Japanese literature

Summary Now more than ever good translations are proving to be vitally important to fulfilling Shoichi Noma’s mission of advancing good relationships between cultures. With the emergence of dozens of world-class Japanese writers, the translators of Japanese literature have acquired a new significance and a new importance. No longer are they required to simply handle the language like an exotic and precious commodity but they must prepare a writer’s work to compete with literature from around the globe and let others understand the issues at their very heart of the Japanese people. Indeed, the selection committee’s choice of Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an apt example of how literature at its very best can span cultural divides to promote mutual understanding of very complicated and important world issues. Written for Japanese to help them understand the devastation of war, it is a rare and timely book that confronts Japan’s experience head on. Ironically, Noma’s idea that books are silent ambassadors, an idea born from agony and defeat, so many years later is helping the world come together towards a unified vision of peace and understanding. “Literature has been described as a means of exchange between the hearts of people. Literary translation, then, is the building of bridges so that all peoples of the world can interact in this way.” Ye Weiqu, Chinese Institute of Social Studies.