The women mentor project: A sharing approach

The Women Mentor Project, a component of the Fort Wayne Community School's Horizons Gifted Education Program, was introduced as a pilot model in one elementary, five middle, and three senior high school buildings during the 1982–83 school year.

Funding for this project was made possible through the 1982 Gifted Children Advocacy Association grants competition and Ball State University Alumni Association. The project endeavored to provide gifted young girls with opportunities to develop their self‐esteem, leadership abilities, and career awareness through weekly guidance meetings and time spent with successful community women from traditional and nontraditional careers.     

Learning Professional Ways of Being: Ambiguities of becoming

The purpose of professional education programs is to prepare aspiring professionals for the challenges of practice within a particular profession. These programs typically seek to ensure the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills, as well as providing opportunities for their application. While not denying the importance of knowledge and skills, this paper reconfigures professional education as a process of becoming. Learning to become a professional involves not only what we know and can do, but also who we are (becoming). It involves integration of knowing, acting, and being in the form of professional ways of being that unfold over time. When a professional education program focuses on the acquisition and application of knowledge and skills, it falls short of facilitating their integration into professional ways of being. In addition, through such a focus on epistemology (or theory of knowing), ontology (or theory of being) is overlooked. This paper explores what it means to develop professional ways of being where the focus is becoming, not simply knowing as an end in itself.     

Executive Function Skills,Early Mathematics,and Vocabulary in Head Start Preschool Children

Research Findings: The contribution of 3 executive function skills (shifting, inhibitory control, and working memory) and their relation to early mathematical skills was investigated with preschoolers attending 6 Head Start centers. Ninety-two children ranging in age from 3 years, 1 month, to 4 years, 11 months, who were native English or Spanish speakers were assessed for these executive function skills as well as their receptive vocabulary skills and early mathematical abilities using the Child Math Assessment (Starkey, Klein, & Wakeley, 2004), which captures an array of skills across 4 domains. Hierarchal regression analyses revealed that inhibitory control and working memory made unique contributions to children’s early mathematical abilities in the domains of numeracy, arithmetic, spatial/geometric reasoning, and patterning/logical relations after we controlled for age, receptive vocabulary, and previous Head Start experience. Furthermore, receptive vocabulary also accounted for significant variance in children’s early mathematical abilities above and beyond executive function skills. No group differences emerged between English-only and dual language learners on the fit of the regression models. Practice or Policy: These findings extend previous research highlighting the interface of executive function skills and mathematical learning in early childhood with further evidence to support this relationship beyond early numeracy and counting using a broad measure of critical early math skills. In addition, the intricate role of language in the development of early mathematical competence is considered. Implications of these findings for scaffolding executive function skills and vocabulary within prekindergarten math curricula are discussed, with particular consideration for children from low socioeconomic backgrounds.     

‘A strategy of distinction’ unfolds: unsettling the undergraduate outbound mobility experience

Although short-term mobility programmes are increasingly promoted to university students as sources of competitive advantage, there is little research on academic learnings arising from these initiatives. A ‘field analysis’ of outbound mobility is undertaken to identify convergences and disjunctures between institutional discourses, staff perceptions and student experiences at one Australian university where outbound mobility is actively promoted as a ‘strategy of distinction’. Self-reported ‘personal transformations’ commonly associated with the mobility experience are interrogated in favour of alternative constructions of self–other relationships. An argument is made for greater institutional effort to enable students to make critical connections with ‘other-ness’ both in and out of place.     

Development of comprehension monitoring in beginner readers

The current study was designed to understand the development of comprehension monitoring among beginner readers from first to third grade, and to determine the extent to which first graders’ comprehension monitoring predicts reading comprehension in grade three. Participants were 113 children (57% female) from four US states who were followed from Grade 1 (M = 7 years, SD = 4 months) to Grade 3 (M = 9 years, SD = 4 months). Measures included decoding, vocabulary, working memory, comprehension monitoring, and reading comprehension. Children’s ability to monitor comprehension grew significantly from first to third grade, with a deceleration in growth over time. In addition, comprehension monitoring in Grade 1 made a significant contribution to reading comprehension in Grade 3, even after controlling for decoding, vocabulary, and working memory. Together, these findings supplement our understanding of young readers’ development of comprehension monitoring as well as its association with reading comprehension at a later time. Practical implications of the results in the context of providing support for higher-level language skills in beginning reading instruction are discussed.     

Improving teaching: Enhancing ways of being university teachers

My aim in this paper is to theorize my teaching in a course for experienced university teachers, in a context of increased attention to such courses. My focus in the course is transforming and enhancing ways of being university teachers, through integrating knowing, acting and being. In other words, epistemology is not seen as an end in itself, but rather it is in the service of ontology. In the paper, I explore and illustrate how this focus on ontology is enacted in the course.     

A strengths-based,culturally responsive family intervention improves Latino kindergarteners’ vocabulary and approaches to learning

Food routines are an ecocultural asset of Latino families. This cluster-randomized trial with 248 children (M_age = 67 months; 50% girls; 13 schools) investigated the impact of a 4-week family program designed to capitalize on food routines in improving Latino kindergarteners’ outcomes in the United States. There were moderate-to-large impacts on child vocabulary (especially food-related) at end-of-treatment and the 5-month follow-up, and suggestive evidence of moderate impacts on approaches to learning (ATL; including ATL math) and executive function at the 5-month follow-up (d = .38–.95). There were no statistically significant impacts on children's math or literacy skills. A strengths-based, culturally responsive family intervention that is integrated into Latino family life can improve the skills needed to succeed in school.     

Funga Alafia 1 : Toward Welcoming,Understanding, and Respecting African American Speakers' Bilingualism and Biliteracy

This article focuses on the development and experiences of two African American Language speakers who are on the precipice of biliteracy and bilingualism. Using a composite counterstory that integrates samples of the girls' language during daily routines as a critical race theoretical analytic tool, we examine their language virtuosity as well as their positive perceptions about AAL. Contrary to pervasive deficit perspectives and narratives about AAL, the counterstory reveals that the girls sometimes viewed Standard English (SE) as bothersome and tedious, and they actively resisted it. At other times, they embraced it when they determined using AAL instead of SE made sense. We capture aspects of their emergent biliteracy and bilingualism as they navigate between two literacies and languages. We demonstrate their transliterate and translingual confidence and proficiency. Implications for educators are included.