The home literacy environment is a well-established predictor of children’s language and literacy development. We investigated whether formal, informal, and indirect measures of the home literacy environment predict children’s reading and language skills once maternal language abilities are taken into account. Data come from a longitudinal study of children at high risk of dyslexia (N = 251) followed from preschool years. Latent factors describing maternal language were significant predictors of storybook exposure but not of direct literacy instruction. Maternal language and phonological skills respectively predicted children’s language and reading/spelling skills. However, after accounting for variations in maternal language, storybook exposure was not a significant predictor of children’s outcomes. In contrast, direct literacy instruction remained a predictor of children’s reading/spelling skills. We argue that the relationship between early informal home literacy activities and children’s language and reading skills is largely accounted for by maternal skills and may reflect genetic influences. 相似文献
In the United States, how to provide a high-quality education to all students has been a focal discussion, especially in urban settings. One potential solution that has emerged to confront this issue involves urban teacher residency (UTR) programs that provide innovations concerning the recruitment, preparation, and retention of teachers in high-need urban schools. In this study, we conducted a content analysis and compared steering documents of a UTR program in California with materials from a teacher-training program in Finland. Despite differences in both the legislative and local contexts under which the two programs operate, we found many similarities in both the steering documents and course offerings of these two teacher-training programs. For example, both promote aspects of social justice and are research-based. Furthermore, both offer a variety of types of courses, such as those emphasizing the pedagogical bases of education and research studies in education.
AbstractAcademic self-efficacy is critical to academic success. Hence those working in higher education need to make deliberate and substantial attempts to foster academic competence, confidence, persistence and resilience in the students they teach, given they are essential components of academic self-efficacy. Addressing an identified gap in the exemplars literature, this article pays particular attention to how exemplars can be used in an embedded and sustained manner with the intent of fostering and supporting these components. Taking into account the three dimensions of self-efficacy – strength, magnitude and generality – and the various sources of information students draw upon to make judgements about their capabilities, four inter-dependent and inter-related practices and associated experiences are identified. We argue that collectively these practices and experiences can accentuate the positive effects and ameliorate the potential negative effects of exemplar use on student academic self-efficacy. 相似文献