Peer feedback mediates the impact of self-regulation procedures on strategy use and reading comprehension in reciprocal teaching groups

The goal of this research was to highlight the role social regulatory processes play in making students’ teamwork in reciprocal teaching (RT) groups (a classroom activity in which students take the teacher’s role in small group reading sessions) effective. In addition to teamwork quality, we expected peer feedback to be a key factor in enhancing students’ reading comprehension achievements. Because previous research (Schünemann et al. in Contemp Educ Psychol 38:289–305, 2013) has shown that procedures of self-regulated learning (SRL) augment the effects of RT methods, we further assumed that such procedures would promote the quality of students’ collaborative efforts. In a cluster-randomized trial, students in 12 fifth-grade classes practiced a strategic approach to reading either in a RT condition or in a RT + SRL condition. In one of the 14 sessions, students’ interactive behavior was videotaped. Strategy use and reading comprehension were assessed at pretest, posttest, and maintenance. Performance differences between conditions were reliable only at maintenance. A multilevel mediation analysis showed that relative to RT students, RT + SRL students were better able to provide their teammates with informative feedback and organize their group work in a task-focused manner. Only feedback quality mediated the sustainability of treatment effects on strategy use and reading comprehension. In essence, this research suggests that effective reading comprehension trainings should integrate explicit instruction and practice in reading strategies, SRL, and focus on supportive peer processes in small groups with extensive instruction and practice in peer feedback.     

Intimate partner violence in the family: Considerations for children's safety

Children's exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) is increasingly recognized as a type of child maltreatment that has a level of impairment similar to other types of abuse and neglect. Despite advances in the area of IPV, the safety planning strategies recommended as part of the overall response to IPV need to be examined in terms of their implications for children. This article discusses these strategies within the context of child safety, comparing IPV safety planning with approaches aimed at reducing exposure to other types of violence such as child sexual abuse, as well as general child safety strategies. Despite the emphasis on safety planning in information available on responding to IPV, the actual effectiveness of such planning in improving safety and reducing violence is unknown. Safety planning provided to children by a parent experiencing IPV, especially when IPV is ongoing and not recognized by anyone outside the home, may lead to confusing messages for children, particularly if there is an emphasis on secrecy. While awaiting evidence about the effectiveness of specific safety planning strategies for children, we suggest basic principles and general strategies that emphasize universality in terms of education about any type of violence or abuse in the home being unacceptable, as well as the need to focus on safety in general.     

Between Asia and empire: infrastructures of encounter in the archive of war

ABSTRACT

In this essay, we stage a conversation about our experiences researching everyday histories of encounter between Asian and Asian diasporic subjects during the Pacific and Vietnam Wars. Through readings of materials from the archives of two empires, Britain and the United States, with bloody records of military intervention in east and south-east Asia, we show how wartime inter-Asian, Afro-Asian, and Asian diasporic geographies of relation overlapped with and animated one another, helping to (re)produce trans-local communities of affinity over space and time even as they also functioned as infrastructures for empire. Throughout, we reflect on the infrastructures – material, institutional, epistemological, affective – that make inter-referencing possible, both for our subjects and, importantly, for ourselves. If our archives resonate, what does this tell us about the trans-imperial durability of the intimate infrastructures we show taking shape in 1940s China and 1960s Vietnam respectively?     

The rise of the organisational society in Canadian and U.S. textbooks: 1836-2011

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how organisations have increasingly been portrayed in textbooks as solving social problems as well as contributing to national development. Findings from 527 Canadian and U.S. textbooks illustrate the rise of an organisational society during the time period between 1836 and 2011. Discussions of for-profit and non-profit forms of organisations rise early on in both countries, creating the foundation for an organisational society, which expands to incorporate global organisations in the post-World War II period. We argue that such portrayals in textbooks both reflect and legitimise the role of organisations in society, strengthening their taken-for-granted status as social actors.     

Charting a Course toward Embracing Evolving Technical Services Horizons

ABSTRACT

Technical Services departments have been navigating rough and uncertain waters while charting courses toward hazy horizons for years. Battling swelling expenses, blustering winds of reduced resources, and tumultuous tempests of electronic resources clashing with print resources, we steer toward an increasingly digital skyline with steadily leaner crews, needing support and new skills to sail these seas of continuous change and challenge. Now more than ever it is necessary to build a team empowered to maneuver efficiently and effectively. Leading and managing are central to positioning for and embracing these emerging horizons. The presenters have been studying and implementing various aspects of “servant leadership” with an eye toward growing people within our departments and communicating in multiple directions. During this session, we will focus particularly on the following processes: discernment, discovering purpose, and building capacity (relationships and communication). This presentation will explore the what, how, where, who, and when for leading and managing toward our Technical Services horizons.     

The genetic-environmental etiology of cognitive school readiness and later academic achievement in early childhood

Using a genetic design of 840 60-month-old twins, this study investigated the genetic and environmental contributions to (a) individual differences in four components of cognitive school readiness, (b) the general ability underlying these four components, and (c) the predictive association between school readiness and school achievement. Results revealed that the contribution of the shared environment for cognitive school readiness was substantial. Genetic effects were more important for the core abilities underlying school readiness than for each specific skill, although shared environment remained the largest factor overall. Genetic, shared, and nonshared environmental factors all accounted for the predictive association between school readiness and early school achievement. These results contribute to a better understanding of the early determinants of school readiness.     

Sensory integration in the learning of aiming toward "self-defined" targets

This study aimed at supporting the specificity of learning hypothesis, when aiming was based on internal cues, as directing the hand toward a "self-defined" target location. Participants practiced modest (20 trials) or intensive (720 trials) training with visual and proprioceptive information or proprioceptive information only. Pretests and posttests were performed in sensory conditions that did or did not match the training condition. Results showed that dynamic visual cues played a dominant role at the beginning of the task, and an intensive practice resulted in increased accuracy of kinesthetic information and efferent mechanisms of motor responses. These results have implications with regard to motor learning conceptions and training as a function of the task constraints.     

Searching for health: the topography of the first page

Members of the lay public are turning increasingly to the internet to answer health-related questions. Some authors suggest that the widespread availability of online health information has dislodged medical knowledge from its traditional institutional base and enabled a growing role for alternative or previously unrecognized health perspectives and ‘lay health expertise’. Others have argued, however, that the organization of information retrieved from influential search engines, particularly Google, has merely intensified mainstream perspectives because of the growing consolidation of the internet with traditional, commercial media sources. In this paper we describe an analysis of ‘first page’ results retrieved through Google searches about several common health concerns, each of which has been the subject of controversy as a result of uncertain aetiology, diagnoses, outcomes and/or contested approaches to treatment. Our findings suggest that the online search tactics used by most lay health information seekers produce sources of information that, for the most part, reflect mainstream biomedical discourses, often linked to commercial interests, rather than a plurality of voices that offer a variety of perspectives and resources. We discuss the implications for health-interested internet searchers who fail to look beyond the ‘first page’.