A Model Program from the Perspective of Faculty Development

This article offers the Lynchburg College Symposium Readings (LCSR) Program as a model for faculty development. The program encourages faculty collaboration, innovative classroom practices, and service as well as new areas of faculty scholarship. Methods for assessing faculty work within the context of the goals of the program and the institution are described. Throughout the history of the program an emphasis has been placed on continuous faculty development in the belief that keeping faculty vital ensures quality teaching and scholarship.     

The effects of amount and type of teacher-child interaction on child-child interaction during free-play

Social interactions between preschool behaviorally handicapped children were measured under three experimental conditions during free-play: (a) active teacher involvement in free-play, (b) no teacher involvement in free-play, and (c) teacher structured free-play. Significantly more child-child interactions occurred during teacher structured free-play than in either of the other two conditions, with the no teacher involvement condition producing significantly more child-child interactions when compared to the active teacher involvement condition. Additionally, significantly more teacher-child interactions occurred during the active teacher involvement condition than in either of the other two conditions, with nonsignificant differences in teacher-child interaction between the no teacher involvement and the teacher structured conditions. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for ameliorating social interaction deficits among young behaviorally handicapped children.     

The influence of achievement goals and social goals on help-seeking from peers in an academic context

The influence of achievement goals and social goals on help-seeking from peers in an academic context was examined in two studies. A total of 551 high school students participated in the two studies. The results across the studies demonstrated strong convergence, revealing that mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, and friendship-approach goals were positive predictors of instrumental help-seeking, whereas performance-avoidance and friendship-avoidance goals were negative predictors. Study 2 additionally demonstrated that attitudes toward help-seeking mediate the influence of achievement and social goals on instrumental help-seeking. These results add to the body of work investigating achievement and social motivation together to more fully understand motivational influences on academic outcomes.     

Use of the woodcock language proficiency battery with culturally variant learning-disabled students

The Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery (WLPB) was administered to 18 learning-disabled adolescents from a culturally variant population in rural southern Louisiana and to a matching group of normal achievers. ANOVA results revealed that group status (learning-disabled vs. normally achieving) had a significant effect on cluster scores (Oral Language, Reading, and Written Language), p < .001. Significant effects for cluster scores were not discovered; however, the significant interaction (p < .05) between subjects and cluster scores was determined to be the result of group differences on all cluster scores. Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z-test results indicated that all WLPB cluster scores for the learning-disabled group were significantly lower (p < .001) than the test's means for each of these clusters; but, for the achieving group, only the Oral Language Cluster mean was significantly lower than the WLPB mean, p < .001. Additional t-test investigation revealed that the learning-disabled group means were significantly lower than the achieving group means on all subtests except for Picture Vocabulary. A modified contrastive linguistic analysis did not uncover the existence of test bias for semantics when error responses were evaluated. The results of this study suggest that the WLPB may be a useful tool for culturally diverse students when interpretation is based on a community norm perspective.     

Addressing first- and second-order barriers to change: Strategies for technology integration

Although teachers today recognize the importance of integrating technology into their curricula, efforts are often limited by both external (first-order) and internal (second-order) barriers. Traditionally, technology training, for both preservice and inservice teachers, has focused on helping teachers overcome first-order barriers (e.g., acquiring technical skills needed to operate a computer). More recently, training programs have incorporated pedagogical models of technology use as one means of addressing second-order barriers. However, little discussion has occurred that clarifies the relationship between these different types of barriers or that delineates effective strategies for addressing different barriers. If pre- and inservice teachers are to become effective users of technology, they will need practical strategies for dealing with the different types of barriers they will face. In this paper, I discuss the relationship between first- and second-order barriers and then describe specific strategies for circumventing, overcoming, and eliminating the changing barriers teachers face as they work to achieve technology integration.