Use of Instructional Feedback and Modification Methods among University Faculty

This study focused on methods used by faculty to gather feedback and how this feedback was used to modify instruction. Data were gathered to determine the degree to which these methods of feedback and modification of instruction were dependent upon variables such as class size, teaching experience, pedagogical training, academic rank and status, gender and academic discipline. It was found that the amount of feedback and modification of instruction did not vary significantly across the variables of teaching experience and class size. The analyses examining the effects of the remaining independent variables (i.e. college of study, pedagogical training, gender, rank, status) did detect statistically significant results. Specifically, those instructors who had received some training in pedagogical methods gathered feedback about their teaching more than those instructors without such pedagogical training. Also, faculty from the Colleges of Education and Liberal Arts used more methods to gather feedback than those faculty from the College of Science and Mathematics. Faculty in the College of Science and Math also did the least in terms of course and instructional modification, significantly less than faculty in the Colleges of Agriculture, Business, Education, Engineering and Liberal Arts.     

Standing in need of justification: Michael Apple,R.S. Peters and Jürgen Habermas

Curriculum decisions are increasingly seen as technocratic or bureaucratic problems, rather than democratic issues that must be deliberated over. As such, curriculum decisions are placed in the hands of a small minority of bureaucrats and business elites who assume the only purpose of education is to prepare children for college and/or the labour market. Within these times, it is essential to revisit classics works in order to move forward a critical theory of the curriculum. To develop a critical theory of the curriculum, I shall revisit two classic books in curriculum studies—R.S. Peters’s Ethics & Education and Michael Apple’s Ideology and Curriculum. I place Michael Apple and R.S. Peters in conversation with each other because both believe, albeit differently, that the curriculum ‘stands in need of justification’: both agree the curriculum must be publically justified through democratic deliberation. Furthermore, Apple and Peters develop different sets of tools for a critical theory of the curriculum—Apple provides tools for critique and Peters tools for the normative standards. However, both inadequately develop the normative standards for determining when the curriculum is democratically justified. These normative standards, I argue, are developed by Habermas’s critical theory of discourse ethics which is capable of building upon and expanding the insights of Apple and Peters.     

The Relationship Between Vocabulary and Word Reading Among Head Start Spanish–English Bilingual Children

In this study, we investigated the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between vocabulary and word reading across Spanish and English. One hundred and seventeen 4- to 5-year-old Spanish–English bilingual children attending Head Start programs in the United States were tested for their Spanish and English word reading twice, 5 months apart. We also tested the children’s Spanish and English vocabulary and phonological awareness at Time 1. We used multiple regression models to examine the predictive value of vocabulary to word reading cross-linguistically and longitudinally. Results showed that within (Spanish or English) language and concurrent predictions were stronger than cross-language and longitudinal predictions; however, Spanish vocabulary was a significant and unique predictor of English word reading longitudinally. Spanish phonological awareness also played an important role in the relationship between vocabulary and word reading. Our results suggest that helping Spanish-speaking children build their Spanish vocabulary can also improve their English word reading ability.     

The Diverse Risk Profiles of Persistently Absent Primary Students: Implications for Attendance Policies in Australia

ABSTRACT

The risk factors associated with absenteeism are well known. However, children's exposure to combinations of risks and how these relate to absence patterns remains unclear. Understanding variations in risk profiles among persistently non-attending children will inform the development of absence interventions. Using a longitudinal sample of Australian children (6–11 years), a latent class analysis of 19 risks identified four classes of risk exposure. Most children (56%) were exposed to minimal risk, 20% were exposed to parenting, child development, and mental health risks only, 15% were exposed to a greater extent to financial risks only, and 9% had a higher probability of exposure to all risks. Persistently non-attending children were eight times more likely to be in the high-risk group than regular attenders. However, one-third of persistent non-attenders were classified as low-risk. The heterogeneity of risk profiles is discussed in relation to policies using financial penalties to motivate improved attendance.     

Modeling citation behavior in Management Science journals

Citation rates are becoming increasingly important in judging the research quality of journals, institutions and departments, and individual faculty. This paper looks at the pattern of citations across different management science journals and over time. A stochastic model is proposed which views the generating mechanism of citations as a gamma mixture of Poisson processes generating overall a negative binomial distribution. This is tested empirically with a large sample of papers published in 1990 from six management science journals and found to fit well. The model is extended to include obsolescence, i.e., that the citation rate for a paper varies over its cited lifetime. This leads to the additional citations distribution which shows that future citations are a linear function of past citations with a time-dependent and decreasing slope. This is also verified empirically in a way that allows different obsolescence functions to be fitted to the data. Conclusions concerning the predictability of future citations, and future research in this area are discussed.     

A comparison of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities with preschool children

The purpose of the present study was to determine the degree to which performance on the McCarthy Scaies of Children's Abilities correlated with performance on the Stanford-Binet for a group of preschoolers. The sample consisted of 44 children ranging in age from 3–11 to 5–4. It was found that the General Cognitive Index scores of the McCarthy Scales correlated well with the Stanford-Binet IQ scores, r^xy = .90. However, 40 of the 44 subjects scored higher on the Stanford-Binet than on the McCarthy Scales.     

The Effects of Parent-Implemented Enhanced Milieu Teaching on the Social Communication of Children Who Have Autism

This study examined the effects of training six parents to use Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT) with their preschool children with autism or pervasive development disabilities. A modified single subject design across the six families was used to assess the parents' acquisition and generalized use of the EMT strategies. The parents learned to use the naturalistic language intervention strategies during 24 individual training sessions in the clinic and generalized their use of the strategies to home interactions at the end of the intervention. Follow- up observations in the clinic and home observations six months after the intervention indicated that parents maintained their use of the newly-learned procedures throughout the follow-up period but at levels lower than those achieved during the clinic training. Positive effects were observed on the use of communication targets for all children and on the complexity and diversity of productive language for most children. Child effects generalized and maintained for four of six children and there was evidence of change on developmental assessments of language for five of six children. Parent satisfaction with the intervention procedures and child outcomes was high.     

The Politics of Opting Out in the Age of Neoliberal Cynicism

Within the past several years, parents, teachers, students, and community members have vociferously debated the value and importance of opting out of standardized testing. The debate has been sparked by an increasing number of parents, dubbed “opt-out activists,” who refuse to have their children participate in federally mandated standards testing. However, an assortment of civil rights organizations and activists have challenged the opt-out movement. Quentin Wheeler-Bell argues that the debate between those in the opt-out movement and the civil rights activists is an example of neoliberal cynicism. While both groups acknowledge (to different degrees) the structural problems inherent to the current testing regime, they both also make educational demands that assume equal educational opportunity is achievable within a capitalist system. In making this assumption that equal educational opportunity is valuable within capitalism, Wheeler-Bell concludes, both sides ultimately reproduce neoliberal cynicism.