What do teacher educators know about English spelling?

Reading and Writing - Teachers’ knowledge of literacy has gained considerable interest over the last three.decades, largely with a focus on the basic language constructs of phonological....     

紧生成l—群的一个结构定理

l-群G称为紧生成的，如果对于G的任意子集{αλ|λ∈Λ}且α=∨λ∈Λαλ存在，必存在{αλ|λ∈Λ}的有限子集a1、a2……an，使得a=∨ni=1ai。主要结果是：G∈F，则G是紧生成的当且仅当G的任一个l-子群是闭的，且Г（G）满足极小条件。     

THE CONTRIBUTION OF SCHOOL COUNSELORS’ SELF‐EFFICACY TO THEIR PROGRAMMATIC SERVICE DELIVERY

Self‐efficacy pertains to individuals’ belief about their capability to accomplish a task; consequently, school counselors’ positive self‐efficacy is a theoretically based prerequisite for their facilitation of school‐based interventions. In addition, school counselor‐led interventions and comprehensive, developmenta l guidance programs benefit students’ personal social, academic, and career development. Therefore, this investigation examined the contribution of practicing school counselors’ (N = 693) self‐efficacy in relation to the frequency of their programmatic service delivery. The findings indicate that participants’ self‐efficacy scores contributed to the frequency of their programmatic service delivery (48% of the variance explained). Implications for school counselors, supervisors, and educational researchers are discussed.     

Modeling Student Test‐Taking Motivation in the Context of an Adaptive Achievement Test

This study examined the utility of response time‐based analyses in understanding the behavior of unmotivated test takers. For the data from an adaptive achievement test, patterns of observed rapid‐guessing behavior and item response accuracy were compared to the behavior expected under several types of models that have been proposed to represent unmotivated test taking behavior. Test taker behavior was found to be inconsistent with these models, with the exception of the effort‐moderated model. Effort‐moderated scoring was found to both yield scores that were more accurate than those found under traditional scoring, and exhibit improved person fit statistics. In addition, an effort‐guided adaptive test was proposed and shown by a simulation study to alleviate item difficulty mistargeting caused by unmotivated test taking.     

Teaching principles of inference with ANOVA

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is a test of mean differences, but the reference to variances in the name is often overlooked. Classroom activities are presented to illustrate how ANOVA works with emphasis on how to think critically about inferential reasoning.     

The motor core of speech: a comparison of serial organization patterns in infants and languages

Comparison of serial organization of infant babbling and early speech with that of 10 languages reveals four movement-related design features reflecting a deep evolutionary heritage: (1) the cyclical consonant-vowel alternation underlying the syllable, a "Frame" for speech consisting of mandibular oscillation, possibly evolving from ingestive cyclicities (e.g., chewing) via visuofacial communicative cyclicities (e.g., lipsmacks); (2) three intracyclical consonant-vowel co-occurrence preferences reflecting basic biomechanical constraints-coronal consonants-front vowels, dorsal consonants-back vowels, and labial consonants-central vowels; (3) a developmental progression from above-chance to below-chance levels of intercyclical consonant repetition; (4) an ease-related labial consonant-vowel-coronal consonant sequence preference for word initiation. These design features presumably result from self-organizational responses to selection pressures, primarily determined by motor factors. No explanation for these design features is available from Universal Grammar, and, except for feature 3, perceptual-motor learning seems to have only a limited causal role in acquisition of any design feature.     

Domain specificity and variability in cognitive development

There are core-specific and noncore-specific domains of knowledge, but only the core-specific domains benefit from innate skeletal structures. Core skeletal domains are universally shared, even though their particular foci may vary; individuals vary extensively in terms of the noncore domains they acquire.     

A study of multimodal motherese: the role of temporal synchrony between verbal labels and gestures

This study examined European American and Hispanic American mothers' multimodal communication to their infants (N = 24). The infants were from three age groups representing three levels of lexical-mapping development: prelexical (5 to 8 months), early-lexical (9 to 17 months), and advanced-lexical (21 to 30 months). Mothers taught their infants four target (novel) words by using distinct objects during a semistructured play episode. Recent research suggests that young infants rely on temporal synchrony to learn syllable-object relations, but later, the role of synchrony diminishes. Thus, mothers' target and nontarget naming were coded for synchrony and other communication styles. The results indicated that mothers used target words more often than nontarget words in synchrony with object motion and sometimes touch. Thus, "multimodal motherese" likely highlights target word-referent relations for infants. Further, mothers tailored their communication to infants' level of lexical-mapping development. Mothers of prelexical infants used target words in synchrony with object motion more often than mothers of early- and advanced-lexical infants. Mothers' decreasing use of synchrony across age parallels infants' decreasing reliance on synchrony, suggesting a dynamical and reciprocal environment-organismic relation.     

Parental Involvement in Deaf Children's Education Programs as a Predictor of Child's Language, Early Reading, and Social-Emotional Development

This study examined the impact of school-based, teacher-rated parental involvement on four child outcomes: language development, early reading skills, and positive and negative measures of social-emotional development. The 28 children were assessed for outcomes between 9 to 53 months post-graduation from a birth-to-3 early intervention (EI) program for children with hearing loss. Other factors included in the study were child's hearing loss, mother's education level, mother's current communication skills with her child, and maternal use of additional services beyond those offered by the early intervention program or the child's school program. Parental involvement in children's school-based education program is a significant positive predictor to early reading skills but shares considerable variance with maternal communication skill for this outcome. In this study, maternal communication skills and the child's hearing loss were the strongest predictors for language development. Maternal use of additional services was the strongest predictor to poorer social-emotional adjustment. The study's findings indicate that although parental involvement in their deaf child's school-based education program can positively contribute to academic performance, parental communication skill is a more significant predictor for positive language and academic development. Factors associated with parental involvement, maternal communication, and use of additional services are explored and suggestions are offered to enhance parental involvement and communication skills.     

Are mastery learning strategies beneficial for developing problem solving skills?

The purpose of the present study was to investigate instructional methods appropriate for developing problem solving skills (PSS) in a paramedical course. Three instructional methods were compared: Frontal Lecture Strategies (FLS), Mastery Learning Strategies (MLS) and Experiential Mastery Learning Strategies (EMLS) in which feedback corrective procedures were embedded within experiential learning situations. Results showed that FLS produced the highest scores on Lower Mental Process subtest while EMLS yielded the highest scores on all measures of problem solving skills. Several implications of this study for future research are suggested and discussed.