Letter knowledge in parent–child conversations

Learning about letters is an important component of emergent literacy. We explored the possibility that parent speech provides information about letters, and also that children’s speech reflects their own letter knowledge. By studying conversations transcribed in CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000) between parents and children aged one to five, we found that alphabetic order influenced use of individual letters and letter sequences. The frequency of letters in children’s books influenced parent utterances throughout the age range studied, but children’s utterances only after age two. Conversations emphasized some literacy-relevant features of letters, such as their shapes and association with words, but not letters’ sounds. Describing these patterns and how they change over the preschool years offers important insight into the home literacy environment.     

Diversity and Mentoring in the Workplace: A Conversation with Belle Rose Ragins

Given projected increases in workplace diversity, an understanding of diversity’s intersection with mentoring is a critical topic in the literature. This article involved an interview with Belle Rose Ragins, one of the world’s leading thinkers on diversity and mentoring in the workplace. After providing an overview of Ragins’ key achievements and contributions to the mentoring literature, the article delved into the interview, which involves four parts: (a) Ragins’ education and early influences; (b) her views on the extant literature as well as insights around future areas for inquiry; (c) her current research interests; and (d) her views on consulting and teaching.     

Exploring the Use of Cases and Case Methods in Influencing Elementary Preservice Science Teachers' Self-Efficacy Beliefs

In this study, we hypothesize that cases demonstrating exemplary practice in the science classroom can be used as a source for learning content and pedagogical skills that will improve teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. Twelve preservice elementary science teachers are followed as they participate in a case and case method activity illustrating the Grade 7 topic of robotics and fluids. While there was little evidence to show improvements in content knowledge, results indicate that the case acted as a boundary object for brokering between individual experiences and those found in the science teaching community by scaffolding for multiple points of entry, bridging the theory practice gap and offering beginning teachers more immediate access to the community of already practicing teachers.

---

     

Children's participation as neo-liberal governance?

Children's participation initiatives have been increasingly introduced within various institutional jurisdictions around the world, partly in response to Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Such initiatives have been critically evaluated from a number of different angles. This article engages with an avenue of critique which argues that children's participatory initiatives resonate with a neoliberal economic and political context that prioritises middle class, western individualism and ultimately fosters children's deeper subjugation through self-governance. Respecting these as legitimate concerns, this article draws on two counter-positions to argue that while children's participation can certainly be conceptualised and practised in ways that reflect neo-liberal, individualised self-governance, it does not necessarily do so. To make this argument I engage, on the one hand, with Foucault's work on the care of the self, and on the other, with more collective approaches to participation.     

(Mis)Measuring Developmental Math Success: Classroom Participants’ Perspectives on Learning

ABSTRACT

Poor completion outcomes in community colleges’ developmental education programs have spurred reforms in developmental education policies and practices in order to increase students’ chances of success. In the case of developmental math, the focus of this article, such changes include revisions to testing and placement policies, amendments to the intended curriculum, and restructuring of the format and sequencing of courses. However, the measures that have highlighted the inadequacies of developmental math are, in themselves, insufficient for assessing the effectiveness of reforms to developmental math. Drawing on interview data from a classroom-level study of a community college’s pilot reform initiative in developmental math, we explore the learning goals articulated by the instructors and a sample of students across four pre-algebra classrooms. Through our analysis of their goals, as well as the extent to which students reported accomplishing those goals, our research underscores the important distinction between course completion and learning. This study highlights the need to assess the effectiveness of developmental math coursework in ways that extend beyond completion rates.     

Reading Comprehension Tests Vary in the Skills They Assess: Differential Dependence on Decoding and Oral Comprehension

Comprehension tests are often used interchangeably, suggesting an implicit assumption that they are all measuring the same thing. We examine the validity of this assumption by comparing some of the most popular reading comprehension measures used in research and clinical practice in the United States: the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT), the two assessments (retellings and comprehension questions) from the Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI), the Woodcock–Johnson Passage Comprehension subtest (WJPC), and the Reading Comprehension test from the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT). Modest intercorrelations among the tests suggested that they were measuring different skills. Regression analyses showed that decoding, not listening comprehension, accounts for most of the variance in both the PIAT and the WJPC; the reverse holds for the GORT and both QRI measures. Large developmental differences in what the tests measure were found for the PIAT and the WJPC, but not the other tests, both when development was measured by chronological age and by word reading ability. We discuss the serious implications for research and clinical practice of having different comprehension tests measure different skills and of having the same test assess different skills depending on developmental level.