The Integration of Common Core and Response to Intervention: Supporting Vulnerable Readers in a Time of Sophisticated Standards

The Common Core State Standards and Response to Intervention are significant contemporary educational initiatives that have emerged largely in isolation from one another. We argue that an integration of these initiatives is beneficial. We trace the independent development of these two initiatives and offer suggestions for how they might fruitfully transact, fully supporting vulnerable readers in their efforts to master sophisticated standards. Results from a school implementing these initiatives as an integrated whole are discussed.     

Valuing and Desiring Purposes of Education to Transcend Miseducative Measurement Practices

Abstract

The separating and isolating tendencies of measuring practices can lead educators to lose sight of the aims and purposes of education. These end purposes can be used to guide and ensure that the activities of educators are educational, and therefore, Biesta recommends there is a need for educators to reconnect with them. This article. explores this notion of a ‘reconnection’ and argues that if educators are to challenge any potentially miseducative measuring practices, then this reconnection must require educators to value and desire particular end purposes. Desires are recognised to be existential in character and are identified as being necessary for initiating actions. It is argued here that this aspect of desires is important for understanding the significance of a ‘reconnection’ because without it the purposes of education may remain only as abstract philosophical ideals. To make a difference and to challenge the isolating and miseducative tendencies of some measuring practices, educators must come to value particular purposes of education, and in addition, they must exercise the courage to enact them. This can be made possible because educators strongly care for and desire the actualisation of the purposes to which they are connected.     

TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION TO LEARNERS WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER: PREDICTORS OF TEACHER SELF‐EFFICACY AND OUTCOME EXPECTANCY

Learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit difficulty in the area of reading comprehension. Research connecting the learning needs of individuals with ASD, existing effective practices, teacher training, and teacher perceptions of their own ability to teach reading comprehension is scarce. Quantitative survey methodology and hierarchical regression analysis were utilized to investigate teacher preparedness to use effective practices, along with the job‐related factors of experience, administrator support, learner verbal ability, and instructional setting, as predictors of (1) teacher perceived self‐efficacy and (2) teacher perceived outcome expectancy teaching reading comprehension to learners with ASD. Study findings, based on 112 teacher participants, indicate that teachers with a higher confidence in using effective practices have both a higher perception of their own ability to teach comprehension (self‐efficacy), and a higher expectation of their own ability to increase instructional outcomes in learners with ASD (outcome expectancy). Implications for practice include professional development recommendations and provision of ongoing support from principals and administrators.     

Needs and Acculturative Stress of International Students in CACREP Programs

International students enrolled in programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs provided acculturative stress and needs data. Acculturative stress was correlated with academic, social, language, and cultural needs. Furthermore, relationships were found between students’ types of needs. Implications are offered to help meet international students’ needs.     

The significance of materiality in shaping institutional habitus: exploring dynamics preceding school effects

This article examines the objective possibilities of Swedish schools to offer an equal and functional pedagogical practice for students’ acquisition of knowledge and skills. The data consist of policy documents, observations, and interviews with students, teachers, and head teachers in three educational settings distinguished by different social demographics. The focus allows for a comparative understanding of how tangible objects generate formations of schools as a relational phenomenon depending on geographic location and social background of students. The article indicates that the impact of materiality lies in its preceding power. It shapes the condition of institutions visualised in architecture, buildings, and the quality of and design of facilities and artefacts. From this material root emanates schools’ values, appeal, social status, and pedagogical organisations – school effects – that empower or weaken the school’s attraction and self-confidence. Different materialities influence each school’s institutional habitus, producing school effects with unequal educational outcomes.