A longitudinal investigation of reading development from kindergarten to grade eight in a Spanish-speaking bilingual population

This longitudinal study used latent growth curve modeling to investigate English literacy development in a sample of Spanish-speaking language minority students from third through eighth grade. This study also compared the sample’s literacy development to the entire population of California students using state standardized test data. Second, this study examined the contributions of a variety of bilingual measures of kindergarten letter knowledge, phonological awareness, word reading, and vocabulary to literacy development. Results demonstrated the present sample scored below average in literacy compared to the overall population of California students across years, but made slight gains to narrow the achievement gap. The greatest gains were obtained between fourth and fifth grade, but plateaued thereafter. Results concerning the second research questions showed that the third grade literacy intercept was predicted by kindergarten English letter knowledge, Spanish onset, Spanish word reading, and English vocabulary. However, English literacy development through eighth grade was only predicted by kindergarten English and Spanish vocabulary. Findings support arguments for educational efforts to target oral language instruction for these students in early elementary and instruction in both languages may provide the greatest benefit. Instructional implications are discussed.     

Emotion regulation and academic perceptions in adolescence

Although studied extensively in the field of adolescent mental health, the role of emotion regulation (ER) in the academic functioning of adolescents is not well understood. This study examined the role of ER in adolescents’ perceptions of themselves and their learning environments. We compared adolescents with high and low levels of ER on perceptions of school achievement and attitudes towards school and their perception of their parents’ academic involvement. Students completed surveys about perceptions of their learning and parental involvement, as well as their ER abilities. Results indicated that students with higher emotion dysregulation endorsed more negative self-perceptions of their own academic abilities, had more negative attitudes towards school, and rated their mothers and fathers as more controlling in relation to their learning. These results demonstrate the importance of ER in the academic context, particularly in the home learning environment.     

Teachers' learning to facilitate high‐level student thinking: Impact of a video‐based professional development

Attaining the vision for science teaching and learning emphasized in the Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the next generation science standards (NGSS) will require major shifts in teaching practices in many science classrooms. As NGSS‐inspired cognitively demanding tasks begin to appear in more and more science classrooms, facilitating students' engagement in high‐level thinking as they work on these tasks will become an increasingly important instructional challenge to address. This study reports findings from a video‐based professional development effort (i.e., professional development [PD] that use video‐clips of instruction as the main artifact of practice to support teacher learning) to support teachers' learning to select cognitively demanding tasks and to support students' learning during the enactment of these tasks in ways that are aligned with the NGSS vision. Particularly, we focused on the NGSS's charge to get students to make sense of and deeply think about scientific ideas as students try to explain phenomena. Analyses of teachers' pre‐ and post‐PD instruction indicate that PD‐participants began to adopt instructional practices associated with facilitating these kinds of student thinking in their own classrooms. The study has implications for the design of video‐based professional development for science teachers who are learning to facilitate the NGSS vision in science classrooms.     

Teacher as Researcher,Teacher as Scholar,and Teacher as Leader

ABSTRACT

Too often, because of the static nature of schools and the dominant existence of high-stakes testing, professional learning for teachers is determined by administrators or policy and is facilitated by those who are not part of the school community using prepackaged programs. These initiatives run counter to authentic teacher inquiry where teachers enhance their understanding of students and learning and, ideally, develop new teaching practices (Borko, 2004; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009; Darling-Hammond, 1997). In this article, we focus on how teachers participating in action research begin to position themselves as teacher leaders.     

The Urgent Need for Teacher Preparation in Religious and Secular Worldview Education

In a world that is becoming increasingly globalized, it is ironic—as well as unfortunate and sometimes tragic—that secular and religious worldview education is decreasing, in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. This article argues for the immediate need for programs that intentionally prepare teachers for all aspects of the educational workforce to reverse this trend. Teachers who are well prepared to help students understand, respect, appreciate, and learn from others with differing worldviews will help produce a generation of citizens who will promote greater respect, tolerance, harmony, and peace on school campuses (at all levels), in the workplace, in neighborhoods, within nations domestically, and in the global community.     

The Success of Urban Schools in Oxnard,California: An In-Depth Look at Developmental and Relational Assets

Abstract

The study is a mixed-methods investigation of how urban schools are succeeding. The study surveyed 28 former students from urban schools in Oxnard, California. The qualitative responses represent themes that align to a high level of school connectedness and social–emotional learning (SEL) as key indicators of a successful urban school district. The responses also aligned with the thematic structures of the assets and relationships frameworks and to SEL standards.     

Effects of segmenting,signalling, and weeding on learning from educational video

Informed by the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, this study examined the effects of three multimedia design principles on undergraduate students' learning outcomes and perceived learning difficulty in the context of learning entomology from an educational video. These principles included segmenting the video into smaller units, signalling to direct students' attention to relevant information, and weeding to remove any non-essential content (SSW). It was hypothesized that the SSW treatment would decrease perceived learning difficulty and facilitate the transfer of knowledge and the structural knowledge acquisition. Results of the study demonstrate that participants in the SSW group outperformed the non-SSW group on the tests of knowledge transfer and structural knowledge acquisition and reported lower levels of learning difficulty. These findings support the use of SSW to help novice learners organize and integrate knowledge from complex, dynamic audio-visual media like video.     

Reclaiming professionalism for geography education: Defending our own territory

In a world where governments increasingly attempt to impose regulation on all professional activities, this paper advocates that professional standards for teachers be developed ‘by the profession for the profession’. Foucauldian archaeology is applied to two teacher standards documents recently published in Australia, one developed at national governmental level and the other by geography teachers through their professional associations. The excavation reveals that both students and geography teachers themselves are better served when teachers assert their own definition of professionalism and thus reclaim their professional territory, rather than being compliant with generic governmental agendas. Whilst we use Australia as an illustrative example, our findings are applicable to all other countries where governments attempt to impose external professional standards on the teaching profession.