The child nobody likes

Disliked children may experience unhappiness, loneliness, and considerable frustration during their early involvement in preschool centers and the early years of school. Teachers of young children, realizing the effects of being disliked on self-esteen and academic, social, and personal growth, must work toward either changing the causes of the problem or attempting to change peer and teacher behaviour toward the disliked child.M. Lee Manning is Assistant Professor of Elementary Education of Columbia College in South Carolina.     

Facilitating Reading Habits and Creating Peer Culture in Shared Book Reading: An Exploratory Case Study in a Toddler Classroom

Fifteen toddlers (2- to 3-years old, nine boys and six girls) in a university preschool classroom were observed for 7 months while spending time with books during transition time, between story time and lunch. This qualitative case study investigated the ways that teachers can facilitate toddlers’ reading habits by providing literacy opportunities in unstructured learning environments and explored the contexts in which toddlers engage in independent reading activities. The findings of this study show that (1) toddlers can develop literacy through participating in meaning-making activities with peers while reading books together in unstructured environments and (2) toddlers want to read and choose to read in order to satisfy their curiosity, involvement, and social interchange, just as older children do.     

Exploring learning culture in Finnish and South Korean classrooms

The authors aimed to investigate learning culture in classrooms at schools to understand education in Finland and South Korea. For this, Finnish and South Korean university students made observations on classrooms in partner countries and reflected on both education systems based on their own previous experiences (2011–2014). Afterwards, researchers from both countries categorized and thematized the experiences of the participants, and interpreted the main themes to figure out the learning culture in Finland and South Korea. As a result, the learning culture in both countries were characterized into six themes: teacher's autonomy in teaching, authenticity in learning, relationships between teachers and students, learning assessment, student engagement, and student well-being. Noteworthy features of high-performing education were recognized through the observation on the learning culture in both countries.     

Differences in food consumption under intermittent and continuous reinforcement schedules of water delivery: Some implications for schedule-induced behavior

Consumption of food pellets was examined in four water-deprived rats during 1-h sessions in which water was presented once every 30, 60, or 120 sec independently of the rats’ behavior according to three fixed-time (FT) schedules. Correlated with each FT condition was a continuous reinforcement (CRF) control condition in which the rats received, at the start of the session, the number of dipper presentations that were programmed to occur during the corresponding FT condition. During both the FT and CRF conditions, pellets per dipper presentation decreased and food intake rate increased with rate of water presentation, and there was a direct linear relation between log food intake and log water intake. For each of these three measures there was less eating under the FT condition than under the CRF condition, but the difference between the FT and CRF functions decreased at shorter FT values. These data are discussed in terms of the effects of amount of water on food consumption and the principle of temporal summation.     

The role of pre-service teachers’ perceived instrumentality,goal commitment,and motivation in their self-regulation strategies for learning in teacher education courses

This study investigated the influence of pre-service teachers’ (n = 142) perceived endogenous/exogenous instrumentality, goal commitment, and intrinsic/extrinsic motivation on their use of self-regulation strategies (effort regulation, management of time and study environment) for their teacher-education courses. Data were drawn from a customised survey and were statistically analysed using hierarchical multiple regressions. Results demonstrated that pre-service teachers’ endogenous instrumentality was a significant contributor for explaining their use of self-regulation strategies. To facilitate pre-service teachers’ use of self-regulation strategies for learning, our findings suggest that, in addition to having intrinsic motivation for learning in their teacher-education courses, they need to have appropriate understandings of how their current course content connects to their future goals to be teachers in order to promote their use of strategies for self-regulation and learning.     

The Relationship between Phonological Awareness and Early Reading for First Grade Korean Language Learners with Reading Difficulties

This study investigated the differences in four components of phonological awareness (i.e., judgment, deletion, blending, and substitution) and early reading ability across reading levels, and the correlation between phonological awareness (PA) and early reading ability in low and average-achievement groups. 27 students with reading difficulties and 34 students with average reading abilities participated in the study, and all participants were native Korean students in Grade One. The results indicated significant differences between low-achievement and averageachievement groups in PA and early reading measures, which revealed features of Korean phonology as different from English. Furthermore, phonological awareness showed significant positive correlation with both word identification and reading fluency for the low and average-achievement groups. For the low-achievement group, the correlation between phonological awareness and reading fluency was higher than between phonological awareness and word identification.     

Teaching Systems Thinking in the Context of the Water Cycle

Research in Science Education - Complex systems affect every part of our lives from the ecosystems that we inhabit and share with other living organisms to the systems that supply our water (i.e.,...     

Beyond Evolution: Addressing Broad Interactions Between Science and Religion in Science Teacher Education

Science and religion are two indisputably profound and durable cultural forces with a complex history of interaction. As ASTE members are aware, these interactions often manifest themselves in classrooms and in the surrounding communities. In this essay, we encourage science teacher educators to broaden their perspectives of science–religion interactions so that they may better assist pre- and in-service science teachers with addressing topics such as the age and origins of the universe and biological evolution in an appropriate manner. We first introduce some foundational scholarship into the historical interactions between science and religion as well as current efforts to maintain healthy dialogue between perspectives that are frequently characterized as innately in conflict with or mutually exclusive of one another. Given that biological evolution is the dominant science–religion issue of our day, in particular in the USA, we next summarize the origins and strategies of anti-evolution movements via the rise and persistence of Christian Fundamentalism. We then summarize survey and qualitative sociological research indicating disparities between academic scientists and the general public with regard to religious beliefs to help us further understand our students’ worldviews and the challenges they often face in campus-to-classroom transitions. We conclude the essay by providing resources and practical suggestions, including legal considerations, to assist science teacher educators with their curriculum and outreach.