Raising reading standards — the Reading Partners approach: cross-age peer tutoring in a special school

This article, written by Mary Nugent, an educational psychologist working with the National Educational Psychology Service in Dublin, reviews the work done in a special school, in the Dublin area, to develop a Reading Partners Scheme. The school involved in the project, which will be referred to as St Mark's, is a special school for children with moderate learning difficulties (in Ireland described as mild learning difficulties). The Reading Partner's Scheme involved cross-age peer tutoring in reading, working with students in the 8 to 18 age range. The training, organisation and management of the scheme are outlined here. Evaluation studies indicate multiple benefits of the scheme, accruing to both the learners and the helpers. These benefits include progress in reading, enhanced feelings of self-worth and more positive attitudes to school. Ideas for further development of the scheme are described, as well as future research opportunities.     

Use and delivery of learning objects in k-12: The public television experience

TechTrends - Driven by economic efficiencies and the object-oriented paradigm of computer programming, learning objects are the current buzz-word in mediated instruction. Considerable work with...     

¡Presente!: Affirming Latinx voices within health sciences library scholarship

Increasing diverse author representation within medical librarianship scholarship among BIPOC information professionals is an important endeavor that requires closer examination. This commentary looks to examine the ways in which the profession can support Latinx librarians and library workers in fully participating within the scholarly pipeline by exploring our unique and authentic voices, structural barriers, hesitation and fears, Whiteness in the profession and knowledge production, bias in the peer review process, lack of resources and support, and finally, a call to action.     

Book reviews

Publishing Research Quarterly -     

Social interaction and the use of analogy: An analysis of preservice teachers' talk during physics inquiry lessons

Analogies have been argued to be central in the process of establishing conceptual growth, making overt connections and carryover into an intended cognitive domain, and providing a generative venue for developing conceptual understanding inherent in constructivist learning. However, students' specific uses of analogies for constructing arguments are not well understood. Specifically, the results of preservice teachers' knowledge gains are not widely studied. Although we would hope that engaging preservice science teachers in exemplary lessons would assist them in using and generating analogies more expertly, it is not clear whether or how such curricula would affect their learning or teaching. This study presents an existence proof of how preservice science teachers used analogies embedded in their course materials Physics by Inquiry. This fine‐grained analysis of small group discourse revealed three distinct roles of analogies including the development of: (a) cognitive process skills, (b) scientific conceptual understanding, and (c) social contexts for problem solving. Results suggest that preservice teachers tend to overgeneralize the analogies inserted by curriculum materials, map irrelevant features of analogies into collaborative problem solving, and generate personal analogies, which counter scientific concept development. Although the authors agree with the importance of collaborative problem solving and the insertion of analogies for preservice teachers' conceptual development, we believe much more needs to be understood before teachers can be expected to construct and sustain effective learning environments that rely on using analogies expertly. Implications for teacher preparation are also discussed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 443–463, 2003