1,720,980 research outputs found
Various Measures of Socioeconomic Status as Predictors of Formal and Informal Home Literacy Environments
Get PDFIndividual differences in literacy during early childhood are important predictors of later reading ability (Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002) and cognitive achievements (Downer & Pianta 2006). These differences in early literacy have been shown to be associated with various forms of literacy opportunities in the home, collectively known as the home literacy environment (HLE; Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002). HLE includes both an informal aspect, which involves “those [activities] for which the primary goal is the message contained in the print,” and a formal aspect, which entails “those [activities] for which parent and child focus on the print” (Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002, p. 1). Each aspect of HLE is correlated with different aspects of future literacy. HLE, however, does not exist in a vacuum; it is associated with multiple family-level variables, most notably socioeconomic status (SES). Like HLE, SES can be conceptualized in many ways. The researchers hypothesized that different aspects of SES would be differentially related to HLE, and that Informal HLE would be more strongly predicted by income-related measures, whereas Formal HLE would be more strongly predicted by education-related measures. To disentangle this complex association between SES and HLE, the researchers administered surveys to the parents of 393 preschool-aged children in Columbus to document their Informal HLE, Formal HLE, and multiple aspects of their SES, including income, income-to-needs ratio, and parental education. Multiple regression was used to predict Informal and Formal HLE from the various SES measures. Results indicated that income (β=.182, p=.010), income to needs ratio (β=.179, p=.014), and maternal education (β=.207, p=.013) are unique, significant predictors of Informal HLE. No measures of SES were significant predictors of Formal HLE. The results suggest that SES plays a role in Informal HLE, but also suggest that SES is not a catch-all predictor of HLE and that factors not explored in this study may predict both Informal and Formal HLE. Although the results do not fully support hypotheses, they suggest the existence of complex associations between SES and HLE that must be understood in order to develop initiatives that address the underlying causes of disparities in early childhood literacy.U.S. Department of EducationAcademic Major: PsychologyAcademic Major: Public Affair
Beginning Reading Instruction in Massachusetts Public Schools: Research, Policy, and Teachers\u27 Knowledge and Beliefs
Get PDFResearch on reading acquisition and instruction has identified the incorporation of an explicit, systematic code-based approach into a comprehensive reading curriculum as most successful in teaching beginning readers, including those who are reading disabled (e.g., Adams, 1990; National Reading Panel, 2000; Pressley, 2002; Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2001). Yet, 70% of 4th grade students nationwide and 60% of such students in Massachusetts are not reading at proficient levels (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2003), statistics which raise questions about how well the research is translated into educational policies and classroom practices. Over the course of my Fenwick year, I have investigated the process by which research may influence educational decisions regarding early reading instruction in Massachusetts public schools, through a review of the relevant literature and state and national policies (e.g., Massachusetts Education Reform Act, 1993; Massachusetts English/Language Arts Curriculum Framework, 2001; No Child Left Behind, 2001), a set of semi-structured interviews with policymakers, school administrators, and teachers (n=58), and a statewide teacher survey (n=112). Although educational policies are aligned with instructional methods supported by research, the degree to which individual districts or schools utilize these policies or the research itself to guide decisions varies. Furthermore, teachers tend to overestimate their own knowledge of reading research and/or devalue the worth of this knowledge for guiding classroom practices. Teachers\u27 lack of motivation to become more familiar with research findings is compounded by a lack of access to such findings. Nor do teachers generally have the prerequisite knowledge to implement the code-based approach which is supported by research, as found on the Teacher Knowledge Assessment: Structure of Language (Bos, Mather, Dickson, Podhajski, & Chard, 2002). A more concerted effort by all professionals involved in the educational system, including educators, policymakers, and researchers, is required to better translate reading research into educational practice
Do emergent bilingual children follow similar patterns in English letter-name knowledge as English-monolingual children?
No full textMultisensory alphabet instruction for English monolingual and emergent bilingual children
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Doing Assessment: A Multicase Study of Preschool Teachers’ Language and Literacy Data Practices
Get PDFEarly childhood research and policy have promoted the use of language and literacy assessment data to inform instruction. Yet, there is a limited understanding of preschool teachers’ data practices and sensemaking, particularly when considered from the perspectives of practicing teachers. In this multicase study, we used a phenomenological approach to generate a theory about preschool teachers’ data practices in relation to supporting children’s language and literacy outcomes. Twenty preschool teachers participated in a series of three observations, planning interviews, and stimulated recall interviews designed to tap their pedagogical reasoning and data use practices. The framework that emerged through iterative within-and cross-case analyses comprised three major elements (what teachers knew, how they knew it, and the way they used the data) and suggested that teachers could be characterized into three data use profiles (data gatherers, in-the- moment data users, and integrated data users). Findings indicate (a) teachers may understand data differently than researchers or policymakers do, (b) teachers’ understanding of data sources goes beyond traditional conceptualizations, (c) a continuum in teachers’ data use practices, and (d) a need to better support teachers in moving from simply doing assessment to using data in ways that are meaningful for practice and children’s language and literacy outcomes
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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