Reading Like a Historian: A Document-Based History Curriculum Intervention in Urban High Schools

Enthusiasm about the instructional potential of primary sources dates to the late nineteenth century and has been echoed recently in the work of literacy experts, historians, and educational psychologists. Yet, no extended intervention study has been undertaken to test the effectiveness of primary source instruction in real history classrooms. This study, with 236 11th-grade students in five San Francisco high schools, represented the first extended curriculum intervention in disciplinary reading in an urban district. The Reading Like a Historian (RLH) curriculum constituted a radical departure from traditional textbook-driven instruction by using a new activity structure, the “Document-Based Lesson,” in which students used background knowledge to interrogate, and then reconcile, historical accounts from multiple texts. A quasi-experiment control design measured the effects of a 6-month intervention on four dimensions: (a) students’ historical thinking; (b) their ability to transfer historical thinking strategies to contemporary issues; (c) their mastery of factual knowledge; and (d) their growth in general reading comprehension. MANCOVA analysis yielded significant main effects for the treatment condition on all four outcome measures. This study has implications for both adolescent literacy instruction and history teaching at the middle- and high-school levels.     

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Recent literature in the area of psychological differentiation suggests that cognitive styles may have significant application potential to the problems of education. Field dependence/ independence is one cognitive style construct that has a relatively rich history of research and has been given serious consideration for issues involving curriculum and instruction. This article reviews field dependence/independence research as it relates to reading and reading instruction. In particular, the construct is considered from its overall impact on reading, its relation to vocabulary or word knowledge, and its impact on reading comprehension. Implications for reading instruction are developed from the review of the literature and future directions for the interaction of field dependence/ independence and reading research are discussed.     

Why is learning to read a hard task for some children?

In this brief review of some of my research on reading disability, I argue that a child’s development into literacy has two major ontogenetic roots, one involving early informal literacy socialization and one related to phonological awareness. Although failure in reading acquisition might be a question of cultural deprivation, the dynamic interaction between genetic dispositions and environment must be acknowledged, especially in a society providing rich sources of print exposure. The crucial transition in literacy development involves a step from implicit to explicit control of the phonemic units of language. When the cipher of the alphabetic system is understood the child is equipped with a powerful instrument for self teaching. A primary source of reading disability is then related to problems of segmenting the speech stream into phonemic units. The poor functioning of the phonological module seems to be a circumscribed deficit not related to general cognitive ability. The causal and reciprocal relationship between phonological awareness and learning to read has been demonstrated in my research over 20 years. Some of these studies are briefly reviewed in this article. The preventive and remedial implications of the findings are rather obvious.     

Student Agency in Literacy: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Abstract

Scholars contend that agency is at the heart of cultivating equitable learning spaces for all learners. While it is intuitive that literacy educators support agency during instruction, there is diverse terminology surrounding the concept of agency in the field. As a result, aligning the construct to instructional practices and developing a conceptual understanding of agency in practice has been challenging. Our research team completed a systematic literature review of agency during literacy instruction. In this article, we describe findings of this review of empirical research on agency in literacy spanning from 1975–2017. Findings highlight the complexities associated with defining agency as well as the need for diverse methodological approaches to examining agency in literacy contexts.     

Learning to “See” Less Than Nothing: Putting Perceptual Skills to Work for Learning Numerical Structure

How can children's natural perceptuo-motor skills be harnessed for teaching and learning mathematical structure? We address this question in the case of the integers. Existing research suggests that adult mental representations of integers recruit perceptuo-motor functionalities involving symmetry. Building on these findings, we designed a hands-on curriculum that emphasizes symmetry to teach integer concepts to fourth graders. Compared to two control conditions, children who went through the experimental curriculum showed evidence of incorporating symmetry into their mental representations of integers and performed higher on problems beyond the scope of instruction, including negative fractions and algebra-readiness problems. Gains did not come at the expense of basic integer computation skill. This study has direct practical implications, as current integers curricula generally omit symmetry. The research demonstrates an approach to designing instruction that involves identifying perceptuo-motor functionalities underlying numerical cognition and creating learning activities to recruit them.     

Bootstrapping Processes in the Development of Students' Commonsense Matter Theories: Using Analogical Mappings,Thought Experiments,and Learning to Measure to Promote Conceptual Restructuring

This study explores whether the development of students' understanding of matter as something that occupies space and has weight involves conceptual change and restructuring rather than only simple belief revision. Based on an analysis of how the concepts in students' initial matter theory (henceforth MT1) may differ from the concepts in the matter theory that is a target of middle school instruction (MT2), I propose ways that concepts in a given theory cohere with each other and identify the sources of the new ideas in MT2 and the learning processes by which those new ideas can be acquired. I test implications of these analyses by designing a curriculum unit that exploits these learning mechanisms, by using the curriculum with 4 classes of eighth-grade Earth Science students, and by assessing 42 students' thinking about matter, object size, and weight (via individual interviews and written tests) before and after the teaching unit. Consistent with the hypothesis of conceptual restructuring, the data not only show coherencies in students' thinking about matter, size, and weight before and after teaching, but also coordinated patterns of change. The implications for the design of science instruction are discussed.     

A Social Ecological Conceptual Framework for Understanding Adolescent Health Literacy in the Health Education Classroom

With the rising concern over chronic health conditions and their prevention and management, health literacy is emerging as an important public health issue. As with the development of other forms of literacy, the ability for students to be able to access, understand, evaluate and communicate health information is a skill best developed during their years of public schooling. Health education curricula offer one approach to develop health literacy, yet little is known about its influence on neither students nor their experiences within an educational context. In this article, we describe our experience applying a social ecological model to investigating the implementation of a health education curriculum in four high schools in British Columbia, Canada. We used the model to guide a conceptual understanding of health literacy, develop research questions, select data collection strategies, and interpret the findings. Reflections and recommendations for using the model are offered.     

Religious Studies Collections and Information Literacy: A Snapshot of a University Library

Academic library collections are maintained to support programs and research at their home institutions. Information literacy, the formal instruction in the use of library resources, has become one of the essential programs in higher education. There is little research that shows how collection development, information literacy, and religious studies programs can be coordinated to produce successful partnerships. The authors, coordinators of Information Literacy and Collection Development, examined the religion collection, including purchase, usage, and circulation statistics. Information literacy courses in relation to the religious studies program were also investigated. After analyzing this data, the authors identified challenges, as they exist at their home institution, which includes a deficiency in both the religion collection and information literacy classes taught for the religious studies program. The authors conclude that much work is needed to advance successful collaborations between libraries and the religious studies departments, and academic librarians will need to examine their own religion collections to address similar challenges.     

Dispositions and the Argument from Science

Central to the debate between Humean and anti-Humean metaphysics is the question of whether dispositions can exist in the absence of categorical properties that ground them (that is, where the causal burden is shifted on to categorical properties on which the dispositions would therefore supervene). Dispositional essentialists claim that they can; categoricalists reject the possibility of such ‘baseless’ dispositions, requiring that all dispositions must ultimately have categorical bases. One popular argument, recently dubbed the ‘Argument from Science’, has appeared in one or another form over much of the last century and purports to win the day for the dispositional essentialist. Taking its cue from physical theory, the Argument from Science treats the exclusively dispositional characterizations of the fundamental particles one finds in physical theory as providing a key premise in what has been called a ‘decisive’ argument for baseless dispositions. Despite sharing the intuition that dispositions can be baseless, I argue that the force and significance of the Argument from Science have been greatly overestimated: no version of the argument is close to decisive, and only one version succeeds in scoring points against the categoricalist. Not only is physical theory more ontologically innocent than defenders of baseless dispositions seem to appreciate, most versions of the Argument from Science neglect important ways that dispositions could be grounded by categorical properties.     

Effects of a family literacy program on low-literate children and their parents: findings from an evaluation of the Even Start family literacy program

A randomized experiment was conducted to test the effectiveness of Even Start, a federally supported family literacy program providing early childhood education, adult education, parenting education, and joint parent-child literacy activities to children and parents from low-literate families. The evaluation of 18 Even Start projects followed 463 families for 2 years and found no statistically significant or educationally important impacts on Even Start families when they were compared with control families on child literacy outcomes, parent literacy outcomes, or parent-child interactions. The study concludes that Even Start projects were able to properly implement family literacy programs, and the observed lack of effectiveness is attributed to a combination of 2 factors: (a) a lack of full participation on the part of families and (b) instructional services that may be ineffective because of the curriculum content or the instructional approach.     

Literacy acquisition in multilingual educational contexts: Evidence from Coastal Kenya

Literacy is a powerful tool against poverty, leading to further education and vocational success. In sub‐Saharan Africa, schoolchildren commonly learn in two languages—African and European. Multiple early literacy skills (including phonological awareness and receptive language) support literacy acquisition, but this has yet to be empirically tested in sub‐Saharan Africa, where learning contexts are highly multilingual, and children are often learning to read in a language they do not speak at home. We use longitudinal data from 1,100 schoolchildren spanning three groups of native languages [Mijikenda languages (Digo, Duruma, Chonyi, and Giriama), Kiswahili, Kikamba] in coastal Kenya (language of instruction: Kiswahili and English). We find that baseline phonological awareness and receptive language are differentially important in predicting literacy skills in English and in Kiswahili, and these relations are moderated by the degree of shared cross‐linguistic features between home and school languages. Importantly, the relative importance of these factors changes over development. Implications for language development and literacy acquisition in linguistically diverse contexts are discussed.     

Culture and Character Education in a Jewish Day School: A Case Study of Life and Experience

This article addresses how to teach character comprehensively by studying ways a school's concurrent curricula (the official curriculum, the operational curriculum, the extra curriculum, and the hidden curriculum) can be used to teach character to students. A single case study analyzes the curriculum at a Jewish day school by examining school documents and records, observing classroom instruction and school culture, and interviewing school administrators and teachers. This research concludes that the Jewish day school teaches character comprehensively through a religious foundation—from which the entire curriculum evolves. The study indicates that addressing character education through religious studies, school traditions, and school culture will enable both public and private schools to fully integrate character education into the school program.     

Using behavioral skills training with preservice teachers in the university classroom

Preservice and novice teachers often identify behavior management as an area of weakness that they attribute to a lack of sufficient instruction during their teacher preparation. Behavioral skills training (BST) is an evidence‐based teaching methodology based on the principles of applied behavior analysis used to teach new skills. This study investigated the use of BST in the university setting to teach undergraduate preservice teachers enrolled in a field‐based special education course to implement a token economy during small group instruction with children. A single‐case research design was used to assess the effectiveness of using BST by evaluating accuracy of implementation before and after BST. Results showed BST was an effective teaching procedure and social validity measures collected from the preservice teachers indicated BST was acceptable to all participants. Limitations and needs for future research are discussed.     

Reflective journaling: fostering dispositional development in preservice teachers

This study investigated the self-identified dispositions of 183 preservice teachers enrolled in a required philosophy of education course. The researchers coded their reflective journaling for the two essential NCATE (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education) dispositions of fairness and the belief that all students can learn, as well as for other recurring, self-identified dispositions. These preservice teachers self-identified fairness much more frequently than the belief that all students can learn. The results point to additional recurring dispositional themes for consideration: critical thinking, caring, openness, moral education, and individual freedom. Further examination of the data revealed great variation in the preservice teachers’ interpretation of fairness, categorized as fairness through (1) inclusion of all socioeconomic classes and abilities; (2) culturally responsive teaching; (3) differentiation of instruction; and (4) fostering a safe learning environment.     

Rethinking Middle School Reading Instruction: A Basic Literacy Activity

Reading fluency has been identified as a key component in effective literacy instruction (National Reading Panel, 2000). Instruction in reading fluency has been shown to lead to improvements in reading achievement. Reading fluency instruction is most commonly associated with guided repeated oral reading instruction. In the present retrospective study we examine the effects of a computer-based silent reading fluency instructional system called Reading Plus (Taylor Associates, Winooski, Vermount, USA) on the reading comprehension and overall reading achievement of a large corpus of students in an urban school setting. Findings indicate that the program resulted in positive, substantial, and significant improvements in reading comprehension and overall reading achievement on a criterion referenced reading test for Grades 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 and on a norm-referenced test of reading achievement for Grades 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10. Moreover, mean gains made by students in the Reading Plus intervention were greater than mean gains for all students at the state and district level. The findings were generally positive for all subpopulations studied, including special education and regular education students. Qualitative reports from teachers who participated in the study were also supportive of the program. Implications for the study are explored for particular subgroups of students and for the role of fluency instruction with struggling adolescent readers.     

Mentoring for Responsible Research: The Creation of a Curriculum for Faculty to Teach RCR in the Research Environment

Despite more than 25 years of a requirement for training in the responsible conduct of research (RCR), there is still little consensus about what such training should include, how it should be delivered, nor what constitutes “effectiveness” of such training. This lack of consensus on content, approaches and outcomes is evident in recent data showing high variability in the development and implementation of RCR instruction across universities and programs. If we accept that one of the primary aims of instruction in RCR/research ethics is “to foster a community of social responsibility” (Antes et al. 2009: 398), then it makes sense to consider the research environment itself—where learning one’s science happens where one also engages in social interaction around that science. In order to take the best advantage of that already existing/naturally occurring research environment, the authors, through a deliberative, collaborative, and integrative process, crafted a workshop curriculum meant to arm research faculty with concrete and specific tools to effectively introduce research ethics in the context of the research environment.     

Let Us Pray: Classroom Worship in Theological Education

Theological education typically includes classroom worship, a practice of great pedagogical power and curricular import. As pedagogy, classroom worship does four things. It focuses teaching and learning on God, and fosters theological dispositions necessary for sustaining that attention. Second, it rightly positions the entire class in dialogical relation to the divine Thou, in communal relation to each other, the larger church and the wider world, and in personal relations that risk transformation. Third, it frames theological education as an integrative practice of faith and learning. Finally, it invites teachers to know their students as whole persons and students to trust their teachers as spiritual guides. As curriculum, classroom worship may have greater significance than chapel worship for many students and at particular schools. It should be moved from implicit curriculum to explicit, with careful attention to the null curriculum and to the matrices of relationship within which worship has meaning.