Children's learning and development are directly and indirectly influenced by teachers' beliefs and pedagogical strategies toward child behaviors. This cross-sectional study explored elementary preservice teachers' attitudes and pedagogical strategies for working with hypothetical children demonstrating temperament-based shy, exuberant, and average behaviors in the classroom. A secondary goal was to compare attitudes and pedagogical strategies at the beginning and end of teacher training program. A total of 354 participants responded to three vignettes describing children frequently displaying these behaviors. Results indicated preservice teachers were more likely to use social-learning strategies with shy children and high-powered strategies with exuberant children. Participants were more likely to show warmth to shy children, but believed they would be less academically successful. Participants at the end of the program reported higher self-efficacy and more warmth toward all children compared to those beginning the program. Results are discussed in terms of their educational implications.
This empirical study explored the home environment literacy practices of young Latino English learners and their families. The participants were 217 incoming Kindergarten Latino EL students and parents. The data collection included a completed HLEQ by the parents. In addition, children were administered the PPVT, the pre-LAS, the PALS-K screening, the Woodcock Reading Mastery assessment, and the Wide Range Achievement test. All of the literacy assessments given to the children provided the researchers with comprehensive look at their literacy knowledge base. The results of this study indicate that there were two significant paths for students' achievement: availability of books and child initiated literacy factors that were directly related to the phonological processing efforts of students.
In today's globalized world, superdiversity and global migration have led to an increased focus on emergent multilingual students and how schools can best serve them. The authors explore how teacher learners in an undergraduate course on emergent multilinguals in a mid-sized university in the Midwest critically reflect on their learning in a practicum experience. Utilizing tools and perspectives from critical discourse studies (CDS), the researchers/teacher educators examine ideologies that surface in teacher learner reflections on their practicum experiences to find out how they renegotiate (or withhold) their beliefs while connecting to critical readings, coursework, and their experiences working with emergent multilingual students. Findings reveal ethnocentrism, gaps in understanding of language practices, continued misconceptions about language learning, and ideologies that view languages other than English as a privilege. However, findings also show some areas of growth resulting from their participation in the teacher education program. The authors then provide suggestions for further improvement of teacher education courses focused on emergent multilinguals.
Writing can be a difficult task for many students in today's classrooms; however, for students who are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD), writing can be especially difficult. These students often are in the process of developing their facility with the English language, and they possess cultural backgrounds that differ from those of many of their peers and teachers. In addition to these challenges, they face the typical difficulties of selecting ideas to write about for their stories. One way to tap into the cultural backgrounds of Spanish‐speaking CLD students is through the use of a strategy called the mini‐novela. A mini‐novela allows students to initially draw their stories and then write an accompanying narrative. It also allows students to use their cultural knowledge and the process of visualization as bridges to images and words that transform writing into a personally relevant, meaningful experience.
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