Call for papers for Language Teaching & Technology Forum

The proliferation of new technologies—tools, platforms, applications, and social media sites—has inspired language educators to leverage these new technologies in creative ways across the wide range of teaching contexts that characterize the field of language education. Sharing effective pedagogical practices has long been a hallmark of collegiality among educators, and the growth in new technologies has amplified the ability for language teachers to exchange their innovative pedagogical approaches. The new Language Teaching & Technology Forum provides a space for language researchers and educators to reflect on their current pedagogical practices in greater depth than is typically possible in a standard research article. This new forum invites manuscripts that provide in-depth engagement with the intersection of technology and language teaching pedagogy

Student-initiated attention to form in wiki-based collaborative writing

This study reports on student initiated attention to form within the collaborative construction of a wiki among pre-service Non-Native Speaker (NNS) English teachers. Forty NNS pre-service teachers from a large Mexican university were observed over a period of a sixteen week semester in an online content-based course aimed at improving their language skills while studying about the cultures of the English-speaking world. A core element of the course was a wiki that was collaboratively created, developed, and revised throughout the course. Students were encouraged to focus on language accuracy while actively participating and interacting with their peers in varied ways. This article explores the degree to which these NNS EFL teacher candidates attempt to correct their own and others’ grammar errors in a long-term collaborative task. The article also addresses the level of accuracy these participants achieve and the attention they pay to grammar revision versus content revision. Follow-up interviews with participants provided insight into the perception of the importance of grammar in the context of collaborative technologies among these NNS pre-service teachers

What Can We Learn about Neighborhood Effects from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment?

Experimental estimates from Moving to Opportunity (MTO) show no significant impacts of moves to lower‐poverty neighborhoods on adult economic self‐sufficiency four to seven years after random assignment. The authors disagree with Clampet‐Lundquist and Massey's claim that MTO was a weak intervention and therefore uninformative about neighborhood effects. MTO produced large changes in neighborhood environments that improved adult mental health and many outcomes for young females. Clampet‐Lundquist and Massey's claim that MTO experimental estimates are plagued by selection bias is erroneous. Their new nonexperimental estimates are uninformative because they add back the selection problems that MTO's experimental design was intended to overcome.Economic

Long-Term Neighborhood Effects on Low-Income Families: Evidence from Moving to Opportunity

We examine long-term neighborhood effects on low-income families using data from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized housing-mobility experiment. This experiment offered to some public-housing families but not to others the chance to move to less-disadvantaged neighborhoods. We show that ten to 15 years after baseline, MTO: (i) improves adult physical and mental health; (ii) has no detectable effect on economic outcomes or youth schooling or physical health; and (iii) has mixed results by gender on other youth outcomes, with girls doing better on some measures and boys doing worse. Despite the somewhat mixed pattern of impacts on traditional behavioral outcomes, MTO moves substantially improve adult subjective well-being.Economic

Long-Term Effects of the Moving to Opportunity Residential Mobility Experiment on Crime and Delinquency

Objectives: Using data from a randomized experiment, to examine whether moving youth out of areas of concentrated poverty, where a disproportionate amount of crime occurs, prevents involvement in crime. Methods: We draw on new administrative data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment. MTO families were randomized into an experimental group offered a housing voucher that could only be used to move to a low-poverty neighborhood, a Section 8 housing group offered a standard housing voucher, and a control group. This paper focuses on MTO youth ages 15–25 in 2001 (n = 4,643) and analyzes intention to treat effects on neighborhood characteristics and criminal behavior (number of violent- and property-crime arrests) through 10 years after randomization. Results: We find the offer of a housing voucher generates large improvements in neighborhood conditions that attenuate over time and initially generates substantial reductions in violent-crime arrests and sizable increases in property-crime arrests for experimental group males. The crime effects attenuate over time along with differences in neighborhood conditions. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that criminal behavior is more strongly related to current neighborhood conditions (situational neighborhood effects) than to past neighborhood conditions (developmental neighborhood effects). The MTO design makes it difficult to determine which specific neighborhood characteristics are most important for criminal behavior. Our administrative data analyses could be affected by differences across areas in the likelihood that a crime results in an arrest.Economic

Predictors of Depression in Very Young Children: A Prospective Study

There have been only a few previous population-based studies of symptoms of depression in young children. There are no previous population-based studies which examine the factors which might be casually associated with depression in very young children

Associations of Housing Mobility Interventions for Children in High-Poverty Neighborhoods With Subsequent Mental Disorders During Adolescence

Importance Youth in high-poverty neighborhoods have high rates of emotional problems. Understanding neighborhood influences on mental health is crucial for designing neighborhood-level interventions. Objective To perform an exploratory analysis of associations between housing mobility interventions for children in high-poverty neighborhoods and subsequent mental disorders during adolescence. Design, Setting, and Participants The Moving to Opportunity Demonstration from 1994 to 1998 randomized 4604 volunteer public housing families with 3689 children in high-poverty neighborhoods into 1 of 2 housing mobility intervention groups (a low-poverty voucher group vs a traditional voucher group) or a control group. The low-poverty voucher group (n=1430) received vouchers to move to low-poverty neighborhoods with enhanced mobility counseling. The traditional voucher group (n=1081) received geographically unrestricted vouchers. Controls (n=1178) received no intervention. Follow-up evaluation was performed 10 to 15 years later (June 2008-April 2010) with participants aged 13 to 19 years (0-8 years at randomization). Response rates were 86.9% to 92.9%. Main Outcomes and Measures Presence of mental disorders from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition) within the past 12 months, including major depressive disorder, panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), oppositional-defiant disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, and conduct disorder, as assessed post hoc with a validated diagnostic interview. Results Of the 3689 adolescents randomized, 2872 were interviewed (1407 boys and 1465 girls). Compared with the control group, boys in the low-poverty voucher group had significantly increased rates of major depression (7.1% vs 3.5%; odds ratio (OR), 2.2 [95% CI, 1.2-3.9]), PTSD (6.2% vs 1.9%; OR, 3.4 [95% CI, 1.6-7.4]), and conduct disorder (6.4% vs 2.1%; OR, 3.1 [95% CI, 1.7-5.8]). Boys in the traditional voucher group had increased rates of PTSD compared with the control group (4.9% vs 1.9%, OR, 2.7 [95% CI, 1.2-5.8]). However, compared with the control group, girls in the traditional voucher group had decreased rates of major depression (6.5% vs 10.9%; OR, 0.6 [95% CI, 0.3-0.9]) and conduct disorder (0.3% vs 2.9%; OR, 0.1 [95% CI, 0.0-0.4]). Conclusions and Relevance Interventions to encourage moving out of high-poverty neighborhoods were associated with increased rates of depression, PTSD, and conduct disorder among boys and reduced rates of depression and conduct disorder among girls. Better understanding of interactions among individual, family, and neighborhood risk factors is needed to guide future public housing policy changes. Observational studies have consistently found that youth in high-poverty neighborhoods have high rates of emotional problems even after controlling for individual-level risk factors.1 These findings raise the possibilities that neighborhood characteristics affect emotional functioning2 and neighborhood-level interventions may reduce emotional problems. Available data from observational studies are unclear and subject to selection bias and the possibility of reverse causality (ie, families with emotional problems end up in poorer neighborhoods). Despite this uncertainty, presumptive neighborhood effects have been characterized,3 causal pathways have been hypothesized,4 and interventions have been implemented.5 It is important to evaluate these causal claims regarding neighborhood effects experimentally. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) enacted a housing mobility experiment known as the Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration by randomizing volunteer low-income public housing families with children to receive vouchers to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods.6,7 An interim evaluation 4 to 7 years after randomization showed that the intervention caused families to move to better neighborhoods with lower poverty and crime rates and increased social ties with more affluent people.8 Significant reductions in psychological distress and depression were also found among adolescent girls in the intervention group vs the control group but increased behavior problems were found among adolescent boys in the intervention group vs the control group.9- 11 Given the importance of these sex differences, clinically significant mental disorders were included in a long-term (10-15 years after randomization) follow-up assessment. Prior long-term follow-up reports documented effects on improved neighborhood characteristics,12,13 reduced adult extreme obesity and diabetes,14 and improved adult subjective well-being.13 No detectable effects on economic self-sufficiency were found.13 Although long-term evaluation found significantly reduced psychological distress among adolescent girls,15 measures of mental disorders were not examined in previous reports. The primary objectives of the Moving to Opportunity study were to move families to lower-poverty neighborhoods and increase educational achievement and economic self-sufficiency. Mental disorders were measured as post hoc outcomes. The current report presents the first exploratory analyses evaluating long-term associations of housing mobility randomization with mental disorders among participants who were in early childhood at randomization and adolescence at follow-up.Economic