Informing Writing: The Benefits of Formative Assessment

Examines whether classroom-based formative writing assessment - designed to provide students with feedback and modified instruction as needed - improves student writing and how teachers can improve such assessment. Suggests best practices

The Search for Values: Young Adults and the Literary Experience

published or submitted for publicatio

A 10-year Study of Factors Associated with Alcohol Treatment Use and Non-use in a U.S. Population Sample

Background This study seeks to identify changes in perceived barriers to alcohol treatment and predictors of treatment use between 1991–92 and 2001–02, to potentially help understand reported reductions in treatment use at this time. Social, economic, and health trends during these 10 years provide a context for the study. Methods Subjects were Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics. The data were from the National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey (NLAES) and the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). We conducted two analyses that compared the surveys on: 1) perceived treatment barriers for subjects who thought they should get help for their drinking, and 2) variables predicting past-year treatment use in an alcohol use disorder subsample using a multi-group multivariate regression model. Results In the first analysis, those barriers that reflected negative beliefs and fears about seeking treatment as well as perceptions about the lack of need for treatment were more prevalent in 2001–02. The second analysis showed that survey year moderated the relationship between public insurance coverage and treatment use. This relationship was not statistically significant in 1991–92 but was significant and positive in 2001–02, although the effect of this change on treatment use was small. Conclusions Use of alcohol treatment in the U.S. may be affected by a number of factors, such as trends in public knowledge about treatment, social pressures to reduce drinking, and changes in the public financing of treatment

Trying On—Being In—Becoming: Four Women’s Journey(s) in Feminist Poststructural Theory

This is the narrative of four women in academia spanning a ten-year relational journey. As a performance collaborative autoethnography, it explores and presents theories of subjectivity and transitional space. Through journals, emails, and dialogue we are trying on, being in, and becoming feminist poststructural thinkers/inquirers/teacher educators. In our work, we explore: How has theory changed our subjectivity, lived experiences and relationships, and moved us from comfortable spaces of knowing to uncomfortable places of becoming? In a series of poetry and performance narratives, we chart our own linked journey(s) in pursuing these questions. As autoethnographers, we grapple with meanings and moments of loss, desire, guilt, and love as a practice of hypomnemata. This study represents a reflective mining of such treasures, capturing moments of rereading and meditation, and a pause, even if an illusionary one, in our intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and embodied journey(s). Our work illustrates how the self looks in transitional space: in motion, contemporaneous, simultaneously in the making and in relation to others. We continue this practice as a pedagogy for being and living out the fictions of our lives

The practices of exemplary teachers of poetry in the secondary English-language arts classroom

Teachers of poetry to high schoolers must navigate special challenges and balance competing tensions, including analysis “versus” appreciation, their status as both novice and expert readers of poetry, and differing conceptions of poetry “mastery” that are historically at odds. What does it mean to be an exemplary teacher of poetry in an era of high-stakes assessment, when poetry itself and poetry teaching have been marginalized? Though existing research highlights poetry’s capacity to cultivate students’ higher-order habits of mind, this mixed-method, phenomenological study fills a research gap by creating a rich portrait of exemplary teaching of poetry at the high school level. For this study, I recruited, surveyed, observed, and interviewed five exemplary teachers of poetry--all identified as experienced, motivated, supported, committed, and reflective--currently teaching in five diverse high schools surrounding Boston, to answer the research question: What are the practices and attributes of five exemplary teachers of poetry in the secondary English-Language Arts classroom? Teachers were observed for three classes teaching three “anchor” poems (one researcher-selected poem, one collaboratively-selected poem, and one participant-selected poem), and interviewed post-observations. The study drew on Elliot Eisner’s conception of students as connoisseurs and critics and Rosenblatt’s conception of poetry reading as a transactional event. It found that these teachers of poetry are specialists who value student agency and share power, make their pedagogical aims transparent and their strategies for reading poetry explicit to students, use multiple modes of representation and manipulate poetic texts to demystify and enrich poetry study, and balance a host of competing tensions. These exemplary teachers, two of whom are published poets, were humble, confident, relational, responsive to both student and text, caring, passionate, and authentic. The most resonant finding was the centrality of the student-teacher relationship to the poetry teaching endeavor. The study found that being an exemplary teacher of poetry is as much about how one is in and out of the classroom as it is about what one does in the classroom. Recommendations are made at the teacher, school, and community level regarding practices and structures that support exemplary teaching of poetry in the high school ELA classroom

Cancer Risk Assessment: Implementation of a Standardized Tool to Identify Women at Risk for Hereditary Cancer Syndrome

Background Though literature identifies improved patient survivability with use of cancer genetic testing (CGT), routine use of risk assessment and referral to genetic services by oncologists remains low. Objectives To increase the number of patients identified as being at risk for hereditary cancer syndromes (HCS) and the number of patients sent for genetic counseling in a gynecologic/oncology office. Methods Ambry Genetics’ “AVA” (Ambry’s Virtual Assistant) screening tool was implemented and sent to all new patients visiting the office for any reason to assess their risk for HCS. Pre- and post-implementation rates of risk identification and referral to genetic services were recorded. The project aimed to increase the number of patients screened for HCS and referred to genetic counseling by 25 percentage points. Findings A chi-square test of independence determined a significant relationship between implementation of the standardized tool and risk identification status (X2 (1, N = 72) = 14.184, p \u3c .001)

An examination of the design principles underlying a self-regulated strategy development study

This article presents the design principles underlying the instruction provided in a Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) study that resulted in substantial improvements in the opinion writing of second and third grade students. The analysis focused on the SRSD instruction students received in the classroom as well as the practice-based professional development (PBPD) teachers received on how to implement SRSD for opinion writing. A newly developed model of writing that draws on both social/contextual and cognitive conceptualizations was used to identify the theoretical aims, instructional focuses, and corresponding instructional activities for (1) creating a PBPD community where teachers learned to apply SRSD for opinion writing, (2) reshaping teachers’ classrooms so that these writing communities were conducive to SRSD instruction, (3) strengthening the capabilities and motivations of teachers to provide SRSD instruction for opinion writing, and (4) improving the capabilities and motivations of students to compose more convincing opinion essays. This analysis is the most comprehensive examination of SRSD instruction presently available, providing greater clarity for researchers and practitioners on how this instructional approach operates and achieves its aims. Our analyses also demonstrated that there is a high degree of interconnectivity among the instructional activities underlying SRSD, as many of them are designed to meet multiple aims, cutting across professional development, classroom instruction, and student and teacher development

Listening and Literacy: Audiobooks in the Reading Program

Perhaps in response to heightened awareness of the pleasure people of all ages take in listening to good literature read aloud, publishers of both children\u27s and adult literature have begun to produce audio versions of their most popular titles. The new availability of a broad range of literature in audiobook form is in sharp contrast to an earlier focus on audio tapes accompanying simple picture books for beginning readers. Audio versions of treasured classics and contemporary young adult fiction by such authors as J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula LeGuin are now readily available

Impacts of natural and man-made influences on sediment sources and suspended solids concentrations in the lower Colorado River, Texas

Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin