Drawing from the work of "cultural memory" and "racial formation theory" (Omi and Winant 1994) we explore the ascension of Barack Obama as an illustration of how "race" is understood and remembered. This article focuses on the public media discourse of the 2012 Obama re-election to illustrate how the narrative morphed…

Inference generation makes a strong, unique contribution to reading comprehension. Young children engage in many of the same inference generation processes as sophisticated readers. This article discusses instructional practices that can be used in prekindergarten through grade two to help children think beyond the words of the text. Suggestions…

An utterance such as "Show me the large rabbit" potentially generates a "contrastive inference," i.e., the article "the" and the adjective "large" allow listeners to pragmatically infer the existence of other entities having the same noun (e.g. a "small" rabbit). The primary way to measure…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe selected Caribbean extension officers' technology preferences and examine factors that may affect their technology preferences. Design/methodology/approach: The sample consisted of extension officers (N = 119) participating in professional development training sessions in Grenada, Belize and…

Written in response to criticism of our work by Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, this position paper reaffirms and reinforces our position about the need to broaden and enrich the scope of nature of science (NOS) oriented curricula by exposing students to the voices of practising scientists. While Abd-El-Khalick's motivation for promoting the so-called…

Definite expressions may be used to introduce a referent into discourse when their familiarity between speaker and listener can be inferred, a strategy known as bridging. However, for a number of reasons, bridging may be difficult to acquire compared to the acquisition of indefinite introductions for noninferable referent types, with the native…

This article explains how to create and use a daybook in the literacy classroom. Readers learn what a daybook is, how the daybook in one fourth and fifth grade classroom is structured, and how students in this classroom use that daybook during reading instruction to engage, record important information, and discuss a text.

The current study examined the predictive roles of L2 vocabulary knowledge and L2 word reading skills in explaining individual differences in lexical inferencing in the L2. Participants were 53 Israeli high school students who emigrated from the former Soviet Union, and spoke Russian as an L1 and Hebrew as an L2. L2 vocabulary knowledge and…

Although combining methods is nothing new, more contributions about why and how to mix methods for validation purposes are needed. This article presents a case of validating the inferences drawn from the Participatory Evaluation Measurement Instrument, an instrument that purports to measure stakeholder participation in evaluation. Although the…

In spite of recent methodological developments related to quality assurance in mixed methods research, practical examples of how to implement quality criteria in designing and conducting sequential QUAN [right arrow] QUAL mixed methods studies to ensure the process is systematic and rigorous remain scarce. This article discusses a three-step…

Music and literacy share many of the same skills; therefore, it is no surprise that music and literacy programs can be used together to help children learn to read. Music study can help promote literacy skills such as vocabulary, articulation, pronunciation, grammar, fluency, writing, sentence patterns, rhythm/parts of speech, auditory processing,…

This paper endorses Dick Selleck and Geoffrey Sherington's view that public policy-making is characterised by both fluidity and contestability. In April 1988, the report of a Taskforce headed by Brian Picot recommended major reforms in New Zealand's public education system. Even today, however, there is controversy regarding the major…

In everyday life, we are often faced with the problem of judging who owns an object. The current experiments show that children and adults base ownership judgments on group stereotypes, which relate kinds of people to kinds of objects. Moreover, the experiments show that reliance on stereotypes can override another means by which people make…

There has been a noted growth in the number of teaching assistants (TAs) in mainstream schools. Research is inconclusive about their efficacy at changing outcomes for children and has proposed more training for TAs. Generic training models have suggested that enhancing self-efficacy in turn improves performance. This exploratory study investigated…

The results of international assessments such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are often reported as rankings of nations. Focusing solely on national rank can result in invalid inferences about the relative quality of educational systems that can, in turn, lead to negative consequences for teachers and students.…