Amy Strage

Improving Students' Self-Directed Learning: Issues and Guidelines

Recent recommendations for educational reform at the elementary level are considered in terms of their implications for improving the self-directed learning capabilities of students. The construct of self-directed learning is defined and its importance at the elementary level is explored. The article focuses on the ways by which classroom practices and conditions can encourage or discourage capabilities and dispositions to engage in self-directed learning. A classroom environment that would support effective self-directed learning is described with respect to 4 components: demands, supports, opportunity, and goal structure. Examples of how classroom tasks might be defined or changed are included within the discussion of each component.

Parenting Styles and Practices of Latino Parents and Latino Fifth Graders' Academic, Cognitive, Social, and Behavioral Outcomes.

A vast literature documents a host of advantages conferred upon middle class European American children whose parents employ an authoritative style of parenting, including enhanced academic achievement and positive behavioral outcomes. The literature is much less clear about the relationship between parental authority style and child outcomes in other cultural contexts. In this study, we examined the relations among authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting styles and practices and several academic and behavioral outcomes among fifth grade Latino/a students. We found significant positive relations between parental authoritativeness and grades, academic engagement, social competence, self-regulation, and perspective-taking as well as negative relations between authoritativeness and aggression. We found no relations between authoritarian or permissive parenting styles and child outcomes. We consider these findings in light of what other researchers have posited about collectivist parenting styles and practices.

Preparing Future Professors: A Cross-Institution Mentoring Program

During the 2012–2013 and the 2013–2014 academic years, Stanford and San José State Universities implemented a graduatestudent mentoring partnership. With the support of Stanford’s Center for Teaching and Learning, vice provost of graduate education, and School of Humanities and Sciences—and with the generous participation of San José State University (SJSU) administrators and faculty—a total of 14 Stanford doctoral students were matched with SJSU mentors from their fields. They shadowed these mentors for a quarter, while meeting weekly as a cohort in a practicum seminar. Following individual learning contracts that they developed with their mentors, these graduate students immersed themselves in the daily demands of working faculty members on a comprehensive state university campus—attending not only classes but also office hours, department meetings, and university governance proceedings. In reflective journals and end-of-term assessments, the graduate students reported