Kavin Ming

Literacy for Children with Moderate to Severe Disabilities: Taking Account of Diversity.

The call for practice on the basis of evidence is slowly impacting the link between research and practice. Accompanying the call for evidence-based practice, concerns have been raised about constructing research questions that address the reality of applied settings, as well as arguments for including additional measures to ensure the internal and external validity of intervention studies. Because intervention research continues to evolve, now may be an appropriate time to begin posing questions about considerations of racial and ethnic diversity in this body of work. Validity is one of the most significant aspects of research and there seem to be few definitive notions about children with moderate to severe disabilities from diverse backgrounds. In an attempt to explore this issue, we chose a small part of the extant literature, specifically, the development of literacy, in an effort to examine how scholars report on diversity (e.g., race, ethnicity, culture). In this article we offer commentary on taking account of diversity in empirical research using the development of literacy in children with moderate to severe disabilities as an example. In addition, we also discuss the implications for future research and offer recommendations for taking account of diversity as a means to push the collective knowledge base forward.

Emergent Literacy: Ways to Foster These Skills in Preschool Children from Low-Socioeconomic Backgrounds

Emergent literacy skills are important for childrens academic achievement. Many preschool children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds have limited access to experiences that allow them to acquire emergent literacy skills such as letter knowledge, concepts of print, and phonological awareness. This article describes purposeful and age-appropriate instructional strategies that can be used by parents, teachers, and health care providers to ensure that preschool children from such backgrounds receive adequate literacy experiences. These instructional techniques may also be an effective tool for reducing the achievement gap in children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Who Among Us May Be Literate? Closing the Gap Between Literacy and Diversity

Who may be literate? The disparities in literacy rates for a number of children are untenable. For years, many students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds have been systematically denied access to education, resulting in unacceptable illiteracy rates. Additionally, students with disabilities have been assumed incompetent and not worthy of receiving literacy instruction. If social justice includes respect for human rights and dignity, then it must be the case that denying anyone access to adequate education or assuming incompetence is unacceptable. In this chapter, social justice leadership is considered in the context of an expanded agenda that includes literacy as a basic human right and necessary component to school programming. School leaders have always shouldered a great deal of the responsibility to articulate the mission and vision for school-wide programming, and as such, this chapter includes a discussion about considerations for school leaders when creating an informed social justice agenda that specifically includes literacy. The discussion concludes with a description of several recommendations for school leaders who wish to move toward an informed practice, including school-wide efforts that promote literacy.

10 Content-Area Literacy Strategies for Art, Mathematics, Music, and Physical Education

Abstract Content-area literacy involves the use of research-based learning strategies that help students effectively and efficiently gain content knowledge. Its use is fundamental to all content areas, not just to those that rely heavily on printed materials. One of the major goals of content-area instruction is to produce critical thinkers and problem solvers, and content-area literacy is a tool that teachers use to help students achieve this goal. Through this authors teaching experiences, she (Ming) learned about literacy strategies that are useful in art, mathematics, music, and physical education. Thus, in this article, she discusses the importance of using literacy in content-area instruction. Specifically, she talks about how literacy strengthens students’ language arts skills, shares 10 content-area literacy strategies that can be integrated into the four content areas, and provides specific examples of what they would look like in each area.

Applying Disciplinary Literacy in Elementary Geography

Elementary teachers are deeply engaged in developing literacy skills with their students throughout the school day. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking are given purpose when they are woven i...

Videoconferencing: A New Opportunity to Facilitate Learning.

Abstract The use of distance learning techniques as a means of delivering instruction in higher education classrooms has become increasingly popular with the growing diversity of todays college students. Videoconferencing has been used as a tool to facilitate the simultaneous communication of individuals across varying geographic regions through the use of telecommunication technologies that allow two-way video and audio transmissions. In this article, the authors share their journey into the world of learning about videoconferencing as a way to facilitate the teaching of courses in their newly designed hybrid program. They outline methods for selecting videoconferencing programs, provide specific steps for using a videoconferencing tool across various educational contexts, and discuss other creative ideas for using videoconferencing in PK–12 settings and beyond.

Gimme Five: Creating a Comprehensive Reading Lesson with All the Essential Elements.

ago, most schools today serve students who are more diverse, come from a variety of life circumstances, and do not achieve an appreciable level of academic success as a result of traditional instructional techniques (Vander Ark, 2002). Although the focus on student diversity has steadily increased, questions about difference and how different demographic characteristics may influence learning are not new. In fact, questions about the effect of culture on learning remain complex and challenging (Cartledge, Gardner, & Ford, 2009). Specifically, culture, race, and language have been discussed as having anywhere from a small to a significant impact on what and how much is learned in schools. Whether these factors have any impact on how children learn to read is an open question (Byrnes, 2008).