Sabina Rak Neugebauer

Assessing influences on intervention implementation: revision of the usage rating profile-intervention.

Although treatment acceptability was originally proposed as a critical factor in determining the likelihood that a treatment will be used with integrity, more contemporary findings suggest that whether something is likely to be adopted into routine practice is dependent on the complex interplay among a number of different factors. The Usage Rating Profile-Intervention (URP-I; Chafouleas, Briesch, Riley-Tillman, & McCoach, 2009) was recently developed to assess these additional factors, conceptualized as potentially contributing to the quality of intervention use and maintenance over time. The purpose of the current study was to improve upon the URP-I by expanding and strengthening each of the original four subscales. Participants included 1005 elementary teachers who completed the instrument in response to a vignette depicting a common behavior intervention. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, as well as reliability analyses, supported a measure containing 29 items and yielding 6 subscales: Acceptability, Understanding, Feasibility, Family-School Collaboration, System Climate, and System Support. Collectively, these items provide information about potential facilitators and barriers to usage that exist at the level of the individual, intervention, and environment. Information gleaned from the instrument is therefore likely to aid consultants in both the planning and evaluation of intervention efforts.

Context-Specific Motivations to Read for Adolescent Struggling Readers: Does the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire Tell the Full Story?

Commonly used literacy motivation assessments do not specifically explore literacy motivation in school. These context-general assessments may be problematic for struggling adolescent readers, as qualitative research documents that these adolescents exhibit different levels of cross-context motivation. The present study explores whether an in-school measure predicts additional variance in reading performance beyond a non-context-specific measure. One hundred and fifteen fifth graders were administered the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire, an in-school reading motivation daily log, a demographic survey, and standardized reading assessments. Findings indicate that the in-school reading motivation measure predicted performance for struggling readers and the non-context-specific measure did not.

Navigating into, through, and beyond the middle grades: The role of middle grades attendance in staying on track for high school graduation ☆

In this longitudinal study, we investigated the use of attendance during middle school as a behavioral indicator of engagement to predict whether students are on track toward high school graduation. We used administrative data from four cohorts of students in New York City schools (N=303,845) to (a) explore patterns of change in attendance between Grades 4 and 8 and (b) determine the extent to which changes in attendance between Grades 4 and 8 predict which students are on track in Grade 9 for going on to graduate from high school. Results of latent growth modeling indicated that students demonstrate the most substantial declines in attendance during Grade 8 and that attendance changes are most variable in this year, with some students demonstrating much more dramatic declines than others. In addition, these changes in attendance were robust predictors of whether students were on track for high school graduation. To identify students who are at risk for not graduating for the purposes of providing appropriate interventions, educators should pay attention to their commonly collected data on attendance rates as a behavioral indicator of engagement.

A New Measure to Assess Linguistic Self-Esteem in Adolescent Latino Bilinguals.

Present conceptualizations and measures of self-esteem do not account for linguistic self-esteem, an aspect of the self specifically relevant for bilingual students. This study examines the utility of a newly developed measure of linguistic self-esteem. This novel measure is compared with a commonly used self-esteem measure, two standardized language proficiency measures, and student think-aloud interviews to identify the unique contribution of a linguistic dimension of self-esteem for bilinguals. Findings indicate that this linguistic dimension comprises two distinct components, one for each language, and explains variance not previously explained by dimensions contained in an established self-esteem measure. Linguistic self-esteem was not significantly correlated with language proficiency. This study supports the value of this new tool and the validity of a new construct, linguistic self-esteem.

Teacher Educator Identity in a Culture of Iterative Teacher Education Program Design: A Collaborative Self-Study

Abstract Faculty in the School of Education have collaborated to re-envision teacher education at our university. A complex, dynamic, time-consuming and sometimes painstaking process, redesigning a teacher education program from a traditional approach (i.e. where courses focus primarily on theoretical principles of practice through textbooks and university-based classroom discussions) to a model of teacher education that embraces teaching, learning and leading with schools and in communities is challenging, yet exciting work. Little is known about teacher educators’ experiences as they either design or deliver collaborative field-based models of teacher education. In this article, we examine our experiences in the second implementation year of our redesigned teacher education program, Teaching, Learning, and Leading with Schools and Communities (TLLSC) and how these unique experiences inform our teacher educator identities. Through a collaborative self-study, we sought to make meaning of our transformation from a faculty delivering a traditional model to educators collectively implementing a field-based model, by analyzing the diverse perspectives of faculty at different entry points in the TLLSC development and implementation process. We found that our participation in an intensive field-based teacher preparation model challenged our notions of teacher educator identity. In a culture of iterative program design, this study documents the personal and professional shifts in identity required to accomplish this collaborative and dynamic change in approach to teacher education.

Promoting Word Consciousness to Close the Vocabulary Gap in Young Word Learners

A proposed avenue for increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is instruction that promotes students’ enthusiasm and attention to words, referred to as word consciousness. This study seeks to investigate, at the utterance level, whether and how word consciousness talk is used in classrooms with young word learners and whether this type of talk is associated with student gains in general vocabulary knowledge. Using videotaped classroom (N = 27) observations, this study found evidence of word consciousness talk, with variability of use across classrooms. Multilevel modeling revealed that this kind of teacher talk—operationalized as reinforcing students’ use of words, affirming students’ recognition of word meanings, and helping students make personal connections to words—was positively associated with student gains in general vocabulary knowledge at the end of kindergarten. Findings from this study can provide guidance for teachers seeking strategies to increase students’ general vocabulary knowledge, beyond words taught.

Assessing Situated Reading Motivations across Content Areas: A Dynamic Literacy Motivation Instrument.

While educators and researchers agree on the crucial role of literacy motivation for performance, research on methods for accurately assessing adolescent reading motivation is still uncommon. The most used reading motivation instruments do not attend to the multiple content areas in which adolescents read. The present study examines a new content-area sensitive measure of reading motivation. One hundred forty middle school students across content-area classrooms participated. Exploratory factor analysis was used to examine the factor structure of this measure, and associations among existing measures, social aspects of literacy events, and teacher-rated content-area reading performance were explored to examine the validity and utility of this measure for classroom practice. Educational implications include the potential for teachers to adapt instruction based on students’ content-area-specific reading motivations.

Exploring an Ecological Model of Perceived Usability Within a Multi-Tiered Vocabulary Intervention

The present study examines an ecological model for intervention use to explain student vocabulary performance in a multi-tiered intervention setting. A teacher self-report measure composed of factors hypothesized to influence intervention use at multiple levels (i.e., individual, intervention, and system level) was administered to 54 teachers and 48 interventionists conducting vocabulary interventions with different levels of instructional intensity with 553 kindergarten students. The reliability and validity of the measure in the context of a specific multi-tiered intervention was explored. Of particular interest was the potential explanatory power of system-level factors, over and above intervention-specific measures of fidelity, to explain student performance in a multi-tiered context. Results indicate that the climate of the school system predicted student performance in the Tier 1 context, and intervention feasibility predicted student performance in Tier 2. However, the intervention-specific fidelity measure was not a significant predictor. This research provides supporting evidence for the use of ecological models of intervention implementation to capture factors that influence intervention use and performance in multi-tiered settings.

Exploring Associations Among Writing Self-Perceptions, Writing Abilities, and Native Language of English-Spanish Two-Way Immersion Students

The current study, with 409 fourth graders in two-way immersion programs, explored the writing self-perceptions of native English and native Spanish speakers and the relationship between self-perceptions and writing performance. An adapted version of the Writer Self-Perception Scale (WSPS) was administered along with a writing task. Native English speakers reported higher English writing self-perceptions than native Spanish speakers. However, native Spanish speakers did not report consistently higher Spanish writing self-perceptions than native English speakers. Regression analyses demonstrate positive associations between self-perceptions and performance in both languages. The present study supports the value of capturing students’ writing self-perceptions in two languages.