The Role of Maternal Beliefs in Predicting Home Learning Activities in Head Start Families Family Relations

150 TESOL QUARTERLY The Role of Maternal Beliefs in Predicting Home Learning Activities in Head Start Families.. The researchers examine the mediational role of parental beliefs, such a

150 TESOL QUARTERLY

The Role of Maternal Beliefs in Predicting Home Learning

Activities in Head Start Families Family Relations ,

51, 2, 176–184 Sandra Machida, Angela R Taylor,

and Juhu Kim, 2002

What infl uences do a mother, child, and family have on learning

acti vities in low-income homes? What factors best predict parental

invol vement in home learning activities? The researchers examine

the mediational role of parental beliefs, such as self-effi cacy (“a parent’s

belief that he or she possesses the required parenting skills to meet

specifi c childrearing challenges”) and perceived control (a parent’s

per-ception of personal control in determining their child’s personality and

development), on their child’s home experience in 306 Head Start

chil-dren and their mothers The sample was 51% Mexican American

Machida et al interviewed the mothers in the fall and spring of the Head

Start program’s academic year During the fall interviews, mothers were

asked to respond to survey items, and in the spring they were asked to

complete a home learning environment profi le The survey and profi le

allowed the researchers to measure maternal education, family stress,

child temperament, maternal beliefs, and home learning activities

Interviews were conducted one-on-one in either the mother’s home or at

the Head Start center Machida et al.’s research partially confi rmed the

belief that parent self-effi cacy mediates the effect of child temperament

that will then impact the family’s home learning activities Another fi

nd-ing is that family stress has an indirect impact on the home learnnd-ing

envi-ronment through the mother’s self-effi cacy This research fails to confi rm

the role of perceived control in predicting home learning activities The

fi ndings in this study help educators understand how people and families

in different situations deal with parenting and the unique situations that

arise in their homes

GENNA GURKOFF

The Dalton School and New York University

New York, New York, United States

Interactional Differentiation in the Mixed-Ability Group:

A Situated View of Two Struggling Readers Reading Research

Quarterly , 43, 228–250 Deborah Poole, 2008

Do homogenous or heterogeneous grouping make a difference for

struggling readers in late elementary school? Grouping has been a

con-troversial topic in a number of school districts in the United States

RESEARCH DIGEST 151

The researcher focuses her study not only on how students emotionally react to their placement in a group but also the instructional practices and interactions during the grouped activity Poole investigated 2 fi fth grade mixed-ability groups Each group consisted of fi ve students Poole’s study was conducted in a Southern California school where about 87% of the students are Latino or Hispanic and 80% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch Poole found that students who participated in a low-ability group for a long period of time developed a “pervasive inter-national differentiation” which stigmatized the students Poole examined the total words read, the number of turns while reading, words read per turn, speaking turns, correction by peers or teachers, unacknowledged miscues, and words read per minute In the heterogeneous groupings, other students often interrupted the low-ability students A focus on com-prehension also allowed for the students reading at grade level to use the experience as additional reading practice However, little attention was given to decoding, which the low-ability students needed Poole suggests that both types of groupings could produce stigmatizing effects for the students reading below grade level For teachers, Poole’s study demon-strates how diffi cult it is to effectively use small-group reading to improve struggling student reading levels For researchers, Poole’s close examina-tion of struggling readers’ moment-to-moment interacexamina-tions opens new points of exploration of how best to support them in classrooms

ASHLEY SILVERS

New York University

New York, New York, United States

Mother–Child Shared Reading With Print and Digital Text

Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 8, 213–245 Ji Eun Kim

and Jim Anderson, 2008

Do mother–child interactions vary in different reading contexts? The researchers compare mother–child interactions in three contexts: tradi-tional print books, and electronic books in CD-ROM and video clip for-mat The interactions of a Korean family—a 3-year-old, a 7-year-old and their mother—were explored Because Korean was the language of the home, all of the electronic and traditional literacy resources were in Korean A traditional print book was read six times per week with the 3-year-old and once per week with the old In addition, the 7-year-old read traditional books independently The print book and the CD-ROM and video electronic books were the same diffi culty level and were selected based on the familiarity with the genre and unfamiliarity with the specifi c books Kim and Anderson observed and videotaped the