Building upon scholarship examining representations of gendered characters in Caldecott Medal-winning books, this contemporary content analysis offers a critical investigation of fatherhood portrayals in American children’s literature. Guided by Critical Multicultural Analysis, this study explores the ways in which father characters are depicted in a sample of 38 award-winning children’s picture books from 2001 to 2020. Despite evolving roles, responsibilities, and expectations of fathers in American society, findings of this study indicated that representations of fathers have remained relatively static over the last two decades of award-winning picture books. Results show fathers most often in the roles of nurturer, companion, and caregiver, although the actual behaviors they engage in are reflective of heteronormative gender-stereotypical parenting patterns. Additionally, most father characters are depicted as White and heterosexual. Results of this analysis present a limited view of fatherhood that further perpetuates the peripheral role father characters play in children’s literature.

Defend CliffsNotes? In these two articles, we will challenge the conventional criticism of study aids. Most teachers and professors dismiss them as bland shortcuts for students too lazy to read the assignments. "Instead of eating three meals a day, it's like taking a multivitamin," one English teacher claimed (Drennan, 1995). Novelist Alice Walker was blunter: "They're terrible" (Study Guides, 2002). And yet students continue to read them and access contemporary online iterations of the genre like SparkNotes, PinkMonkey, GradeSaver, and Thug Notes. Part of the appeal is savvy marketing. As Robert Hampel's article demonstrates, the history of CliffsNotes is a story of adroit advertising. The company knew how to stir the hopes and fears of students unsure of their grasp of difficult assignments. But that's only part of the story. Besides providing a quick summary of difficult texts for anxious students, CliffsNotes can enhance students' opportunities to learn both the language of literary criticism and the specific habits of mind that experts use to comprehend literary texts.

We assessed the influence of genre-specific discourse knowledge and writing goals on the persuasive writing of 4th and 6th grade students with and without learning disabilities (LD). Students were first interviewed about their knowledge of persuasion and persuasive writing. They then wrote a persuasive essay about a controversial topic after receiving either a general goal to persuade or an elaborated goal that focused on the inclusion of elements of persuasive discourse. Finally, the students were asked to generate ideas to assist a hypothetical student who was struggling to write a persuasive essay. Students in the elaborated goal condition produced higher quality persuasive essays than students in the general goal condition. In addition, students with LD wrote less persuasive essays than students without disabilities. Furthermore, knowledge of persuasion predicted the persuasiveness of students' essays. However, the number and types of ideas students generated did not predict essay persuasiveness after accounting for the effects of other variables. Finally, the provision of an elaborated goal did not impact the number or type of ideas generated by the students. However, the students' ideas evidenced considerable sensitivity to possible criticisms that could be leveled by an audience. The implications for argumentative writing are discussed.

Cross-disciplinary self-studies and peer coaching have separately been shown to offer teacher educators meaningful professional development opportunities. However, the teacher educator literature has said little about combining cross-disciplinary self-studies with peer coaching. In this article, the authors report a two-year cross-disciplinary peer-coaching self-study by experienced teacher educators, one from English Language Arts and one from Mathematics Education. The purpose of the self-study was to examine the connections that bridge the two disciplines and the differences between disciplines that offer new perspectives. Results revealed important process connections involving standards for practice and academic vocabulary. The self-study also illuminated meaningful new perspectives about what questions are asked during whole-class discussion and how data is generated during student collaboration. This study demonstrates the benefits of combining cross-disciplinary teacher educator collaboration with peer coaching and has implications for individual teacher educators and teacher education programs. Tanto los self-study interdisciplinarios como el asesoramiento entre pares han mostrado por separado que ofrecen a los formadores de docentes significativas oportunidades de desarrollo profesional. Sin embargo, la literatura de la formacion docente tiene poco que decir respecto a la combinacion de ambos. En este articulo, los autores reportan un self-study interdisciplinario de asesoria entre pares de dos anos de duracion por parte de formadores docentes experimentados, uno de lenguaje y el otro de matematicas. El proposito de este self-study fue el de examinar las conexiones que tienden un puente entre las dos disciplinas y las diferencias entre ellas que ofrecen nuevas perspectivas. Los resultados revelaron importantes conexiones de proceso incluyendo estandares de la practica y vocabulario academico. El self-study tambien ilumino nuevas y significativas perspectivas acerca de que preguntas surgen durante una discusion con un grupo completo y el modo en que se generan datos durante la colaboracion de los estudiantes. Este estudio muestra los beneficios de combinar la colaboracion interdisciplinaria entre formadores con asesoramiento entre pares, los que tienen implicancias tanto para los formadores de docentes a nivel individual como para sus programas.

The quad text set framework can assist content teachers in building students' background knowledge, increasing their reading volume, and incorporating complex texts into instruction.

Literary scholars use specific critical lenses called topoi (Fahnestock & Secor, 1991) to read literature and write their interpretations of these texts. Literary topoi are used in the discourse of modern college literature classrooms (Wilder, 2002) and are associated with higher grades in students’ literature classes (Wilder, 2002, Wilder, 2005). However, research shows that high school students are generally unable to justify their literary interpretations (Marshall, 2000). In this study, six high school students were taught a strategy to recognize and use topoi to form an interpretation of literature, and then write an argument to support that interpretation. Three of the students were taught to recognize repeated examples of single patterns of symbolism and imagery that support a theme, i.e., the ubiquity topos. The other three were taught to recognize opposing patterns of symbolism and imagery that support a theme, i.e., the paradox topos. All participants were then taught to form arguments based on the topoi, to utilize direct quotations to back their arguments, and to write “tie-in sentences” that link the quotations to the writers’ arguments. Instruction about these topoi resulted in higher quality argumentative essays that provided more textual evidence to support their literary interpretations.

The study of literature has many important benefits for students, but research shows that students often have difficulty interpreting literary texts, are unable to read critically, and are challenged to write interpretations that go beyond basic plot summary. This article provides a theoretical interpretation of the processes by which students read, represent, and make effective analytical arguments about literary texts. To illustrate how this framework can be utilized in the classroom, we briefly discuss an instructional intervention in which high school students were taught to improve their analytical writing about literature through training in the “topoi” of literary analysis, and a cognitive writing strategy based on the self-regulated strategy development model of S. Graham and K. Harris. The implications for teaching students about the analysis of literary texts are discussed.

Fourth- and sixth-grade students with and without learning disabilities wrote essays about a controversial topic after receiving either a general persuasion goal or an elaborated goal that included subgoals based on elements of argumentative discourse. Students in the elaborated goal condition produced more persuasive essays that were responsive to alternative standpoints than students in the general goal condition. Students with learning disabilities wrote poorer quality and less elaborated arguments than students without disabilities. Measures derived from the structure of students' argumentative strategies were highly predictive of essay quality, and they accounted for the effects of goal condition, grade, and disability status. Nearly all students used the argument from consequences strategy to defend their standpoint. The implications for argumentative writing are discussed.

Drawing on their experiences as high school writing instructors, researchers, and teacher trainers, David Coker and William Lewis examine an often overlooked dimension of adolescent literacy: writing proficiency. The authors explore recent research on the skills and strategies students need in order to write with competence and describe analyses of interventions that help students attain writing mastery. They also address divisions and gaps in the field of writing research and instruction and offer suggestions for overcoming these rifts in order to advance, understanding of adolescent writing development and effective writing instruction.

Education seeks to cultivate dispositions and skills that promote effective participation in democratic institutions, including the capacity to produce thoughtful written arguments about controversial issues. Unfortunately, students' argumentative writing is generally neither effective nor persuasive, and this is especially so for students with learning disabilities (LD). The most efficacious argumentative writing interventions explicitly teach strategies that can be used to self-regulate the writing process. These interventions reflect the descriptive approach to argumentation, which seeks to understand the influence of content and context on argumentative performance. A contrasting and complementary perspective, called the normative approach, seeks to understand how critical standards can be ideally used to guide argumentation. The latter approach has received scant attention in instruction for students with LD. In this article, we first review studies in the LD literature that illustrate the descriptive approach to instructing argumentative writing, and then discuss how normative standards may be used to further promote the quality of students' written arguments.

Funded in 2000 by an R&D grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), POWER performed a conceptual design and pilot testing effort to determine the feasibility of applying an advanced high-efficiency binary heat recovery cycle – the Kalina Cycle™ – to recover energy from 171° C silica-rich geothermal brine being injected from an existing geothermal power plant tapping Roosevelt Hot Springs in Utah’s remote western desert. A crucial issue in the work was the suitability of pH modification (acid injection) treatment to prevent or delay destructive silica precipitation in the power cycle components and downstream injection lines. The work also included an updating of the computer model of the Roosevelt Hot Springs underground reservoir, to verify that it could sustainably support additional power generation. The study confirmed the suitability of the Kalina Cycle and pH modification for application to a bottoming cycle at the site, which will be a pioneer utility-scale application of a fresh and conspicuously efficient binary heat recovery technology to a significant resource – a 171° C [340° F] reject stream being reinjected into the reservoir – that is now essentially wasted because of historic fear of complications due to silica scaling. An Underutilized Thermal Resource Uncertainty about the application of binary energy recovery systems to silica-rich geothermal resources has impeded energy harvest from these resources because binary cycle plants are typically complex, relatively expensive and (at least in conjecture) susceptible to degradation from scaling. Binary plants also tend to be most cost-effective precisely in low-temperature operation regimes where such scaling is more likely to occur due to temperature drop and resulting drop in silica solubility below critical levels. The relevance of the work outlined here lies in its determination of the practicality of applying the pH modification/Kalina Cycle combination to such a resource, and its indication of material selections that would increase the robustness and reliability of such a power plant. The work effectively confirms the applicability of the Kalina Cycle to a particular significantly under-used thermal resource in Utah, U.S.A., and may usefully apply to other underutilized energy-rich – but also silica-rich – resources elsewhere. The work concerned a proposed addition to an existing PacifiCorp/Scottish Power geothermal power plant, the Harry Blundell Geothermal Power Plant, which entered service in 1982. POWER’s study work for DOE had three avenues of approach. A Kalina Cycle bottoming plant was sized, designed and computer-modeled to determine potential power output and cost. A pilot

From the Publisher:This book helps accelerate the development of high quality software using continuous process improvement. The book starts with an overview of basic quality principles and how you can apply the continuous improvement cycle to software testing. It then reviews waterfall life cycle testing, followed by an extensive RAD testing methodology for client/server and the internet. The final section provides a comprehensive analysis of modern testing tools.