Happy New Year! I hope you had a great vacation!

The volume of good material this week was overwhelming - more than enough for two Memos. I had to defer the new issues of American Educator, Rethinking Schools, American School Board Journal, and Principal Leadership, all with good articles. Please be patient!

All the best for a terrific 2009!

Kim

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Quotes of the Week

“He must understand that making sure a policy is implemented properly is just as important as making sure the policy is right. But to do so, he must have… curiosity. His desire to learn must be nearly insatiable, and it helps to have an instinct for the right question.”
Charles Peters in Newsweek, Dec. 22, 2008, p. 37 on characteristics of effective leaders

“There are few things sadder to a teacher or parent than being faced with capable young people who, as a result of previous demoralizing experiences, self-imposed mind-sets, or mind-sets imposed before birth, have come to believe that they cannot succeed at a task or activity when all objective indications show that they can.”
Ellen Usher and Frank Pajares (see item #1)

“Although failure may occur periodically, when students notice a gradual improvement in skills over time, they typically experience a boost in their self-efficacy. Mastery experiences prove particularly powerful when individuals overcome obstacles or succeed on challenging tasks.”
Ellen Usher and Frank Pajares (ibid.)

“The ninth graders are like sponges. They just soak up and absorb everything, and you really get to see the fruits of your labor.”
Delaware teacher Sharon Crossen (see item #5)

“Indeed, it may be possible that a teaching career requires one set of beliefs, attitudes, and values to get hired, another set to survive in a school bureaucracy and parent-teacher community, and a different set altogether to be a pedagogically effective teacher.”
Scott Alan Metzger and Meng-Jia Wu (see item #2)
 

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1. What Helps Develop Students’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs?

In this 45-page article in the Review of Educational Research, professors Ellen Usher and Frank Pajares examine the literature on students’ self-efficacy beliefs. In particular, they analyze the theory propounded by Albert Bandura (1977, 1986) and confirmed by others that people’s beliefs about their own capabilities powerfully affect the way they behave, including:
- Their level of optimism;
- How they attribute causation;
- Their achievement goal orientation;
- The choices they make;
- The effort they put forth;
- The persistence and perseverance they display in the face of difficulties;
- How well they monitor and assess the quality of their work time;
- How readily they correct their errors;
- How efficiently they solve problems;
- How willing they are to seek academic help;
- The degree of anxiety or serenity they feel as they tackle life’s challenges;
- Their self-concept and sense of worth;
- Their academic achievement across all areas and levels;
- Their college major and career choices.
Clearly self-efficacy beliefs are a key factor in students’ success. But where do these positive or negative beliefs come from?
Usher and Pajares say the research points to four sources, and the rest of their article is an analysis of how these sources operate and how they stack up.
• Mastery experiences – Students’ own past successes and failures are one source of their sense of competence or incompetence. Self-efficacy develops when students successfully learn new material, say the authors. “Although failure may occur periodically, when students notice a gradual improvement in skills over time, they typically experience a boost in their self-efficacy. Mastery experiences prove particularly powerful when individuals overcome obstacles or succeed on challenging tasks.” What’s important, though, are students’ perceptions of their achievement. For example, if a student is accustomed to getting As, works hard for a test, and gets a B, self-efficacy suffers. But if a student is accustomed to getting Ds, works equally hard, and gets a B, self-efficacy improves.
• Comparing oneself to others – A second source of self-efficacy comes from students’ comparisons of their performance with that of other students. For example, let’s take a high-school student who gets 8 right out of 20 questions on a physics test. If she finds out that the rest of the class scored below 8, she would feel pretty good about her competence; if she finds out everyone else scored better than 8, she would feel stupid. Usher and Pajares say that adolescents are more susceptible to measuring themselves against peers than elementary-school students.
• Encouragement from others – Supportive messages from trusted parents, teachers and peers are a third source of self-efficacy, particularly, say Usher and Pajares, “when accompanied by conditions and instruction that help bring about success,” and also when feedback encourages students to measure success in terms of personal growth, not in comparison to others. But spoken and unspoken messages from others can also undermine confidence and effort. The authors quote the poet Stanley Kunitz, who wrote, “We learn, as the thread plays out, that we belong less to what flatters us than to what scars” (2000).
• Emotional and physiological states – Students can interpret their level of anxiety, stress, and fatigue as a sign of personal competence or incompetence. “Students who experience a feeling of dread when going to a particular class likely interpret their apprehension as evidence of lack of skill in that area,” say the authors. Previous success or failure can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy as students approach new challenges; if they did poorly in the past, they are more likely to be anxious – and to tell themselves they’re no good at the subject because they feel anxious.
Usher and Pajares analyzed thirty years of research to find out which of these was the most important to students’ self-efficacy beliefs. They found that the first, mastery experiences, was by far the most influential across all studies, all domains, and all types of student (the median correlation was .58). Why was experiencing mastery so important? Because, say the authors, “this experience contains the most authentic evidence as to whether students can master subsequent tasks in related domains.” Evidence on the other three sources was much less compelling, often because of methodological problems with the studies.
Studies also found links among the four sources of self-efficacy. This is not surprising, say the authors. A student who writes an excellent essay, for example, will probably compare favorably to classmates, receive praise from teachers and parents (and perhaps from peers), and have positive feelings going into the next writing assignment.
The authors looked to see if there were gender and racial differences. Mastery experiences were the number one source of self-efficacy for both males and females and all racial/ethnic groups. However, girls’ self-efficacy was somewhat more likely to be affected by the opinions of significant others, whereas boys were more likely to be influenced by their objective accomplishments. Adolescent girls were also more likely to have lower self-efficacy beliefs in subjects that are seen as “masculine” – e.g., math and science. Usher and Pajares say this is probably caused by cultural beliefs; parents, in particular, often portray math and science as male domains.
As for racial differences, Usher and Pajares report the research on “stereotype threat”, wherein African-American students underperform in a manner consistent with negative stereotypes when attention is drawn to their race and to the idea of innate ability. The authors also speculate that African-American students’ relatively high self-efficacy beliefs (as compared with their academic achievement) may be explained by their “disidentification” with the academic realm – avoiding working hard to safeguard against being seen as inferior. They cite the work of Claude Steele (1999) on the need for schools to take a “culturally attentive approach” to boost identification with academic work and self-efficacy beliefs linked to high achievement.
The authors conclude by speculating about the impact that transformative experiences can have on “a child’s theory of who he is and what he is worth” – perhaps a teacher who comes along at just the right moment, perhaps the way educators and parents talk about intelligence and effort. Usher and Pajares bemoan the way some students get locked into negative beliefs about their abilities, believing they are fixed and unchangeable. “There are few things sadder to a teacher or parent,” they say, “than being faced with capable young people who, as a result of previous demoralizing experiences, self-imposed mind-sets, or mind-sets imposed before birth, have come to believe that they cannot succeed at a task or activity when all objective indications show that they can.” The authors hope that future research will help educators find the most powerful levers for influencing what students believe about their intelligence and abilities so they can “make the best of the efficacy-relevant information that comes their way, to help them become agents of their own psychological health.”

“Sources of Self-Efficacy in School: Critical Review of the Literature and Future Directions” by Ellen Usher and Frank Pajares in Review of Educational Research, December 2008 (Vol. 78, #4, p. 751-796), no e-link available
 

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2. Do Commercial Teacher Selection Interviews Pick the Best Teachers?

In this Review of Educational Research article, researchers Scott Alan Metzger and Meng-Jia Wu review the research on interviews designed to select effective teachers based on their beliefs, attitudes, and values. The theory behind such interviews – what they call the educational values hypothesis – is that the best teachers value diversity and caring, embrace patience and persistence, and have a commitment to helping all children learn – and that by assessing these qualities up front, the best candidates can be hired. Around 10 percent of U.S. school districts use structured, scripted, commercially produced interviews to hire teachers. The great appeal of these interviews is that they seem objective, efficient, and nondiscriminatory. However, very little research has been done on how effective they are at picking teachers who wind up being successful in the classroom.
Metzger and Wu set out to fill this gap by analyzing 24 studies of the most widely used commercial teacher selection interview, the Gallup Organization’s Teacher Perceiver Interview (TPI). The TPI has evolved since the 1970s and in recent years has been used by more than 1,200 school districts. (The Haberman Urban Teacher Selection Interview is also widely used, but there were no empirical statistics available for independent analysis.)
The TPI is based on twelve characteristics that Gallup says are present in teachers who are most successful at working with students. The authors say that their summary, reproduced below, does not infringe on proprietary Gallup documents. They are also at pains to say that commercial teacher selection instruments like the TPI don’t claim to measure effective teaching; they claim to identify teacher candidates who communicate the same professional values and dispositions as the “best” teachers.
- Mission: The teacher’s goal is to make a significant contribution to student growth.
- Empathy: The teacher responds to the individual student’s feelings and thoughts.
- Rapport drive: The teacher likes students and promotes warm, accepting relationships.
- Individualized perception: The teacher considers the interests and needs of each student.
- Listening: The teacher listens to students’ feelings with responsiveness and acceptance.
- Investment: Teacher satisfaction comes from the learner’s response, not teacher performance.
- Input drive: The teacher searches for new ideas and experiences to share with students.
- Activation: The teacher motivates students to think, respond, and feel in order to learn.
- Innovation: The teacher is determined to implement creative new ideas and techniques.
- Gestalt: The teacher tends toward perfectionism but works from individual to structure.
- Objectivity: The teacher responds to the total situation rather than reacting impulsively.
- Focus: The teacher has models and goals and selects activities in terms of these goals.
These themes were modified somewhat when Gallup released its Urban TPI in the late 1990s, and were further modified in Gallup’s latest product, TeacherInsight, which candidates take online. Since 2005, this has been the company’s main instrument, supplemented by a set of in-person questions.
Metzger and Wu proceeded to compare TPI scores with five data points on teachers who were hired at the elementary, middle, and high-school level:
- Absenteeism
- Ratings by trained observers from outside the school (mostly researchers)
- Ratings by principals
- Ratings by students
- Student gain scores.
The study showed only a “modest” relationship to the indicators of teacher quality. The strongest TPI correlations were with low absenteeism and principals’ ratings, with student ratings a little behind. By far the weakest correlations were with outside observers’ ratings. Student gain scores couldn’t be counted because so few studies measured them. Correlations were much stronger among secondary than elementary teachers, casting doubt on the wisdom of using the same set of characteristics K-12.
“The TPI does seem to measure something,” Metzger and Wu conclude, “but we are not convinced that what it measures relates meaningfully to what matters for teaching effectiveness.” They believe it measures qualities that principals and students like – a strong work ethic and good values about teaching and learning. But the fact that trained outside observers disagreed so sharply with the other ratings casts doubt on whether this is the real essence of classroom effectiveness. Unfortunately, the test-score data were so thin that they did not contribute to the analysis.
Metzger and Wu also wonder to what degree teacher candidates could “game” the interview, saying what they thought the interview was looking for rather than what they truly believed. With the online interview, the authors note, it’s easy for candidates to share and discuss the questions with others. In addition, the authors wonder whether really believing certain values necessarily translates into acting on them in a classroom setting – the gap between espoused theories and theories-in-action. “Commercial teacher interviews, by their very nature, can only assess a teacher’s espoused theory, assuming that the candidate’s responses to the interview prompts are both an honest reflection of personal feelings and an accurate indicator of future behavior,” they write. They conclude that it is unwise for school administrators to rely exclusively on instruments like the TPI to make hiring decisions.
The authors also question the wisdom of the educational values hypothesis on which interviews like the TPI (and standard what-is-your-educational-philosophy questions) are based. “The TPI is an example of how hard it is to ‘prove’ the efficacy of a multifaceted, slippery theory such as educational values,” they say. “…The TPI’s affective orientations do not appear to us to be relevant to pedagogical effectiveness – the kinds of beliefs, attitudes, and values educational researchers typically focus on.”
Metzger and Wu ponder the types of questions on the TPI and the differences in the ratings of high-scoring TPI teachers and close with a provocative thought: “Indeed, it may be possible that a teaching career requires one set of beliefs, attitudes, and values to get hired, another set to survive in a school bureaucracy and parent-teacher community, and a different set altogether to be a pedagogically effective teacher.”

“Commercial Teacher Selection Instruments: The Validity of Selecting Teachers Through Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values” by Scott Alan Metzger and Meng-Jia Wu in Review of Educational Research, December 2008 (Vol. 78, #4, p. 921-940), no e-link available.
[For ideas on teacher interview questions, see Marshall Memo 29 article #12, Memo 87 #5, Memo 91 #3, Memo 136 #5, Memo 186 #3, and Memo 217 #5.]
 

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3. Trouble-Shooting and Addressing Possible Learning Barriers for ELLs

In this article in Essential Teacher, Queens University Belfast TESOL professor Caroline Linse says that it’s vital for teachers to know whether struggling English language learners are having difficulty because of language issues or because they have a learning disability or some other impediment to learning. Here is her suggested checklist:
• Find out if the student has uncorrected vision. ELLs need to have a proper vision test conducted with a tester, or a tester assisted by an interpreter, proficient in their native language.
• Help students with uncorrected vision get glasses or other vision tools. If students need help, the school’s special-education staff, organizations for the blind, or others can work with families to get free or low-cost corrective lenses. Other resources: Vision USA at http://www.aoa.org/x5607.xml helps individuals in many states get glasses; Lions Club International at http://www.lionsclubs.org/EN/content/vision_index.shtml can help with glasses or magnification tools; Unite for Sight at http://www.uniteforsight.org provides glasses, vision surgeries, adaptive equipment, and volunteer services.
• Urge students to wear their glasses. Some students may be embarrassed to wear glasses or use magnification devices and need constant encouragement and support.
• Make classroom modifications. These might include seating nearsighted students near the front of the room, pairing them with a buddy who can help answer questions, and not using cursive handwriting on the board or overhead transparency because it’s harder for ELLs to decipher, especially if cursive conventions are different in their native language.
• Identify possible hearing problems. ELLs may have suffered hearing loss from untreated ear infections or by being exposed to loud noises, for example, from farm equipment or from explosions. Schools should work with families to get thorough hearing exams for students.
• If needed, help students get hearing aids or amplification equipment. Three groups can help families in need:
- Lions Club International at http://www.lionsclubs.org/EN/content/programs_hear.shtml
- The World Hearing Network at http://www.thecni.org/hearing/world.htm
- The Starkey Hearing Foundation at http://www.sotheworldmayhear.org.
• Modify instruction for students with hearing loss. This might include additional written instructions and visual support, seating students at the front of the class, pairing students with a buddy, and facing students while speaking in a natural, strong, clear voice.
• Help students attend school regularly. It’s important for teachers to meet with families and emphasize the importance of regular attendance, even in inclement weather, and the consequences of missing school.
• Find out if academic content is too challenging or overwhelming due to cultural factors. This might involve asking an educator familiar with the student’s culture whether there are reasons why the student is having difficulty with the curriculum. “Lessons may not resonate because the student doesn’t eat the same foods, use the same expressions, or play the same games that are presented in the lesson,” says Linse. “The learner may be bewildered by long division because the U.S. system of long division is different from the system used in other countries.”
• Find out if students had trouble learning their native language. If the child struggled learning how to speak, read, write, and understand his or her first language, it may be an indication that there is a learning disability. If the student developed strategies for working around the disability in the native language, it is very helpful to carry them over to English learning.
• Identify a professional who can communicate with the family about a possible learning disability. “Many ELLs and their families are unfamiliar with the concept of learning disabilities,” says Linse. “They may come from cultures in which society does not recognize nonapparent disabilities. Or they may equate learning disabilities with more significant cognitive disabilities.” It’s important to have someone who is familiar with the student’s culture talk to the family about the special-education process.
• Determine the best language in which to communicate with ELLs. The student may speak several languages, and educators need to find the best one for assessment and everyday teaching.
• Find the most suitable assessment. Language issues are important; for example, if a test has been developed for students in Spain, it may not be suitable for students from Mexico.
• Find a tester who has the appropriate language skills, cultural knowledge, and training. It’s not enough to hand the examiner the test booklet, says Linse.
• Develop an IEP if the student has a disability and mesh it with ELL support. The challenge is ensuring that ELLs with learning disabilities receive English language instruction as well as special-education support. This requires thoughtful collaboration among teachers, with ELL staff incorporating some special-education goals and special-education teachers incorporating language instruction. Linse suggests the following organizations for online resources:
- The Australian Learning Disabilities Association at http://www.adcet.edu.au/oao
- The British Institute of Learning Disabilities at http://www.bild.org.uk
- The Learning Disabilities Association of America at http://www.ldanatl.org
- The World Dyslexia Network Foundation at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/wdnf.

• Check at regular intervals to make sure the plan is helping. “Because so many issues impact ELLs with learning disabilities,” cautions Linse, “educators serving these students need to check that progress is being made.”

“Language Issue or Learning Disability?” by Caroline Linse in Essential Teacher, December 2008 (Vol. 5, #4, p. 28-30), no e-link available
 

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4. Using Cooperative Learning To Support English Language Learners

In this article in Essential Teacher, ESL instructor Judie Haynes has these suggestions for successfully integrating English language learners into cooperative learning groups and getting the most out of this approach:
• Spread English language learners among heterogeneous cooperative groups. “All students will benefit from working with classmates from varying ethnic backgrounds, cultures, and linguistic abilities,” says Haynes. She suggests making sure each ELL has a buddy who will give extra help and support.
• Arrange the physical space so active student participation is encouraged. Arranging students in groups of four or five maximizes communication and the integration of ELLs into the group.
• Teach teamwork and social skills. This means explicit instruction in group process and communication skills.
• Have students process how their group is working together. This means assigning roles, monitoring individual participation, and periodically discussing how things are going.
• Give all students real reasons to communicate within their groups. This will boost ELLs’ content-area knowledge and language proficiency. Group-mates who are native English speakers should adapt their speech and vocabulary to help ELLs understand and participate.
• Use “Showdown” to assess and reinforce learning. In this activity, each group comes up with a list of ten questions on the topic that’s just been taught and passes the questions to another group. A student in each group then reads the first question to his or her teammates, has them write down their answers, and then says, “Showdown”, at which point everyone shares answers. Those with correct answers are congratulated, those with wrong answers are helped. A different team member then reads the next question and calls “Showdown”, and the activity continues until all the questions have been answered and discussed.
• Use “Round Table.” In this activity, the teacher asks all groups an open-ended question, for example, “Name as many insects as you can.” A student in each group responds on a piece of paper and passes it to the next student, and the paper makes its way around the group until everyone has contributed (Haynes suggests having ELLs be among the first to write). The team with the most correct answers gets some kind of recognition.
• Use “Two-Minute Review.” In this activity, the teacher pauses in the middle of instruction and asks all teams to spend two minutes discussing and reviewing what they’re learning. Haynes says she sometimes allows as much as ten minutes so ELLs can get answers to their questions and understand everything.

“Cooperative Learning in the Content Area Classroom” by Judie Haynes in Essential Teacher, December 2008 (Vol. 5, #4, p. 6-7), no e-link available; the author can be reached at judieh@optonline.net.
 

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5. Beefing up Ninth-Grade Teacher Teams

In this Harvard Education Letter article, Letitia Stein reports on the problem of the least experienced teachers winding up teaching ninth grade, where student needs are greatest because of uneven preparation, disrupted social networks, and difficulties adjusting to large high schools. Referring to the popular TV medical show, House, NASSP official Mel Riddile says, “The premise is that the best doctor treats the most critically ill patients. We do exactly the opposite of that in most high schools.” Ninth-grade teachers are often the least credentialed, the least experienced, and lowest on the totem pole – and this happens not because of formal policies or the collective bargaining agreement but because of cultural factors inside schools.
It’s difficult for principals to push back against this pattern. If principals start assigning top-notch teachers to ninth-grade classes, they’ll get phone calls from school board members who’ve heard from parents of high-achieving upper-grade students. On the other hand, when underperforming ninth graders don’t get the best teachers, their parents “aren’t going to run to the school board to make a fuss,” says retired high-school teacher Billie Donegan. Calling herself a “reformed elitist”, Donegan describes how she became passionate about ninth grade when her principal “cajoled, conned, drugged, coaxed” her into teaching at that level.
Persuasion works better than administrative fiat, says Gene Bottoms of the Southern Regional Education Board. “Smart principals are able to get some of those best teachers to come to the ninth grade and actually be leaders of teams of teachers,” he says. The DeKalb County, Georgia schools issued a call for teachers to make a difference at ninth grade and offered summer sessions to develop a curriculum in reading and math recovery and career technology. One school offered special parking privileges to ninth-grade teachers, another promised to have ninth-grade classrooms cleaned daily, and another had ninth-grade teachers lead presentations on their program for the rest of the faculty.
Chicago principal Rob Karpinski used to focus mainly on getting his seniors into college, and then realized that he had a pipeline problem: his freshmen were floundering. He said to his faculty: “If you start with a weak foundation, then you’re constantly patching the foundation for the next three years… If you build a strong freshman class, then you have that strength for the next three years.” Karpinski’s strategy was to assign teachers to more than one grade level whenever possible, reasoning that it’s helpful for ninth-grade teachers to know what’s required to be successful in junior year.
At POLYTECH High School in Delaware, veteran English teacher Sharon Crossen enjoys turning her ninth-graders on to her subject. “I want to be the teacher who introduces and shares my love of Shakespeare and literature with freshmen,” she says. “The ninth graders are like sponges. They just soak up and absorb everything, and you really get to see the fruits of your labor.” Crossen is often able to keep them in her drama program for three years. Praise from tenth-grade teachers on her students’ skill and knowledge means a lot, she says.

“Wanted: Better Ninth-Grade Teachers” by Letitia Stein in Harvard Education Letter, January/February 2009 (Vol. 25, #1, p 4-6); this article can be purchased at
http://www.edletter.org.
 

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6. The Benefits of Student-Led Report Card Conferences

In this New York Times article, Karen Ann Cullotta reports on the growing popularity of report card conferences led by students. Lavonne Smiley, a middle-school principal in Streamwood, Illinois, says she realized a few years ago that low parent attendance at conferences was caused not by apathetic or dysfunctional families but by the outmoded traditional model the school was using. “Five years ago, the most important person – the student – was left out of the parent-teacher conference,” she said “The old conferences were such a negative thing, so we turned it around by removing all the barriers and obstacles.”
From that point on, students led each conference, walking their parent through their work portfolio and explaining the curriculum, their goals, and their grades, with teachers available to answer questions about homework, standardized test scores, and other issues. The mother of one seventh grader at the school said, “At the student-led conferences, our children are learning to be organized and capable adults someday. When I was growing up, my parents went to my conference, and I waited at home, scared they would come back with some concerns. With this new kind of conference, there are no secrets.”
At Jones Middle School in Minden, Nebraska, student-led conferences had been in place for ten years when a newly elected school board tried to return to traditional parent-teacher conferences. But board members backed off when a survey showed that 93 percent of parents approved of conferences with their children present.
In this and other schools implementing student-led conferences, here are some practical innovations:
• Blocks of time are opened up for conferences on two consecutive days, one from 8 a.m. to noon, the other from noon to 8:00 p.m., giving parents flexibility on when they can meet.
• Some schools allow other family members to come to the conferences – siblings, grandparents, uncles or aunts, even family friends.
• Traditional parent-only conferences can be scheduled for parents who prefer them or feel there is confidential information that needs to be discussed without the child present.

“The Parent-Teacher Talk Gains a New Participant” by Karen Ann Cullotta in the New York Times, Dec. 28, 2008 (p. 16) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/education/28conferences.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=The%20Parent-Teacher%20Talk%20Gains%20a%20New%20Partcipant&st=cse
For additional article summaries on student-led conferences, see Marshall Memo 1, article #2, Memo 6 #1, Memo 57 #7c, Memo 106 #5, Memo 218 #7, Memo 231 #11, and Memo 249 #3.
 

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7. What Kind of Home Reading Support Makes the Biggest Difference?

In this Review of Educational Research article, researchers Monique Sénéchal and Laura Young report on their study of different ways for parents to support their K-3 children’s reading development. The authors looked at 16 intervention studies involving 1,340 families, and found that overall, the effects of parent involvement were quite positive. However, there were marked differences among three different approaches:
• Parents reading to their children – Although this is always a good thing for parents to do, the studies showed very little impact on children’s reading achievement – an effect size of only 0.18.
• Parents listening to their children read books – The impact of this was much more robust, with an effect size of 0.52. This does involve some parent training on the basics of listening to children reading.
• Parents tutoring their children in specific literacy skills with activities – This was the most effective intervention, with an effect size of 1.15. However, it does involve more extensive parent training and the selection of the most effective activities.

“The Effect of Family Literacy Interventions on Children’s Acquisition of Reading From Kindergarten to Grade 3: A Meta-Analytic Review” by Monique Sénéchal and Laura Young in Review of Educational Research, December 2008 (Vol. 78, #4, p. 880-907), no e-link available
 

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