Impacts of Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed Community Outreach Project Intervention on Students’ Oral Reading Fluency, Reading Comprehension, and Academic Achievements

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed Community Outreach (READ CO) project intervention on students’ oral reading fluency, reading comprehension, academic achievements, and listening comprehension. It also aimed at identifying the students and teachers’ awareness and practices about the READ CO project interventions. Experimental research—Posttest-only control group—design was employed for the study, which is mainly quantitative, but also uses qualitative techniques (latent content analysis). The results were analyzed using t tests and econometrics analysis mainly. Questionnaires and observations were also developed and employed as other tools among the experimental group principals and language teachers in the school to investigate the overall practice. The results from quantitative data analysis indicated that there were no statistically significant differences between the posttest performance of the study group and the control group for reading comprehension, academic achievements, and listening comprehension, yet oral reading fluency is significant. The result from questionnaire and observation also showed that the project has not been found to have a positive impact on students reading performance or improvement. Finally, it was mainly recommended that practical training and real service should be given for the targeted schools on how to improve and implement reading practices via the project.

Study on Stress Management of College Teachers Based on Employee Assistance Program

Employee assistance program (EAP) is a service mode for organizations to effectively manage employees’ psychology and behavior to improve their work efficiency. As the problems of teachers’ stress and mental health are so serious that cannot be ignored, in order to understand their psychological stress and the demands for EAP, a survey was conducted among 386 college teachers, on their working pressure and pressure management by self-made questionnaires. The results show that besides the interpersonal relationships, teachers in colleges and universities have greater stress and the stress sources are more various, and they are supposed to have stronger subjective needs for the EAP. However, few college teachers have received EAP services, and the teachers who received EAP services are not the most stressed people. Thus, the EAP should be promoted inside universities to provide supportive services for teachers’ career development.

Students’ Behavior of Asking Questions Through Narrative and Informative Texts

By asking questions, students can practice many cognitive processes, and these processes may reflect clues about their thinking skills. In order to understand students’ cognitive levels in thinking, questions can be used as agents. Doing so, this study focuses on examining students’ questions in terms of cognitive levels of Bloom’s revised taxonomy, namely, remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. For this purpose, the study followed a qualitative research design with 106 high school students and eight language and literature teachers. To capture the relevant data, students were given two types of texts (narrative and informative), then asked to generate text-based questions as well as their answers. Along with students, teachers were interviewed to find out how they direct students to ask comprehension questions according to instructional strategies they used in asking questions. The data were analyzed through descriptive and content analysis. The results showed that participant students mainly asked questions addressing at the analyze level for the narrative text, and at the understand level for the informative text. These levels are assumed as lower-order thinking skills according to the taxonomy, and possible reasons were discussed with further recommendations.

Disengagement From Schools: Possible Solutions

This article investigated possible solutions to disengagement from schools by ethnic minority learners in Botswana. Disengagement is a concern for educationists and researchers. The study used qualitative approach to investigate the problem. The reason for disengagement include cultural misfit. The theory of social integration was used to understand the problem under study. The findings indicated that there must be consultation with farm owners and they use local languages for teaching. The article concludes that there is a need to liaise with stakeholders to review certain practices to encourage retainment in schools such as mobile schools and the use of indigenous languages.

The Translanguaging Pedagogies Continuum

Translanguaging pedagogy is an approach to educational equity that harnesses multilingual learners’ communicative repertoires (e.g., home languages, non-standard varieties, and gestures) by strategically incorporating them in the classroom to ensure students’ active participation and meaningful learning. This paper proposes a research-informed continuum that captures a range of possibilities for integrating translanguaging in language and literacy instruction. This continuum provides insight into how educators may make socially just instructional and curricular decisions that are based on recognizing multilingual students' languages, cultures, and ways of knowing as valuable assets in the classroom.

A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effect of Socioeconomic Status on Academic Performance

The two main purposes of the current meta-analysis were (a) to determine the relation between socioeconomic status (SES) of students and academic performance (AP) (b) and evaluate the effect of several potential moderating factors in this relation. Data covered the publications between 2010 and 2019, and the dataset consisted of 48 independent studies that included 62 different samples, and the total sample was 386.601. Findings revealed that the relation between SES and academic performance represented a moderate positive correlation. All moderators, type of SES measure, academic performance scale, location, grade level, subjects of academic performance, and year, produced significant effects, respectively. These findings were discussed for every category of moderators with the related literature.

Investigating the Role of Academic Optimism in Classroom Management and Job Burnout of Elementary School Teachers

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of academic optimism in classroom management and job burnout of elementary school teachers. The method of this research is a descriptive correlational study. The statistical population in this study included all primary school teachers in Baneh who were teaching in this city during the academic year 2017–2018. The number of teachers in Baneh was 800, of whom 457 were female teachers and 343 were male teachers. According to Krejcie and Morgan table, the sample size was 260 people. The sampling technique in this study was cluster sampling. To collect data, the following questionnaires were used; Beard et al.’s academic optimism, the attitudes and beliefs of teachers regarding classroom management of Martin and Sass and Maslach Burnout. Data analysis was performed by Amos software. The results showed that the paths of scientific emphasis on behavior management, trust in education management, self-efficacy in behavior management, and education management were statistically significant. Also, the results showed that the paths of scientific emphasis on emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal success; confidence in emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal success; and self-efficacy to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal success are statistically significant.

The Importance of Relationships in Education: Reflections of Current Educators

The purpose of this study was to seek to understand and describe current educators’ perceptions of building relationships in education. Thirty-five K-12 educators completed reflective writing responses as part of this phenomenological study. The thematic analysis constructed four themes: (a) “students are motivated to learn when strong relationships are formed,” (b) “if they don’t trust you and don’t think you care, learning decreases,” (c) “teachers had a great impact on me that I admire deeply-these teachers are the reason I went into education,” and (d) “they can always google the content.” The findings highlight the significant impact of relationships.

Improving Communicative Competence Levels of Pre-Service Teachers Through Spoken-Based Reflection Instruction

This study investigated the use of spoken-reflection instruction to improve the communicative competence level of English as Foreign Language learners in a second language acquisition classroom. A listening and speaking test was administered before and after the study to determine the participants’ level of speaking competence. A quantitative research design was adopted for the study. A 3-credit unit language course was designed and implemented for the study. The course was built on the core principles of reflective practice. Participants were taught using the normal language teaching method and spoken-based reflection instruction. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 65 English as Foreign Language learners who willingly participated in the study. At the end of the course, a questionnaire was used to obtain information from the participants about their perceptions of using spoken-based reflection instruction to improve their speaking skills. In addition, participants were administered a Reflection-Listening, and Speaking Skills Test before and after each experimental phase to determine whether their listening and speaking skills had improved. Most learners found the use of spoken reflections to be a fun way to learn. However, they expressed anxiety about doing teacher-student reflection because they felt intimidated by the presence of their language teacher, although sending recordings of their reflections to their teachers was more convenient than interacting with them on a one-to-one basis.