Charles Nelson: Searching for early signs of autism

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Virginia Hughes

23 July 2012

Lost children: Charles Nelson’s most famous work follows the lives of orphans, like this young girl, at institutions in Romania.

Ten years had passed since the execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, and his infamous network of state-run orphanages was beginning to disintegrate. As these children came under international scrutiny, theMacArthur Foundation funded the Bucharest Early Intervention Project. Led by Nelson and several other scientists, the longitudinal study would randomly place some children in foster care and then compare their fates to those of children who stayed in the institutions.

Nelson’s team found that even when institutionalized children receive adequate food and decent living conditions, their social and physical neglect results in stunted growth, motor delays, anxiety, attention deficit, repetitive behaviors and low intelligence quotients¹. But they also found an encouraging trend: Many of these symptoms can be at least partially reversed if the children enter foster homes before age 2. 

From his lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, he is asking the same thing about autism: How do different risk factors — whether a single mutation, a family history or extreme social deprivation — lead to different manifestations of the diverse disorder?

Good sport: Last year, compelled by a Facebook campaign to raise money for the nonprofit Autism Speaks, Nelson shaved his mustache of 30 years.

Environmental effects:

In the late 1990s, Fox, Nelson and nine other researchers were part of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Early Experience and Brain Development. For nine years, the group met a few times a year to share ideas and launch pilot projects. One of these studies investigated the effects of maternal separation on rhesus macaque monkeys.

The results showed that it all comes down to timing: When 1-week-old monkeys are separated from their mothers, they tend to develop severe social deficits. If they are separated when they’re 1 month old, they wind up anxious and nervous, and if at 3 or 6 months, have no problems at all.

Family ties: Nelson measures brain waves in young children — including his son, Colin, pictured here in 1986 at 6 months old.

Inspired, in 2000 the group launched the Bucharest study on the effects of foster care. The years since have seen growing international awareness about the dangers of institutional care, in large part because of the highly publicized scientific reports from the project. “When I travel to other countries, like Russia and China, they’re aware of the Bucharest study,” says Johnson, professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota. “There’s been a real change in attitudes.”

All of his work, Nelson says, suggests that the environment shapes the brain just as much as the genome does. And that has big implications for the autism field.

“The simplistic model that there is a genetic vulnerability, whatever that means, and some environmental hit, whatever that means, is probably the right one,” he says. “But so much attention has been paid to genetics, and too little to the environment.”

http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/investigator-profiles/2012/charles-nelson-searching-for-early-signs-of-autism

Social deprivation hurts child brain development

By Jon Bardin, Los Angeles Times

July 24, 2012

"The brain needs stimulation to grow and develop, and we know the Romanian orphans are not getting that stimulation," Nelson said. 

Children who grow up in institutions instead of with families have major deficits in braindevelopment, a study of Romanian orphans has shown.

Researchers at Harvard University, the University of Maryland and Tulane University worked with Romanian authorities to place half the children with families that had been rigorously vetted to ensure they would provide good homes. Children living with their biological families have served as a control group.

The team has published almost 50 research papers since the project began, showing that the orphans who remained in institutions have significantly more behavioral and neurological deficits than those who went to families: At age 4 1/2, more than 40% had anxiety disorders and 4% had major depressive disorders. Many also exhibited signs ofautism such as "stereotypies," repetitive behaviors such as rocking and arm-flapping.

In the new study, the team scanned the brains of 74 of the Bucharest children, now ages 8 to 11, using magnetic resonance imaging.

What they found was striking: Brains of children who had remained in institutions had less white matter — the type of tissue that connects different regions of the brain — than orphans who were placed in foster care or children living with their own families.

Reductions in white matter have been found in numerous neurological and psychiatric conditions, including autism, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

Study senior author Charles Nelson, a developmental neuroscientist at Children's Hospital Boston, said the white-matter changes were probably related to a difference that the scientists had noticed earlier in the project: Children in institutions had less electrical activity in their brains — specifically, a kind known as "alpha power" — than those who had gone to foster homes.

"If a normal kid is like a 100-watt light bulb, these kids were a 40-watt light bulb," Nelson said.

The observed brain differences seem to parallel some of the behavioral differences seen in the different groups of children — notably, higher rates of depression and anxiety disorders in kids who remained in institutions, Nelson said.

But the placements — the children went to families when they were 6 to 31 months old — did not wipe away all problems. Though the children with families were doing better than the children left in institutions, brains of both groups remained far from normal, Nelson said, with less gray matter than children who had been with families all along. Both groups also had significantly higher rates of ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder.

Perhaps, Nelson said, the children were placed in homes too late in life; deprivations they experienced before that time were profound. Children in the orphanages are often left in rooms by themselves for hours at a time with nothing to look at or play with.

Dr. Daniel Geschwind, an autism expert at UCLA who was not involved in the study, said the new report is "fundamental and foundational because it identifies clear structural abnormalities in the brains of these kids. Now we can ask 'Why?' What is it about these environments that alters brain structure and function?"

[The] kind of environment a child has from zero to 3 and 3 to 5 is fundamental to their future," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-orphan-brains-20120724,0,1723553.story

Social deprivation has a measurable effect on brain growth

July 23, 2012, 

On MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), children with histories of any institutional rearing had significantly smaller gray matter volumes in the cortex of the brain than never-institutionalized children, even if they had been placed in foster care.

Children who remained in institutional care had significantly reduced white matter volume as compared with those never institutionalized.

"Our cognitive studies suggest that there may be a sensitive period spanning the first two years of life within which the onset of foster care exerts a maximal effect on cognitive development," Nelson notes. "The younger a child is when placed in foster care, the better the outcome."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/social-deprivation-has-a-measurable-effect-on-brain-growth-2012-07-23

The benefits of early childhood programs

Dr. Sara Watson is the executive vice president of America’s Promise Alliance and the director and cofounder of ReadyNation, a collaboration of business leaders, economists, and philanthropists that enlists business leaders to advocate for proven investments in young children. I spoke with Sara about the benefits of early childhood programs and ReadyNation’s efforts to encourage investment in those initiatives. 


The fundamental rationale for linking early childhood and later behavior lies in neuroscientific evidence on early brain development. The most rapid growth in brain development occurs during pregnancy and the first three years of life. According to theCenter on the Developing Child at Harvard University, during that period the brain develops 700 neural synapses—the connections that support learning—every second. And children learn what they experience.


Early childhood programs can build on this physical development to help children start down the right path in life. High-quality programs are so effective that a variety of rigorous randomized controlled-trial studies have shown a causal link between participation in these programs and reductions in later participation in crime. Such programs foster basic school-readiness skills, which include academic skills—number and letter recognition, how to hold a book or a crayon—as well as social and emotional skills that enable them to learn: how to follow directions, listen, and solve problems in a productive way. 


http://cbkb.org/2012/07/the-benefits-of-early-childhood-programs-part-2-of-an-interview-with-sara-watson/

Brain Development: Conception to Age 3

Genetic and environmental factors work together to shape early brain development. Although the first stages of brain development are strongly affected by genetic factors, genes do not design the brain completely.

 Instead, genes allow the brain to fine-tune itself according to the input it receives from the environment. The brain’s ability to shape itself lets individuals adapt to their surroundings more readily and more quickly than they could if genes alone determined the brain’s wiring.

The interplay of genetic and environmental factors is becoming better understood thanks to recent research in a relatively new scientific field called epigenetics.


http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/sites/all/files/databooks/TUCI_Data_Book_VII_2012.02_brain_development.pdf

Building synergy

Mormons’ First Families Rally Behind Romney

Fotosearch/Getty Images

A CHURCH’S EARLY DAYS  “Independence Rock on the Mormon Trail,” by William Henry Jackson, depicted wagons in a field in Wyoming.

By JIM RUTENBERG

Published: July 16, 2012 431 Comments

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SALT LAKE CITY — In the mid-1800s,

SALT LAKE CITY — In the mid-1800s, newly converted families from across the United States and Europe gathered in the growing Mormon town of Nauvoo, Ill., to help their prophet, Joseph Smith, build a New Jerusalem.

Soon driven out by anti-Mormon neighbors who killed Mr. Smith and his brother Hyrum, they trekked westward by foot and on horseback, chased by Indians, cholera and even United States troops before settling together safely in Utah.

Now, more than 150 years later, descendants of those first families of Mormonism are joining together in a new effort: delivering the White House to Mitt Romney, whose great-great-grandfather Miles Romney settled alongside many of their ancestors in Nauvoo in 1841 and joined their torturous migration.

These families — Marriotts, Rollinses, Gardners and others — have formed a financial bulwark and support network for Mr. Romney at every important point in his political career. Starting with his 1994 Senate race, moving into the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics effort that became his political springboard and continuing through his first foray into presidential politics, they have been there to open doors, provide seed money and rally support.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/us/politics/support-for-romney-by-old-mormon-families.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=us&emc=edit_cn_20120717

'Acquisition’ Vs ‘learning’

"Language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammatical rules, and does not require tedious drill."

"Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding."
"The best methods are therefore those that supply 'comprehensible input' in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are 'ready', recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production."
"In the real world, conversations with sympathetic native speakers who are willing to help the acquirer understand are very helpful." Professor Stephen Krashen (University of Southern California), leading linguist in USA

'Acquisition’ Vs ‘learning’    According to Krashen, 'acquisition' is the product of a subconscious process very similar to the process children undergo when they acquire their first language. 'Learning' is the product of formal instruction and it comprises a conscious process which results in conscious knowledge 'about' the language, for example knowledge of grammar rules. According to Krashen 'learning' is less important than 'acquisition'.  http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html

The Natural Approach and Second Language Acquisition

In 1983, Tracy Terrell and Stephen Krashen proposed a new philosophy of language teaching and learning in their book The Natural Approach.

Terrell and Krashen second language theory became well known in the United States and around the world which has great impact on all areas of second language.

The Natural Approach principles descend from the communicative approach because it views communication as the primary function of language. Terrell and Krashen believe that second language learners should learn the way they acquired their native language which means not focusing on mastering language structures but on using the language and improving communicative skills.

This means that language acquisition takes place if language acquirers are exposed to sufficient meaningful messages in the target language.  The Natural Approach is based on five main hypotheses; the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis, the Monitor hypothesis, the Natural Order hypothesis, the Input hypothesis, and the Affective Filter hypothesis.

http://www.preservearticles.com/2012071333205/the-natural-approach-and-second-language-acquisition.html

Comprehensible input - Key to success in language acquisition

We acquire language when we understand what people tell us. Comprehensible input, in my opinion, has been the last resort of the language teaching profession. We’ve tried everything else. We’ve tried grammar teaching, drills and exercises, computers, etc. But the only thing that seems to count is getting messages you understand, comprehensible input.

Talking is not practicing. It will not help you to speak Spanish out loud in the car as you drive to work in the morning. It will not help you to go to the bathroom, close the door and speak Spanish to the mirror. I used to think those things help. Now I think they don’t.

On the other hand, if we were a German class and we could hang together for a couple of weeks, say an hour a day of German, and I could keep the input light and lively as in the second example, you would start to acquire German. It would come on its own, and eventually you would start to talk. Your speaking ability would emerge gradually.

http://www.beeoasis.com/archives/13948

Picking up a new language

My experience took place in 1974 when I was briefly living in exile from California working at the
City University of New York at Queen’s College, as Director of English as a Second Language. And like everyone else in New York, we lived in a big apartment building.

And the apartment next door to us was owned by a Japanese company. And every year there’d be a new family in the apartment. And every year there were the children who couldn’t speak English. And there I was, Director of English as a Second Language. I will teach English to these children and brag about it to my friends.

So I remember going up to the little girl next door. She was four years old; her name was Hitomi, and I didn’t know about this material on language acquisition then. Nobody did. And I thought then the way you get people to acquire language is you get them to practice talking. So I tried to get her to talk. I’d say, “Hitomi, talk to me. Say ‘Good morning.’ Say ‘Hi.’” No response.

Well, clearly I decided I’ve got to make this more concrete. “Hitomi, say ‘ball.’” No response. Well obviously, I’ve got to break it down into its component parts. Let’s work on initial consonants. “Say ‘B.’” “Look at my lips.” Again, no response. There was a theory going around then that a lot of people still believe that children don’t really want to acquire language. You have to kind of force it out of them, so I tried that, “I won’t give you the ball until you say ‘ball.’” That didn’t work either.

No matter what I said Hitomi wouldn’t speak. She didn’t say anything the first week. She didn’t say anything the second week, the first month, the second month. [It was] five months until she started to speak. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Children during this stage do pick up certain expressions from the other children in the neighborhood.

It’s not real language. They understand approximately what they mean. Again, it’s not real language. They were rough idea of what it means. They use it in roughly appropriate situations. Things like “Leave me alone.” “Get out of here.” In fact, one child I knew the only thing he could say was “I kick your ass!” [He] said it everywhere. He wasn’t quite sure what it meant.

After about five months, Hitomi started to speak, and several things were interesting about her language. First, it looked a lot like first language acquisition, the same process our children went through. One word, two words, gradually getting more complicated. Second, it came quickly. By the time Hitomi and her family went back to Japan at the end of the year, her English was closing in on the way the other children in the neighborhood were talking.

The question is this. “What was going on during those five months?” She was listening. She was picking out comprehensible input. When she started to speak, it was not the beginning of her language acquisition. Let me repeat that. When she started to speak, it was not the beginning of her language acquisition. It was the result of all the comprehensible input she had gotten over those five months.

What counts in speaking is not what you say, but what the other person says to you. In other words, when you get involved in conversation, what counts is the input that you can stimulate from other people. 

http://www.beeoasis.com/archives/13948

Integrating Immersion Programs

Mark Rentz explains how and why universities should re-align their Intensive English Programs to better serve the long-term goals of students and the university as a whole

We are focusing on the “five-year” student and not the “five week” or “five month” student. In 2011, we spent $320,000 marketing ASU to a larger international audience. To encourage student flow from the IEP to ASU, we reduced our commission to agents that send students only to the IEP in order to double it for agents that help students come to the IEP as conditionally admitted students. Another re-alignment was the creation of a university-wide international brochure for marketing and recruiting purposes. The international brochure focuses on the excellent graduate and undergraduate programs at ASU and the position of the IEP within the larger university. We printed and paid for 30,000 copies and now, all international departments, and even upper leadership, use this international recruiting tool. In response to the growing number of conditionally admitted students who have come to the IEP with “three-year” or “five-year” scholarships, we hired two sponsored student coordinators to provide the highest levels of support and customer service to these students and their sponsors. Academically we raised passing grade requirements in all of our levels, slashed the number of minutes students can be absent from class, and created classes that prepare students for popular university departments and colleges. We surveyed our IEP students for future areas of study at ASU and created a number of academic English courses, including English for Science and Technology, Sustainability, Architecture, Nutrition, Engineering, Business, and Native American Studies.
http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=3852

Strategic Mentoring

Betty Achinstein, Susan O’Hara, Robert Pritchard, and Jeff Zwiers explore how specific training of mentors for new teachers improves English learner outcomes

The task of supporting new teachers to work with the growing population of culturally and linguistically diverse students has generated widespread interest in mentoring programs. Despite this fervor, such programs often provide emotional support and generic advice giving, and lack a focus on meeting the needs of English language learners. There is also a problematic assumption that mentors come ready-made or just need tuning up with technical tips, rather than situating mentoring in a complex knowledge base and repertoire of quality mentor practices. While attention turns to mentoring to develop novices, little is known about mentor professional development to strategically support new teachers to meet the needs of English learners.

This lack of knowledge comes at a critical time. A demographic imperative exists to support the growing English learner population in U.S. schools, with one in 10 students classified as English language learners (ELLs). New teachers, who are disproportionately placed in classrooms with students from non-dominant cultural and linguistic communities, often lack the preparation and practices to meet the needs of ELLs, and find themselves struggling. Not surprisingly, an achievement gap exists between ELLs and their English-speaking counterparts. At the same time that ELLs are struggling to keep up with their peers, and their teachers are struggling to meet their literacy needs, the new Common Core State Standards call for specific attention to Academic Language (AL) development for all students across all subject areas.

This article explores mentor professional development (PD) to strategically support new teachers’ capacity to improve Academic Language development in content areas for ELLs. It draws on findings from an innovative research and design (R&D) partnership between Stanford University and a network of secondary schools serving high numbers of ELLs in California. We identify three key domains for mentor PD and highlight “close-in looks” at actual mentor learning experiences from the R&D work in an effort to promote quality practices of ELL-focused mentoring.

Building the Foundation
Effective mentors possess a complex body of knowledge including an understanding of: pedagogy and curriculum to teach ELLs and to guide novices during mentoring sessions to promote ELL learning; learners and the learning of novices and ELL students; organizational, socio-political, and professional contexts within which novices work and students learn; and mentor and teacher’s knowledge of self as related to ELL issues (Achinstein & Athanases, 2010). One critical aspect of such foundational knowledge includes understanding how novices may experience a cultural/linguistic mismatch with their students, and may lack an understanding of ELL experiences. It is important to heighten mentors’ awareness of this cultural/linguistic gap, as evidenced in this exchange from a session during the R&D initiative. Participants watched a video excerpt of an interview with Ana, an ELL student of Guatemalan descent, addressing what math teachers need to know to be successful. The task was to explore what was useful for teaching and mentoring. In reflecting on the video, mentors heard comments from their novices. One new teacher (a monolingual African American teacher) explained, “Ana said students are scared to come up to the teacher. Scared. I never thought about that!” The novice is becoming aware of issues of trust that may block access to learning opportunities — information that her mentor can take up in their mentoring conversation.

Mentors also need foundational knowledge on the AL development of ELLs including understanding: the central role that language plays in content learning; components of second (and academic) language acquisition; the importance of teachers’ attitudes toward cultural/linguistic diversity and their assumptions about ELLs; and the broad range of academic and linguistic backgrounds that ELLs bring and their implications for learning (Lucas & Grinberg, 2008). In particular, this means fostering mentors’ awareness of linguistic obstacles that ELLs have in accessing content.

Close-In Look: Determining Linguistic Obstacles
To ensure that the mentors and novices had the same foundational knowledge regarding ELL issues, one PD session focused on determining linguistic obstacles. Teachers and mentors were given five versions of the same math problem, each written to represent what a student at each level of language proficiency (beginning, early intermediate, intermediate, early advanced, advanced) would be likely to understand. The table groups were told: (a) the first figure is what students at the beginning level of language proficiency might comprehend; (b) that blanks indicate words students likely would not understand; (c) to try to solve the problem, thinking about what they could determine from the information given; (d) to repeat the process for each level in the order presented; and (e) to note the features of each problem that create difficulty for students. This activity and its debriefing demonstrated the importance of determining whether ELLs are struggling with content concepts or language proficiency. For instance, mentors and teachers were able to see that at the beginning level, students could only decipher a few words and pick out the numbers in a problem. Consequently, even if students have the math background in their first language, they cannot determine enough information to solve the problem. At higher levels of proficiency, students may have acquired an active social vocabulary but still not possess sufficient academic vocabulary or an understanding of abstract concepts to solve a problem without significant support. During the debrief, one participant described his revelation: “Thinking about beginning and intermediate levels and what students are comprehending made me realize that the preparation of having them fill out a chart would be difficult for [certain ELLs]. To even do step one, you had to read and comprehend. If you’re lost at step one, then you couldn’t process more. It made me wonder how can I scaffold this reading further?”

Focusing on Core Teaching Practices
Teaching is a complex practice that can be deconstructed, rehearsed, and revised for the development of novices. While historically mentors have been trained to follow the lead of new teachers, a new approach focuses on a targeted set of teaching practices that are high leverage, impact student learning, and are deemed core to the content. Focusing mentoring on deliberate and repeated practice of elements of complex practices is critical for development of expertise. Mentors can develop a common framework and language to utilize in their repertoire in support of new teacher improvement, particularly in supporting AL development of ELLs. Thus, the R&D initiative developed a set of core teaching practices for AL development of ELLs from the work of an expert group drawing on previous research and tested in a range of classroom videos across subject domains, teacher experience, and ELL contexts (Anstrom et. al, 2010):
• Alignment of Language Learning to Support Content Learning: aligning AL objectives with key language demands of content objectives, activities, tasks, and texts.
• Modeling: explicitly modeling use of AL.
• Comprehensible Input: utilizing a range of strategies and materials to make target AL understandable to ELLs.
• Explicit Strategy Instruction: explicitly teaching language learning strategies (e.g., use of cognates, context, non-linguistic cues.)
• Output: providing opportunities for ELLs’ oral and written production using AL in support of content learning.
The set of core practices was expanded to create an observation protocol that specifies elements and lower and higher enactment, thus helping mentors and novices focus on moving along a continuum of practice:

1 Almost no evidence
2 Limited evidence
3 Evidence with some weaknesses
4 Consistent strong evidence

Strategy Use and Instruction
Teacher does not provide instruction about language learning strategies. This includes referring to strategies without discussion of why or when to use them.

Teacher introduces, and/or refers to language learning strategies and why or when to use them, or the teacher prompts students to use a specific strategy. However, the teacher does not provide explicit instruction on how to use the strategy.

Teacher provides explicit instruction about a language learning strategy, including how to use it. However instruction is insufficient for students to implement strategies independently.

Teacher provides explicit instruction about a range of language learning strategies, or detailed instruction about a single strategy, including how (and why or when) to use them. It is reasonable to infer that instruction is sufficient for students to implement strategies independently.

Close-In Look: Identifying Language Demands
The R&D initiative sought to facilitate mentors’ understanding of core practices for teaching ELLs. One PD session was designed for mentors to dive deeply into aligning language and subject matter/content objectives. The particular focus was to develop an understanding among mentors about the importance of AL in the teaching of content to ELLs and to introduce them to a framework for integrating language and content instruction. This framework (see Figure 1) begins with the development of content objectives (Stfep 1), proceeds through an analysis of the text, tasks, and tests to be used in a lesson as the basis for identifying language demands (Step 2), and concludes with the development of language objectives that are based on the language demands (Step 3). This close-in look focuses specifically on how Step 2 was introduced to and modeled for mentors.

The session began with a discussion of AL features (lexical, syntactic, and discourse). Mentors were provided with content-specific examples of these features and applied this knowledge to the process of identifying language demands. The approach was based on the assumption that mentors need to experience this process as learners, and then reflect on their learning and on the effectiveness of the process from a teacher’s perspective. This increases the mentors’ capacity for explaining and modeling to their teachers.

Mentors were given a set of instructional materials developed for use in a secondary history lesson: a content objective, texts used, and instructional tasks for students. The group was asked to work in pairs to find the key language demands in each of three AL features by: analyzing the content objective; considering data on students’ language strengths and needs; and analyzing texts and student tasks. Once mentors completed these steps and discussed them as a group, they were given a second set of instructional materials and worked independently through the same process. These experiences were designed to build mentors’ understanding of AL and how that knowledge can be used to identify language demands inherent in content-specific instructional materials. A subsequent session focused on how mentors and teachers could use this information to develop language objectives that support content objectives, texts, and tasks of a lesson.

Guiding Mentoring Conversations
Historically, mentoring conversations have been shaped by the cognitive coaching model, which often leads to conversations characterized by a lack of clear direction due to a “follow the novice’s lead” approach, and little critical feedback that can extend the novice’s practice. Just as educators seek to develop a common language of core teaching practices, we see a parallel need to develop a common language about mentoring discourse moves to allow mentors’ practice to move forward. Thus focusing on specific mentor moves in conversations about lesson planning or observations, analysis of student work, or individual students’ learning is critical for mentor and novice learning.

The R&D initiative involved collaboratively developing a common language about mentor conversational moves. Mentors served as a resource to one another as they collaboratively examined transcripts of their own mentoring practices to identify effective moves in mentoring conversations. This involved naming mentor moves, fostering norms of instructional dialogue about common practice among teachers and mentors, and deconstructing exchanges to understand mentoring practices that supported the AL development of ELLs. In so doing, the mentors identified the following protocol for guiding mentoring conversations.

Mentoring programs often lack quality models for the PD of mentors, particularly in regard to supporting new teachers to meet the needs of ELLs. The content of such PD must include building the foundation of mentors’ complex knowledge base, focusing on core teaching practices of ELLs, and guiding mentoring conversations. The profession needs robust visions of PD for English Learner-focused mentoring of new teachers in order to address the demographic imperative of our increasingly diverse student population.

References available online at http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=3989.

Dr. Susan O’Hara is an associate professor at Stanford University and executive director for the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching. Her research agenda focuses on teacher professional development and on instructional practice that are associated with improved outcomes for English learners. She has extensive experience in developing and evaluating large-scale professional development initiatives. She has co-authored articles for numerous journals including the Journal for the Education of Students Placed at Risk and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. She has co-authored two books, NETS Grades 6-8 Multidisciplinary Resource Units and Teaching Vocabulary with Hypermedia, 6-12.

Dr. Betty Achinstein is a senior researcher at Stanford University’s Center to Support Excellence in Teaching where she conducts research on: new teacher induction and mentor professional development; mentoring to support English learners; and organizational contexts. Betty is also a researcher at University of California, Santa Cruz’s Center for Educational Research in the Interest of Underserved Students where she conducts research on: urban schooling in support of culturally/linguistically non-dominant communities; and new teachers of color. Her most recent books include: Change(d) Agents: New Teachers of Color in Urban Schools; and Mentors in the Making: Developing New Leaders for New Teachers.

Dr. Robert Pritchard is professor of Education at Sacramento State University. A former classroom teacher and reading specialist, Dr. Pritchard is a language and literacy specialist who works extensively with school districts and county offices of education on a wide range of professional development projects. Dr. Pritchard also worked internationally for nine years as an ESL teacher and teacher trainer. He has authored and edited numerous publications related to English learners, innovative uses of technology, and professional development for teachers, including Kids Come in All Languages: Reading Instruction for ESL Students, and Teaching Vocabulary with Hypermedia.

Dr. Jeff Zwiers is a clinical associate for the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching and teaches pre-service teachers at Stanford University. He participates in the research and design of teacher professional development efforts that promote academic language development, interaction, critical thinking, and engaged learning. He has published books on reading, thinking and academic language. His recent work is about students’ academic language and communication skills.

http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=4109

Anxiety impedes learning

Viviane Gontijo studies the effect of lowering anxiety levels on oral language production

Self-enhancement would probably facilitate language learning while self-derogation would impair progress.

Among all the negative emotions, anxiety is considered “the most pervasively affective factor that obstructs the learning process” (Arnold, 1999, p.8). It is often linked to self-doubt, frustration, apprehension and tension (Horwitz et al., 1986). Despite its importance, researchers have yet to fully understand the relationship between communication skills and language anxiety. It is widely accepted that the language ego appears more vulnerable where oral skills are concerned. The development of oral skill is very challenging because of its potentially negative effect on the learners’ self-image (Horwitz, 1990).

http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=4401

NIH study shows the deaf brain processes touch differently

posted on: july 10, 2012 - 9:31pm

People who are born deaf process the sense of touch differently than people who are born with normal hearing, according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health It adds to a growing list of discoveries that confirm the impact of experiences and outside influences in molding the developing brain. The study is published in the July 11 online issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

The researchers, Christina M. Karns, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research associate in the Brain Development Lab at the University of Oregon, Eugene, and her colleagues, show that deaf people use the auditory cortex to process touch stimuli and visual stimuli to a much greater degree than occurs in hearing people. The finding suggests that since the developing auditory cortex of profoundly deaf people is not exposed to sound stimuli, it adapts and takes on additional sensory processing tasks.

"This research shows how the brain is capable of rewiring in dramatic ways," said James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. "

Source: NIH/National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders

http://www.sciencecodex.com/nih_study_shows_the_deaf_brain_processes_touch_differently-94761

Boys' Reading Commission

Research consistently shows boys’ reading lags behind girls'. The All Party Parliamentary Literacy Group Boys' Reading Commission was a joint venture with the National Literacy Trust from January to June 2012. The report says action needs to be taken in homes, schools and communities.
The Commission's findings, published on Monday 2 July 2012, reveal that three out of four (76%) UK schools are concerned about boys’ underachievement in reading despite no Government strategy to address the issue. Last year an estimated 60,000 boys failed to reach the expected level in reading at age 11.
The Commission’s report, compiled by the National Literacy Trust, reveals the “reading gender gap” is widening and says action needs to be taken in homes, schools and communities, with recommendations including boys having weekly access to male reading role models.
MPs and Lords who sat on the Commission heard evidence from teachers, researchers, literacy experts and children’s authors Michael Rosen and Anthony Horowitz.
Boys' Reading Commission Final Report [PDF, 1MB]

For more information on the evidence gathered for the Commission, please see:
The National Literacy Trust review of existing research
Evidence session transcript [PDF]
Transcript of the focus group with boys [PDF]

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/policy/nlt_policy/boys_reading_commission

From Conception to Birth

Even though I am a mathematician, I look at [fetal development] with marvel: How do these instruction sets not make mistakes as they build what is us? — Alexander Tsiaras
A 9 min video clip you must not miss. Sam
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120702-conception-to-birth-visualized