Tag Archives: social-emotional learning

Term of Art: Reciprocal Reading/Teaching

“reciprocal reading/teaching: A situation in which teachers and students take turns in reading or discussing a written passage. Reciprocal reading is useful because teachers model good reading such as pausing at punctuation, using intonation, and tracking with a finger. Reciprocal teaching also can involve shared discussion where the teacher can model good comprehension and questioning strategies to promote critical thinking.

In reciprocal teaching and learning, teachers and students share in the process of a learning activity and teachers can also monitor and assess students while they try out new reading/thinking strategies.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Term of Art: Socioeconomic Status

“socioeconomic status: A term used to describe the home backgrounds of individuals or groups, taking into account such elements as family income and education attainment.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

Concepts in Sociology: Achievement Motivation

“achievement motivation: The need to perform well, or achievement motivation, significantly determines a person’s effort and persistence in reaching some given standard of excellence, or in comparison with competitors, and the level of aspiration that is involved in that standard or competition. This motivation is seen by psychologist D.C. McClelland (1961;1971) as a major determinant of entrepreneurial activity and as a cause of rapid economic growth when widely dispersed in a society. Many managerial roles are also said to require individuals with a high need for achievement if they are to be performed well. McClelland believes that such needs are learned in childhood, when individuals are socialized into the culture of their societies, rather than being innate. Other needs that may be learned are the needs for power, affiliation and autonomy.”

Excerpted from: Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner. Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Term of Art: Recall

“recall:  A term used to describe the ability to retrieve information from long-term memory. Recall is involved in a broad range of tasks, from remembering a phone number to recalling information for a school exam. While useful as a descriptive term, it does not refer to a specific area of cognitive function.

Difficulty recalling information may be cause by a number of different learning problems. This may include problems imprinting information during processing because of poor attention or short-term memory, as well as difficulty with rapid retrieval tasks that are typically found in expressive language disorders.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Term of Art: Self-Advocacy

“self-advocacy: An individual’s ability to discuss a personal learning disability and request appropriate accommodations and services. Self-advocacy skills are important to develop in people with learning disabilities so they can take responsibility for their own learning and become empowered in school, work, and life. Individuals with disabilities should be familiar with their learning profile as well as relevant legislation.

Self-advocacy skills should be developed as soon as an individual is old enough to understand the learning process. Parents have a right to include their children who are being considered for special education classification in the multidisciplinary team meeting and in development of the individualized education program. Many high schools encourage students to become self-advocates by discussing their learning style and needs with teachers and by actively making transition plans from high school to the next environment.

Self-advocacy skills become even more important once an individual leaves school and begins a job or college, where there are no special educators or parents to advocate for them.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Bernard Coard on the Intellectual and Emotional Oppression of the West Indian Child in the British School System

“The Black child acquires two fundamental attitudes or beliefs as a result of his experiencing the British school system: a low self-image, and consequently low expectations in life. These are obtained through streaming, banding, bussing, ESN [Educationally Sub-Normal] schools, racist news media, and a white middle-class curriculum; by totally ignoring the Black child’s language, history, culture, identity. Through the choice of teaching materials, the society emphasizes who and what it thinks is important—and by implication, by omission, who and what it thinks is unimportant, infinitesimal, irrelevant. Through the belittling, ignoring, or denying of a person’s identity, one can destroy perhaps the most important aspect of a person’s personality—his sense of identity, of who he is. Without this, he will get nowhere.”

Excerpted from: Coard, Bernard. How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System: 50th Anniversary Expanded Fifth Edition. Kingston, Jamaica: McDermott Publishing, 2021.

Paul Robeson in Testimony Before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

“My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I’m going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear?”

Paul Robeson, Testimony before House Un-American Activities Committee. 

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Term of Art: Selective Attention

“selective attention: Picking out the most relevant cue among stimuli in the environment, and excluding the rest. It is well established that people do not pay attention to everything; for example, at a party an individual can focus on the voice of one person with whom he or she is conversing.

Yet while it is clear that people do filter out a great number of stimuli, it is not at all clear how this is done, nor what information is noted unconsciously. In an attempt to find out, psychologist have often used dichotic listening experiments (that is, two different messages are presented separately to each ear), roughly along the lines of the situation at a party.

If a child’s ‘attention’ problems are selective—that is, appearing only in certain subjects—it suggests that he or she is capable of paying attention when the subjects are comprehensible and meaningful.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Term of Art: Socializing Intelligence

“socializing intelligence: The expectation that students can be taught to think intelligently by developing ‘habits of mind’ to solve problems, not just to stockpile tidbits of knowledge.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

Term of Art: Saliency

“saliency: The relevance of an item or phenomenon to a task or activity. For example, the homework excitement that a teacher writes on the blackboard is highly salient to a student in the class, while the sounds of an activity out in the hallway are nonsalient. Problems with determining saliency (what is relevant or important to a particular task) are a significant issue in individuals with attention disorders.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.