A pedagogical alliance for academic achievement: Socio-Emotional effects on assessment outcomes

Assessment of student learning outcomes is often discussed in relation to curriculum, standards and even administration practices. However, assessment of learning outcomes is rarely discussed in light of students’ socio-emotional contexts, which might help or hinder learning outcomes. For example, do students’ perceptions of the teacher as trustworthy influence their empathic views on classmates, learning engagement, academic achievement and wellbeing? The present paper reports the results of a theoretically-driven, short-term longitudinal study designed to explore the effects of socio-emotional variables, specifically students’ trust in teachers and empathy towards self and peers on engagement for learning, academic achievement, and wellbeing. Grounded in attachment theory and the LEAFF model, Panel Structural Equation Modeling (P-SEM) results revealed three significant pathways, which provide evidence that student trust in teachers may serve to launch a domino effect of outcomes, predicting students’ empathic views of classmates, learning engagement, academic achievement, and wellbeing.     

The use of limericks to engage student interest and promote active learning in an undergraduate course in functional anatomy

The study of anatomy is a content-dense discipline with a challenging vocabulary. A mnemonic is a series of letters, a word, a phrase, or a rhyme that students can use when studying to facilitate recall. This project was designed to promote active learning in undergraduate students studying anatomy and physiology by asking them to create limericks based on course content and then to evaluate the limericks written by their peers for learning value, accuracy, style, and adherence to limerick characteristics. Students (278 and 288, respectively, in the 2009 and 2010 sections of ANP1107) worked in groups of three to create a total of 242 limericks. Peer evaluation was accomplished in two stages using a 20-point marking rubric. In Stage 1, students were randomly divided into 10 groups (n = 23 ± 2 students) with each group member evaluating the same 12 ± 1 limericks. In Stage 2, the top 19% of limericks were reevaluated by all students so that the best three could be chosen. In each of the two years, 60% of students completed all parts of the assignment. Higher percentages (75-80%) participated in limerick writing and one of the two assessment stages. A positive association was noted between level of student participation in the limerick assignment and final course marks. Limerick creation and evaluation can be used to promote active learning by encouraging students to review functional-anatomy-based content to create limericks with good learning value and to provide valid assessments of limericks written by their peers.     

Assessing the effects of school‐wide Second Step implementation in a predominately English language learner,low SES,Latino sample

Because school violence is widespread, social and emotional competence must be targeted. Second Step is a social and emotional violence‐prevention curriculum that teaches prosocial skills and reduces aggressive behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Second Step implementation on students (N = 403) in preschool through fourth grade who were predominately Latino, English language learners, and from families with low socioeconomic status. The data of 165 out of the 403 students were included in the present study. Analyses consisted of paired‐samples t‐tests to identify changes in social and emotional knowledge and behavioral and emotional risk. Results showed that there was a significant increase in both social and emotional knowledge and behavioral and emotional risk following the implementation of Second Step. These results are discussed with regard to previous and future research, limitations, and implications for school practice.     

When does an opportunity become an opportunity? Unpacking classroom practice through the lens of ecological psychology

Drawing on ecological psychology, this paper considers how student engagement is an accomplishment of the classroom system. Specifically, this paper presents an analysis of two teachers and their students who were using a project-based unit in their mathematics classes. The two teachers used identical curricular materials, but had dramatically different personal histories of teaching and different instructional practices. Our goal is to investigate the role of the teacher in supporting student engagement by considering the kinds of opportunities to learn that were presented by the teacher, and the relationship between those opportunities to learn and the ways their students engaged. Pragmatically, this paper contributes to our understanding of how teachers’ framing of activity significantly impacts the ways that students are likely to engage tasks. Theoretically, this paper highlights the interactional nature of learning, with the goal of clarifying why learning is not simply an individual accomplishment.     

Multicultural Children’s Literature as a Context for Teaching Mathematics for Cultural Relevance in Urban Schools

This article reports on a teacher-research study that used multicultural texts as a context for teaching mathematics for cultural relevance during an elementary mathematics methods course. The results of the study reveal that 28 % (5 out of 18) of the teacher candidates (TCs) chose books that were culturally contextual or culturally amenable. However, 89 % (16 out of 18) of the TCs chose texts that were mathematically robust or mathematically peripheral. Four focal TCs were selected to examine how they used the texts with children to teach mathematics concepts. Math lessons fostered academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. Overall, the results of the study are mixed. We conclude that some TCs’ choice of texts may reflect indifference, passive resistance, low self-efficacy, school culture, and mixed messages from the teacher–researcher. Additional studies that include follow-up interviews and classroom observations are needed to determine the factors that influence TCs’ selections of multicultural texts and their implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy with students.     

Developing Children's Early Competencies to Engage With Science

Science educators have long been concerned with how formal schooling contributes to learners’ capacities to engage with science after school. This article frames productive engagement as fundamentally about the coordination of claims with evidence, but such coordination requires a number of reasoning capabilities to evaluate the strength of evidence, critique methods, and other factors upon which evidence evaluation rests, evaluating sources and potential biases, and so on. Although the general discourse on education commonly suggests students are bad at such things, we review cognitive development research that demonstrates children display a variety of capabilities, even at early ages, that can be productively built upon by formal science instruction. We use this research to suggest some possibilities for formal schooling to develop children's capacities for evaluating claims within the pursuit of personally meaningful goals. We conclude with observations of useful directions our analysis opens to research.     

Three Contemporary Dilemmas for Rural Superintendents

The school district is the fundamental administrative unit of schooling in the United States and the superintendent the lead official. The nature and the challenges of this position, however, vary across the landscape. Because most superintendents lead rural districts, the challenges facing those districts are the ones that typically bedevil the superintendency overall (perhaps a surprising thought to many readers). From this vantage, we theorize such challenges overall, and illustrate the theory with three episodes: (1) the continuing threats of school and district consolidation; (2) the arrival of ethnic diversity in previously all-White rural places; and (3) the leasing of school lands for mining, with a focus on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).     

Toward Intentional,Reflective, and Assimilative Classroom Practices with Students with FASD

The value of research-informed classroom practices is well recognized and thus this qualitative study was designed to explore, from multiple perspectives, the experiences and influences of classroom practices for students with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). The inductive analysis of 11 focus groups and three interviews involving 60 individuals working closely with this student population—31 teachers, seven administrators, 16 allied professionals, and six caregivers—generated three themes: understanding the whole student, responding within dynamic environments, and optimizing student-centered programming. This study provides an essential step toward better-prepared educators for meeting the learning and developmental needs of students with FASD as well as other complex populations. The implications for developing professional learning opportunities reflective of intentional, reflective, and assimilative classroom practices are discussed.