Gender Differences,Family and Psychological Factors Affecting School Performance in Greek Secondary School Students

High rates of school failure have been reported for secondary school students, with boys presenting more schooling difficulties. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between school performance and family and psychological factors. A sample of 1315 male and female secondary school students was recruited from 54 classes randomly selected out of a total of 534 classes in the Greek region of East Macedonia and Thrace. School performance was measured dichotomously according to the final school results (pass or fail). Family and sociodemographic data were collected and psychological problems were measured using the Youth Self Report (YSR). Male gender, low socioeconomic status, low parental education and parental separation were all positively associated with school failure. Those who failed scored higher on the YSR problem scales than those who passed, and boys were more affected by adverse circumstances than girls. The results indicate that students, especially boys, with psychological problems and those coming from families of low socioeconomic and educational status are at high risk of school failure.     

Reformation of VET and demands on teachers’ subject knowledge – Swedish vocational teachers’ recurrent participation in a national CPD initiative

This study investigates continuing professional development (CPD) of vocational teachers, with a focus on recurrent participation. Vocational teachers need to be competent as teachers and in relation to their vocational teaching subject. Reformation of Swedish vocational education in order to strengthen the working-life connection imposes demands on teachers to have up-to-date knowledge about the vocations related to their vocational subjects. To support the reform, vocational teachers have been offered to participate in a new national CPD initiative targeting their vocational competence. The study concerns participation in this initiative. Drawing on a socio-cultural perspective, vocational teachers’ CPD implies boundary-crossing between school and working-life. Theory concerning adults’ participation in education is considered relevant to understand conditions for such boundary-crossing, and learning, among vocational teachers. The article specifically investigates patterns in vocational teachers’ recurrent participation, which is expected to clarify the factors influencing further participation in professional development. The strongest predictor of recurrent participation, when adjusting for the influence of other factors, is the type of municipality that the teacher comes from, with low populated municipalities having the lowest likelihood of participation. Furthermore, recurrent participation is more likely by participating teachers from adult education or from privately owned schools, and by male teachers.     

Differential Item Functioning Resulting From The Use of Different Solution Strategies

The present study investigates the degree to which item "bias" techniques can lead to interpretable results when groups are defined in terms of specified differences in the cognitive processes involved in students' problem-solving strategies. A large group of junior high school students who took a test on subtraction of fractions was divided into two subgroups judged by the rule-space model to be using different problem-solving strategies. It was confirmed by use of Mantel-Haenszel (MH) statistics that these subgroups showed different performances on items with different underlying cognitive tasks. We note that, in our case, we are far from faulting items that show differential item functioning (D1F) between two groups defined in terms of different solution strategies. Indeed, they are "desirable" items, as explained in the discussion section     

The Mind's "I": Children's Conception of the Mind as an Active Agent

1 hypothesis about children's developing conception of the mind is that preschoolers are limited to an understanding that persons have internal, mental contents like thoughts and beliefs, whereas older children and adults conceive of the mind itself as an independent, active structure or processor. Adults' conception of the mind in this independent active fashion seems evident in their use of personified mental metaphor (e.g., "My mind tricked me"). 3 studies examined the development and consolidation of this active, personified view. Study 1 provided an analysis of natural language data regarding 1 child's uses of vision words such as see and look from age 2 1/2 to 8 years. We examined the child's use of such words to refer literally to perception (e.g., "I see the TV") and also to refer nonliterally to active mental processes such as comprehension and inference (e.g., "I see what you mean"). Studies 2 and 3 examined 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds' comprehension and production of mental metaphors. In a metaphor comprehension task, we asked children to interpret personified metaphoric statements about the mind (e.g., "My mind wandered") and 3 comparison domains, mechanics (e.g., "The car is dead"), nature (e.g., "The wind is howling"), and emotion (e.g., "Her heart was smiling"). In an explanation task, we asked children to explain the processes underlying the making of both instant photos and mental images. The findings reveal a developing ability to interpret and produce statements personifying the mind and provide considerable evidence about children's movement toward a conception of the mind as an independent entity deserving reference and conceptualization in its own right.     

Determinants of placement for sexually abused children

While conducting a prospective study of 100 sexually abused children, we found a much higher rate of out-of-home placement than has been previously described for child maltreatment. This study was designed to determine which factors were most influential in predicting the placement experiences of this cohort. The children, ages 6-17 years, were recently substantiated victims of intrafamilial sexual abuse whose parents or guardians permitted study involvement. We examined child and family demographics, abuse characteristics, and family response as possible determinants of immediate and later placement. At the initial assessment, within a few weeks of the disclosure, 50% of the children had already been removed. A follow-up assessment of 83 children two years later revealed that 73% had been removed from the abusing home. In a multivariate regression model, only maternal support of the child emerged as a significant predictor of immediate placement and placement over time. The offender's status as a resident in the child's home was an important predictor of immediate placement but was not significant as a predictor of all placements at any time. As maternal support is an important predictor of the need for placement, workers are encouraged to seek ways of enhancing maternal support as a means of reducing placement.     

Influence of conspecific and predatory Stressors and their associated odors on defensive burying and freezing responses

In Experiment 1, male rats were exposed to either aggressive (i.e., alpha) or nonaggressive conspecific colonies and tested 24 h later, with or without alpha odors, for freezing behavior and burying of a wall prod that had been the source of a brief electric shock. The results indicated that prior defeat experience and the presence of alpha odors alone during testing had no significant effects, but the combination of prior defeat and alpha-odor testing significantly decreased burying and increased freezing behavior. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of noncontact exposure to a cat, as a predatory Stressor, during subsequent prod-shock tests involving the presence or absence of cat odors. Exposure to a cat failed to disrupt later prod burying and did not produce freezing. However, the presence of cat odors during testing significantly reduced the amount of defensive burying,without resulting in an increment in freezing. In Experiment 3, rats were given 1, 5, or 30 inescapable preshocks in the presence of either cat odors or a hedonically neutral citronella odor and were tested 24 h later for prod burying and freezing with or without these odors. Both the cat and the citronella odors resulted in a significant reduction in burying and an increase in freezing for rats given 5 and 30 preshocks and tested in the presence of these respective conditioned odors. For the groups that were given 5 preshocks, preshock and later testing in the presence of cat odors resulted in significantly less prod burying and more freezing than for rats that were preshocked and tested in the presence of citronella. The findings of these three ethoexperimental studies are discussed in terms of the learned-helplessness theory, the stress-coping-fear-defense (SCFD) theory, and the concept of selective CS-US associability.     

Evaluating college campus closings for the 1980s: A case application of an optimization model

Institutional administrators, faculty, state planners, and legislatures have little analytical basis available to help them cope with the expected excess higher education capacity of the 1980s. Without objective criteria, state planners and legislatures are likely to propose across-the-board reductions even if it were preferable to close some institutions and expand others. This study is a case application of an optimization model to two community colleges in northern Minnesota. Using estimated enrollment demand functions and readily available data on size, quality, and costs, this model is designed to assist policymakers in identifying overbuilt institutions and programs that should be closed. The state's objective in the model is to satisfy specified proportions of enrollment demand with a minimum expenditure of state funds.     

Instructional design for advanced learners: Establishing connections between the theoretical frameworks of cognitive load and deliberate practice

Cognitive load theory (CLT) has been successful in identifying instructional formats that are more effective and efficient than conventional problem solving in the initial, novice phase of skill acquisition. However, recent findings regarding the “expertise reversal effect” have begun to stimulate cognitive load theorists to broaden their horizon to the question of how instructional design should be altered as a learner's knowledge increases. To answer this question, it is important to understand how expertise is acquired and what fosters its development. Expert performance research, and, in particular, the theoretical framework of deliberate practice have given us a better understanding of the principles and activities that are essential in order to excel in a domain. This article explores how these activities and principles can be used to design instructional formats based on CLT for higher levels of skills mastery. The value of these formats for e-learning environments in which learning tasks can be adaptively selected on the basis of online assessments of the learner's level of expertise is discussed. In their preparation of this article, the first and last authors were supported by an Internationalization grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, The Hague, project number 411-01-010).