A journey of self‐discovery: an intervention involving massage,yoga and relaxation for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties attending primary schools

This study reports on an intervention involving massage, yoga and relaxation delivered to young children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Children (n = 126) were invited to participate in the Self‐discovery Programme (SDP) with parental consent. A total of 107 children aged 8–11 years completed the SDP and all measures. Children were allocated to a Control (n = 54) or Intervention (n = 53) group. The results indicate that children in the Intervention group showed improvements in self‐confidence, social confidence, communication and contributions in class. Children in the Intervention group were noted by teachers to use skills learned on the SDP during the school day.     

Pre-service teachers’ TPACK competencies for spreadsheet integration: insights from a mathematics-specific instructional technology course

This article explored the impact of strategies applied in a mathematics instructional technology course for developing technology integration competencies, in particular in the use of spreadsheets, in pre-service teachers. In this respect, 104 pre-service mathematics teachers from a teacher training programme in Ghana enrolled in the mathematics instructional technology course for one semester. Strategies applied in designing the course were: aligning theory and practice, collaborative design, learning technology by design, modelling how to use technology and scaffolding authentic technology experiences. The pre-service teachers’ technology integration competencies were assessed through analysis of lesson plans and lesson observations, their self-reported technological pedagogical content knowledge and attitudes towards technology. Findings show that pre-service teachers’ technology integration competencies improved after participation in the course. All strategies were considered important, but in particular, scaffolding authentic technology experiences including feedback from teaching try-outs made significant contributions to the pre-service teachers’ developed technology integration competencies. The study provides guidelines that can serve as a benchmark for implementing strategies in the design of a subject-specific teacher education programme in preparing pre-service teachers to integrate technology in teaching.     

Using Web-Based Key Character and Classification Instruction for Teaching Undergraduate Students Insect Identification

The purpose of the study was to determine whether undergraduate students receiving web-based instruction based on traditional, key character, or classification instruction differed in their performance of insect identification tasks. All groups showed a significant improvement in insect identifications on pre- and post-two-dimensional picture specimen quizzes. The study also determined student performance on insect identification tasks was not as good as for family-level identification as compared to broader insect orders and arthropod classification identification tasks. Finally, students erred significantly more by misidentification than misspelling specimen names on prepared specimen quizzes. Results of this study support that short web-based insect identification exercises can improve insect identification performance. Also included is a discussion of how these results can be used in teaching and future research on biological identification.     

COMPARISON OF THE BECK DEPRESSION INVENTORY-II AND THE INVENTORY TO DIAGNOSE DEPRESSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE COUNSELORS

Community college counselors need to assess depressive symptoms in students and to differentiate depressive symptoms from anxiety symptoms to help them implement crisis intervention strategies. Two instruments available to the community college counselor are the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and the Inventory to Diagnose Depression (IDD). This article, which is based on the published literature, reports on and discusses the construct and discriminant validities of the BDI-II and IDD so that community college counselors may use them with knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of each instrument. Although results should be interpreted with caution, both instruments are useful in measuring the presence or absence of depressive symptoms.     

First order or higher order general factor?

The Schmid‐Leiman decomposition of a hierarchical factor model converts the model to a constrained case of a bifactor model with orthogonal common factors that is equivalent to the hierarchical model. This article discusses the equivalence and near‐equivalence of the hierarchical and bifactor models and the implications of the difficulty of distinguishing between these models because of low power in samples commonly found in academic research.     

Creating a Schoolwide Vocabulary Initiative in an Urban High School

In an effort to improve student achievement at an urban high school, teachers and administrators developed a 5-part, schoolwide vocabulary plan. Over 4 years, teachers provided students with increased opportunities to read, read to their students, developed content-specific vocabulary instruction, taught students academic words, and focused on 5 words each week with a common prefix, suffix, or root. Over the 4 years, student achievement in vocabulary and reading comprehension improved in significant ways, both on reading assessments and state achievement tests.     

Sociodemographic Inequality in Early Literacy Development: The Role of Teacher Perceptual Accuracy

Previous research has established that student learning is influenced by how accurately teachers perceive student academic ability. But studies rarely investigate the degree to which inaccuracies in teacher perceptions exacerbate demographic inequality in academic ability. Using a sample of almost 14,000 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort, we found that children whose literacy skills are overestimated by their teachers typically gain more literacy skills during kindergarten. Conversely, children whose skills are underestimated learn less. It is important to note that the skills of socioeconomically disadvantaged children are on average underestimated. As a result, inequalities in kindergarten literacy development stem in part from the links between teacher misperceptions and student background. We also explored the extent to which these relationships operate through practices associated with ability grouping. We found instructional grouping to be a weak facilitator of the link between teacher perceptions and student learning, suggesting the need for further research that identifies the social and structural classroom characteristics that link teacher perceptual accuracy to student learning.