The effects of contingency avoidance on programmed student achievement

If it is assumed that student failure in the classroom situation is the result of inadequate performance skills rather than a lack of ability, then the attention of the educator should more properly be directed at teaching the student to develop effective methods of studying. The present experiment employed a Programmed Student Achievement (PA) procedure which required that the student evidence 100% mastery of discrete units of material. Two PA contingencies which differed in the intensity of the consequence of failing to evidence mastery were used, testing the hypothesis that the PA effect is analogous to avoidance conditioning. In addition, generalization of the effect of PA on performance in courses taken concurrently was evaluated. The performance of PA students was found to be significantly superior to that of control students on both weekly quizzes and major exams; however, performance under the two experimental contingencies did not differ. Additionally, the PA effect did not generalize to performance in other courses. The implication of these data for an avoidance hypothesis account of the PA effect is discussed.     

Perceptions of sleep duration,patterns and emotional and behavioural difficulties: a study of Greek adolescents

The study investigated adolescent students’ perceptions of sleep duration and patterns, and the way they relate to emotional and behavioural difficulties. Five hundred and two students from public schools in Greece completed the Sleep Questionnaire and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). It was demonstrated that consistency in sleep duration and quality in sleep patterns were associated with a reduction in adolescents’ reports of emotional and behavioural difficulties. Sleep duration was similarly distributed across gender, while sleep patterns were gender‐specific. Distinct differential effects of gender, sleep duration and patterns to adolescents’ emotional and behavioural difficulties were also found. These findings and their implications for research and practice are discussed, within the scope of the biopsychosocial framework in education.     

Cognitive and environmental predictors of early literacy skills

Not all young children benefit from book exposure in preschool age. It is claimed that the ability to hold information in mind (short-term memory), to ignore distraction (inhibition), and to focus attention and stay focused (sustained attention) may have a moderating effect on children’s reactions to the home literacy environment. In a group of 228 junior kindergarten children with a native Dutch background, with a mean age of 54.29 months (SD = 2.12 months), we explored therefore the relationship between book exposure, cognitive control and early literacy skills. Parents filled in a HLE questionnaire (book sharing frequency and an author recognition checklist as indicator of parental leisure reading habits), and children completed several tests in individual sessions with the researcher (a book-cover recognition test, PPVT, letter knowledge test, the subtests categories and patterns of the SON, and cognitive control measures namely digit span of the KABC, a peg tapping task and sustained attention of the ANT). Main findings were: (1) Children’s storybook knowledge mediated the relationship between home literacy environment and literacy skills. (2) Both vocabulary and letter knowledge were predicted by book exposure. (3) Short-term memory predicted vocabulary over and above book exposure. (4) None of the cognitive control mechanisms moderated the beneficial effects of book exposure.     

On the evaluation of systemic science education reform: Searching for instructional sensitivity

We propose a multilevel‐multifaceted approach to evaluating the impact of education reform on student achievement that would be sensitive to context and small treatment effects. The approach uses different assessments based on their proximity to the enacted curriculum. Immediate assessments are artifacts (students' products) from the enactment of the curriculum; close assessments parallel the content and activities of the unit/curriculum; proximal assessments tap knowledge and skills relevant to the curriculum, but topics can be different; and distal assessments reflect state/national standards in a particular knowledge domain. To provide evidence about the sensitivity of the multilevel approach in ascertaining outcomes of hands‐on science programs we administered close, proximal, and distal performance assessments to evaluate the impact of instruction based on two Full Option Science System units—Variables, and Mixtures and Solutions—in a Bay Area school district. Results indicated that close assessments were more sensitive to the changes in students' pre‐ to post‐test performance than proximal assessments. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 369–393, 2002     

Teachers' concerns regarding the adoption of a new mathematics curriculum: An application of CBAM

The main purpose of the present study was to identify and examine the concerns of primary school teachers in Cyprus in relation to the recent implementation of a new mathematics curriculum and the use of new mathematics textbooks. An adaptation of the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) based on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) was administered to a representative sample of teachers. According to the findings, the concerns of teachers largely focused on the task stage of the CBAM model. Furthermore, there were significant differences in the concerns of teachers across years of teaching experience but not across years of implementation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Differential supervision and cognitive structure effects on empathy and counseling effectiveness

The present study investigated the effects of didactic and experiential supervision procedures on the judged counseling effectiveness of high and low cognitive complexity counselor trainees. Subjects in the two supervision groups (N=16) were trained in attending, questioning, and reflection of feeling over three sessions. Training consisted of exposure to videotaped counseling models, discussion of the model's behavior with the supervisor, videotaped role playing of therapy, and discussion of the therapy with the supervisor. Training was exactly the same for both groups except for supervision. A control group (N=8) did not receive any training. All subjects, including controls, were pre- and post-tested for counseling effectiveness as measured by judged tape ratings on the 25-item Counselor Effectiveness Scale and four scales designed to assess affective, exploratory, listening, and honest labeling responses.High complex subjects responsed more favorably to the didactic supervision significantly outperforming both the high complex controls and the low complex didactic subjects on four of the five dependent measures, whereas high and low complex subjects did not respond differentially to the experiential supervision. The results were discussed in terms of fitting the complexity of the students to the supervision approach in selecting students for counseling programs.This paper was presented at the International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling, Thessaloniki, Greece, April 1980, and was based partly on the senior author's doctoral disser tation (University of Maine, 1978).     

Phonological awareness and reading speed deficits in reading disabled Greek‐speaking children

There is evidence that phonological awareness skills secure decoding ability and that phonological deficits underlie failure to acquire adequate word recognition. Slow word‐reading rate may be an additional defining characteristic of reading disability. The present study aimed to investigate whether: (1) reading disabled (RD) Greek‐speaking children showed reading accuracy and reading speed deficits relative to chronological age‐matched controls (CAC) and reading age‐matched controls (RAC); (2) they showed phonological deficits relative to the two control groups who do not present reading difficulties; and (3) they showed reading comprehension deficits over and above any word reading deficits.

Results suggested that the reading accuracy of the RD group was predictably weaker than that of the CAC group but equivalent to that of the RAC group. However, the reading speed of the RD group was significantly slower than the RAC group, who showed the same single word reading speed as the CAC group.

Slow and laboured decoding was found to compromise the reading comprehension of the RD group, whose listening comprehension performance was as good as the two other groups. The RD children performed poorly on phonological awareness tasks and naming speed. Naming speed was not an independent core feature of reading difficulties in the Greek language but was associated with a general phonological deficit.

It is recommended that diagnostic assessments for children with reading difficulties in Greek should include phonological awareness, single word reading and pseudoword reading tasks that measure both accuracy and speed.     

Using kindergarten number sense to predict calculation fluency in second grade

Children's number sense in kindergarten was used to predict their calculation fluency in second grade (N = 198). Using block entry regression, usual predictors of age, reading, memory, and verbal and spatial cognition were entered in the first block and number sense measures were added in the second block. Number sense measures contributed a significant amount of variance over and above the more general predictors (26%-42%). Uniquely predictive subareas were active memory for numbers, number knowledge, and number combinations, with number combinations standing out as the strongest single predictor. Number sense screening in kindergarten, using "at-risk" versus "not-at-risk" criteria, successfully ruled out 84% of the children who did not go on to have calculation fluency difficulties and positively identified 52% of the children who later showed fluency difficulties. The relation of early number skills to later calculation fluency has important implications for math screening and intervention.     

The Virtual University of the Monterrey Technical Institute

The creation and the achievements of the Virtual University of Monterrey Tech (Instituto Tecnolo´gico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey) in Mexico are briefly described. Monterrey Tech itself, which was founded in 1943, has had a vocation going back a number of years to offer distance education on a number of satellite campuses. The Virtual University was founded in 1996 to carry on the distance education vocation of the institution as a whole in Mexico and in other Latin American countries with the use of the new information and communications technologies (ICTs). The Virtual University is particularly active in the domain of community education, teacher retraining, in-company training programmes, and in the offer of training for Mexican state and local officials. Although a private entity, the Virtual University and its parent organization, Monterrey Tech, are firmly committed to the public development of Mexico.     

Empowering visuo-spatial ability in primary school: results from a follow-up study

The current study was primarily aimed at verifying the effect of a combined computer-assisted and pencil-and-paper training that was developed to empower visuo-spatial abilities in primary school pupils. One hundred and twenty third grade (mean average: eight years old) and fourth grade (mean age: nine years old) students attending several Italian primary schools were presented with several tests of the Primary Mental Abilities (PMA) battery by Thurstone and Thurstone. Of these, 64 children underwent the training “Recovery in visuo-spatial abilities” developed by Fastame and Antonini for 15 weekly sessions. The remaining students were assigned to the control group. Post-test scores and a follow-up assessment after six months by the end of the training highlight the positive impact of the intervention in enhancing visuo-spatial abilities.