Sleep,Classroom Behavior,and Achievement Among Children of Color in Historically Disinvested Neighborhoods

Children of color are more likely to have poor sleep health than White children, placing them at risk for behavioral problems in the classroom and lower academic performance. Few studies, however, have utilized standardized measures of both classroom behavior and achievement. This study examined whether children’s sleep (parent and teacher report) in first grade concurrently related to independent observations of classroom behavior and longitudinally predicted achievement test scores in second grade in a sample of primarily Black (86%) children (n = 572; age = 6.8) living in historically disinvested neighborhoods. Higher teacher-reported child sleepiness was associated with lower adaptive behaviors and higher problem behaviors in the classroom, and predicted lower achievement. Parent-reported bedtime resistance and disordered breathing also predicted lower achievement.     

Creating a responsive curriculum for postgraduates: lessons from a case in Ghana

A responsive curriculum addresses the changing needs of students, bridging the gap between universal knowledge and theories on one hand and contextual, continuously changing realities of everyday life and the world of work, on the other. Though several higher education institutions appreciate the value of making curriculum responsive, how to do this remains a challenge. This paper first identified unique attributes of responsive curriculum development based on literature and assessed their manifestation in the creation of a new Masters curriculum in natural resource and environmental governance in Ghana. The role of actors within and outside academia and its implications, were also investigated. The study was designed as participatory action research. Key process attributes identified include, among others, iteration, built-in learning within the curriculum development process, and the contribution of actors from outside academia to curriculum design and implementation. The study also shows the important role of the so-called champion of the process and the expert facilitators. The paper does not seek to provide a blue-print but rather provides a valuable example for future initiatives at creating curriculum that better responds to current needs of students.     

“I Just Love Black People!”: Love,Pleasure, and Critical Pedagogy in Urban Teacher Education

With concern to critical pedagogy, the concept of love is fairly frequently (ab)used, yet under-theorized. In this exploratory study, I ask: How does a critical pedagogy of love—or critical pedagogical love—look, sound, and feel? Regarding feeling, how does a critical pedagogue engage the sensations of pleasure attendant to love? Lastly, how does the pedagogue invite love and pleasure into the pain-filled field of urban teacher education? Using Black feminist theorizing of love as an analytic filter, I investigate a university-based urban teacher educator’s navigation of the nexus of love, pleasure, and critical (specifically, antiracist) pedagogy. Extrapolating from the resultant narrative portrait, I consider the affordances of a critical pedagogy of love that accesses embodied pleasure, emphasizing how such a pedagogy might present racially marginalized persons—particularly urban teacher educators of Color—with opportunities for reprieve from the suffering that characterizes many of our experiences with/in teacher education.

     

From preschool teachers’ professional development to children’s knowledge: comparing sets

Recently, there have been increased calls for enhancing preschool children’s mathematics knowledge along with increasing calls for preparing preschool teachers to meet the demands of new preschool mathematics curricula. This article describes the professional development program Starting Right: Mathematics in Preschools. Focusing on four episodes that revolve around the topic of equivalent sets, it demonstrates how engaging preschool teachers with challenging tasks may promote their subject matter knowledge as well as their pedagogical content knowledge, leading to an interweaving of knowledge and practice. Assessment of the program included assessing the children’s knowledge. Results indicated that students of participating teachers learned to be more flexible and to give more possible answers than students of non-participating teachers.     

Stressful Effects of a University Faculty Strike on Students: Implications for Coping

This study examines university students' psychological reactions to a two-month faculty strike at a large Canadian university. Of particular interest were relationships between students' experience of angry feelings (state anger) about the strike and perceptions of the extent to which the strike had affected their plans involving important planned life experiences such as graduation, travel, and employment. The role of social support from the internet during the strike in alleviating the intensity of angry feelings was also investigated. Data were collected using an anonymous self-report questionnaire administered a few days after the labour dispute was settled. A total of 289 college students completed the questionnaire. Hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted with variables entered as blocks and with state anger and anxiety as dependent variables. The first block of variables entered were individual variables such as age and year of study. The second block included average ratings of the extent to which plans were affected by the strike and how fairly students felt they had been treated. The third block of variables included social support from the internet and self-efficacy. The fourth block was the interaction between internet support and sex. With anger as the dependent variable, results showed that the more unfairly students felt they were treated during the strike and the more their plans had been affected by the strike, the greater their anger. Support provided to students from the internet predicted to lower anger. Further regression results indicated that the more students' plans had been affected by the strike, the greater their anxiety. Higher self-efficacy in students contributed to lower anxiety. Implications of the results are discussed within a social context, particularly the importance of studying how individual and social resources can reduce distress resulting from an interruption of students' academic plans due to a strike.     

Scaling up successfully: Lessons from Kenya’s Tusome national literacy program

Many successful piloted programs fail when scaled up to a national level. In Kenya, which has a long history of particularly ineffective implementation after successful pilot programs, the Tusome national literacy program—which receives funding from the United States Agency for International Development—is a national-level scale-up of previous literacy and numeracy programs. We applied a scaling framework (Crouch and DeStefano in Doing reform differently: combining rigor and practicality in implementation and evaluation of system reforms. International development group working paper no. 2017-01, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC, 2017. https://www.rti.org/publication/doing-reform-differently-combining-rigor-and-practicality-implementation-and-evaluation) to examine whether Tusome’s implementation was rolled out in ways that would enable government structures and officers to respond effectively to the new program. We found that Tusome was able to clarify expectations for implementation and outcomes nationally using benchmarks for Kiswahili and English learning outcomes, and that these expectations were communicated all the way down to the school level. We noted that the essential program inputs were provided fairly consistently, across the nation. In addition, our analyses showed that Kenya developed functional, if simple, accountability and feedback mechanisms to track performance against benchmark expectations. We also established that the Tusome feedback data were utilized to encourage greater levels of instructional support within Kenya’s county level structures for education quality support. The results indicated that several of the key elements for successful scale-up were therefore put in place. However, we also discovered that Tusome failed to fully exploit the available classroom observational data to better target instructional support. In the context of this scaling framework, the Tusome literacy program’s external evaluation results showed program impacts of 0.6–1.0 standard deviations on English and Kiswahili learning outcomes. The program implemented a functional classroom observational feedback system through existing government systems, although usage of those systems varied widely across Kenya. Classroom visits, even if still falling short of the desired rate, were far more frequent, were focused on instructional quality, and included basic feedback and advice to teachers. These findings are promising with respect to the ability of countries facing quality problems to implement a coherent instructional reform through government systems at scale.     

The Relative Merits of Explicit and Implicit Learning of Contrasted Algebra Principles

Knowledge representations that result from practicing problem solving can be expected to differ from knowledge representations that emerge from explicit verbalizing of principles and rules. We examined the degree to which the two types of learning improve problem-solving knowledge and verbal explanation knowledge in classroom instruction. We presented algebraic addition and multiplication problems to 153 sixth graders randomly assigned to two conditions. Students in the explicit learning condition had to verbally compare contrasted algebra problems. Students in the implicit learning condition had to generate and solve new problems. On three follow-up tests over 10 weeks, students in the explicit learning condition exhibited better problem-solving knowledge than students in the implicit learning condition, as well as some advantages in verbal concept knowledge. Implicit learning showed some advantages on not directly taught but incidentally learned aspects. Overall, this outcome favors the explicit learning of concepts. Explicit comparison fostered student performance on non-verbal and verbal measures, indicating that verbalization facilitates effective comparison.     

Asymmetries in Infant Cross-Modal Transfer

3 groups of 12-month-olds were tested for cross-modal and intramodal transfer of information about shape. Infants were given either visual (V) or tactual (T) familiarization and then tested for visual recognition (V-V, T-V) or tactual recognition (T-T, V-T). Transfer was tested after either 15, 30, or 60 sec familiarization. Overall, intramodal transfer was superior to cross-modal transfer. Whereas the V-V condition was easiest of all, the T-T condition proved easier than V-T cross-modal transfer, although it was no more difficult than T-V transfer; cross-modal asymmetries appeared, with T-V easier than V-T. The asymmetry in cross-modal transfer could not be explained by intramodal factors. Possible bases for cross-modal asymmetries were discussed.     

Comparing Multilevel and Classical Confirmatory Factor Analysis Parameterizations of Multirater Data: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study

This simulation study assesses the statistical performance of two mathematically equivalent parameterizations for multitrait–multimethod data with interchangeable raters—a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a classical CFA parameterization. The sample sizes of targets and raters, the factorial structure of the trait factors, and rater missingness are varied. The classical CFA approach yields a high proportion of improper solutions under conditions with small sample sizes and indicator-specific trait factors. In general, trait factor related parameters are more sensitive to bias than other types of parameters. For multilevel CFAs, there is a drastic bias in fit statistics under conditions with unidimensional trait factors on the between level, where root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and χ2 distributions reveal a downward bias, whereas the between standardized root mean square residual is biased upwards. In contrast, RMSEA and χ2 for classical CFA models are severely upwardly biased in conditions with a high number of raters and a small number of targets.