The value of digital tutoring and accelerated expertise for military veterans

This report concerns use of a digital tutor to accelerate veterans’ acquisition of expertise and improve their preparation for the civilian workforce. As background, it briefly discusses the need to improve veterans’ employability, the technology of digital tutoring, its ability to produce advanced levels of technical expertise, and the design, development, and earlier assessment of a specific digital tutor, which motivated use of this tutor to develop veterans’ technical expertise and employability. The report describes the tutor’s use in an experimental program for veterans, an assessment of its success in preparing veterans for employment, and return on investment from its use compared to other investments in education and training.     

Patterns of participation in year 9 academic testing and factors predicting absence on the day of test

Policies aiming to improve educational outcomes are typically based on academic testing data. However, such data only reflect the performance of students who completed the tests. It is possible that students who were absent have shared characteristics. The proportion of students absent out of all eligible school students and whether they have shared characteristics has not been investigated, as this is only possible through the use of linked administrative data. Participants were born in Western Australia in 1994 and 1995, and their birth records were linked to participation status in the Year 9 academic tests to determine the proportion of students who were absent. Logistic regression was conducted to investigate characteristics which predicted absence on test day. A proportion of non-Aboriginal (3.2 %) and Aboriginal students (21.9 %) were absent on test day. Risk factors which predicted the absence included contact with Child Protection and Family Services, history of maternal mental health problems, and fathers aged below 20 years at the time of their child’s birth. A significant proportion of students was absent and therefore not represented in academic achievement information. These students were more likely to have experienced adverse events and therefore are not randomly absent. As these data are typically used to inform policies which aim to improve educational outcomes, they may lack the necessary information to adequately address the complex needs of students who are absent on test day. However, findings suggest that service providers, as well as schools may play an important role in encouraging participation in school.     

College selectivity and young adult health behaviors

Large literatures have shown important links between the quantity of completed education and health outcomes on one hand and the quality or selectivity of schooling on a host of adult outcomes, such as wages, on the other hand. However, little research attempts to produce evidence of the link between school quality and health. The paper presents the first evidence in the literature on the potential short and intermediate term effects of attending a selective college on health behaviors during and following college attendance. Using a variety of empirical methods, this paper shows strong evidence that college selectivity reduces tobacco and marijuana use but has small and possibly positive effects on binge drinking. The effects on weight behaviors are suggestive of reduced weight, potentially through diet, but not exercise change.     

The Contribution of Attentional Control and Working Memory to Reading Comprehension and Decoding

Little is known about how specific components of working memory, namely, attentional processes including response inhibition, sustained attention, and cognitive inhibition, are related to reading decoding and comprehension. The current study evaluated the relations of reading comprehension, decoding, working memory, and attentional control in 1,134 adolescent students. Path analyses were used to assess the direct and indirect effects of working memory and aspects of attentional control on reading comprehension and decoding. There were significant direct effects of working memory, sustained attention, and cognitive inhibition on reading comprehension, but not decoding. There was a significant direct effect of working memory and response inhibition on decoding, but not comprehension. These results suggest that different aspects of attentional control are important for decoding versus comprehension.     

An Experimental Evaluation of Guided Reading and Explicit Interventions for Primary-Grade Students At-Risk for Reading Difficulties

Abstract

Considerable research evidence supports the provision of explicit instruction for students at risk for reading difficulties; however, one of the most widely implemented approaches to early reading instruction is Guided Reading (GR; Fountas & Pinnel, 1996), which deemphasizes explicit instruction and practice of reading skills in favor of extended time reading text. This study evaluated the two approaches in the context of supplemental intervention for at-risk readers at the end of Grade 1. Students (n = 218) were randomly assigned to receive GR intervention, explicit intervention (EX), or typical school instruction (TSI). Both intervention groups performed significantly better than TSI on untimed word identification. Significant effects favored EX over TSI on phonemic decoding and one measure of comprehension. Outcomes for the intervention groups did not differ significantly from each other; however, an analysis of the added value of providing each intervention relative to expected growth with typical instruction indicated that EX is more likely to substantially accelerate student progress in phonemic decoding, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension than GR. Implications for selection of Tier 2 interventions within a response-to-intervention format are discussed.     

Going beyond the buzzword: what exactly is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business strategy for improving profitability by focusing on customer needs and creating an attentive relationship with the customer. It involves a personalized and interactive approach for the entire customer lifecycle. Successful implementation of a CRM approach requires changes in organization structure, culture, and skills, as well as front‐ and back‐office information systems. CRM is a hot topic at the moment, and the marketplace of ‘CRM solutions’ is rife with confusing jargon, grandiose claims, and marketing hyperbole. This article attempts to explain what CRM actually is (and isn't), and provides some suggestions for how you should approach CRM for your business.     

Stress in elite sport performers: a comparative study of competitive and organizational stressors

The purpose of this study was to compare the content and quantity of competitive and organizational stressors in elite athletes. Ten international performers were interviewed about sources of stress. Content analysis of the data involved categorizing the demands associated primarily and directly with competitive performance (#CS = 21) under the post hoc dimension "performance issues", and the demands associated primarily and directly with the sport organization (#OS = 72) under one of the following four post hoc dimensions: "environmental issues", "personal issues", "leadership issues" and "team issues". Frequency analysis revealed that the participants mentioned the competitive stressors (sigma = 95) less than the organizational stressors (sigma = 215). Further analysis within these categories showed that the mean number of participants citing individual competitive stressors (M = 4.52) was greater than the mean number of participants citing individual organizational stressors (M = 2.99). The findings indicate that elite athletes experience and recall more demands associated primarily and directly with the sport organization than with competitive performance. Furthermore, this population appears more likely to mention similar competitive stressors but varied organizational stressors, probably because the former are inherent and endemic to elite sport, whereas the latter are essentially extraneous and widely distributed.     

The knowledge gap: examining the rhetoric and implementation of peer education for HIV prevention in Myanmar

In this paper, I report on an examination of the rhetoric and implementation of peer education in Myanmar. I demonstrate that while there was widespread consistency on interviewees' views of what peer education should involve, there was a significant gap between this rhetoric and the ways in which peer education was implemented, particularly in relation to the training of peer educators. It is my argument that this gap occurred because of failure to utilise, or even recognise, a particular form of knowledge: knowledge as phronesis, which is most commonly translated as ‘practical wisdom’ and incorporates factual, emotional and experiential knowledge. Instead, as I show, the pedagogic processes in use in peer education practice in Myanmar drew on an (unexpressed) understanding of knowledge as episteme: a form of knowledge that is facts-based, technical and presumed objective.