Parenting and family socialization strategies and children's mental health: low-income Mexican-American and Euro-American mothers and children

The extent to which current theories on family-related factors associated with children's depression and conduct problems are applicable to Mexican American children was examined among demographically comparable samples of low-income Mexican American (English and Spanish speaking) and Euro-American mothers and children. There were ethnic differences in mean levels of children's depression, maternal inconsistent discipline, and hostile control. In addition, there were differences across language within the Mexican American sample on levels of reported maternal inconsistent discipline and hostile control. The vast majority of relations between parenting and mental health were similar between Mexican Americans and Euro-Americans, suggesting that current theories do apply across ethnic groups. However, analyses across language within the Mexican American sample showed that language preference moderated the relation between maternal acceptance and children's conduct problems. Moreover, the relation between acceptance and hostile control differed across groups. These results are discussed in light of the relative influence of ethnicity and other contextual variables on parenting and children's mental health.     

School Chemistry vs. Chemistry in Research: An Exploratory Experiment

This report describes a study which explores, from the out-of-school student viewpoint, why students are not studying chemistry anymore. In a 2-day stay at a research institution three groups of graduating high school students from different schools, together with their chemistry teacher, were confronted hands-on with molecular modeling in industry and in university. Each of these volunteer students had agreed to write an essay on School Chemistry Vs. Chemistry in Research. These essays were evaluated together by the students, the teacher, and the researcher in a meeting at their school. The opinion of the students show that school chemistry does not convey today's chemistry in research and in industry. At the computer screen the students demonstrated their skill in performing molecular modeling experiments. Moreover, at the computer screen, chemistry was fun and easier to understand. Now we begin to see the solution: our students are also our teachers.     

The social construction of a Teacher Support Team: an experience of university lecturers’ professional development in STEM

Abstract

This paper focuses on understanding and exploring how a group of university engineering and science tutor educators learn and assimilate new conceptions about their role in the face of the forces of globalisation that are transforming the system of higher education. This research paper adopts the notion of the Teacher Support Team (TST) as developed by Daniels and grounded in Vygotsky’s sociocultural account of the social formation of mind. These structures of meaning provide insight into the role played by the context, the interactions, the needs and the demands of actual activities, agreements and learning processes that this group of STEM lecturers undertook as they sought to transform their usual teaching methods that were focused on individual and isolated work in order to create more innovative practices and impact on their students’ performance. The analysis of this experience, which was based on the epistemological principles of the sociocultural approach, focused on the educational model that emerges from needs that are perceived and shared through the group’s interactions, as well as the transitions that such a team undergoes in its actions and decisions.     

Conceptual Mediation Program in Practice: Educational Outcomes from Two Sites

We report on two studies in which high school students who had been exposed to a cognitive training procedure known as the Conceptual Mediation Program (CMP) were compared to students who had not participated within the program. In the first study, based on data from two sites, it was found that 70 CMP students exhibited higher levels of school affect and strategy awareness than 103 comparable students not in the program. In the second study, based on retrospective data from one site, 53 students who had participated within CMP classes were found to exhibit higher levels of attainment on Year 12 South Australian public examination results (effect size of 1.04 on the aggregate). On the Year 12 examination results, the CMP students outperformed both the school and state norms.