General Growth Mixture Analysis of Adolescents' Developmental Trajectories of Anxiety: The Impact of Untested Invariance Assumptions on Substantive Interpretations

Substantively, this study investigates potential heterogeneity in the developmental trajectories of anxiety in adolescence. Methodologically, this study demonstrates the usefulness of general growth mixture analysis (GGMA) in addressing these issues and illustrates the impact of untested invariance assumptions on substantive interpretations. This study relied on data from the Montreal Adolescent Depression Development Project (MADDP), a 4-year follow-up of more than 1,000 adolescents who completed the Beck Anxiety Inventory each year. GGMA models relying on different invariance assumptions were empirically compared. Each of these models converged on a 5-class solution, but yielded different substantive results. The model with class-varying variance–covariance matrices was retained as providing a better fit to the data. These results showed that although elevated levels of anxiety might fluctuate over time, they clearly do not represent a transient phenomenon. This model was then validated in relation to multiple predictors (mostly related to school violence) and outcomes (grade-point average, school dropout, depression, loneliness, and drug-related problems).     

Disentangling Shape from Level Effects in Person-Centered Analyses: An Illustration Based on University Teachers’ Multidimensional Profiles of Effectiveness

This study compares alternative ways of disentangling the effects of level (the tendency for a person to be high, medium, or low across all factors) and shape (the tendency for a person to have a distinct pattern of factors on which they are high, medium, or low) in profile analyses. This issue is particularly relevant to performance appraisals where it is often useful to identify specific strengths and weaknesses over and above a person global performance, but also to person-centered analyses more generally where the observation of qualitative (shape) differences between profiles is often used as justification for the added value of profiles. Substantively, this study illustrates these issues in the identification of profiles of teachers based on multidimensional students’ ratings of their effectiveness, using an archival data set of 31,951 class-average ratings based on the Students’ Evaluations of Educational Quality (SEEQ) instrument collected over a 13-year period. The results show the superiority of a factor mixture operationalization of teaching effectiveness in which a global effectiveness factor was used to control for unnecessary level effects in the profiles.     

Preschool Teachers' Beliefs About Appropriate Early Literacy and Mathematics Education for Low- and Middle-Socioeconomic Status Children

This study explored preschool teachers' beliefs about the appropriateness of early literacy and mathematics education. In all, 60 teachers of 4-year-olds, half working with low-socioeconomic status (SES) children at publicly funded preschools and the other half with middle-SES children at private preschools, were randomly assigned to read either the mathematics or the literacy versions of written vignettes describing issues related to teaching these subjects. Teachers were interviewed individually concerning the vignettes. Analyses showed that teachers of middle-SES children tended to support literacy and mathematics education that respects individual children and their preferences and to oppose classroom use of computers; overall they emphasized nonacademic areas. Teachers of low-SES children tended to focus on literacy and mathematics to prepare children for kindergarten and to support computer use; they showed concern about their students' underdeveloped readiness to learn, particularly literacy. Analyses comparing subject matter showed that for literacy, teachers preferred to gear a curriculum toward children's interests and to allow children to follow their interests in a literacy-rich classroom to promote social competence and positive dispositions toward literacy. For mathematics, teachers preferred to embed mathematics into everyday routines to promote the learning of key knowledge and skills throughout the day. These findings have significant implications for professional development.     

The Big-fish–little-pond-effect Stands Up to Critical Scrutiny: Implications for Theory, Methodology, and Future Research

The big-fish–little-pond effect (BFLPE) predicts that equally able students have lower academic self-concepts (ASCs) when attending schools where the average ability levels of classmates is high, and higher ASCs when attending schools where the school-average ability is low. BFLPE findings are remarkably robust, generalizing over a wide variety of different individual student and contextual level characteristics, settings, countries, long-term follow-ups, and research designs. Because of the importance of ASC in predicting future achievement, coursework selection, and educational attainment, the results have important implications for the way in which schools are organized (e.g., tracking, ability grouping, academically selective schools, and gifted education programs). In response to Dai and Rinn (Educ. Psychol. Rev., 2008), we summarize the theoretical model underlying the BFLPE, minimal conditions for testing the BFLPE, support for its robust generalizability, its relation to social comparison theory, and recent research extending previous implications, demonstrating that the BFLPE stands up to scrutiny. Quotations (associated page numbers) to the Dai and Rinn (2008) article are based on a prepublication version of the article available to the authors of this article that may have changed during the final preparation for publication. The authors would also like to express thanks to David Dai and Anne Rinn for their encouragement and assistance to us in preparation of our article, whilst still acknowledging that they might not agree will all the views expressed here.