Evaluation of a randomized intervention to delay sexual initiation among fifth-graders followed through the sixth grade

US adolescents initiate sex at increasingly younger ages, yet few pregnancy prevention interventions for children as young as 10-12 years old have been evaluated. Sixteen Washington, DC schools were randomly assigned to intervention versus control conditions. Beginning in 2001/02 with fifth-grade students and continuing during the sixth grade, students completed pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys each school year. Each year, the intervention included 10-13 classroom sessions related to delaying sexual initiation. Linear hierarchical models compared outcome changes between intervention and control groups by gender over time. Results show the intervention significantly decreased a rise over time in the anticipation of having sex in the next 12 months among intervention boys versus control boys, but it had no other outcome effects. Among girls, the intervention had no significant outcome effects. One exception is that for both genders, compared with control students, intervention students increased their pubertal knowledge. In conclusion, a school-based curriculum to delay sexual involvement among fifth-grade and sixth-grade high-risk youths had limited impact. Additional research is necessary to outline effective interventions, and more intensive, comprehensive interventions may be required to counteract adverse circumstances in students' lives and pervasive influences toward early sex.ClinicalTrials. gov identifier: NCT00341471.     

ORIENTATIONS TO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION: UNDERSTANDING THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO PD OUTCOMES ACROSS MULTIPLE PROJECTS

Given the large investment in teacher professional development (PD), further understanding of the factors that impact PD success is needed. In a previous study, the authors established a framework for categorizing PD projects using the notion of orientations. A PD orientation is comprised of project characteristics that drive the PD design and implementation for that project. In this study, we applied this orientation framework to 14 science and mathematics PD projects and examined the relationship between projects of differing orientations and PD outcomes (e.g. perceived improvement in teaching practices). The results provide support for the value of the framework and demonstrate that PD projects with different orientations exhibit differing participant outcomes. This study also provides evidence of the value of this research framework for understanding how PD implementation characteristics are related to PD outcomes, as well as points to the value of a “balanced” orientation where both content and pedagogy are addressed in equal parts.     

Creating an information-rich learning environment to enhance design student learning: challenges and approaches

The use of technology with engineering design students is well established, with shared workspaces being particularly supportive of the collaborative design process. This paper reports on a study where a design knowledge framework involving three learning loops was used to analyse the effectiveness of shared workspaces and digital repositories in supporting design education. The issues discussed include the relationship between knowledge and information structures, the importance of integrating information literacy support, and the need for different systems within the learning environment to support formal and informal storage of resources. These issues are explored within the context of experiences of working in a multidisciplinary team with different approaches, research methodologies, and discourses.     

Science and Mathematics Teachers Working Toward Equity Through Teacher Research: Tracing Changes Across Their Research Process and Equity Views

We investigated secondary science and mathematics teachers engaged in a two-and-a-half-year professional development effort focused on equity. We examined how teachers conducting research on their own instructional practices—a central learning strategy of the professional development project—informed and/or constrained their views related to three strands of equity: teachers and teaching, students and learning, and students’ families and communities. Data collected included recordings of professional development seminars and school-site meetings, three sets of individual interviews with teacher researchers, and drafts and final products of the classroom research teachers conducted. From our qualitative analyses of data, we found that most teachers addressed at least two of the three equity strands in researching their own practice. We also found that most transformed their understandings of teachers and students as a result of their teacher research process. However, teachers’ views of families and communities changed in less substantive ways. We close with recommendations for other researchers and professional developers intent on supporting science and mathematics teachers in using teacher research to work toward equity.     

Meaningfulness of a learning experience: A measure for educational outcomes in higher education

Based on assumptions derived from the humanistic education theory that (1) the learners' perceived meaningfulness of a learning experience is an important measure of the educational outcomes, and that (2) the learner is a legitimate evaluator of his own learnings, this study attempts to develop a conceptual model for the meaningfulness and value of a course of study as judged by students in higher education. The model suggests that in a course, perceived meaningfulness and value are related to the perceived learnings in the cognitive-subject matter, affective-personal, and behavioral domains.A Course Valuing Inventory based on this model has been developed and tested on 141 students, participating in 19 university courses. Testing the Inventory showed that it is reliable, and that the relationship between the perceived learnings in the course and its value are as established by the conceptual model. It was also found that the tool successfully differentiates between graduate and undergraduate students, as has been hypothesized.The study was supported in part by the Jewish Memorial Foundation.     

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.     

Early childhood family education

If they came with instructions, then you wouldn't need us reads the poster on the classroom door. It is a pleasant morning in early September and my twelve-month-old daughter, Laura, and I are going to our first day of school. Laura and I enter the infant and toddler room with anticipation.Barb Rose is a free lance writer living in St. Paul, MN, and the mother of a 2-year-old named Laura.     

Children's Gender-Based Reasoning about Toys

The goal of these studies was to investigate how preschool children use gender-based reasoning in making judgments about toy preferences for themselves and for others. In Studies 1 and 2, children ( n = 22, n = 71) were shown unfamiliar, non-sex-typed toys and asked to rate how much they, other girls, and other boys would like each toy. As expected, children made gender-based inferences: "What I like, children of my sex will also like, and children of the other sex will not like." Study 3 was designed to assess how children use gender-based reasoning to make decisions about attractive and unattractive toys when they are given gender labels. Children ( n = 91) were shown unfamiliar toys varying in attractiveness that were given explicit gender labels (e.g., "this is a toy girls really like") or no label. With a different experimenter (to avoid demand characteristics), children rated their own and others' liking of the toys. Children used gender labels to guide their own preferences and their expectations for others. Even with very attractive toys, children liked toys less if they were labeled as being for the other sex, and expected other girls and boys to do the same. The role of gender-based reasoning in cognitive theories of gender and on children's play preferences is discussed.     

Memory and Speed: Their Role in the Relation of Infant Information Processing to Later IQ

This study examined the extent to which memory and processing speed accounted for relations we had found earlier between infant information processing and childhood IQ. The measures of speed and memory were obtained when the children were 11 years of age using paper-and-pencil tasks and an extensive battery of computer-administered tasks. The relations of 7 month visual recognition memory and 1 years cross-modal transfer to 11 years IQ were both substantially reduced with statistical control of factors dericed from these measures. These results suggest that speed and memory underlie some of the infant-childhood continuities in cognition. Path and stuctural equation modeling indicated that the significant pathways from 7 month visual recognition memory to 11 year IQ were nboth directr and indirect, the indirect paths going through memory and speed.     

Relation between Physical Growth and Information Processing in Infants Born in India

The relation between physical growth and cognitive development in infants growing up in India was examined in this study. Subjects were 183 5–12-month-olds. Weight and length, two anthropometric measures commonly used to index nutritional status in developing countries, related to infant measures of visual recognition memory and tactual-visual cross-modal transfer. Underweight infants performed relatively poorly on both cognitive measures and failed to show the clear age-related improvements in speed of processing found among the heavier infants. Weight and length correlated with both measures of infant cognition, r = .25 to r = .45, as did, to a lesser degree, head circumference. Although birthweight, previous illness, and parental education were also related to development, the relations between infant growth and cognition remained significant even after these variables were statistically controlled.