High-Ability Grouping: Benefits for Gifted Students’ Achievement Development Without Costs in Academic Self-Concept

Effects of full-time ability grouping on students’ academic self-concept (ASC) and mathematics achievement were investigated in the first 3 years of secondary school (four waves of measurement; students’ average age at first wave: 10.5 years). Students were primarily from middle and upper class families living in southern Germany. The study sample comprised 148 (60% male) students from 14 gifted classes and 148 (57% male) students from 25 regular classes (matched by propensity score matching). Data analyses involved multilevel and latent growth curve analyses. Findings revealed no evidence for contrast effects of class-average achievement or assimilation effects of class type on students’ ASC. ASC remained stable over time. Students in gifted classes showed higher achievement gains than students in regular classes.     

Development of Gender Typicality and Felt Pressure in European French and North African French Adolescents

Trajectories of gender identity were examined from Grade 6 (M_age = 11.9 years) to Grade 9 in European French (n = 570) and North African French (n = 534) adolescents, and gender and ethnic group differences were assessed in these trajectories. In Grade 6, boys of both ethnic groups reported higher levels of gender typicality and felt pressure for gender conformity than girls. European French girls and boys and North African French girls reported decreasing gender typicality from Grade 6 to Grade 9, whereas North African French boys did not change. Felt pressure decreased among girls, did not change in European French boys, and increased in North African French boys. Ethnic and gender differences in gender identity development are discussed.     

The “Indefinite Discipline” of Competitiveness Benchmarking as a Neoliberal Technology of Government

Minerva - Working on the assumption that ideas are embedded in socio-technical arrangements which actualize them, this essay sheds light on the way the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) achieves...     

Early Childhood Educators’ Perceptions of Their Emotional State,Relationships with Parents,Challenges, and Opportunities During the Early Stage of the Pandemic

Early Childhood Education Journal - This article presents a study about the impact of COVID-19 on childcare center educators in Quebec (Canada). Regulated childcare services were closed...     

Hanging tough: post-PhD researchers dealing with career uncertainty

ABSTRACT

This study examines the impact of career uncertainty on post-PhD researchers’ experiences. Drawing on an identity-trajectory approach and a qualitative design, we analysed experiences of post-PhDs from the UK and Switzerland. Our findings show that in the course of their work experiences, career uncertainty takes two different forms: intellectual uncertainty and occupational uncertainty. On a daily basis, both forms strongly impact the participants’ work and personal lives and can limit their ability to plan for the future, restrict their developing research expertise and networks and induce tension in trying to reconcile work and personal lives. While often struggling with a blurred institutional status, participants ‘hang tough’ despite their uncertain situation, notably by clinging to the academic researcher identity. Contributing to the previous work on the increasing casualisation of post-PhD positions and the resulting challenges, our study offers new insights into how different aspects of career uncertainty influence post-PhDs’ work and identity.     

War-related trauma linked to increased sustained attention to threat in children

Experiences of war and displacement can have profound effects on children's affective development and mental health, although the mechanism(s) underlying these effects remain unknown. This study investigated the link between early adversity and attention to affective stimuli using a free-viewing eye-tracking paradigm with Syrian refugee (n = 31, M_age = 9.55, 12 female) and Jordanian non-refugee (n = 55, M_age = 9.98, 30 female) children living in Jordan (March 2020). Questionnaires assessed PTSD, anxiety/depression, insecurity, distress, and trauma. Refugee children showed greater initial avoidance of angry and happy faces compared to non-refugee children, and higher trauma exposure was linked to increased sustained attention to angry stimuli. These findings suggest that war-related trauma may have differential effects on the early and later stages of affective processing in refugee children.     

What makes them leave? A path model of postdocs’ intentions to leave academia

A growing number of postdoctoral academics cite stressful working conditions for considering abandoning their studies and leaving the academic profession entirely before they obtain a tenured position. This paper identifies the mechanisms by which work stress influences postdocs’ intentions to leave academia. Based on Schaubroeck et al.’s (1989) stress-turnover-intention model, we propose a professional turnover-intention model that includes both the effort-reward imbalance model as a comprehensive measure of work stress and affective professional commitment. The research model is tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) and data from 421 postdocs. The results show significant support for the hypothesized effects. In particular, a three-path-mediated effect is found from work stress to the intention to leave academia via strain and job satisfaction. Additional analyses reveal significant gender differences: The relationship between overcommitment and strain is stronger for female postdocs than it is for male postdocs, and the direct link between work stress and the intention to leave academia applies only to female postdocs. Further, job satisfaction fully mediates the relationship between affective professional commitment and the intention to leave academia. Thus, we provide a model on an academics’ professional turnover intention that goes beyond previous research by incorporating two important mediators, strain and job satisfaction. We also confirm the relevance of affective professional commitment to professional turnover intentions in the realm of academia. Specific policy recommendations for retaining more postdocs in academia are given.     

Confidence sharing in the vocational counselling interview: emergence and repercussions

Confidence sharing is an asymmetrical dialogic episode to which both parties consent, in which one reveals something personal to the other who participates in the emergence and unfolding of the confidence. We describe how this is achieved at a discursive level within vocational counselling interviews. Based on a corpus of 64 interviews, we analyse the disclosure of confidences and the discursive procedures allowing their expression, the way the interactants manage the situation and the repercussions on the counselling interview.     

Children Explain the Rainbow: Using Young Children’s Ideas to Guide Science Curricula

This study examines young children’s ideas about natural science phenomena and explores possibilities in starting investigations in kindergarten from their ideas. Given the possibilities inherent in how young children make sense of their experiences, we believe it is critical to take children’s perspectives into consideration when designing any activities, and ideally, to design activities from their perspectives and understandings. Specifically, this research focuses on 5- and 6-year old children’s explanations of rainbows, and there are three main findings. First, our analysis demonstrates that opportunities to discuss their ideas revealed children’s different perceptions of the phenomena of rainbows. Secondly, this research emphasizes that peer-to-peer interaction in the co-construction of science concepts provided support to the children to learn from, and with, each other. Third, children’s initial explanations provided the teacher-researcher (second author) with a starting point to scaffold her teaching from. Although rainbows are quite an abstract topic to try to reproduce in the classroom, the children demonstrated their often sophisticated understandings of natural science phenomena, as well as their creative ideas as related to rainbows. In order to foster an appreciation of themes in natural science, it is crucial to build from what children already know and can do, and to use these emergent theories and considerations in designing curriculum. Thus, we draw implications for the importance of teaching science at the early childhood level and for using children’s ideas as starting points in planning instruction.