Engaging White parents to address their White children's racial biases in the Black-White context

Multiple studies (n = 1065 parents, 625 females, 437 males, 3 nonbinary, 99.06% White; n = 80, 5 to 7-year-old children, 35 girls, 45 boys, 87.50% White; data collection September 2017–January 2021) investigated White U.S. parents' thinking about White children's Black-White racial biases. In Studies 1–3, parents reported that their own and other children would not express racial biases. When predicting children's social preferences for Black and White children (Study 2), parents underestimated their own and other children's racial biases. Reading an article about the nature, prevalence, and consequences of White children's racial biases (Study 3) increased parents' awareness of, concern about, and motivation to address children's biases (relative to a control condition). The findings have implications for engaging White parents to address their children's racial biases.     

Educational equity,academic standards,and countercontrol: Preventing academic deficits with supplemental interdependent rewards

School psychologists have been involved with developing and installing individual contingencies designed to remedy individual students' academic deficits. Group-oriented contingencies can be applied to broader efforts designed to prevent learning problems class-wide. Independent group-oriented rewards are frequently used in school settings to enhance learning by rewarding strong academic performance (e.g., reward for each student who maintains a 90% average). Research suggests overreliance on these contingencies may not be educationally equitable because they may be less effective or ineffective in influencing the behavior and learning of students with weaker academic skills. Theoretical and applied research is analyzed which suggests that maintaining ubiquitous independent rewards and providing supplemental interdependent group-oriented bonus rewards may allow educators to a) maintain their academic standards, b) enhance educational equity by improving learning in students who may not respond to typical independent group-oriented rewards, and c) enhance classroom climates. Also, recommendations are provided that may allow educators to mitigate concerns over perceived unfairness associated with interdependent group-oriented rewards.     

Isolationism,exceptionalism, and acculturation: the internationalisation of Mormon education in Mexico

Faiths have long used education as a means to preserve and transmit cultural values from one generation to the next. However, they have also employed education to unite people of different cultures and proselytise others to their worldview. Over the last two centuries, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Latter-day Saint, LDS, or Mormon) has exercised these same patterns in its educational programmes, especially internationally, as it has sought to expand around the world. Using Mormonism's Juárez Academy in northern Mexico as a historical case study, our paper demonstrates how transnationally governed religion-led school systems can confront the challenge of exceptionalism by embracing local culture and customs while maintaining the heritage of their faith tradition. The study advances the field of international education, highlighting the issues of globalisation, cultural transfer, and transnational educational governance.     

Is It the Intervention or the Students? Using Linear Regression to Control for Student Characteristics in Undergraduate STEM Education Research

Although researchers in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education are currently using several methods to analyze learning gains from pre- and posttest data, the most commonly used approaches have significant shortcomings. Chief among these is the inability to distinguish whether differences in learning gains are due to the effect of an instructional intervention or to differences in student characteristics when students cannot be assigned to control and treatment groups at random. Using pre- and posttest scores from an introductory biology course, we illustrate how the methods currently in wide use can lead to erroneous conclusions, and how multiple linear regression offers an effective framework for distinguishing the impact of an instructional intervention from the impact of student characteristics on test score gains. In general, we recommend that researchers always use student-level regression models that control for possible differences in student ability and preparation to estimate the effect of any nonrandomized instructional intervention on student performance.     

Use of Social Emotional Learning Skills to Predict Future Academic Success and Progress Toward Graduation

This study evaluated the degree to which a range of social emotional learning skills—academic self-efficacy, academic motivation, social connections, importance of school, and managing psychological and emotional distress and academic stress— could be used as an indicator of future academic outcomes. Using a sample of 4,797 from a large urban school district, we found that high school students classified as performing in the lowest 25% of their grade reported lower social emotional skills than students classified in the top 25% of academic performers by the end of the 8th grade. Two variables, perceived importance of attending college and psychological and physical stress, accounted for nearly 26% of the variance in cumulative high school GPA after controlling for 9th-grade GPA. Finally, the results indicated that a combination of 5 social emotional learning subscales effectively discriminated between students making positive progress towards high school graduation and those identified as having dropped out of or failed more than 14% of their courses.     

The Cobbler's Children: Improving Performance Improvement at Amerigroup

A team of performance consultants at Amerigroup applied their chosen human performance technology (HPT) methodology, Six Boxes^® Performance Thinking, to define their own performance, identify improvement opportunities, and build performance infrastructure in the form of clearer expectations and regular feedback, better processes and tools, and more relevant consequences, all while developing their own skills and knowledge and conducting client projects using the methodology. This article summarizes the context, process, and accomplishments to date, along with the lessons learned from this ongoing effort.     

Electronic Textbooks: Antecedents of Students’ Adoption and Learning Outcomes

Faculty and students are increasingly faced with the opportunity to use electronic versions of textbooks (e‐texts). Despite the advantages of e‐texts and recent advances in technology, evidence suggests that students are still reluctant to adopt and use e‐texts. This situation leads us to investigate two research questions: What factors contribute to students’ acceptance of e‐texts? Are there differences between hardcopy texts and e‐texts when it comes to course grade? We draw on a variety of perspectives (i.e., psychology, management information systems, economics, environmental studies) to build a framework that allows us to determine the motivations of students for adopting e‐texts, and the learning outcomes of e‐text adoption. Data was collected via a survey administered in the business school of a metropolitan university with approximately 20,000 students, located in the western United States. Results suggest that perceived ease‐of‐use and the price of e‐texts relative to hardcopy texts are two key motivators in e‐text adoption, while perceived usefulness, Internet self‐efficacy and environmental concerns are not significant motivators. However, there was no significant difference in the grades of e‐text adopters compared to hardcopy adopters. We conclude this paper by discussing the implications of our findings for educators.     

Resurgence of instrumental behavior after an abstinence contingency

In resurgence, an extinguished instrumental behavior (R1) recovers when a behavior that has replaced it (R2) is also extinguished. The phenomenon may be relevant to understanding relapse that can occur after the termination of “contingency management” treatments, in which an unwanted behavior (e.g., substance abuse) is reduced by reinforcing an alternative behavior. When reinforcement is discontinued, the unwanted behavior might resurge. However, unlike most resurgence experiments, contingency management treatments also introduce a negative contingency, in which reinforcers are not delivered unless the client has abstained from the unwanted behavior. In two experiments with rats, we therefore examined the effects of adding a negative “abstinence” contingency to the resurgence design. During response elimination, R2 was not reinforced unless R1 had not been emitted for a minimum period of time (45, 90, or 135 s). In both experiments, adding such a contingency to simple R1 extinction reduced, but did not eliminate, resurgence. In Experiment 2, we found the same effect in a yoked group that could earn reinforcers for R2 at the same points in time as the negative-contingency group, but without the requirement to abstain from R1. Thus, the negative contingency per se did not contribute to the reduction in resurgence. These results suggest that the contingency reduced resurgence by making reinforcers more difficult to earn and more widely spaced in time. This could have allowed the animal to learn that R1 was extinguished in the “context” of infrequent reinforcement—a context more like that of resurgence testing. The results are thus consistent with a contextual (renewal) account of resurgence. The method might provide a better model of relapse after termination of a contingency management treatment.     

Scapulohumeral kinematic assessment of the forward kayak stroke in experienced whitewater kayakers

By understanding the normal humeral and scapular kinematics during the kayak stroke, inferences about the relationship of kayaking technique and shoulder injury may be established. The purpose of this study was to describe scapular and humeral kinematics and to compare dominant versus nondominant symmetry in healthy whitewater kayakers performing the forward stroke. Twenty-five competent whitewater kayakers (mean age: 34.1 +/- 9.4 years, mean height: 1.768 +/- 0.093m, mean mass: 78.2 +/- 13.0 kg) underwent humeral and scapular kinematic assessment, using an electromagnetic tracking device, while kayaking on a kayak ergometer. Paired t-tests were used to determine symmetry. Scapular and humeral kinematic means and standard deviations at six time points during the kayak stroke were described. Scapular and humeral kinematics were shown to be similar upon bilateral comparison. The greatest potential for injury during the forward stroke may be at thrust paddle shaft vertical when the humerus is maximally elevated in internal rotation and adduction as subacromial structures may be mechanically impinged. The relationship between scapulohumeral kinematics related to injury at other time points are also described.