Führen verschiedene Inspektionskonzepte zu unterschiedlicher Akzeptanz und Verwendung der Ergebnisse durch Schulleitungen und Lehrkräfte?

In the past decade, variant inspection procedures have been implemented in the German federal states, setting different priorities in terms of objectives. For example, while Bremen focused only on school improvement, Berlin and Brandenburg focused equally on school improvement and control. Considering the differences in the inspection procedures, we investigate whether the variant designs lead to differing attitudes among school principals and teachers (N = 1589) towards the inspection procedure as well as to different school improvement activities. The results show more positive attitudes towards the inspection in Bremen. In all three federal states, cooperation and participation of students and parents increased after inspection. In Berlin and Brandenburg, schools’ self-evaluations increased. In the same two federal states, school documents and curricula were updated before the inspection, while in Bremen this occurred after the inspection. Teachers’ attitudes towards the inspection are slightly more critical in comparison with school principals.     

Predictors of early versus later spelling development in Danish

The present study examined phoneme awareness, phonological short term memory, letter knowledge, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and visual–verbal paired associate learning (PAL) as longitudinal predictors of spelling skills in an early phase (Grade 2) and a later phase (Grade 5) of development in a sample of 140 children learning to spell in the opaque Danish orthography. Important features of the study were the inclusion of PAL measures and the fact that the children were followed up to Grade 5. Findings from other orthographies were replicated, in that phonological processing (awareness and memory) and RAN accounted for unique variance in early spelling skills. For later spelling skills, Grade 2 spelling was by far the most powerful predictor. PAL-nonwords was the only measure to explain additional unique variance. It is suggested that PAL-nonwords taps the ability to establish representations of new phonological forms and that this ability is important for the acquisition of orthographic spelling knowledge.     

Social influence or selection? Peer effects on the development of adolescents’ educational expectations in Germany

Abstract

Educational expectations are a key predictor of educational attainment. Throughout adolescence, friends increasingly function as ‘significant others’ and, thus, can affect the development of these expectations. Although scholars often interpret the clustering of students with similar expectations within friendship networks as the outcome of peer influence, a similarity of friends can also be a result of friendship selection processes and preselection due to ability tracking. We apply multilevel social network models to panel data of adolescents from Germany (1,992 ninth-grade students in 91 classes) to disentangle these mechanisms. Beyond selecting similar friends (homophily), we find that adolescents adapt their expectations towards the average expectations of their friends (social influence) but only in secondary-school tracks that support diverse educational paths. We conclude that peer socialization is important for the development of students’ educational expectations in contexts that are sufficiently heterogeneous to allow for the emergence of distinct peer milieus.     

Two measures of the quality of group care for infants and toddlers

Two sets of quality measures of group care were used to assess their predictive power for two sets of measures of the development of infant and toddlers in group day care. One of the quality measures we investigated was the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS). We replicated the findings of Scarr, Eisenberg, & Dealer-Deckard (1994) which were that the total score of the ECERS represents a global index and that the 37 items making up the scale are redundant and could be shortened considerably without loss of the scale as a quality criterion of group care for young children. Neither Scarr, Eisenberg, and Dealer-Deckard (1994) nor our own Factor Analyses of the 37 items supported the a priori distinction of seven Subscales. However further findings indicate that regardless of the redundancy within ECERS, two Subscales, dealing mainly with adult-child, child-child and adult-adult interactions, predict the development of infants and toddlers, but only when the measures of development were based on participant observations of the children over a longer period of time and in the broad context of the natural daycare environment. None of the Subscales, nor the total ECERS predicted social development when it was based on precise time sampling observations, assessed by non participant observers, in interactions between a child and a specific caregiver. Such measures of development were well predicted in our study by caregiver behaviors assessed through Time Sampling Observations.     

A family process model of economic hardship and adjustment of early adolescent boys.

We propose a family process model that links economic stress in family life to prosocial and problematic adolescent adjustment. Employing a sample of 205 seventh-grade boys aged 12 to 14 years (M = 12.7) and living in intact families in the rural Midwest, the theoretical constructs in the model were measured using both trained observer and family member reports. In general, results were consistent with the proposed model. Objective economic conditions such as per capita income and unstable work were related to parents' emotional status and behaviors through their perceptions of increased economic pressures such as the inability to pay monthly bills. These pressures were associated with depression and demoralization for both parents, which was related to marital conflict and disruptions in skillful parenting. Disrupted parenting mediated the relations between the earlier steps in the stress process and adolescent adjustment. The emotions and behaviors of both mothers and fathers were almost equally affected by financial difficulties, and disruptions in each parent's child-rearing behaviors had adverse consequences for adolescent development.     

Emergence and constructvalidation of the big five factors in early childhood: a longitudinal analysis of their ontogeny in Sweden

Researchers have shown that the five major dimensions of personality (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience) and two additional factors (irritability and positive activity) are evident from adolescence. This study attempted to replicate and extend these results in a longitudinal study of 102 Swedish children, followed from 2.3 to 15.2 years of age. Item analyses revealed consistently reliable irritability, conscientiousness, and positive activity factors, whereas the internal reliability of the extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience factors increased over time. Irritability and positive activity were not independent of the other factors. Scores on most of the personality factors were fairly stable over time. Over time, children became less extraverted, more agreeable, and more conscientious. Neuroticism and openness to experience increased in Phase III, although openness then decreased in Phase V. Validity of the original factors was demonstrated by correlations with independent assessments of the children's cognitive performance and adjustment to school.     

Training in interactive sports

The general purpose of this systematic review was to study the effectiveness of off-court perceptual–cognitive training interventions in nonnovice, interactive sport athletes. We looked at task-specific practice effects and, more importantly, the transfer of effects. Databases used for the literature search were PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO. In all, 16 studies were found to be eligible for this review. These studies were independently evaluated by four reviewers for methodological quality and their evidence for specific practice effects and transfer effects. The effectiveness was analyzed with respect to the level of transfer, i.?e., from training-task-specific effects to near-transfer (e.?g., a similar perceptual task), further-transfer (e.?g., a sensorimotor sports skill), and far-transfer (e.?g., competition performance) intervention effects. Analyses of the 16 included studies suggest that around 60% of the training-specific measures tested after off-court practicing perceptual–cognitive training in sports athletes signal performance enhancement. However, transfer, be it near, further or far, is mostly not studied empirically; if studied, there is currently only limited and weak evidence for intermediate and far transfer. To reason that perceptual–cognitive off-court training interventions are ineffective might be premature at this point of time as methodological quality can still be improved and only a very limited number of studies actually included transfer variables. In those few studies integrating transfer variables, results are mixed and inconsistent. Future work should focus on critical factors to assure transfer of perceptual–cognitive training interventions.     

The impact of instruction and student characteristics on the development of students’ ability to read texts with instructional pictures

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Reading texts with instructional pictures (text-picture integration) is a key component of students’ learning processes in most school subjects,...