Organization of Concepts Relevant to Emotions and their Regulation During Test Taking

The purpose of this study was to assess aspects of college students' organization of concepts related to emotions and their regulation during test taking. The authors also evaluated whether students who report having problems with test anxiety hold a different conceptual organization about test taking compared with students who do not report having such problems. Concepts relevant to emotions and their regulation during test taking were sampled from the emotion and emotional regulation literature. Participants rated how similar these concepts were during test taking. These ratings were then submitted to multidimensional scaling analyses (MDS). The resulting arrangement of concepts provides insight into the underlying organizational conceptions held by low, moderate, and high test-anxious participants. Students' organizational schemes surrounded 2 dimensions: (a) task-focus and (b) pleasantness. High test-anxious participants had differing conceptual organizations about test taking than moderate and low test-anxious participants with regard to pleasantness. In addition, the high test-anxious participants saw task-focused processes such as reading directions during test taking as more highly related to unpleasant emotions like anxiety than moderate and low test-anxious participants.     

Collaborative knowledge-making in the everyday practice of youth suicide prevention education

The development and implementation of a new school‐based suicide prevention education programme in one secondary school in Vancouver, British Columbia, recently provided us with an opportunity to conduct an in‐depth, qualitative case study. The purpose of our study was to deepen our understanding of how school‐based suicide prevention education programmes like this one get planned and enacted in particular, local settings. We argue that the narrow range of methodologies that have traditionally been deployed to study school‐based youth suicide prevention education programmes have hindered our ability to see the complexities and potentialities of this work. Through the presentation of a sub‐set of findings, we aim to show the possibilities for fresh thinking and contextualized understandings that a qualitative case study, informed by a constructionist methodology, invites.     

Happiness matters: towards a pedagogy of happiness and well-being

The role of the emotions in learning has long been acknowledged but is often overlooked. This article considers the impact one particular emotion, happiness, has on learning and the school curriculum. Recent reports have drawn attention to the importance of happiness (or the lack of it) by highlighting concerns about childhood well-being. At the same time, there is increasing evidence from psychology and neuroscience to suggest that periods of happiness are linked to personal growth, health and development. When we are happy it seems we are more likely to be receptive to outside stimuli than when we are sad or distressed. Happiness also makes us more disposed to engage in creative endeavour, which is itself another source of fulfilment. Positive psychologists argue that rather than being fixed, happiness, optimism and other positive traits can be learnt. We offer evidence from our own professional experience in teaching to corroborate these claims and to extend the debate about the relevance of affective neuroscience to education. In conclusion, we consider how a focus on happiness might underpin a positive approach to curriculum reform.     

The digit naming speed test: Its power and incremental validity in identifying children with specific reading disabilities

This paper presents two studies, both of which address the question of whether a test that measures the automaticity with which digits can be named could be useful as part of a diagnostic battery to assess reading disabilities. In the first study, the Digit Naming Speed Test significantly differentiated elementary-school boys who were disabled readers from age-matched boys reading at appropriate grade levels, correctly classifying 83.3% of the children. In the second study, the Digit Naming Speed Test accounted for a significant portion of the word recognition variance of nondisabled readers over and above that portion accounted for by general intelligence as measured by the WISC-R. Taken together, these studies indicate that the Digit Naming Speed Test has the potential to contribute significantly to the diagnostic process.     

Repeating the first grade: How the decision is made

Although there has been a great deal of debate about whether or not children should repeat a grade in school, a more interesting question is which children are retained. This study addresses the question of what kind of children were retained in the first grade as compared to the norm, and as compared to a group of promoted children who were classroom peers yet who educators in the middle of the year considered to be possible nonpromotion candidates. Teachers from 6 school districts identified in March 146 children as candidates to repeat the first grade. By September, 84 had been retained, 62 promoted. In the Spring before the decision was made, we tested all children with a variety of measures of immaturity: intellectual, social, emotional, and physical. Promoted candidates differed from nonpromoted first graders with respect to academic achievement, cognitive development, and adaptation to school. All candidates, both promoted and retained, scored below average in reading achievement, visual-motor integration, and adaptation, but scored in the average range with respect to IQ, height and weight, and social adjustment. A cluster analysis on cases for the retained children further revealed three subgroups of retained children: One group had low scores on all measures of immaturity, especially self-concept; a second group had high or medium scores on all measures; and a third group had low math skills, but good social skills. These results may be interpreted as indicating that some children are appropriately retained and some are not.     

Book review

Suzanne Grant Lewis and Joel Samoff, eds., Microcomputers in African Development: Critical Perspectives (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 258 pp., $42.50 (ISBN 0–8133–7934–2).