Physical activity and school recess time: differences between the sexes and the relationship between children's playground physical activity and habitual physical activity

The aims of this study were: (1) to observe participation in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) during school recess periods; (2) to determine the relative importance of physical activity during recesses to overall daily physical activity; and (3) to examine differences in physical activity between the sexes during unstructured recess periods. The participants were 22 school children (10 boys, 12 girls) aged 8 - 10 years (mean = 8.9, s = 0.7) in the third and fourth grades. Daily totals for the physical activity variables were calculated by summing the values for each hour of 14 h of physical activity measurements (08:00 to 22:00 h). Recess times (minutes) were as follows: morning 10:30 to 11:00 h and afternoon 15:30 to 16:00 h. We did not differences between boys and girls in daily total accelerometer counts or the overall time spent in MVPA. However, girls were significantly (P < 0.05) more involved (38%) in MVPA during recess time than boys (31%). Participation in MVPA during recess contributes significantly more (P < 0.05) for girls (19%) than boys (15%) to the total amount of physical activity suggested by international health-related physical activity guidelines, while the percentage of time engaged in MVPA during recess time at school accounts for a small amount of the daily MVPA (6% for boys and 8% for girls). The results of this study suggest that school recess time is an important setting to promote MVPA and contributes to daily physical activity in young children, especially in girls.     

Labor Market and Teaching Staff Considerations for Making Early Childhood Education Work for Migrant Head Start Teachers: The Case of Michigan Migrant Head Start

This paper considers the case of the Michigan Migrant Head Start program to describe and analyze the labor market conditions and teaching staff characteristics to identify the challenges faced by Migrant Head Start grantees in attracting, hiring, retaining, and training degreed teachers. The emphasis is on describing and analyzing the child care labor market characteristics that confront Migrant Head Start grantees in upstream locations and on describing the characteristics and opinions of Migrant Head Start teachers and interpreting their significance for developing educational programs that facilitate the ability of Migrant Head Start teachers to become degreed in early childhood education. The implications of the findings for making early childhood education work for Migrant Head Start teachers are discussed from the perspective of administrators of Migrant Head Start programs and teacher preparation programs at community colleges and universities.     

Learning analytics application to examine validity and generalizability of game-based assessment for spatial reasoning

Game-based assessment (GBA), a specific application of games for learning, has been recognized as an alternative form of assessment. While there is a substantive body of literature that supports the educational benefits of GBA, limited work investigates the validity and generalizability of such systems. In this paper, we describe applications of learning analytics methods to provide evidence for psychometric qualities of a digital GBA called Shadowspect, particularly to what extent Shadowspect is a robust assessment tool for middle school students' spatial reasoning skills. Our findings indicate that Shadowspect is a valid assessment for spatial reasoning skills, and it has comparable precision for both male and female students. In addition, students' enjoyment of the game is positively related to their overall competency as measured by the game regardless of the level of their existing spatial reasoning skills.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic:

• Digital games can be a powerful context to support and assess student learning.
• Games as assessments need to meet certain psychometric qualities such as validity and generalizability.
• Learning analytics provide useful ways to establish assessment models for educational games, as well as to investigate their psychometric qualities.

What this paper adds:

• How a digital game can be coupled with learning analytics practices to assess spatial reasoning skills.
• How to evaluate psychometric qualities of game-based assessment using learning analytics techniques.
• Investigation of validity and generalizability of game-based assessment for spatial reasoning skills and the interplay of the game-based assessment with enjoyment.

Implications for practice and/or policy:

• Game-based assessments that incorporate learning analytics can be used as an alternative to pencil-and-paper tests to measure cognitive skills such as spatial reasoning.
• More training and assessment of spatial reasoning embedded in games can motivate students who might not be on the STEM tracks, thus broadening participation in STEM.
• Game-based learning and assessment researchers should consider possible factors that affect how certain populations of students enjoy educational games, so it does not further marginalize specific student populations.

     

Building personalised homework from a learning analytics based formative assessment: Effect on fifth-grade students' understanding of fractions

This study analyses the potential of a learning analytics (LA) based formative assessment to construct personalised teaching sequences in Mathematics for 5th-grade primary school students. A total of 127 students from Spanish public schools participated in the study. The quasi-experimental study was conducted over the course of six sessions, in which both control and experimental groups participated in a teaching sequence based on mathematical problems. In each session, both groups used audience response systems to record their responses to mathematical tasks about fractions. After each session, students from the control group were given generic homework on fractions—the same activities for all the participants—while students from the experimental group were given a personalised set of activities. The provision of personalised homework was based on the students' errors detected from the use of the LA-based formative assessment. After the intervention, the results indicate a higher student level of understanding of the concept of fractions in the experimental group compared to the control group. Related to motivational dimensions, results indicated that instruction using audience response systems has a positive effect compared to regular mathematics classes.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Developing an understanding of fractions is one of the most challenging concepts in elementary mathematics and a solid predictor of future achievements in mathematics.
• Learning analytics (LA) has the potential to provide quality, functional data for assessing and supporting learners' difficulties.
• Audience response systems (ARS) are one of the most practical ways to collect data for LA in classroom environments.
• There is a scarcity of field research implementations on LA mediated by ARS in real contexts of elementary school classrooms.

What this paper adds

• Empirical evidence about how LA-based formative assessments can enable personalised homework to support student understanding of fractions.
• Personalised homework based on an LA-based formative assessment improves the students' comprehension of fractions.
• Using ARS for the teaching of fractions has a positive effect in terms of student motivation.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Teachers should be given LA/ARS tools that allow them to quickly provide students with personalised mathematical instruction.
• Researchers should continue exploring these potentially beneficial educational implementations in other areas.