Elementary school teachers’ preferences for school‐based interventions for students with emotional and behavioral problems

Teachers’ adoption and implementation of evidence‐based programs is often limited. Program characteristics may be important facilitators or barriers of use, yet little is known about which attributes influence teacher decisions. Using a discrete choice experiment with a sample of general education elementary teachers (N = 230), we examined (a) preference for attributes of school‐based interventions, (b) relative preference for three intervention packages with experimentally manipulated characteristics, and (c) teacher characteristics related to the above preference profiles. Intervention outcomes were the most important characteristics in teachers’ intervention decisions. Most teachers’ responses suggested preference for a social and emotional learning program (57.9%) or school‐based consultation for behavioral interventions (35.8%); a small group of teachers preferred a general support intervention (5.8%). Teachers preferring the general support intervention reported greater mental health symptoms, lower mental health literacy and lower confidence in program effectiveness than peers preferring other interventions. Implications for intervention development and future directions are discussed.     

A metasynthesis of the complementarity of culturally responsive and inquiry‐based science education in K‐12 settings: Implications for advancing equitable science teaching and learning

Employing metasynthesis as a method, this study examined 52 empirical articles on culturally relevant and responsive science education in K‐12 settings to determine the nature and scope of complementarity between culturally responsive and inquiry‐based science practices (i.e., science and engineering practices identified in the National Research Council's Framework for K‐12 Science Education). The findings from this study indicate several areas of complementarity. Most often, the inquiry‐based practices Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information, Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions, and Developing and Using Models were used to advance culturally responsive instruction and assessment. The use and development of models, in particular, allowed students to explore scientific concepts through families’ funds of knowledge and explain content from Western science and Indigenous Knowledge perspectives. Moreover, students frequently Analyzed and Interpreted Data when interrogating science content in sociopolitical consciousness‐raising experiences, such as identifying pollution and asthma incidences in an urban area according to neighborhood location. Specific inquiry‐based practices were underutilized when advancing culturally responsive science instruction, though. For example, Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking and Engaging in Argument from Evidence were infrequently encountered. However, culturally responsive engineering‐related practices were most often connected with these, and thus, represent potential areas for future complementarity, particularly as the United States embraces the Next Generation Science Standards. In considering innovative directions for advancing equitable science education, several possibilities are discussed in light of the findings of this study.© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 54:1143–1173, 2017     

Assessing Developmental Education Policies

This paper reviews the results of a research study designed to assess the effectiveness of the policies governing the developmental education program at a comprehensive community college. The major issues addressed in the study are required remediation of skill-deficient students, enrollment in college-level courses by skill-deficient students, and differing policies for skill-deficient students depending on the extent of deficiency. The results point to guidelines for designing or revising policies governing developmental education programs. A recently implemented student tracking system was used to conduct this comprehensive and in-depth analysis of student enrollment patterns, persistence, and performance.     

Unconventional word segmentation in Brazilian children’s early text production

An important element of learning to read and write at school is the ability to define word boundaries. Defining word boundaries in text writing is not a straightforward task even for children who have mastered graphophonemic correspondences. In children’s writing, unconventional word segmentation has been observed across a range of languages and contexts with more occurrences of hyposegmentation (failure to separate two or more written words with a space) than hypersegmentation (written words are split into more than one segment). However, it is still unclear how frequent these errors are and the relationships of these written error patterns to the child’s development in oral language, spelling and reading remains relatively unexplored. To address these issues, unconventional written lexical segmentations in Brazilian Portuguese children’s text production during their first years at primary school (Year 1 to Year 3) were examined in relation to different cognitive and linguistic measures and patterns of spelling errors. Results reveal that in Portuguese the establishment of word boundaries in written text is not explained by visuospatial skills or limitations in processing resources (working memory). In contrast higher occurrences of hyposegmentation patterns were associated with lower levels of reading, vocabulary, verbal ability and morphological awareness whereas hypersegmentations were rarer and related to lower levels of reading and morphological awareness and typically only occurred in the initial stages of learning to write (Year 1). Occurrences of hyposegmentations as well as hypersegmentations were also related to spelling errors which reflected children’s poor phonological skills.     

The impacts of an early mathematics curriculum on oral language and literacy

Competence in early mathematics is crucial for later school success. Although research indicates that early mathematics curricula improve children's mathematics skill, such curricula's impacts on oral language and early literacy skills are not known. This project is the first to investigate the effects of an intensive pre-kindergarten mathematics curriculum, Building Blocks, on the oral language and letter recognition of children participating in a large-scale cluster randomized trial project. Results showed no evidence that children who were taught mathematics using the curriculum performed differently than control children who received the typical district mathematics instruction on measures of letter recognition, and on two of the oral language (story retell) subtests, sentence length and inferential reasoning (emotive content). However, children in the Building Blocks group outperformed children in the control group on four oral language subtests: ability to recall key words, use of complex utterances, willingness to reproduce narratives independently, and inferential reasoning (practical content).     

When friends disappoint: boys' and girls' responses to transgressions of friendship expectations

In this study, the prevailing view that girls are pervasively more skilled in their friendships than boys was challenged by examining whether girls respond more negatively than boys when a friend violates core friendship expectations. Fourth- and fifth-grade children (n = 267) responded to vignettes depicting transgressions involving a friend's betrayal, unreliability, or failure to provide support or help. Results indicated that girls were more troubled by the transgressions, more strongly endorsed various types of negative relationship interpretations of the friend's actions, and reported more anger and sadness than did boys. Girls also endorsed revenge goals and aggressive strategies just as much as boys. These findings lead to a more complex view of boys' and girls' friendship competencies.     

Indigenous peoples’ human rights and the Victorian Charter: a framework for reorienting recordkeeping and archival practice

This article considers the legal framework for archival and recordkeeping institutions, archivists and recordkeeping professionals in one Australian state under the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic) and the relationship with protection of Indigenous culture. It examines the underlying themes of the Victorian Charter and considers the Charter rights to culture, privacy and family as relevant specifically to Indigenous Victorians, and to those institutions keeping records and archives relating to Indigenous Victorians. Finally, it explains the way the human rights protected by the Charter are enforced, and the role of public institutions as duty bearers under the Charter.     

Preservice early childhood educators’ perceptions of outdoor settings as learning environments

In the context of encouraging the use of natural settings for educational experiences with young children, an exploratory study using survey research and photographs of outdoor settings was conducted to understand how preservice early childhood educators perceive these settings and what educational opportunities, motivations, and barriers they associate with them. Based on the results of 110 participants, this study suggests preservice early childhood educators perceive parks as the most conducive outdoor setting for achieving educational outcomes, specifically structured learning about nature, and that they are more inclined to use maintained outdoor settings than natural outdoor settings. The strongest predictors of intention to use natural outdoor settings were perceived difficulty in using natural settings, participants’ level of nature relatedness, and the degree to which they agreed that experiences in nature were important for young children’s health and wellness. Barriers to address include perceived lack of access to natural settings and safety concerns.     

Problematizing the processes of participation in networks: working through the rhetoric

Participation in networks, both as a concept and process, is widely supported in environmental education as a democratic and equitable pathway to individual and social change for sustainability. However, the processes of participation in networks are rarely problematized. Rather, it is assumed that we inherently know how to participate in networks. This assumption means that participation is seldom questioned. Underlying support for participation in networks is a belief that it allows individuals to connect in new and meaningful ways, individuals can engage in making decisions and in bringing about change in arenas that affect them and that they will be engaging in new, non-hierarchical and equitable relationships. In this paper, we problematize participation in networks. As an example, we use research into a decentralized network – described as such in its own literature – the Queensland Environmentally Sustainable Schools Initiative Alliance in Australia – to argue that while network participants were engaged and committed to participation in this network, ‘old’ forms of top-down engagement and relationships needed to be unlearnt. This paper thus proposes that for participation in decentralized networks to be meaningful, new learning about how to participate needs to occur.