Individual Differences in the Stability and Change of Childhood Depression: A Growth Mixture Model With Structured Residuals

Studies of developmental trajectories of depression are important for understanding depression etiology. Existing studies have been limited by short time frames and no studies have explored a key factor: differential patterns of responding to life events. This article introduces a novel analytic technique, growth mixture modeling with structured residuals, to examine the course of youth depression in a large, prospective cohort (N = 11,641, ages 4–16.5, 96% White). Age-specific critical points were identified at ages 8 and 13 where depression symptoms spiked for a minority of children. Most depression risk was due to dynamic responses to environmental events, drawn not from a small pool of persistently depressed children, but a larger pool of children who varied across higher and lower symptom levels.     

Assessment of mathematics and reading performance: An examination of the correspondence between direct assessment of student performance and teacher report

Teacher judgments have been identified as a primary source of information regarding student academic achievement. Research examining the accuracy of teachers' judgments in assessing students' academic abilities has shown relatively high accuracy. However, previous studies have relied primarily on norm‐referenced measures to obtain estimates of students' achievement in reading and mathematics. Recent developments in the assessment of students' academic skills, such as Curriculum‐Based Measurement (CBM), provide a direct estimate of students' skill levels in basic areas such as reading and mathematics. The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which teachers' perceptions of students' reading and mathematics skills corresponded to direct estimates of students' reading and mathematics skills. Two second‐grade teachers estimated the reading and mathematics skills of 33 second‐grade students. Results of this study indicated that teachers were not accurate in assessing their students' mathematics functioning. Teachers were more accurate in assessing the occurrence of Mastery mathematics levels in basic addition, but were very inaccurate in assessing the occurrence of Mastery, Instructional, or Frustrational mathematics levels in all other skills assessed. In reading, teachers' judgment accuracy varied as a function of grade‐level material and instructional level. Specifically, teachers experienced considerable difficulty accurately identifying students who were reading at a Mastery level in grade‐level or above‐grade‐level material. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 247–265, 2006.     

Australian academics and transnational teaching: an exploratory study of their preparedness and experiences

Australia is now the third largest provider of education to overseas students. Between 1994 and 2000 the number of overseas students taught by Australian universities increased by 150% to 107,622. It is estimated that 41% of the recent growth in international education has been in offshore enrolments, with each of Australia’s 38 universities now providing offshore education. This paper reviews recent Australian literature on transnational teaching and presents an overview of a study with academics who teach transnationally and who are drawn from nine Australian universities. The study covers the professional development and teaching experiences of these academics and their perceptions of the induction/orientation and ongoing professional development needed to support the delivery of quality trans‐cultural education offshore.     

Determinants of pigeons’ choice between certain and probabilistic outcomes

Pigeons chose between 50% and 100% reinforcement on a discrete-trials concurrent-chains procedure with fixed-ratio 1 initial links and fixed-time terminal links. The 100% alternative always provided food after a terminal-link delay, whereas the 50% alternative provided food or blackout equally often after a delay. Additionally, the terminal-link stimuli on the 50% alternative were correlated with the outcomes in signaled, but not in unsignaled, conditions. The effects of intertrial-interval duration and length of the terminal-link delays on choice of the 50% alternative were investigated in four experiments. Preference for the 50% alternative varied with signal condition and duration of the terminal link leading to food, but not with duration of either intertrial interval or the terminal link leading to a blackout. The results are discussed in terms of conditioned-reinforcement effects, Mazur’s hyperbolic-decay model, and delay reduction. This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada research grant awarded to the first author.     

The effects of verbal reinforcement and contingency management in increasing and stabilizing responses in reading behaviours: A report

Verbal reinforcement and contingency management Was used to increase the response rate correct in a class group of twenty‐nine boys in year 7 of schooling. The response rate increased by six times over a period of thirty school days, on data using daily measurements. On the Gap achievement test, the mean reading age prior to the study was 8.0 years. After the thirty day period of instruction it was 10.0 years.     

Perspectives on the Contribution of Social Science to Adapted Physical Activity: Looking Forward,Looking Back

ABSTRACT

In this article, we reflect on the contributions of the social sciences to the field of adapted physical activity by examining the theories and methods that have been adopted from the social science disciplines. To broaden our perspective on adapted physical activity and provide new avenues for theoretical and empirical exploration, we discuss and evaluate broad ideas/tensions arising from the social science literature—the individual versus social/ecological, and social science of adapted physical activity versus social science in adapted physical activity. We intentionally focus discussion on the application of specific lines of inquiry in the social sciences that have not yet emerged (or have done so only in limited applications) in the field of adapted physical activity. Such untapped areas of scholarship in the social sciences can lead to broader understanding, innovations, and new lines of inquiry when applied to an adapted physical activity context.     

Influence of motherhood on the implicit academic self-concept of female college students: Distinct effects of subtle exposure to cues and directed thinking

Despite notable steps toward gender equality and significant changes in gender roles, women continue to face tension between academic aspirations and the more traditional role of caregiver. The goal of the present research was to examine how this conflict might be revealed through assessments of associations that cannot be consciously controlled. In two experiments, college women completed implicit association tasks measuring the strength of their academic identification. Experiment 1 (N=55) showed that implicit academic identification was weaker when motherhood cues were present (rather than absent). In Experiment 2 (N=73), implicit academic identification was weaker when participants reflected on their aspirations to become a college graduate rather than aspirations to be a mother. These findings emphasize the malleability of the implicit academic self-concept. More precisely, they document that subtle exposure to cues and more deliberate thought processes produce distinct effects. This research contributes to a better understanding of contextual influences on the academic self-concept of college women and their potential implications for academic performances.     

Teachers ’ conversations about civic education: Policy and practice in Australian schools

Civic education has been a priority for many countries in the Asia Pacific region over the past decade. Governments of different persuasions have recognized the need to provide stability and cohesion in their societies. This has been particularly so at a time when globalization and other forces threaten to fragment the nation state and co-opt its citizens into broader realms of allegiance and commitment. Policy makers have not been slow to come up with new directions for civic education in the school curriculum and the literature now abounds with examples from different countries. Yet missing from this flurry of policy development has been recognition of the role that teachers play in constructing civic education programs at the school level. In the end, it is teachers in classrooms who determine how centralized polices are understood and implemented. Drawing on a sample of Australian teachers, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the role that teachers play in constructing and reconstructing civic education policy in schools and classrooms. Interviews conducted with teachers in four Australian States/Territories have revealed that teachers ’ personal views of civics are more likely to influence them than external policies, their focus is more on citizenship than formal civics programs and that they are reluctant to develop programs where civic knowledge is formalized and disciplined based. The research reported in this paper was funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC). The views expressed are those of the authors and not the ARC.     

Prevention is better than cure: coping skills training for adolescents at school

Children and adolescents today face a plethora of stressful problems, including family and relationship conflict, death of close family members or friends, and academic and social pressures. Such problems have been found to contribute to an increased risk of various emotional–social–cognitive difficulties in adolescence. These include academic failure, social misbehaviour, interpersonal problems, and depression.

Programmes that promote coping with normative stress, delivered to the whole population, have been considered to represent a promising direction for the prevention of social emotional difficulties. The Best of Coping: Developing Coping Skills Program (Frydenberg & Brandon, 2002 Frydenberg E Brandon CM (2002) The best of coping Melbourne: Oz Child [Crossref] [Google Scholar]) was introduced in two school settings on four separate occasions. Evaluation of the results provides modest support for coping skills enhancement but provide a warning about the need for caution when implementing and evaluating the Programme. First, it appeared to have some opposing effects on males and females. Second, improvements in students' coping responses were apparently related to the authenticity of implementation of the Programme.

The findings are discussed with regard to the need to implement programmes through which we can teach adolescents coping responses, which include optimism and problem‐solving skills, so that they may handle problems and stressors more effectively. Additionally, an important feature of such programmes is a focus on the reduction of the use of non‐productive coping skills. With an increase in psycho‐social problems, the need to provide school‐based programmes is discussed, with emphasis placed on programme implementation. In particular, the probable need for ongoing involvement of psychologically trained school counsellors with teachers, through the life of the programme.