Giving Till it Helps? Alumnae Giving and Children’s College Options

This paper examines whether donations to colleges and universities are partly motivated by the desire of alumni to increase their children’s admissions probabilities. The paper uses data from a single-sex college, so that only alums with a daughter would evince this motive. We find that alums with a teenage daughter, as opposed to a teenage son, are more likely to make donations of at least $5,000. The same relationship is not evident for smaller donations, or when children are older than 18. Further, we find evidence that this difference in the probability of a donation by alums with teenage daughters and teenage sons does not exist when acceptance rates are higher in an earlier period.     

Pre-kindergarten child care and behavioral outcomes among children of immigrants

The school transition model suggests that children's transitions into formal schooling can have lasting and profound implications for their educational careers, though this model is rarely used to understand the outcomes of children of immigrants. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), a nationally representative sample of kindergarteners in 1998–1999, we examine the pre-kindergarten child care arrangements of children of immigrants and how these care arrangements are associated with children's behavior. We find that minority and immigrant children are less likely than their native-born white counterparts to be enrolled in center-based care and other care, compared to parental care, prior to kindergarten. We also find that ethnic origin is an important predictor of child care usage. Finally, though center-based care, on average, is not independently associated with children's behavior in kindergarten, the association between center-based care and behaviors varies by race and immigrant status. Broadly, these findings underscore the importance of understanding how native- and foreign-born children experience the transition to schooling, a critical period in the life course.     

Promoting Linguistically Diverse Students’ Short-Term and Long-Term Understanding of Chemical Phenomena Using Visualizations

Ensuring that all students, including English language learners (ELLs) who speak English as a second language, succeed in science is more challenging with a shift towards learning through language-intensive science practices suggested by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Interactive visualization technologies have the potential to support science learning for all students, including ELLs, by providing explicit representations of unobservable scientific systems. However, whether and how such technologies can be beneficial for these underserved students has not been sufficiently investigated. In this study, we examine the short-term and long-term effects of interactive visualizations in improving linguistically diverse eighth-grade students’ understanding of properties of matter and chemical reactions during inquiry instruction. The results show that after interacting with the visualizations, both ELLs and non-ELLs showed significant improvement in their understanding of the target concepts at the molecular level on both the immediate test and the delayed test (3 months after the study). In particular, aligned with the goals of the NGSS, all students, including ELLs, were able to demonstrate their understanding of how energy and matter are involved in chemistry through developing molecular models, critiquing models, and constructing scientific explanations. This study shows the potential benefits of using interactive visualizations during inquiry instruction as a resource to help all students, including ELLs who are traditionally underserved in mainstream classrooms, develop a more coherent understanding of abstract concepts of molecular processes during chemical phenomena.     

Management of Innovations from a Cultural-Individual Perspective

The history of education and schooling is characterised by not only the attainment of results but also ongoing critique of the existing situation in education and schooling. Developers and researchers are, as a result, constantly seeking new strategies and methods for the improved implementation of innovations in actual educational practice. The central question is which factors and which conditions facilitate the effects of innovations. In an attempt to answer this question, many educators will not so much be concerned with objective structural factors such as available funds, classmates, et cetera. They will be concerned, rather, with the questions of which socially constructed realities and which particular forms of involvement on the part of teachers, school administrators, and counsellors facilitate successful innovation. In our search for an answer to these questions, moreover, we will be guided by a cultural-individual perspective on innovation. Traditional innovative strategies – and, in particular, large scale strategies – seem not always suitable to deal with today's educational problems. Alternative scenario's for the management of innovations are considered.     

Examining Change in Cortisol Patterns During the 10‐Week Transition to a New Child‐Care Setting

The transition to out‐of‐home child care brings a number of challenges for children, including complex peer interactions and extended separations from parents. Children often show a midmorning to afternoon rise in cortisol on child‐care days, compared to the typical diurnal decline seen at home. Changes in cortisol were examined in a wide age range of children (N = 168; 1.2 months to 8 years, M = 3.27 years) during the 10‐week transition to a new child‐care setting. Structural equation modeling using latent change scores showed that children experienced an increase in the cortisol rise at child care across the 10‐week transition. Furthermore, child age moderated the difference between home‐ and child‐care cortisol patterns. Findings are placed in a developmental context, and potential implications and future directions are discussed.     

Stepping into other people’s shoes proves to be a difficult task for high school students: assessing historical empathy through simulation exercise

In 2011, the Finnish National Board of Education assessed the learning outcomes of history with a study whose results raised doubts about the fulfilment of the goals of history education. This article seeks to expand awareness about Finnish adolescents’ understanding of historical empathy. The study assessed twenty-two 16–17-year-old high school students’ ability to understand predecessors’ actions in particular historical situations. The study also examined how well a simulation exercise works as a tool of empathy teaching and evaluation. Students participated in the simulation and afterwards the students were interviewed. They also participated in a survey that measured their attitudes before and after the exercise, and wrote an essay at the end of the course. The results of the study show that most of the high school students did not reach the goals set for history teaching. The weak performance of students is explained by the strong tradition of history teaching which has been continuing in Finnish schools despite the curriculum reform. Teaching still concentrates on passing a meta-narrative on to students who have not yet enough experience of explaining historical events from a multiperspective point of view.     

Cognitive Style Index: Further investigation of the factor structure with an American student sample

The present study investigates the factor structure of the Cognitive Style Index (CSI), comparing the unitary, bipolar continuum of intuition–analysis, the theory upon which the CSI is predicated, with the two‐factor theory of cognitive style. We conducted both confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses on data from a sample of 222 American university business students. There was a lack of fit for the unifactorial model. Our results suggest the instrument is tapping multiple dimensions of cognitive style, the implications of which are discussed.