Looking Back on Lessons Learned: Gifted Adults Reflect on Their Experiences in Advanced Classes

The purpose of this study was to learn about gifted adults' experiences in advanced classes and attitudes about advanced classes or gifted programs for their children. Participants were 88 adults (33 men and 55 women) who have been participating in a longitudinal study of academically talented individuals since their high-school graduation in 1988. Participants responded to open-ended questions via mailed surveys. Eighty-five percent of participants described their academic experiences in advanced classes as positive, whereas slightly fewer participants (59%) described their interpersonal experiences in advanced classes as positive. Seventy-five percent of participants with children described signs of giftedness in their children, and 88% of participants indicated that they would support advanced placement for their children if it were recommended by the school. Implications of the findings were discussed and directions for future research were provided.     

When you shouldn't do what you want to do: young children's understanding of desires, rules, and emotions

This research investigated 4- through 7-year-olds' and adults' (n = 64) concepts about the emotional consequences of desire fulfillment versus desire inhibition in situations where people's desires conflict with prohibitive rules. Results revealed developmental increases in attributing positive or mixed emotions to story characters that make willpower decisions and negative or mixed emotions to characters that transgress. These developmental changes in emotion predictions were accompanied by age-related differences in emotion explanations. Whereas 4- and 5-year-olds largely explained emotions in relation to the characters' goals, 7-year-olds and adults further explained how rules and future consequences influence emotions. Results are discussed in relation to connections among children's psychological, deontic, and future-oriented reasoning about emotions as well as the development of self-control.     

Science identity development: how multimodal composition mediates student role-taking as scientist in a media-rich learning environment

Educational technology research and development - Science identity has been widely discussed in recent years; however, research on its development in multimodal composing environments, especially...     

How generalization inferences are constructed in expository text comprehension

Three questions regarding adult readers’ processing of generalization inferences (conceptually broad statements that subsume several specific statements) are investigated. College students (N = 193) read expository texts containing target statements that were consistent, inconsistent, or off-topic in relation to a generalization implied by one paragraph. Reading times were faster for consistent than inconsistent statements and faster for inconsistent than off-topic statements, indicating adult readers construct generalization inferences online during initial reading of a text and that the inference they construct is relatively narrow in scope. This pattern of faster reading time for consistent sentences occurred under different reading goals, suggesting generalization inferences are a pervasive component of expository text comprehension.     

Obesity‐Related Hormones in Low‐Income Preschool‐Age Children: Implications for School Readiness

Mechanisms underlying socioeconomic disparities in school readiness and health outcomes, particularly obesity, among preschool‐aged children are complex and poorly understood. Obesity can induce changes in proteins in the circulation that contribute to the negative impact of obesity on health; such changes may relate to cognitive and emotion regulation skills important for school readiness. We investigated obesity‐related hormones, body mass index (BMI), and school readiness in a pilot study of low‐income preschoolers attending Head Start (participating in a larger parent study). We found that the adipokine leptin was related to preschoolers' BMI z‐score, the appetite‐regulating hormones ghrelin and glucagon‐like peptide 1 (GLP‐1), and pro‐inflammatory cytokines typically associated with early life stress; and that some of these obesity‐related biomarkers were in turn related to emotion regulation. Future work should evaluate how obesity may affect multiple domains of development, and consider modeling common physiological pathways related to stress, health, and school readiness.     

A Developmental Comparison of the Out‐of‐school Recreation and Leisure Activity Participation of Boys and Girls With and Without Physical Disabilities

Similarities and differences were examined in the out‐of‐school recreation and leisure activity participation of 422 children with physical disabilities and 354 children without disabilities. The roles of age (six to eight years, nine to 11 years, and 12–14 years), gender, and disability status were examined with respect to the diversity, intensity, location, companionship, and enjoyment of participation in five types of activities, controlling for family income. The findings indicate that dimensions and types of activity participation are differentially influenced by age, gender, and disability. Age cohort comparisons indicated that children without disabilities experienced a widening social world characterised by more intense social participation, greater participation with non‐family members, and stable levels of enjoyment across the age groups. In contrast, children with disabilities in the various age groups were similar in their intensity of social participation and the nature of their companionship, with 12–14 year olds reporting less enjoyment of social activities than those aged six to eight years or nine to 11 years. The findings support the utility of a developmental and contextual perspective in understanding children’s patterns of participation. The information can be used by service providers and managers interested in creating centre‐based or community‐based recreational opportunities, and in providing information to parents about how to encourage children’s recreation and leisure participation.     

Being a Learner Using Social Media in School: The Case of Space2cre8

The aim of this article is to gain knowledge about what it means to be a learner using social media in an educational setting. The article presents an ethnographic study of students in a multiethnic community in Oslo who participate in a social networking site called Space2cre8 (S28). In this article, we set out to explore the kind of space for learning that can be created in a lower secondary classroom by a social networking site. The article provides a detailed study of how two students made use of this social networking site as part of school activities, and it outlines two specific ways in which to be a learner using social media in school. The findings suggest that a social networking site such as S28 can provide different resources for different students with different learner identities, and might represent a space in which everyday knowledge and school knowledge merge to offer a hybrid space for learning.     

Developing a Training Course for Undergraduate Teaching Assistants

An undergraduate teaching assistant (UTA) training course was developed using existing best practices and Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives as a framework. Course goals included developing assistants’ content knowledge, procedural knowledge, and metacognition regarding teaching. Across three semesters, UTAs’ (N?=?68) pre- and post-test responses showed significant increases in their teaching-related knowledge, confidence in their skills, consideration of a teaching-related career, and perceived benefits of being a UTA. The course provides an efficient method by which assistants learn to support students and faculty in a range of undergraduate courses, serving as a potential model for other teaching assistantship programs.