Peer effects on high school aspirations: Evidence from a sample of close and not-so-close friends

In this paper we investigate how schoolmates influence high school dropout intentions in Catalonia, Spain. Our analysis uses self-reported friends to identify possible peers by assuming that peer influence flows in one direction in cases where one student identifies another as a friend, but the other does not reciprocate. We first estimate the effects of education aspirations of non-reciprocating friends on students’ own education aspirations, with and without conditioning on a large set of personality and cognitive characteristics. We then investigate the extent to which the estimated effects are associated with friends’ height, weight, BMI, gender and cognitive ability. The estimated impact of non-reciprocating peers’ dropout intentions is small and generally not statistically significant: a 10 percentage point increase in the fraction of non-reciprocating peers that intend to drop out increases students’ chances of dropping out by about .2 percentage points.     

Children's Participation in Evaluating the Role of New Information and Communication Technologies in Schools

The central thesis of the paper is that children should be accorded a greater role in the evaluation of the role of new information technologies in schools, that is, where possible they should be stakeholders who help shape the design, processes and interpretations of evaluation studies as well as informants who provide data for the study. Arguments for this position draw on children's special relationship with the new technologies as well as current movements in children's rights and the development of a new paradigm of childhood studies. The paper finishes with a discussion of some of the issues that might arise from involving children as stakeholders.     

The effects of middle-school career intervention on students’ career readiness

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - The study examines the effectiveness of a career intervention in middle schools. The intervention was organized in eight...     

Mentoring african american educational media and technology students

Summary Mentoring appears to help African-American students taking educational media and technology classes to have more confidence in their abilities to integrate technology. It has also provided them with an opportunity to express their concern about their lack of technology skills and anxiety about teaching. Furthermore, they were able to speak to someone who cares about them and who has also had similar concerns and anxieties. The fact that we were all African American facilitated communication and trust between each of my students and me. However, since there is typically a scarcity of African-American faculties to mentor them it is problematic to have same-race mentoring relationships for most African-American students at predominately White academic institutions. Research suggests however, that African-American students feel that having an African-American mentor is less important to them than having a mentor in their career field. With appropriate attitudes and the belief that cultural diversity is an asset and not a deficit, faculty of other races can effectively mentor African-American students. With this in mind coupled with the fact that research indicates that mentoring supports retention particularly for African-American students, all faculties should consider mentoring African-American and other minority students. Mentoring enables faculty to MEET their minority students where they are and move them forward. Remember to Model use of technology in the classroom, Engage students in dialogue in and out of class, Embrace their anxiety and point our their successes, and Team students with partners. Her research interest focuses on factors that support or inhibit preservice and professional teachers from integrating technology.     

Theory of mind and relational complexity

Cognitive complexity and control theory and relational complexity theory attribute developmental changes in theory of mind (TOM) to complexity. In 3 studies, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds performed TOM tasks (false belief, appearance-reality), less complex connections (Level 1 perspective-taking) tasks, and transformations tasks (understanding the effects of location changes and colored filters) with content similar to TOM. There were also predictor tasks at binary-relational and ternary-relational complexity levels, with different content. Consistent with complexity theories: (a) connections and transformations were easier and mastered earlier than TOM; (b) predictor tasks accounted for more than 80% of age-related variance in TOM; and (c) ternary-relational items accounted for TOM variance, before and after controlling for age and binary-relational items. Prediction did not require hierarchically structured predictor tasks.     

Sport Education as a pedagogical application for ethical development in physical education and youth sport

The purpose of this paper is to consider four pedagogical applications within the Sport Education model to examine the ways in which a young person can become a literate sports person and develop ethical behaviour through engagement in physical education and youth sport. Through a systematic review of the Sport Education research literature we present evidence to suggest that although notions such as inclusion, responsibility and ownership, personal and social development and social justice are part of the architecture of this pedagogical model, our findings show that rather than simply being caught, ethical conduct must be taught. Consequently, in the final part of the paper, we present four pedagogical applications within Sport Education that physical education teachers as well as youth sport practitioners and administrators may find useful to promote ethical development: (1) ethical contracts; (2) sports panels; (3) modified games; and (4) awards and rewards.