HOW MUCH HOPE IS ENOUGH? LEVELS OF HOPE AND STUDENTS’ PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SCHOOL FUNCTIONING

This study investigated the characteristics of students who report extremely high levels of hope. A sample of 682 students (ages 11–17) completed measures of hope, school engagement, life satisfaction, self‐worth, and mental health. Academic achievement was obtained from students’ school records. Based on their hope scores, students were divided into three groups: “extremely low” (bottom 10% of the distribution), “average” (middle 25%), and “extremely high” (upper 10%). Results indicate that students in the extremely high hope (EHH) group differed from students with average (AH) and extremely low hope (ELH) on all measures. Further, EHH and AH are associated with mental health benefits that are not found among students reporting comparatively ELH levels. Taken together, the findings support the notion that EHH in students is associated with adaptive psychological and school‐related functioning. Overall, given the superior adjustment profile, perhaps ‘‘enough hope’’ should be defined as “EHH.”     

Sociomathematical norms and the regulation of problem solving in classroom microcultures

The perspective of situated learning offers a theoretical framework for understanding the dialectical relations between the social and the individual dimensions of classroom microculture. The purpose of this article is to show how sociomathematical norms constructed during whole-class discussions provide a reference for the elaboration of mathematical practices and for the interactive regulation of learning. Qualitative data regarding the transition from additive to multiplicative problem solving were collected in two third-grade classrooms during an entire school year. The sociomathematical norms constructed in the two classrooms were identified and compared. An in-depth analysis focusing on two interactive episodes in one classroom showed the forms of regulation of learning that emerged in relation to the norm of “effectiveness”. Both episodes demonstrated how the processes of regulation resulting from teacher–student interactions incorporated and orchestrated regulations resulting from peer interactions and thereby contributed to the progression of the students’ problem-solving procedures.     

Non-formal basic education as a development priority: Evidence from Nicaragua

Almost 900m adolescents and adults are illiterate in the developing world, yet most policy discussions focus on the educational circumstances of primary aged children. As a result non-formal educational programs for adolescents and adults are given very little support, and this group is virtually ignored in international agreements such as the millennium declaration. This article presents the first serious attempt at evaluating the impact of a non-formal education program. Results show significant learning achievement over the academic year, as well as strong development impacts of the program in non-learning dimensions of participants’ lives. These positive impacts, plus the significantly lower unit costs and self-targeted nature of the program provide strong evidence that this type of program can be an important part of the poverty reduction and human capital enhancement strategy of developing countries with large illiterate adult populations.     

Using Pictorial Glossaries as an Accommodation for English Learners: An Exploratory Study

In this article we explore the use of pictorial glossaries as an accommodation for English learners (ELs) with entry and emerging levels of English language proficiency. Drawing on survey responses from 98 middle school ELs and cognitive interviews with 10 of the survey participants, we examined the participants’ preferences and experiences with using accommodations and explored how some of them responded to NAEP mathematics items using pictorial glossaries. Our findings showed that the participants viewed the use of pictures, videos, and translations as useful, but they did not have a lot of experience using these types of accommodations. Also, we found that the pictorial glosses sometimes helped ELs with understanding the local meaning of words in the mathematics problems but not with the global meaning conveyed at the sentence level in the problems.