Do Belonging and Social Exclusion at School Affect Structural Brain Development During Adolescence?

Students’ sense of belonging presents an essential resource for academic and health outcomes, whereas social exclusion at school negatively impacts students’ well-being and academic performance. Aiming to understand how feelings of school-related belonging and exclusion shape the structural brain development, this study applied longitudinal questionnaire-based data and MRI data from 71 adolescent students (37 females, M_age at t1 = 15.0; t2 = 16.1 years). All were white participants from Germany. Voxel-based morphometry revealed only an association of social exclusion (and not of belonging) and gray matter volume in the left anterior insula: From t1 to t2, there was less gray matter decrease, the more social exclusion students perceived. School-related social exclusion and disturbed neurodevelopment are thus significantly associated.     

Performance Approach,Performance Avoidance and Depth of Information Processing: A fresh look at relations between students' academic motivation and cognition

This study examines the effects of motivational approach on the recall of verbal information processed at shallow and deep levels. Two hundred students attending the same primary school were randomly assigned to either a mastery focused condition, performance approach condition, performance avoidance condition, or a control group. The participants were motivationally manipulated prior to receiving 12 stimulus words designed to be encoded at either shallow or deep levels of processing. A free recall test followed, then a cued recall test. Results indicate that students remembered more stimulus words during cued recall than free recall. Recall of verbal information was superior when processed according to the deeper (category and sentence) levels of processing. Performance approach and avoidance goals resulted in superior recall during free and cued recall, compared with a mastery goal or with the control group. The usefulness of these findings for promoting greater clarity among motivational frameworks and ideas for further research are discussed.     

A framework for implementing and teaching the social and ethical impact of computing

This article describes the work of Project ImpactCS, which was initiated to define the core content and pedagogical objectives for integrating social impact and ethics into the computer science (CS) curriculum. Over a three year period the project will address three major problems that hamper the implementation of across-the-board curriculum change: the lack of a well-specified definition of what the core content and learning objectives should include, the lack of a strategy for adapting and adopting existing materials that address the core topics into the existing CS curriculum, and the lack of awareness and expertise on the part of most CS faculties regarding the need and methodology for presenting such material in their courses. This report provides the conceptual frame-work and describes the learning objectives, called knowledge units, for defining a new content area in the computer science curriculum. It also discusses strategies and innovative pedagogical techniques for implementing the knowledge units into the curriculum.     

Who's in the house? Race differences in cohabitation,single parenthood,and child development

This study examined four questions: (1) How does family structure (specifically, single parenthood, married parent, and cohabitating parent) affect children's delinquency and math test scores? (2) Do these effects differ by race? (3) Do parenting practices mediate the links between family structure and children's outcomes? and (4) Does this mediation differ by race? Unlike some previous work in this area, the present study distinguished between the effects of single parenthood and cohabitation. Using fixed-effects techniques to control for unobserved heterogeneity between children in the various family structures, single parenthood was found to be associated with reduced well-being among European American children, but not African American children. Cohabitation was associated with greater delinquency among African American children, and lower math scores among European American children. No evidence was found to indicate that parenting mediated the links between family structure and children's outcomes. Finally, it was found that for African American children, measures of maternal warmth and the provision of rules had direct effects on children's delinquency.     

Obstacles Related to Structuring for Mathematization Encountered by Students when Solving Physics Problems

This paper studies the cognitive obstacles related to one aspect of mathematization in physics problem-solving, namely, what might be called structuring for mathematization, where the problem situation is structured in such a way that a translation to a mathematical universe can be done. We report the results of an analysis of four protocols from task-based interviews with university students working on physics problems in pairs who fail when solving the problems. The obstacles encountered by the students are shown to be related to how the students approach the structuring for mathematization, but they are met at different steps in this process. Four types of obstacles are identified.     

Investigating the Intertwinement of Knowledge,Value, and Experience of Upper Secondary Students’ Argumentation Concerning Socioscientific Issues

This study aims to explore students’ argumentation and decision-making relating to an authentic socioscientific issue (SSI)—the problem of environmental toxins in fish from the Baltic Sea. A multi-disciplinary instructional module, designed in order to develop students’ skills to argue about complex SSI, was successfully tested. Seven science majors in the final year of their upper secondary studies participated in this study. Their argumentation and decision-making processes were followed closely, and data were collected during multiple stages of the instructional module: group discussions were audio recorded, the participants wrote reports on their decision making, and postexercise interviews were conducted with individual students. The analysis focused on the skill of evaluation demonstrated by the students during the exercise and the relationships between the knowledge, values, and experiences that they used in their argumentation. Even though all of the students had access to the same information and agreed on the factual aspects of the issue, they came to different decisions. All of the students took counter-arguments and the limitations of their claims into account and were able to extend their claims where appropriate. However, their decisions differed depending on their background knowledge, values, and experiences (i.e., their intellectual baggage). The implication to SSI teaching and learning is discussed.     

Learning from web-based instructional systems and cognitive style

Two of the principal issues, which have been addressed in assessments of the benefits of web‐based instructional systems, are firstly, whether the segmentation of information provided by the web structure aids users in apprehending the interrelationships between the units of information featured in the web. Secondly, whether providing the user with an overview of the web system assists in facilitating his/her learning. It is suggested in the present study that these two issues may be more effectively understood by a consideration of an individual's cognitive style. Fifty participants were assigned to one of two web‐based instructional systems featuring information on the subject of psychological ethics. The information in one of the web systems was segmented to a greater degree than the information in the other. Half the participants using each web system were given an overview of the system and half were not. After a given time using the system, participants were tested on the information from the web. The findings suggest that cognitive style and segmentation had an effect on performance, although the provision of the overview had little effect. The results are discussed in terms of a consideration of cognitive style in the design of web‐based instructional systems.     

Student satisfaction with interactive telecourses as a function of demographic variables and prior telecourse experience1

An investigation was conducted in which 699 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in 33 live, interactive telecourses were asked to report their (1) telecourse facet satisfaction (satisfaction with the telecourse instruction/ instructor, technology, and logistic/management), (2) demographic characteristics (age, gender, personal income, and socioeconomic status), and (3) experience with televised courses (number of prior telecourses they had completed). Results showed that, among the demographic variables, gender reliably predicted student satisfaction with the logistic/management aspects of the telecourses. That is, male students reported being significantly more satisfied than female students with these aspects of the courses. Moreover, age, personal income, and socioeconomic status were unrelated to facet satisfaction. Finally, greater telecourse experience was significantly associated with lower degrees of instruction/instructor satisfaction. Practical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.