Do certain groups of children profit from a grade retention?

As more children are being held back a grade as a result of tougher academic standards, the practice of retention and its effects was studied in two Utah school districts. Retention was not found to benefit the children academically or in personal or social adjustment. The purpose of this article is to further analyze the data in order to study retention effects for subgroups of children commonly believed to profit from being retained. In this reanalysis, three independent variables were added in order to address the following questions: (a) Is retention beneficial for children if supplementary academic instruction is provided? (b) Is retention beneficial if the children are average or above in intelligence? (c) Also, is retention beneficial if it occurs in kindergarten or 1st grade? Retention was not found to benefit these subgroups of children.     

Conceptual conditional discrimination inSaimiri sciureus

The present work introduced a task which superimposed a tray brightness, stimulus-response contingency on previously acquired, highly successful, one-trial oddity performance. Continuing with new one-trial oddity problems, the new contingency was that responses to the odd objects were rewarded on a white tray and responses to the nonodd objects were rewarded on the black tray. Since there is no opportunity to learn specific stimuli or stimulus patterns, successful performance may be interpreted as having a conceptual basis. All monkeys achieved criterion (90% based on 18/20) and statistically significant performances (p<.001). Discussion considered the appropriate nomenclature to describe a conceptual conditional discrimination task and the necessary evidence to justify a conceptual interpretation of conditional discrimination behavior.     

Failure-to-thrive, maltreatment and the behavior and development of 6-year-old children from low-income, urban families: a cumulative risk model

OBJECTIVE: A cumulative risk model was used to examine the relationship among failure-to-thrive (FTT), maltreatment, and four aspects of children's development: cognitive performance (standardized testing), adaptive functioning at school, and classroom behavior (teacher report), and behavior at home (maternal report). METHOD: The sample included 193 6-year-old children and their families, recruited from pediatric clinics serving inner-city, low-income, primarily African-American families, who were part of a longitudinal investigation of child development and maltreatment. Four risk groups were formed based on their growth and maltreatment history: neither FTT nor Maltreatment, FTT Only, Maltreatment Only, and both FTT and Maltreatment. FTT was defined as a deceleration in weight gain (weight-for-age below the 5th percentile) prior to 25 months of age among children born at term with birth weight appropriate for gestational age. Maltreatment was defined as having at least one report to CPS for neglect, physical abuse and/or sexual abuse. RESULTS: Risk status was negatively associated with each of the four developmental outcomes. Children with a history of both FTT and maltreatment had more behavior problems and worse cognitive performance and school functioning than children with neither risk factor. Children with only one risk factor (either FTT or maltreatment) achieved intermediate scores. CONCLUSIONS: Findings support a cumulative risk model as being more detrimental to children's development than the presence of a single risk factor alone, consistent with theories linking the accumulation of environmental risks to negative consequences. These results underscore the importance of interventions to prevent both FTT and maltreatment during children's early years.     

The impact of word processing on the preparation and submission of written essays in a tertiary course of study

This study investigated whether the use of word processing in the creation and submission of written essays by tertiary students, resulted in the achievement of higher grades compared with conventional methods. The study was conducted among 240 student teachers in the first year of a degree course and studying a pre-service unit in teacher education. Students' marks in an essay were gathered along with details of the submission method used; word processed, typed or hand-written. Initial statistical tests showed that students who used word processing as a method for essay submission scored significantly higher essay marks that students whose essays were typed or hand-written. Further tests, however, revealed than it was the level of revision carried out rather than the submission method that accounted for the differences in achieved scores.     

Teaching Philosophy of Education: The Value of Questions

The teaching of foundations courses, and in particular philosophy of education, is frequently under siege in teacher education programs across Canada, as these programs struggle to meet other demands on student teachers. This article results from a panel discussion addressing the context of a variety of undergraduate philosophy of education courses across the country, and the principles and practices instructors take in teaching their discipline. The result of the discussion is a strong argument in favour of teaching philosophy of education as an important means of achieving many of the other aims Faculties of Education and teacher education programs have for their teacher education students, in an atmosphere of reflective thought about the profession and its challenges.     

Knowledge management support for teachers

Business organizations worldwide are implementing techniques and technologies to better manage their knowledge. Their objective is to improve the quality of the contributions people make to their organizations by helping them to make sense of the context within which the organization exists; to take responsibility, cooperate, and share what they know and learn; and to effectively challenge, negotiate, and learn from others. We consider how the concepts, tools, and techniques of organizational knowledge management can be applied to the professional practices and development of teachers. We describe a framework for knowledge management support for teachers where the sharing of concrete knowledge scaffolds the attainment of more abstract levels of knowledge sharing. We describe the development of a knowledge management support system emphasizing long-term participatory design relationships between technologists and teachers, regional cooperation among teachers in adjacent school divisions, the integration of communication and practice, synchronous and asynchronous interactions, and multiple metaphors for organizing knowledge resources and activities. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, REC-0106552.