Teacher Stress Predicts Child Executive Function: Moderation by School Poverty

Research Findings: Recent research has explored relations between classroom quality and child executive function (EF), but little is known about how teachers’ well-being, including stress, relates to child EF—a crucial component of self-regulation. We hypothesized that teacher stress is negatively or curvilinearly related to child EF and classroom quality may be one mechanism explaining this relation. Furthermore, as working with young, low-income children may be particularly stressful, we tested the extent to which the relation between teacher stress and child EF varies by school-level poverty. Two-level hierarchical linear models using a sample of 171 kindergarten children and 33 teachers revealed a marginally significant linear relation between teacher stress and child EF (spring) controlling for baseline child EF (fall); there was no evidence for mediation by classroom quality. School-level poverty moderated the relation between teacher stress and child EF: Children attending low-poverty schools demonstrated smaller gains in EF when their teachers reported higher stress levels. However, in high-poverty schools high levels of teacher stress were not a risk factor for child EF. Practice or Policy: These novel findings are a first step to understanding how teachers’ well-being relates to child EF across schools and have implications for supporting teachers.     

Educational Reform in Post-Accord Palestine: A synthesis of Palestinian perspectives

Education is central to the preservation and success of any society, including that of the Palestinians. With the signing of the Peace Accords in 1993, Palestinians now have their first opportunity in nearly 500 years to control and develop their own educational system, a system that will better meet the needs of the Palestinians than those nations who have controlled the Palestinians for so many years. With this singular opportunity, the questions now becomes one of determining the nature of this educational system, one uniquely fitted to preserve and promote Palestinian society. The purpose of this study was to examine ideas from Palestinians about what they thought their educational system should be and what core values should inform its creation and development. Through information gathered in semi-structured interviews, a portrait begins to emerge about what Palestinians think their schools and educational processes should look like, what barriers present themselves to the realization of their ideas, and what the solutions may be to remove these barriers.     

Effective School Leadership: The multi-ethnic context

The literature on schools has emphasised the importance of leadership for the effectiveness of institutions. Effectiveness has largely been defined in terms of the academic success of students in standardised tests. Although it has been well established that students of certain minority ethnic backgrounds do not achieve as well as their peers, the literature has failed to address effectiveness in relation to this issue. Discussions of school leadership have therefore neglected to examine the specific challenges for leaders in multi-ethnic contexts and the qualities necessary to reverse the trend of underachievement among identified groups. This article examines the notion of effectiveness and of effective leadership, and attempts to delineate some of the qualities of leadership necessary for success in multi-ethnic contexts.     

Capturing Environmental Dimensions of Adversity and Resources in the Context of Poverty Across Infancy Through Early Adolescence: A Moderated Nonlinear Factor Model

Income, education, and cumulative-risk indices likely obscure meaningful heterogeneity in the mechanisms through which poverty impacts child outcomes. This study draws from contemporary theory to specify multiple dimensions of poverty-related adversity and resources, with the aim of better capturing these nuances. Using data from the Family Life Project (N = 1,292), we leveraged moderated nonlinear factor analysis (Bauer, 2017) to establish group- and longitudinally invariant environmental measures from infancy to early adolescence. Results indicated three latent factors—material deprivation, psychosocial threat, and sociocognitive resources—were distinct from each other and from family income. Each was largely invariant across site, racial group, and development and showed convergent and discriminant relations with age-twelve criterion measures. Implications for ensuring socioculturally valid measurements of poverty are discussed.     

Changes in stimulus salience as a result of stimulus preexposure: Evidence from aversive and appetitive testing procedures

In two experiments, rats received preexposure to three compound flavor stimuli, AX, BX, and CX, where X represents a saline solution. AX and BX were presented in alternation; CX, on a separate block of trials. The value of X was then modified, being devalued by aversive conditioning in Experiment 1, and rendered valuable by the induction of a state of salt need in Experiment 2. When given a choice between BX and CX, the rats consumed more of BX than of CX in Experiment 1, and more of CX than of BX in Experiment 2, suggesting that B and C differed in their ability to modulate the response governed by the X element. It was suggested that blocked preexposure to CX reduces the salience of the C stimulus but that the salience of B is maintained by preexposure in which BX is alternated with AX. The implications of this result for the phenomenon of perceptual learning are discussed.     

Cortisol reactivity is positively related to executive function in preschool children attending head start

This study examined relations among cortisol reactivity and measures of cognitive function and social behavior in 4- to 5-year-old children (N = 169) attending Head Start. Saliva samples for the assay of cortisol were collected at the beginning, middle, and end of an approximately 45-min testing session. Moderate increase in cortisol followed by down-regulation of this increase was positively associated with measures of executive function, self-regulation, and letter knowledge but not with measures of receptive vocabulary, emotion knowledge, or false belief understanding. Regression analysis indicates that executive function accounted for the association between cortisol reactivity and self-regulation and letter knowledge.     

Social Status and Children's Orientations to Limited Resources

6-year-old children were paired according to their sociometric status and then confronted with 3 situations in which there was only 1 toy for the 2 children. Children's responses to these limited-resource situations were coded in terms of a scheme reflecting the degree to which each child focused on his or her own concerns and/or those of the other child. Low status dyads were found to compete (i.e., focus on their own interests) more than high status dyads, who exhibited orientations focused more on mutual benefit. The implications of these results as well as the relations among general orientations and dyadic affect are discussed.     

Promoting Academic and Social‐Emotional School Readiness: The Head Start REDI Program

Forty‐four Head Start classrooms were randomly assigned to enriched intervention (Head Start REDI—Research‐based, Developmentally Informed) or “usual practice” conditions. The intervention involved brief lessons, “hands‐on” extension activities, and specific teaching strategies linked empirically with the promotion of: (a) social‐emotional competencies and (b) language development and emergent literacy skills. Take‐home materials were provided to parents to enhance skill development at home. Multimethod assessments of three hundred and fifty‐six 4‐year‐old children tracked their progress over the course of the 1‐year program. Results revealed significant differences favoring children in the enriched intervention classrooms on measures of vocabulary, emergent literacy, emotional understanding, social problem solving, social behavior, and learning engagement. Implications are discussed for developmental models of school readiness and for early educational programs and policies.     

Riding against the wind: a review of competition cycling aerodynamics

Aerodynamics has such a profound impact on cycling performance at the elite level that it has infiltrated almost every aspect of the sport from riding position and styles, equipment design and selection, race tactics and training regimes, governing rules and regulations to even the design of new velodromes. This paper presents a review of the aspects of aerodynamics that are critical to understanding flows around cyclists under racing conditions, and the methods used to evaluate and improve aerodynamic performance at the elite level. The fundamental flow physics of bluff body aerodynamics and the mechanisms by which the aerodynamic forces are imparted on cyclists are described. Both experimental and numerical techniques used to investigate cycling aerodynamic performance and the constraints on implementing aerodynamic saving measures at the elite level are also discussed. The review reveals that the nature of cycling flow fields are complex and multi-faceted as a result of the highly three-dimensional and variable geometry of the human form, the unsteady racing environment flow field, and the non-linear interactions that are inherent to all cycling flows. Current findings in this field have and will continue to evolve the sport of elite cycling while also posing a multitude of potentially fruitful areas of research for further gains in cycling performance.     

Digital Module 12: Think-aloud Interviews and Cognitive Labs https://ncme.elevate.commpartners.com

In this digital ITEMS module, Dr. Jacqueline Leighton and Dr. Blair Lehman review differences between think-aloud interviews to measure problem-solving processes and cognitive labs to measure comprehension processes. Learners are introduced to historical, theoretical, and procedural differences between these methods and how to use and analyze distinct types of verbal reports in the collection of evidence of test-taker response processes. The module includes details on (a) the different types of cognition that are tapped by different interviewer probes, (b) traditional interviewing methods and new automated tools for collecting verbal reports, and (c) options for analyses of verbal reports. This includes a discussion of reliability and validity issues such as potential bias in the collection of verbal reports, ways to mitigate bias, and inter-rater agreement to enhance credibility of analysis. A novel digital tool for data collection called the ABC tool is presented via illustrative videos. As always, the module contains audio-narrated slides, quiz questions with feedback, a glossary, and curated resources.