Assessing the Correlates of Over- and Underrating of Academic Competence: A Conceptual Clarification and a Methodological Proposal

The present article addresses 3 issues pertaining to the conceptualization and assessment of the effects of over- and underrating academic competence. First, it is shown that it is impossible to separate the effects of over- and underrating from the effects of both perceived and actual competence. Second, it is shown that the method used by Connell and Ilardi in a previous article to assess the effect of net overversus underrating is of questionable validity. Finally, a new definition and method for assessing the effects of over- and underrating is presented. The new method was applied to Connell and Ilardi's data to retest the hypothesis that overrating is associated with more problematic psychological profiles than accuracy and underrating. Results did not generally support the hypothesis, but did show that the correlates of over- and underrating vary as a function of both extremity of over- or underrating and the level of children's actual competence.     

Place-based education from three perspectives

Abstract

This article examines the perception of the Czech place-based education program School for Sustainable Development from the perspectives of the participating students, teachers, and representatives of the local municipalities. The study is based on an analysis of paired or group interviews with 47 students, 7 teachers, and 6 representatives. The findings show that while the teachers perceived the process of the students’ involvement in planning and conducting a community-based project as highly participative, the students’ opportunities to shape the process through making their own decisions were rather limited and the teachers kept control over important parts of the process to themselves. While the cooperation of the schools with their respective municipalities was appreciated by most of the respondents, several barriers have been identified. Participation in the project has likely increased the teachers’ self-effectiveness, developed the students’ interpersonal competence, and improved the atmosphere at the schools involved.

Abbreviations: PBE: place-based education; ENEC: European Network for Environmental Citizenship; STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics; SSD: The School for Sustainable Development.     

Student Decision-Making about a Globally Familiar Socioscientific Issue: The value of sharing and comparing views with international counterparts

This paper focuses on the views of 16–17-year-old science students from England, Germany, Hong Kong and Sweden on whale hunting, and their perceptions of the views of their international counterparts. The students were all provided with the same decision-making task, discussed the issue in small groups and then presented their views on video, which were shared with their counterparts. The findings show that the decision-making task served to deepen and modify students' views across all nationalities, and the students generally valued and learned from the sharing of views with students of the same age from around the world. However, an important discovery was that the German students' opinions often ran counter to those from the other 3 locations, and the paper cautions against making broad-sweeping generalisations about students' views on socioscientific issues.     

Factors affecting success of training companies

This study aims to identify the key factors which influence the functioning quality and success of training companies. Based on an analysis of the requirements included in the quality management system standards for providers of education and training services, a set of twenty factors has been developed. This was followed by a survey for specifically selected managers of 90 Polish firms, which provide training, who evaluated both the influence of the factors on the probability of success and also the level of difficulty required to accomplish the factors. The findings indicate that the managers of the learning providers need to focus on employing qualified trainers and providing a curriculum which is unique and adjusted to their customers’ needs.     

Reliability of the new environmental paradigm for analysing the environmental attitudes of Senegalese pupils in the context of conservation education projects

The New Environmental Paradigm scale for children was developed and validated in Western nations but has seldom been applied in non-western countries. The aim of the current study is to examine the scale’s validity for schoolchildren in Senegal. The study was conducted in three regions of Senegal in November and December 2015, and a total 782 schoolchildren with an average age of 13 years participated. We used Cronbach’s alpha and confirmatory factor analysis to assess the consistency of the scale. The principal component analysis was used to reveal the different potential dimensions of our data-set. Given the low internal consistency of the scale and the unexpected responses to certain items, the scale seems to be rather unreliable for the investigated population. This difference could be caused by specific cultural features encompassing strong religious beliefs, different understandings of the place of humankind in nature, and weak awareness of humans’ impact on the natural world.     

The beneficial effect of sleep on behavioral health problems in youth is disrupted by prenatal cannabis exposure: A causal random forest analysis of Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development data

Studies suggest prenatal cannabis exposure is associated with mood/behavioral problems in children. However, it is unclear if targeting modifiable domains like sleep behaviors would improve outcomes in exposed youth. Using a causal inference framework, the effect of changing sleep-hours on changing internalizing/externalizing problems in children was examined using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development™ study baseline (ages 9–10; collected during 2016–2018) and year-1 follow-up data (N = 9825; 4663 female; 5196 white). Average treatment effects (ATE) indicated that more sleep predicted less internalizing (ATE = −.34, SE = .08, p < .001) and externalizing (ATE = −.29, SE = .07, p < .001) problems over time. However, prenatal cannabis exposure moderated the ATE on internalizing (conditional-ATE = .91, SE = .39, p = .019), whereby participants with exposure (n = 605) did not show any effect of changing sleep-hours on mood (B = .09, SE = .24).     

Validation of a model and a simulator for road cycling on real tracks

In this study, methods for data acquisition, analysis, modelling, and simulation of performance parameters in road cycling on real tracks were developed and evaluated. A simulator was designed to facilitate the measurement in a laboratory environment. The simulation included real height profiles and a video playback that was synchronised with the cyclist’s current virtual position on the track, and online visualisation of course and performance parameters. Field data obtained on mountain tracks in this study were compared with the state-of-the-art mathematical model for road cycling power, established by Martin et al. (J Appl Biomech 14: 276–291, 1998), which accounts for the gradient force, air resistance, rolling resistance, frictional losses in wheel bearings and inertia. The model described the performance parameters accurately with correlation coefficients of 0.96–0.99 and signal-to-noise ratios of 19.7–23.9 dB. It was shown that the mathematical model could be implemented on an ergometer for simulating rides on real courses, providing similar quality measures when comparing field and simulator measurements.