Infant-toddler teachers can successfully employ authentic assessment: The Learning Through Relating system

This study documents the reliability and validity of a new infant-toddler authentic assessment, the Learning Through Relating Child Assets Record (LTR-CAR), and its feasibility of use by infant-toddler caregivers in an Early Head Start program. In a sample of 136 children, results indicated a strong internal structure of the LTR-CAR as evidenced by high internal consistency within age bands, expected performance in terms of the order of difficulty of items, and expected performance relative to the chronological ages of children. Moreover, the LTR-CAR accounted for a statistically significant amount of unique variance (between 6 and 26%), over and above age and gender, in six out of eight regressions predicting criterion measures. Given the increasing numbers of infants and toddlers in non-parental care, the need for authentic assessment as a tool to plan meaningful learning opportunities, as well as the lack of evidence-based authentic assessment options at the infant-toddler level, the LTR-CAR may provide a viable option for the field.     

The Garden and the Jungle: Burnett, Kipling and the Nature of Imperial Childhood

Imperial British India is the point of origin for protagonists in both Frances Hodgson Burnett??s The Secret Garden (1911) and Rudyard Kipling??s The Jungle Books (1894?C1895), two influential children??s stories in which late Victorian notions of childhood education and nature converge with those of national and imperial identity. In Burnett??s The Secret Garden, Mary Lennox, orphaned in colonial India, is restored to health only as she is ??schooled?? in the English countryside. Kipling, meanwhile, finds the imperial setting a fine and fitting place to raise his hero Mowgli. In both cases the young protagonists develop physically, spiritually and socially in classrooms of nature outside or parallel to mainstream culture. This paper follows the different ??escapes?? offered characters in these works, while tracing the contours of class structure, gender, family relations, educational standards and imperial identity as experienced in the last decades of the nineteenth century.     

The reading rate and comprehension of adults with impaired reading skills or visual discomfort

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of impaired reading skills and visual discomfort on the reading rate and comprehension of university students when reading texts presented at a high school (Grade 9) or university (Grade 12) level of difficulty. Groups included impaired readers (n=18) and normal readers with (n=13) or without visual discomfort (n=19). Regardless of text difficulty the impaired reader group had a significantly slower reading rate and poorer comprehension than the normal reader control group. However, when reading rate and comprehension were compared at the assessed reading level of each group, no group differences were found. The normal reading visual discomfort group had poorer reading comprehension than other normal readers with presentation of university‐level text only. It was concluded that poor word decoding skills may exacerbate comprehension difficulties in impaired readers. In contrast, the comprehension difficulties found for normal readers with visual discomfort occurred because of the somatic and perceptual difficulties induced with exposure to the repetitive striped patterns found on text pages. The types of strategy needed to increase the reading efficiency and produce greater academic success in university students with impaired reader skills or visual discomfort are discussed.     

The Magical Number 7

This article describes an interactive activity that involves students participating in a memory recall test. Data collected from the activity may be used to illustrate the one‐sample t test or one‐sample sign test.     

Interest,enjoyment and pride after failure experiences? Predictors of students’ state-emotions after success and failure during learning in mathematics

The current investigation was designed to identify emotion states students experience during mathematics activities, and in particular to distinguish emotions contingent on experiences of success and experiences of failure. Students’ task-related emotional responses were recorded following experiences of success and failure while working with an individualised computer-based mathematics learning environment. In addition, relations between these patterns of emotional responses after success and failure experiences and trait-like motivational variables, self-concept of ability, subject value, orientation to learning from errors, goal orientation and causal attributions, were examined. Two separate studies are reported. In Study 1 emotions associated with success and failure experiences in mathematics were investigated in relation to self-concept of ability, subject value and orientation to learning from errors. In Study 2, patterns of emotion following success and failure were examined in relation to students’ goal orientation and their causal attributions for success in school.     

Face-to-face versus computer-mediated discussion of teaching cases: Impacts on preservice teachers’ engagement, critical analyses, and self-efficacy

Two frequently-used discussion protocols were investigated as part of a program to implement teaching cases in undergraduate educational psychology classes designed for preservice teachers. One protocol involved synchronous face-to-face (FTF) discussion of teaching cases, which occurred in class after students had individually completed written case analyses as homework outside of class. The other was asynchronous computer-mediated (CM) discussion taking place outside of class, simultaneous to students’ completion of their written case analyses. Six class offerings of an undergraduate child development course taught by two instructors (three classes by each instructor) were randomly assigned within instructor in a quasi-experimental design to one of the three discussion conditions: FTF, CM, or no discussion of the cases across the semester. Findings indicated that both CM and FTF discussion conditions were associated with positive outcomes relative to the control condition. Both CM and FTF discussion related to higher cognitive–affective engagement with the cases than the control condition; and the CM discussion condition was associated with higher cognitive–affective engagement than FTF discussion. In contrast, FTF discussion, but not CM discussion, was associated with higher-than-control-condition case analysis ability at the end of the semester. Potential explanations for these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Examining the influence of the parent-initiated and coach-created motivational climates upon athletes' perfectionistic cognitions

The aims of this study are threefold. First, we investigate the influence of the parent-initiated motivational climate upon elite junior athletes' perfectionistic cognitions. Second, we examine whether the coach-created motivational climate predicts additional variance in elite junior athletes' perfectionistic cognitions beyond the effects associated with the parent-initiated motivational climate. Third, we test the moderating role of athletes' gender and age in the relationship between the parent-initiated and coach-created motivational climates and athletes' perfectionistic cognitions. A total of 190 elite junior athletes (mean age 15.2 years, s?=?1.5, range 10-18) completed the Parent-Initiated Motivational Climate Questionnaire-2 (White & Duda, 1993), the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire-2 (Newton, Duda, & Yin, 2000), and the Perfectionistic Cognitions Inventory (Flett, Hewitt, Blankstein, & Gray, 1998). Regression analyses revealed that mother- and father-initiated worry-conducive climates, the father-initiated success-without-effort climate, and the coach-created performance motivational climate predicted male athletes' perfectionistic cognitions. Female athletes' perfectionistic cognitions were predicted by the mother-initiated worry-conducive climate, father-initiated learning-enjoyment climate, and both dimensions of the coach-created climate. Finally, athletes' gender emerged as a significant moderator of the mother-initiated worry-conducive climate and athletes' perfectionistic cognitions relationship. Findings confirm that the parent-initiated motivational climate is a significant predictor of athletes' perfectionism-related thoughts, and provide initial support for the influence of the coach-created motivation climate over children's perfectionistic cognitions.