Testing the effectiveness of the Developing Inclusive Youth program: A multisite randomized control trial

The Developing Inclusive Youth program is a classroom-based, individually administered video tool that depicts peer-based social and racial exclusion, combined with teacher-led discussions. A multisite randomized control trial was implemented with 983 participants (502 females; 58.5% White, 41.5% Ethnic/racial minority; M_age = 9.64 years) in 48 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classrooms across six schools. Children in the program were more likely to view interracial and same-race peer exclusion as wrong, associate positive traits with peers of different racial, ethnic, and gender backgrounds, and report play with peers from diverse backgrounds than were children in the control group. Many approaches are necessary to achieve antiracism in schools. This intervention is one component of this goal for developmental science.     

Tackling the anxiety of learning statistics: The mystery of the red envelope

Most graduate programs in management require students to carry out a substantive research project. However, few management students have a comfortable command of the statistical techniques needed to realize such quantitative projects. This can lead to student anxiety and stress, which challenges instructors to devise ways to build students’ self-efficacy with statistical analysis. Drawing on game-based learning principles, we developed an exercise to help students in a graduate-level research methods course practice these statistical techniques. Designed around a series of four gamified challenges, students perform basic statistical analyses (correlations, t-tests, and simple linear regression) to solve puzzles and unlock a reward hidden in a mysterious red envelope. We used the exercise on seven occasions (five times in the methods course and twice in a graduate program preparatory course). After launching it in fall 2021, we observed that students were engaged and enthusiastic about the exercise. To ascertain its effectiveness more systematically, we collected data in five subsequent sections using a pretest/posttest design (N = 84) which showed that perceptions of statistics self-efficacy increased following the exercise. We conclude by suggesting that our exercise can be tailored to other learning contexts such as management and statistics-centered courses.     

Fifth graders' science inquiry abilities: A comparative study of students in hands‐on and textbook curricula

A large number of American elementary school students are now studying science using the hands‐on inquiry curricula developed in the 1990s: Insights; Full Option Science System (FOSS); and Science and Technology for Children (STC). A goal of these programs, echoed in the National Science Education Standards, is that children should gain “abilities to do scientific inquiry” and “understanding about scientific inquiry.” We have studied the degree to which students can do inquiries by using four hands‐on performance assessments, which required one or three class periods. To be fair, the assessments avoided content that is studied in depth in the hands‐on programs. For a sample of about 1000 fifth grade students, we compared the performance of students in hands‐on curricula with an equal number of students with textbook curricula. The students were from 41 classrooms in nine school districts. The results show little or no curricular effect. There was a strong dependence on students' cognitive ability, as measured with a standard multiple‐choice instrument. There was no significant difference between boys and girls. Also, there was no difference on a multiple‐choice test, which used items released from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). It is not completely clear whether the lack of difference on the performance assessments was a consequence of the assessments, the curricula, and/or the teaching. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 467–484, 2006     

Are A-not-B errors caused by a belief about object location?

Eight- to 12-month-olds might make A-not-B errors, knowing the object is in B but searching at A because of ancillary (attention, inhibitory, or motor memory) deficits, or they might genuinely believe the object is in A (conceptual deficit). This study examined how diligently infants searched for a hidden object they never found. An object was placed in A twice, and then in B. In a different task the object was placed beside A twice, and then in B. Infants made more A-not-B errors in the former task, and perseverating infants searched diligently in A rather than in B. Infants seemed to believe the object was in A, suggesting that both a conceptual deficit and ancillary deficits account for A-not-B errors.     

A diffractive reading of dialogical feedback through the political ethics of care

With regard to improving higher education feedback practices, there is an increasing interest in using the efficacy of dialogue rather than the more traditional unidirectional approaches. We build on this impetus by considering how the ethics of care can be used to analyse the dialogical aspects of feedback. By diffractively reading insights of Boud and Molloy [2013a. “What is the Problem with Feedback?” In Feedback in Higher and Professional Education: Understanding it and Doing it Well, edited by D. Boud, and E. Molloy, 1–10. London: Routledge; Boud, D., and E. Molloy. 2013b. “Rethinking Models of Feedback for Learning: The Challenge of Design.” Assessment &; Evaluation in Higher Education 38 (6): 698–712] on dialogic feedback through the moral elements of care ethics, this paper proposes a novel way of discerning the extent to which the dialogical giving and receiving of feedback contributes to learning. To illustrate this, we draw on experiences from an Emerging Technologies professional development course for higher educators. We examine our own dialogical interactions of giving and receiving feedback using the moral elements of care ethics – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust, to provide a concrete example of how the ethics of care can be used productively for evaluating feedback practices.     

Moments of Inclusion and Exclusion: pupils negotiating classroom contexts

This paper uses evidence from a small-scale study of two English primary school classrooms to examine school inclusion in its political contexts. We argue that ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ are complex processes, enacted moment-by-moment by pupils and teachers. Our focus is on the pupils' negotiation of these moments, and we examine how their negotiations are contingent on (although not determined by) a web of intersecting indices of ‘difference’, including differences of social class, ethnicity, gender/sexuality, perceived academic ability and physical appearance. We take a post-structuralist approach, well-known in feminist educational research but less often used in research and thinking about ‘inclusive’ schooling, to foreground children's active role in making sense of social conditions that are not of their own making or choice. We conclude that a politically literate understanding of the processes of inclusion and exclusion is necessary both to highlight the continuing reproduction of educational inequality, and to produce the necessary conditions for egalitarian change.     

Assessing emergent literacy in preschool classrooms

Recent research on the literacy development of children during the preschool years has emphasized the notion of “emergent literacy,” according to authors Kontos (1986) and Teale and Sulzby (1986). According to this view, preschool children learn about reading and writing as they participate in a literate culture. Early social interactions involving print are crucial to children's reading and writing development, according to the Early Childhood and Literacy Development Committee (1986).     

Risk-based school inspections: impact of targeted inspection approaches on Dutch secondary schools

In most countries, publicly funded schools are held accountable to one inspectorate and are judged against agreed national standards. Many inspectorates of education have recently moved towards more proportional risk-based inspection models, targeting high-risk schools for visits, while schools with satisfactory student attainment levels are excluded from inspections. This paper looks into these newer inspection models and aims to enhance our understanding of the potential effectiveness of such targeted models on student attainment and other performance indicators. Random effects models, analyzing changes in schools over time, indicate that targeted inspections particularly have an effect on student attainment in literacy in weak schools, while also impacting on student satisfaction, student numbers and student-staff ratios.