Psychometric properties and optimizing of the Bracken School Readiness Assessment

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - The Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) has been used in large studies such as the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). Important...     

Academic accommodations for university students living with disability and the potential of universal design to address their needs

Higher Education - This paper reports on a faculty-wide investigation into the experiences of students requiring academic accommodations due to disability. Underpinned by the social model of...     

Mathematics teachers’ self-captured video and opportunities for learning

Numerous video-based programs have been developed to support mathematics teachers in reflecting on and examining classrooms interactions without the immediate demands of instruction. An important premise of such work is that teacher learning occurs at the time that the video is viewed and discussed with teachers. Recent advances in technology, however, offer new approaches for the use of video with teachers. We claim that these new technologies provide important opportunities for teacher learning prior to the viewing and discussion of video with colleagues. In particular, we believe that important teacher learning can occur from the activities of (1) capturing video from one’s own classroom and (2) selecting clips to share with others. The goal of this article is to introduce key strategies that three groups of middle and high school mathematics teachers use prior to, during, and after instruction as they engage in this work. We believe that increased attention to these strategies is necessary in order to better understand how to support teacher learning in the context of new digital technologies.     

Play it safe or play to learn: mindsets and behavioral self-regulation in kindergarten

Metacognition and Learning - Individuals hold different mindsets encompassing beliefs about trait stability (stable vs. malleable) and goal orientations (performance vs. mastery). These...     

Audience orientations toward new media

The proliferation of new communication technologies over the last 2 decades has increased opportunities for audience activity by offering more choices and greater control aver the communication process for media consumers. However, extant research on the degree of user activity with new media portrays conflicting views of audience members as more active or more passive. This study attempts to sort out this issue by exploring audience activity levels among users of new and traditional media, as indicated by instrumental or ritualized orientations toward media use. Results indicate that new communication technologies are motivated by both instrumental and ritualized motives, but are used more instrumentally than traditional channels, particularly among older users.     

Short-term tracking of performance and health-related physical fitness in girls: The Healthy Growth in Cariri Study

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to track the performance and health-related physical fitness of girls from Brazil's Cariri region. In the “Healthy Growth in Cariri Study”, 294 girls from public and private schools were divided into four age cohorts – 8, 10, 12, and 14 years – and followed for three consecutive years, with an assessment every 6 months. Shuttle run, hand grip, standing long jump, trunk lift, curl-up, 12-min run, and fatness were used to rate physical fitness performance and health-related components on each of six occasions. Tracking was done in a stepwise manner, using auto-correlation, by modelling the individual history of change in performance of each girl, and using Foulkes and Davies’ γ-coefficient. SPSS 18.0 and TIMEPATH were used for data analysis. Auto-correlations evidenced low-to-moderate values in almost all components of performance and health-related physical fitness. Intra-individual tracking analysis showed large variation in all fitness components as a result of a wide spread in individual history of change in fitness performance. Population estimates of γ were low in all tests. Our results show low-to-moderate tracking of physical fitness components of girls. A wide range of intra-individual and inter-variability in fitness development was observed.     

Sleep and Cognition in Preschool Years: Specific Links to Executive Functioning

This study investigated the prospective links between sleep in infancy and preschoolers' cognitive performance. Mothers of 65 infants completed a sleep diary when infants were aged 1 year, and children completed two subscales of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence at 4 years, indexing general cognitive ability and complex executive functioning. Consistent with hypotheses, children getting higher proportions of their sleep at night as infants were found to perform better on executive functions, but did not show better general cognition. Relations held after controlling for family socioeconomic status and prior cognitive functioning. These findings suggest that the special importance of sleep for higher order cognition, documented among adults, may appear very early in life.