Engaging students emotionally: the role of emotional intelligence in predicting cognitive and affective engagement in higher education

Student engagement is a key predictor of academic performance, persistence and retention in higher education. While many studies have identified how aspects of the college environment influence engagement, fewer have specifically focused on emotional intelligence (EI). In this study, we sought to explore whether EI could predict cognitive and/or affective engagement in a sample of undergraduate psychology students in Ireland. Ninety-one students completed two forms of the student engagement instrument, rating current engagement and retrospective secondary school engagement, along with the trait EI (TEI) questionnaire. After controlling for academic ability, gender and school engagement, multiple regression analyses found TEI to be a positive predictor of both cognitive and affective engagement. Previous academic performance acted as an additional predictor of cognitive engagement, while retrospective affective school engagement predicted current affective engagement. These results suggest that interventions aimed at increasing EI may have positive implications for many aspects of student engagement, and hence performance at third level.     

Gross motor teaching in preschool education: where,what and how do Singapore educators teach? (Enseñanza de la motricidad gruesa en educación infantil: ¿dónde,qué y cómo enseñan las maestras en Singapur?)

ABSTRACT

Fostering the development of gross motor (GM) skills is important in itself and beneficial for the holistic development of children. While early childhood curriculum frameworks for GM teaching have been recently articulated, there is limited research on actual pedagogical practices. This study explored GM teaching practices in Singapore Kindergarten 1 classrooms (4–5 years), focusing on where (indoors vs outdoors), what (types of GM skills) and how (teaching strategies and opportunities for practice) preschool educators teach. The study is part of a longitudinal project in which 108 Kindergarten 1 classrooms were observed and videotaped during a full ‘typical day’ (3–4 hours). GM teaching was observed to occur predominantly indoors. Non-locomotor skills were the most frequently taught to children, followed by locomotor and manipulative skills. Many educators were observed using explicit teaching strategies before and during GM activities, with low involvement after activities had been completed. While GM teaching was predominantly teacher-led, opportunities for unguided practice and play were more frequent outdoors. We conclude that Singapore preschool educators need support to better enact the guidelines of the GM curriculum framework. The study enriches the thin classroom-based international literature on GM education.     

Pubertal Timing and Adolescent Alcohol Use: The Mediating Role of Parental and Peer Influences

Using intergenerational, prospective data at ages 9 months, 7, 11, and 14 years from the nationally representative United Kingdom Millennium Cohort Study, this interdisciplinary study unpacks why 14-year-old adolescents with early perceived pubertal timing (PT) were more likely to drink alcohol (ever, frequent, and binge drinking) compared to those whose PT was on-time or late (5,757 girls, 5,799 boys; 80% White, 10% Asian, 3% Black, and 7% Other British). Parents allowed drinking among 22% (18%) of early PT girls (boys) compared to 11% of late PT adolescents; formal mediation models showed differences by PT in parent permissiveness and gains in alcohol-using friends primarily explained age 14 PT-drinking associations. Parental alcohol permissiveness should be a key prevention target for early PT adolescents.     

The Influence of Ethnic-Racial Identity Developmental Processes on Global Bicultural Competence Development

This study investigated ethnic-racial identity (ERI) developmental processes (i.e., exploration and resolution) as pathways for adolescents to develop global bicultural competence, or the ability to meet heritage and host cultural demands. The sample included 749 U.S. Mexican-origin youth (30% Mexico-born; 51% male) followed from early-to-late adolescence (M_age = 12.79–17.38 years). Longitudinal structural equation analyses revealed that youth’s sequential engagement in ERI exploration and resolution (from early-to-middle adolescence) promoted global bicultural competence in late adolescence. The findings highlight the benefits of achieving clarity about one’s ERI via self-exploration efforts for adolescents’ ability to respond effectively to bicultural demands. This study advances mechanisms via which ERI development may support youth adaptation to multiple cultural systems.     

Cognition in art education

Whilst it is accepted that art education is a cognitive endeavour, the value and contribution of cognition to art education is often deliberated. By examining literature concerning conceptions of cognition and contextualising studies with the findings of a 5-year artographic inquiry into cognition in the lived experiences of artist teachers, this article is able to present a case for the reinstatement of cognition and cognitive study across policy, practice and research in art education. The article shares a conceptual frame to assist engagement with cognition as a concept whilst presenting a strategy to support cognitive reinstatement in the changing climate of art education. Questions are posed and answered regarding cognition’s position in art education to bring reinstatement implications forward, such as its complexity and productivity within education. Recommendations, such as increased engagement, voice projection and visibility, are also suggested to infiltrate transformation in future materialisations of cognitive engagement in the policy, practice and research of art education.     

Discursive constructions of equity in Australian higher education: Imagined worlds and the case of people seeking asylum

There is a strong rationale for people seeking asylum and refugees given temporary protection to be key beneficiaries of Australian higher education equity practices. However, despite the extreme precarity they face, this group remains among the most educationally disadvantaged populations in Australia. Here, we use critical discourse analysis to examine the publicly available statements of 38 Australian universities to identify discursive representations of equity practices and connections, with our analytic gaze focused through the lens of people seeking asylum. Using a three-part analytic heuristic examining ‘statements’, ‘practices’ and ‘connections’, we offer a critical discourse analysis of how each public university expresses its commitment to the equity agenda in powerful stakeholder-facing documents—such as annual reports, strategic plans and media releases—and we compare this analysis against institutional stated practices with regard to people seeking asylum. In identifying misalignments between equity statements and stated practices, we suggest that institutional equity narratives articulate ‘imagined worlds’, in which all marginalised groups can access higher education. We argue that now is the time to move beyond these ‘imagined worlds’, to enact stated commitments to universal education, by instituting real and effective practices to facilitate equitable access to Australian higher education for people seeking asylum.     

The Role of Classification Skill in Moderating Environmental Influences on Children's Gender Stereotyping: A Study of the Functional Use of Gender in the Classroom

Sandra Bem has suggested that societal use of gender as a functional category increases gender stereotyping. The present study tests Bem's theory and the additional hypothesis that children's classification skill moderates environmental effects on gender stereotyping. Elementary school children ( N = 66) were given pretest measures of gender stereotyping and of classification skill and assigned to 1 of 3 types of school classrooms in which teachers made: (1) functional use of male and female groups, (2) functional use of "red" and "green" groups, or (3) no explicit groups. After 4 weeks, children completed posttest measures of gender and intergroup attitudes. As predicted, the functional use of gender categories led to increases in gender stereotyping, particularly among those children with less advanced classification skills. The functional use of color categories did not result in highly stereotypic perceptions of groups. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed.     

Rethinking Universal Suspension for Severe Student Behavior

Driven by a combination of concern for historically high suspension rates and substantial disproportionalities in suspension use, a recent wave of education reforms encourages schools to reduce their use of suspensions for student behavior management. Both academic and political discourse has focused on the extensive use of suspension for relatively minor behavioral infractions, with an implicit assumption or explicit articulation that suspension could still be used for severe infractions. This article tests that assumption, providing evidence that reductions in suspensions for severe infractions may produce positive impacts without harming school safety.

Using data from high schools in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), 2007–2014, we examine how declines in school reliance on suspensions for severe infractions are associated with changes in academic performance, attendance, and student reports of school climate for all students in the school. Recognizing the substantial methodological difficulty in obtaining impact estimates, we exploit a series of official and unofficial policy-induced changes to suspension practice, using school and student fixed effects models with extensive controls to reduce potential sources of bias in the estimates.

We find the reduction in out-of-school suspension for severe infractions was associated with small but statistically significant increases in student test scores, consequential attendance improvements (beyond the impact of fewer days suspended), and heterogeneity in changes to students' perceptions of school safety. Test score impacts are concentrated in racially diverse schools and those with low baseline suspension use. Attendance impacts are driven by schools predominantly serving African American students (which also had the highest baseline suspension rates); these schools also had large, significant improvements in perceptions of school climate.     

Children's perceptions of discrimination: a developmental model

Discrimination affects millions of children in the United States and throughout the world. Although the topic is important for both theoretical and applied reasons, little developmental work has examined children's perceptions of discrimination directed toward themselves and others. A review of past theoretical and empirical work on the perception of discrimination is provided. Next, a developmental model of the perception of discrimination is offered. The model identifies developmental and individual differences expected to influence judgments about discrimination, as well as situational variables that are likely to support attributions to discrimination.     

Explaining variation in student efforts towards using math and science knowledge in engineering contexts

Previous research suggests that in classes that take an integrated approach to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, students tend to engage in fulfilling goals of their engineering design challenges, but only inconsistently engage with the related math and science content. The present research examines these inconsistences by focusing on student engagement, or effort, towards math and science concepts while working on an engineering challenge, through the lens of expectancy-value theory. Specifically, we examine how students’ perceptions of the value of math and science and expectancy for success with the math and science relate to the efforts they put towards using math and science while working on engineering challenges. Our results suggest that subjective task value significantly predicts efforts towards both math and science, whereas neither expectancy, nor the interaction between expectancy and value predicted effort. We argue that integrated learning environments need to help students understand how the domains of math, science, and engineering support their work in fulfilling the engineering project design goals. In other words, we argue that we, as educators, must help students to recognise the value of each of the domains addressed within STEM integrated learning environments. This paper discusses strategies for accomplishing this goal.