Professor-student communications: Why they should be privileged communications

Relationships between professors and students are well-known to be important aspects of the university experience. A successful professor-student relationship is founded on open and honest communication, which may not be possible if the content of conversations between the parties is not guaranteed to be confidential. In this article the authors argue for consideration of professor-student communications as privileged communications and consider the legal and ethical issues involved. Based on a review of the rationale, scope and exceptions to existing forms of privileged communications, the importance of such for professor-student communications is proposed.     

Psychometric Properties of the Eating Attitudes Test

The study was designed to develop an instrument to examine students' reports of the type and frequency of various student behaviors in physical education classes that might disrupt classroom management. This study had multiple phases, including instrument development, preliminary studies, content-related evidence study, and an exploratory factor analysis and internal consistency reliability study. Participants for the content-related evidence study were 27 experts in physical education pedagogy. They were sent items from the student disruptive behavior instrument and asked to organize them into 3 management severity categories. Participants for the factor analysis and internal consistency reliability study were 2,309 middle and high school students from 2 states. The following 6 factors emerged from the exploratory factor analysis: (a) aggressive, (b) low engagement or irresponsibility, (c) fails to follow directions, (d) illegal or harmful, (e) distracts or disturbs others, and (f) poor self-management. Alpha reliability coefficients for the factors were mostly above .70 and the rotated factor loadings for the items ranged from .26 to .73. Investigating students' reports of the type and frequency of potentially troublesome behaviors may lead to a better understanding of student disruptive behaviors in physical education contexts.     

Development of a Scale to Determine Enrollment Barriers into Allied Health Programs

The purpose of this study was to develop the Scale of Allied Health Education Barriers to identify factors limiting enrollment in college/university allied health education programs. Development of the Scale of Allied Health Education Barriers was conducted through the following four stages: (1) review of literature, (2) focus group studies, (3) pilot testing, and (4) test administration and testing of measurement properties. Research participants (N = 1,044) were students enrolled in allied health and non-allied health education programs. Through conducting both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, this study identified five unique factors that are potential barriers to student enrollment in allied health education: Social Influence, Experiential Opportunity, Academic Preparation, Physical Self-Efficacy, and Self-Management. These factors were consistent with the social cognitive theory adopted to guide this study, which posits that personal, environmental, and behavioral factors collectively influence allied health enrollment. Further discussions are made on the practical implications of applying the developed scale to reduce barriers for allied health program recruitments.     

Psychological correlates of physical abuse in Hong Kong Chinese adolescents

OBJECTIVE: To understand the associations between adolescent family physical maltreatment and psychiatric morbidity or psychological problems. METHODS: questionnaire survey on 489 secondary school students in Form 2 from 10 schools in Hong Kong. Questions regarding three forms of family physical maltreatment were measured: corporal punishment within the past 6 months, beaten without any reason within the past 6 months, or ever been beaten to injury. MAIN RESULT: Corporal punishment was not associated with the psychological variables after Bonferroni adjustment was made. Those who experienced the two other forms of physical maltreatment had significant and strong associations with positive Achenbach CBCL outcome (OR from 3.26 to 3.27), drug abuse problems (OR from 2.60 to 20.38), self-injurious behaviors (OR from 3.34 to 8.47) and poor perceived parental support. In addition, those who had ever been beaten to injury scored significantly lower in the "physical appearance" and "behavioral conduct" subscales of the Harter's Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents. CONCLUSIONS: In Hong Kong, some forms of family physical maltreatment (beaten for no reason and beaten to injury) were associated with a number of psychiatric/psychological problems. Further studies should be carried out to clarify whether the relationships are causal in nature.     

Examining the relationship between grit and academic achievement within K‐12 and higher education: A systematic review

In recent years, grit has drawn increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners. As an important noncognitive indicator, grit has been used to understand individual success and performance in various fields. However, past empirical research has shown inconsistent findings on the relationship between grit and academic achievement. This study aims to review and synthesize past empirical findings on the relationship between grit and academic achievement. Forty‐four relevant articles involving a total of 60,133 participants met the inclusion criteria and were synthesized in this meta‐analysis. Our findings suggest that (a) overall grit level and its two facets (consistency of interest and perseverance of effort) are positively associated with academic achievement; (b) the association between grit and academic achievement is moderated by grade level; and (c) perseverance of effort shows the largest effect size on students’ academic achievement when compared with overall grit level and consistency of interest.     

Heterogeneity of student perceptions of the classroom climate: a latent profile approach

Student perceptions are a pivotal point of measurement for understanding why classroom learning environments are effective. Yet there is some evidence that student perceptions cannot be reliably aggregated at the classroom level and, instead, could represent idiosyncratic experiences of students. The present study examines whether heterogeneity in student perceptions of the classroom climate has implications for student achievement. We use data from 1428 seventh grade students in 75 mathematics classrooms from the Michigan Study of Adolescent and Life Transitions. Three dimensions of student perceptions of the classroom were measured: emotional support, autonomy support and performance focus. To obtain a measure of heterogeneity, we first reduced the data using latent profile analysis to describe profiles of students’ perceptions of the classroom. Next, we quantified the heterogeneity of student perceptions within classrooms using Simpson’s D. Classroom-level heterogeneity (Simpson’s D) of students’ perceptions was negatively associated with students’ mathematics achievement, even after controlling for individual- and classroom-level previous achievement, student’s prior perceptions and other variables. Findings suggest that measures of heterogeneity in student perceptions might be important for understanding classroom- and teacher-level effects on student outcomes.     

Children's stroke sequence errors in writing Chinese characters

Each Chinese character is a two dimensional logograph and if character writing is seen as drawing a diagram, then there is no obvious correct sequence in the writing process. However, over the ages and to this day, Chinese children have been taught the proper stroke sequence for forming the characters based on some calligraphic rules when they begin to learn to write in Chinese. The rationale for the teaching of stroke sequence has traditionally been argued on the basis of facilitating better calligraphy and as a memory aid for the exact reproduction of the correct form of the character. This paper reports on a study that tries to determine how far young children can master the correct stroke sequences in writing and the common kinds of errors children made. It further explores the importance of and the possible educational implications for the teaching of stroke sequences in the teaching of handwriting based on the empirical results.     

Use of comics to enhance students’ learning for the development of the twenty-first century competencies in the mathematics classroom

Abstract

This paper discusses the use of comics in teaching mathematics in the secondary mathematics classroom. We explicate how the use of comics in teaching mathematics can prepare students for the twenty-first century competencies. We developed an alternative teaching package using comics for two lower secondary mathematics topics. This alternative teaching package consists of (1) several sets of comic strips expounding all related mathematical concepts in a lively way; (2) tiered practice questions for learning reinforcement; and (3) a set of proposed lesson outlines with suggestions on how to use the comics for mathematics teaching. We also report how one of the teachers in our study used this teaching package in her mathematics lessons. Her lessons were video-recorded and 11 students were interviewed to help us understand how the mathematics comics lessons were enacted and the students’ perception of comics as instruction. We identified instances in which the teacher tweaked the provided resource to further enhance student learning and incorporated elements of the twenty-first century competencies during her lessons. Through selected student interviews, we also identified instances in which students commented on their gain from the new approach from the perspective of the twenty-first century competencies.     

Explaining student and home variance of Chinese reading achievement of the PIRLS 2011 Hong Kong

Hong Kong attained the top place in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011, an international study of reading achievement, which arouses keen interest in understanding the reasons behind this remarkable achievement. Although factors associated with reading achievement in English have been widely studied, similar studies using Chinese as a different language system are limited. The present study proposes and tests a hypothetical model that attempts to explain the variance of reading achievement of Hong Kong pupils in the PIRLS 2011 study, focusing on parental and student factors. Data of 3,875 fourth graders from 132 primary schools and their parents or caregivers (n = 3,682) are involved in the analysis. Structural equation modeling supports the hypothesized model as tenable explaining 34% of the variance of reading achievement. Parental background acts as the fundamental factor that exerts an indirect effect on reading motivation, reading self‐efficacy, and reading achievement of students via books at home and early reading abilities. Reading motivation and reading self‐efficacy are found to be significant in influencing reading achievement. Implications for educational practices and future research are discussed.     

A conceptual framework for understanding children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten

The transition from home to kindergarten, for most children, is the first and major ecological transition in their educational life. Kindergarten is the first educational setting in which children make sense about ‘school’ as a place to learn and about themselves as ‘pupils’. In this transition, children cross a cultural boundary from home to kindergarten and, in fact, they commute between the two cultural settings. In Vygotsky's view, children are active culture learners. How they cope with, and adapt to, the novel kindergarten is crucial to their ‘pupil career’ in their life‐long learning. Thus, this paper aims to provide early childhood education professionals with a framework to understand children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten. This paper begins with a review of the concept of transition. It then presents a conceptual framework of the understanding of children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten. Major elements of the conceptual framework are derived from sociocultural theory, and analyses of ‘rites of passage’ and ‘pupil career’. This highlights the relationships between layers of context, stages of transition, and adaptation outcomes.