Effects of test anxiety on performance,worry, and emotionality in naturally occurring exams

Test performance and reported anxiety levels of high and low test-anxious subjects taking either a regular exam or an exam containing brief, written relaxation instructions were compared. A consistent main effect for test anxiety was found; high test-anxious subjects performed more poorly and reported greater worry and emotionality than did low test-anxious subjects. Effects for the relaxation manipulation were found only on the second of three exams where the high anxious subjects receiving the relaxation exam format reported less worry than the high anxiety-regular exam group. Results provide greater external validity for the Test Anxiety Scale (TAS).     

The Interplay Between Multisensory Associative Learning and IQ in Children

This study assessed the developmental profile of unisensory and multisensory processes, and their contribution to children's intellectual abilities (8- and 11-year olds, N = 38, compared to adults, N = 19) using a simple audiovisual detection task and three incidental associative learning tasks with different sensory signals: visual-verbal with pseudowords, novel audiovisual, and visual-visual. The level of immaturity throughout childhood was dependent on both, the sensory signal type and the task. Associative learning was significantly enhanced with verbal sounds, compared to novel audiovisual and unisensory visual learning. Visual-verbal learning was also the best predictor of children's general intellectual abilities. The results demonstrate a separate developmental trajectory for visual and verbal multisensory processes and independent contributions to the development of cognitive abilities throughout childhood.     

Rolling out ‘good’, ‘best’ and ‘excellent’ practice. What next? Perfect practice?

The identification and dissemination of ‘good practice’ has for years been a central part of the Government's strategy for radical change of the education system. ‘Good practice’, however, is no longer good enough, nor is ‘best practice’. The requirement now for post‐compulsory education and training (from which all our examples are taken) is nothing less than ‘excellent practice for all’. This article critically examines these highly significant shifts in the rhetoric of policy, finds them wanting and argues that we need to face up to the complexities involved in deciding not only what is ‘excellent practice’ but also in working through all the stages which would be needed to transmit it throughout the sector. In particular, recent documents from the Quality Improvement Agency and the Learning and Skills Council on the pursuit of excellence are critically appraised. The views of those practitioners who are part of the authors' project in the Economic and Social Research Council's Teaching and Learning Research Programme are also explained in relation to ‘good practice’. The authors attempt to explain the frenetic activity of politicians and policy makers in this sector, and end by moving from critique to construction by considering what can be rescued from the inherently contestable notion of ‘good practice’, and, in doing so, draw heavily on the work of Robin Alexander.     

Manipulating Treatment Dose: Evaluating the Frequency of a Small Group Intervention Targeting Whole Number Operations

Treatment dose is an understudied aspect of treatment effectiveness. This study compared the frequency with which a small‐group mathematics intervention was delivered weekly (i.e., four times, twice, once) with a control condition while controlling for total duration. 101 at‐risk students in grades 2–4 were randomly assigned to a condition following universal screening and skill‐based assessments. Multilevel modeling was used to evaluate final score and growth on three measures. Results suggested that for the most proximal computation measure, treatment sessions occurring four times weekly produced clear benefits. On the application measure, students in all treatment groups outperformed students in the control condition. For the most complex computation measure, frequency was not a useful predictor. Grade was a moderating variable.     

Additional support needs reforms and social justice in Scotland

New additional support‐needs legislation in Scotland sought to recognise the way in which poverty, as well as individual impairment, contribute to the creation of children's difficulties in learning. As well as identifying a wider range of needs, the legislation sought to provide parents, irrespective of social background, with more powerful means of challenging local authority decisions on resource allocation, with the aim of delivering a fairer system. This paper uses Scottish Government statistics and family case studies drawn from an ESRC‐funded project (RES‐062‐23‐0803) to examine the links between social deprivation, the identification of additional support needs and parents' ability to use the new dispute resolution mechanisms. There is a strong association between the identification of additional support needs and social deprivation and this is particularly marked in relation to non‐normative difficulties, such as social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, compared with normative difficulties such as blindness and deafness. Statutory educational plans, which provide greater rights to additional resources and formal dispute resolution mechanisms, are disproportionately distributed to parents in more advantaged neighbourhoods. Parents from middle‐class backgrounds appear to be able to use their social and cultural capital more effectively to challenge local authority decisions. The paper concludes that some funding for additional support needs should be allocated on the basis of social deprivation, but there continues to be a need for the assessment and resourcing of individual needs, since poverty has material consequences for individual children, whose difficulties may be overlooked if an entirely systemic approach is adopted. There is a need for greater investment in advocacy service to enable parents from poorer backgrounds to exercise their rights.     

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Most research into religious education has concentrated upon older children, but this paper reports findings obtained from the teachers of junior (seven to II years old) school children. From the content of religious education lessons and the overall religious sub‐cultures of classroom and school, conclusions are drawn about the religious socialization process of the child. A distinction is made between the child's own religious quest for meaning and the Christian culture which is generally accepted in Britain and taught in school. The child's religion is divided into the cognitive and the emotive while the socialization process is treated as cognitive, explicit and implicit. The general conclusion reached is that religious education lessons do not respond to the child's own cognitive level and are thus likely to confuse, whereas the religious life of classroom and school leads to an emotive affinity with Christianity. Thus ambivalence towards the Christian religion is produced in the child.