Predictors of ability-achievement discrepancies in children referred for psychoeducational evaluation

The present study evaluated a school district's psychoeducational screening program to determine the best predictors of two difference score variables: (a) WISC-R FSIQ – PIAT reading recognition score and (b) WISC-R FSIQ – PIAT math score. The study also investigated the merit of using scores from a group-administered achievement test (CAT) as predictors. Subjects were 61 first through fifth graders initially referred for testing from 1982–1984. Multiple regression analyses indicated: (a) for reading, the SIQ score and the PPVT-R – CAT reading difference score were significant predictors, together accounting for 27% of the variance, and (b) for math, the PPVT-R score accounted for 28% of the variance, with additional variables producing nonsignificant increments. Results suggest that CAT scores may prove useful predictors when combined with screening IQ tests to form difference scores.     

Meeting the 2020 American Graduation Initiative (AGI) Goal of Increasing Postsecondary Graduation Rates and Completions: A Macro Perspective of Community College Student Educational Attainment

The paper uses the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data system (IPEDS) data to simulate the 2020 American Graduation Initiative (AGI) goal introduced by President Obama in the summer of 2009. We estimate community college graduation rates and completion numbers under different scenarios that include the following sets of variables: (a) internal education variables; (b) external workforce development variables; and (c) state and national environmental factors. Our analysis suggests that the likelihood of success of meeting the AGI goal increases dramatically if community colleges are able to raise graduation rates and increase completion numbers by doing the following: (a) lowering the inherent risk factors that prevent students from graduating by implementing proactive retention and completion strategies; (b) operating in economic and workforce development environments of low unemployment levels and (c) taking into consideration the ever-growing globally competitive environment.     

Policy for physical education and school sport in England, 2003–2010: vested interests and dominant discourses

Background: The salience of physical education and school sport (PESS) in England changed dramatically in the 2000s in terms of central government investment and political interests. The government put in place the physical education, school sport and club links strategy and the physical education and sport strategy for young people for a wide-ranging array of social objectives. Although policy research relating to PESS has centred on the sport policy-making process and the role of government or agents, including teachers, has been growing from the 2000s, this paper argues for the need to explore the social construction and constitution of school knowledge underpinned and influenced by particular dominant vested interests and their associated discourses to understand certain pedagogical implications for young people.

Method: Applying the educational policy sociology approach adapted from Basil Bernstein's work on the social construction of pedagogic discourse, the focus of this paper was to identify the main discourses which constructed and constituted policy for PESS from 2003 to 2010 in England. Qualitative content analysis on six policy documents and 467 media articles was conducted.

Findings: This paper identifies five discourses constructing and constituting policy for PESS during the period under study: sport, health, citizenship, lifelong participation and Olympic legacy. These are sources of policy for PESS that were constructed in Bernstein's re-contextualising field. This paper also seeks to show the complexity of policies and strategies for PESS in that they are anchored in a web of significations in terms of complex connections between elements of discourses. It can be argued that as a structure-in-dominance, policies for PESS reinforced competitive sport-based conceptions of physical education and, arguably, created a limited universe of possibilities, of what was thinkable, for and as PESS.

Conclusions: This paper argues that the inclusions and exclusions of discourses from policy for PESS are all politically charged, and will have an impact on the quality of young people's education and their life chances in the future. Furthermore, this paper proposes that we need to explore in further depth the processes of how to maximise the possibilities of realising quality PESS in order for young people to learn citizenship, foster health improvement and facilitate lifelong participation in physical activities.     

Finding and using patterns in linear generalising problems

Linear generalising problems are questions which require students to observe and use a linear pattern of the formf(n)=an+b withb0. This study reports responses of students aged between 9 and 13 to these questions, documenting the mathematical models that they select, the strategies used in implementing them and the explanations they give. Substantial inconsistency of choice of model is observed; students who began a question correctly frequently adopted a simpler but incorrect model for more difficult parts of the question. Students who had undertaken a course in problem solving implicitly used a linear model more frequently and consistently and their explanations more often related the spatial patterns and the number patterns. They seemed to understand the relationship between the data and the generalising rule more completely.     

Explicating the relationally attentive approach to conducting engaged communication scholarship

As interest in engaged communication scholarship grows, so does the need for concrete examples of how such research is done. In this essay, we articulate an example of the how by presenting the work of the Purdue Peace Project, a locally led peacebuilding initiative based at Purdue University. We do so by (a) explicating the communicative choices in our approach to engaged scholarship and (b) relating these choices to the impacts that our approach has had on preventing political violence related to a chieftaincy dispute in Keperman (pseudonym), Ghana. Based on qualitative data from multiple time points, we unpack our communicative choices, relate these choices to the realization of engagement goals and setbacks, and reveal multi-level, interdependent, and communicative indicators of impacts. We present what we term the relationally attentive approach to engaged communication scholarship and discuss implications and recommendations for those doing engaged scholarship.     

Executive functioning predicts academic achievement in middle school: A four-year longitudinal study

Executive functioning (EF) is a strong predictor of children's and adolescents' academic performance. Although research indicates that EF can increase during childhood and adolescence, few studies have tracked the effect of EF on academic performance throughout the middle school grades. EF was measured at the end of Grades 6–9 through 21 teachers' and 22 teacher assistants' assessments of 322 adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds who attended an urban, chartered middle/high school. Assessment of EF was done through the completion of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF). BRIEF global executive composite scores (GEC) predicted both current and future English/language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and Spanish annual grade point averages (GPAs). The effect of BRIEF GEC scores often overshadowed the effects of gender, poverty, and having an individual education plan; the other, non–BRIEF-related effects retained slightly more impact among teacher assistant–derived data than teacher-derived data. The strong relationships between BRIEF GEC scores and these GPAs also remained constant over these 4 years: There was little evidence that EF changed over the measured grades or that the relationship between EF and grades itself regularly changed. The findings indicate that EF scores during early middle grades can well predict academic performance in subsequent secondary-school grades. Although methodological constraints may have impeded the abilities of other factors (i.e., poverty) to be significantly related to GPAs, the effects of EF were strong and robust enough to prompt us to recommend its use to guide long-term, academic interventions.