Investigating the effect of an adaptive learning intervention on students’ learning

Educators agree on the benefits of adaptive learning, but evidence-based research remains limited as the field of adaptive learning is still evolving within higher education. In this study, we investigated the impact of an adaptive learning intervention to provide remedial instruction in biology, chemistry, math, and information literacy to first-year students (n = 128) entering a pharmacy professional degree program. Using a mixed methods design, we examined students’ learning in each of the four content areas, their experience using the adaptive system, and student characteristics as related to their choice of participating in the intervention. The findings showed the adaptive learning intervention helped address the knowledge gap for chemistry, but the same effect was not observed for the other three content areas. Math anxiety was the only student characteristic that showed a significant relationship with students’ participation. While the students reported an overall positive experience, the results also revealed time factor and several design flaws that could have contributed to the lack of more student success. The findings highlight the importance of design in adaptive learning.     

Intercollegiate Athletes and Effective Educational Practices: Winning Combination or Losing Effort?

Scrutiny of intercollegiate athletics has intensified in recent years. This study compares student-athletes with those of non-athletes in terms of their engagement in effective educational practices. Contrary to many reports in the popular media, the findings from this study indicate that, on balance, student-athletes across a large number of colleges and universities do not differ greatly from their peers in terms of their participation in effective educational practices. In most instances, when differences do exist, they favor athletes.     

No “fear of flying”? Worrals of the WAAF,fiction, and girls’ informal wartime education

Abstract

This article focuses on the series of 11 books about a young female pilot, Worrals of the WAAF, by W.E. Johns, creator of Biggles. The Worrals books were published from 1941 when recruitment for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was falling. Johns chose to ignore that the WAAF supported pilots through their work on the ground and did not themselves fly. The article discusses how historians of education can draw on fiction in order to identify aspects of informal education, especially during wartime, when so many children’s formal schooling was disrupted or non-existent. Drawing on Erica Jong’s 1970s metaphor of “flying” as representative of female freedom, it is possible to read Worrals’ character as a role model for teenage girls. The conundrum of why Johns chose to put Worrals in the WAAF, rather than in Air Transport with the likes of Amy Johnson, is further explored in the light of evidence that a number of WAAF were seconded to the SOE. It concludes that fiction read alongside a range of other evidence offers a rich source for the historian engaged in a search for the gendered nature of education beyond the classroom.     

The Relation between Individual Differences in Fantasy and Theory of Mind

The relation between early fantasy/pretense and children's knowledge about mental life was examined in a study of 152 3- and 4-year-old boys and girls. Children were interviewed about their fantasy lives (e.g., imaginary companions, impersonation of imagined characters) and were given tasks assessing their level of pretend play and verbal intelligence. In a second session 1 week later, children were given a series of theory of mind tasks, including measures of appearance-reality, false belief, representational change, and perspective taking. The theory of mind tasks were significantly intercorrelated with the effects of verbal intelligence and age statistically controlled. Individual differences in fantasy/pretense were assessed by (1) identifying children who created imaginary characters, and (2) extracting factor scores from a combination of interview and behavioral measures. Each of these fantasy assessments was significantly related to the theory of mind performance of the 4-year-old children, independent of verbal intelligence.     

Classroom Activities and Areas: Regularity of Use and Perceptions of Adaptability by General Early Educators

This report describes a mail survey of general early educators from Head Start, public school pre-kindergarten, public school kindergarten, and community preschool/child care programs. The purposes were to secure information about the availability of classroom activities and areas, and to obtain the respondents' perceptions of the ease with which activities and areas could be adapted to accommodate children with disabilities. Of the 893 mailed questionnaires, 483 (54.1%) were returned and coded. The respondents reportedly used a wide range of classroom activities and areas, and they rated those activities and areas as moderately easy to adapt. Also, respondents from mainstreamed programs used slightly more activities and perceived the activities as easier to adapt than did respondents from non-mainstreamed programs. The findings appear to indicate that placement of children with disabilities in segregated programs cannot be justified on grounds that integration will restrict the range of activities available to typically developing children, or on the grounds that the adaptations are perceived by program staff as too difficult to be accomplished.     

Student Predispositions as Predictors of Dissent Behaviors in Supply Chain Courses*

This study investigates how student dissent behaviors are affected by student predispositions (i.e., math anxiety and self‐efficacy) in supply chain related courses. The data support a model in which students’ vengeful dissent behaviors are indirectly induced by these predispositions through the mediation of perceived immediacy. It is critical for instructors to understand the relationship between these variables to help improve the classroom environment for students, which this study helps to accomplish. Instructors of quantitative courses may need to engage students with predispositions in communication outside of the classroom to foster effective relationship building away from an environment that triggers students’ anxiety.     

The componential model of reading: predicting first grade reading performance of culturally diverse students from ecological, psychological, and cognitive factors assessed at kindergarten entry

This study, framed by the component model of reading (CMR), examined the relative importance of kindergarten-entry predictors of first grade reading performance. Specifically, elements within the ecological domain included dialect, maternal education, amount of preschool, and home literacy; elements within the psychological domain included teacher-reported academic competence, social skills, and behavior; and elements within the cognitive domain included initial vocabulary, phonological, and morpho-syntactic skills, and alphabetic and word recognition skills. Data were obtained for 224 culturally diverse kindergarteners (58% Black, 34% White, and 8% Hispanic or other; 58% received free or reduced-price lunch) from a larger study conducted in seven predominantly high poverty schools (n = 20 classrooms) in a midsized city school district in northern Florida. Results from a hierarchical multiple regression (with variables in the ecological domain entered first, followed by the psychological and cognitive domains) revealed a model that explained roughly 56% of the variance in first grade reading achievement, using fall-of-kindergarten predictors. Letter-word reading and morpho-syntactic skill were the strongest significant predictors. The findings largely support the CMR model as a means to understand individual differences in reading acquisition and, in turn, to support data-based instructional decisions for a wider range of children.     

Pathways underlying somatic complaints in children and adolescents who are deaf or hard of hearing

Frequent somatic complaints are not only a problem in themselves but also related to other difficulties. So far, no conclusive findings have been reported about the prevalence of and factors underlying these complaints in children and adolescents who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). Such information would be valuable for prevention and intervention. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of somatic complaints and their relation with emotional functioning in DHH youngsters, as compared with hearing youngsters. This was established by assessing how somatic complaints, mood states, and sense of coherence were experienced by 186 Dutch participants (mean age = 11;07 years). DHH and hearing groups were compared using multivariate analysis of variance and structural equation modeling. The results showed that somatic complaints were reported equally often for both groups, but that the pathways leading to these complaints were partly different. Only in DHH participants were feelings of fear associated with more somatic complaints. The results suggest that DHH children and adolescents would benefit from support in the regulation of fear and its causes. Other aspects affecting adjustment outcomes of DHH youngsters were education type and communication mode.