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.     

Development of emotional and behavioral regulation in children born extremely preterm and very preterm: biological and social influences

This study describes the development of emotional and behavioral regulation in a regional cohort of children born extremely preterm (<28 weeks gestational age, n = 39), very preterm (<34 weeks gestational age, n = 56), and full term (n = 103). At 2 and 4 years, children born at younger gestational ages demonstrated poorer self-regulation across multiple contexts spanning observed interactions, formal cognitive testing, and parental report of child behavior at home. Among children born preterm, the 2 strongest predictors of impairments in self-regulation were the presence of moderate-to-severe cerebral white matter abnormalities on neonatal magnetic resonance and a less sensitive parenting style when children were aged 2 years. Findings support the importance of early neurological development and parenting for developing regulation in children born very preterm.     

Introducing teaching cases with face-to-face and computer-mediated discussion: Two multi-classroom quasi-experiments

Two studies were conducted in multisection introductory child and adolescent development classes to determine effects of introducing abbreviated teaching case studies that were then discussed either in face-to-face or online formats. Students receiving teaching case studies in either format in both classes showed improved ability to critically analyze probe and final cases compared to control participants. Both case study groups in the child development class also showed increased application of psychological concepts in analyzing new cases. No differences in course knowledge were expected as a function of condition and none were found. Hypothesized case-related increases in efficacy for teaching also were not observed. Results were interpreted as supporting a case analysis approach in educational psychology classes and use of online methods for presentation and discussion of abbreviated cases.     

Children's Preliteracy Skills: Influence of Mothers' Education and Beliefs About Shared-Reading Interactions

Research Findings: This research investigated the associations among children's preliteracy skills, mothers' education, and mothers' beliefs about shared-reading interactions for 45 Appalachian families. These variables were studied for lower income, primarily European American, families residing in a geographically isolated, small, rural community in the Appalachian Mountains. Children's performance on standardized measures of preliteracy skills pertaining to print concepts and alphabet knowledge was substantially lower than normative references, but their performance on tasks assessing their understanding of environmental print was similar to normative references. The preliteracy skills of children with more educated mothers were significantly better than those of children with less educated mothers. More educated mothers had higher ratings on a measure of parental beliefs about shared reading than less educated mothers had; however, maternal reports of the frequency of home literacy practices were similar for both groups. Mediation analyses indicated that mothers' beliefs about shared-reading interactions served as a mediator for the association between maternal education and children's understanding of reading conventions. Practice or Policy: Future directions for research and implications for practice are discussed.     

Assessing professional decision-making abilities

This paper describes a computer-based method of diagnosing supervisors’ abilities to make professional decisions, with supervisors being defined as principals, staff developers, and /or curriculum coordinators in elementary or secondary schools. The diagnostic approach-Teacher Development Decision Exercises or TeDDEx-was designed to simulate the assessment of supervisors’ abilities to use their professional knowledge to solve problems encountered with teachers in the field. Preactive or planning decisions were the focus of the exercises.     

Counteracting Summer Slide: Social Capital Resources Within Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Families

Research on summer learning has shown that children from a higher socioeconomic status (SES) continue to learn during the summer months of elementary school, but lower-SES students tend to stagnate or lose ground. However, not all low-SES students experience summer learning loss. Drawing on the Beginning School Study (BSS), a longitudinal study of a random sample of Baltimore public school students who began first grade in 1982, this article identifies a small sample of low-SES students who gained as much as their higher-SES peers in reading or math during at least three of the four summers of elementary school. Drawing on Coleman and Hoffer's (1987 Coleman , J. S. , & Hoffer , T. ( 1987 ). Public and private high schools: The impact of communities . New York : Basic Books . [Google Scholar]) theory of within-family social capital, we identify parental characteristics and practices that set these low-SES exceptional summer learners (ESLs) apart from their low-SES peers, who evidence the more typical pattern of summer slide.     

Phonemic Representation and Early Spelling Errors in Bilingual Children

The relationship between linguistic experience and phonemic representations in spelling was investigated in two groups of Mandarin–English bilingual children (aged 5–6 years) who spoke mostly Mandarin-L1 (n = 23) or mostly English-L1 (n = 27) at home. A 60-item cloze task including high- and low-frequency words with word-initial and word-final target phonemes that are either common to Mandarin and English (/f/ and /p/), or found only in English (/v/ and /b/), was developed and administered to both groups. With performance for a neutral control phoneme /m/ matched, spelling accuracy for the common phonemes was equivalent but the Mandarin-L1 children's performance for /v/ and /b/ was significantly poorer than that of their English-L1 classmates in low-frequency words. For both groups, performance on word-final targets was poorer for English-only phonemes than common phonemes. If early literacy development depends on stored phonological representations of the first language, these findings have implications for language minority communities.