Family interdependence and academic adjustment in college: youth from immigrant and U.S.-born families

This study is an examination of family interdependence and its implications for academic adjustment among late adolescents and young adults in college (18 to 25 years). Survey data and university records were collected on 998 American youth with Asian Pacific, Latino, African/Afro-Caribbean, and European backgrounds. Results indicate that Asian Pacific Americans placed more importance on family interdependence than did European Americans. Across all panethnic groups, youth with immigrant parents placed greater emphasis on family interdependence than did youth with U.S.-born parents. The study distinguished between family interdependence attitudes and behaviors and found that they had counteracting influences on academic adjustment: Family obligation attitudes contributed to greater academic motivation among youth from immigrant as compared with U.S.-born families, but greater behavioral demands detracted from achievement.     

Factors affecting the motivation to learn among United Arab Emirates middle and high school students

This study was designed to examine the relative contributions of student and parents’ socio‐demographics, students’ beliefs about learning, parental support of children’s learning, peers’ attitudes towards learning, teacher–student interaction and curriculum content to students’ motivation to learn. The sample consisted of 275 school‐age children ranging from 12 to 16 years old. All measures were constructed for the purpose of this study. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to predict student motivation to learn. Results indicated that students’ beliefs about learning, teacher–student interaction and curriculum content contributed to the United Arab Emirates middle and high school students’ motivation to learn. Implications for research are discussed.     

A systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis of the development of turn taking in adult–child vocal interactions

Fluent conversation requires temporal organization between conversational exchanges. By performing a systematic review and Bayesian multi-level meta-analysis, we map the trajectory of infants’ turn-taking abilities over the course of early development (0 to 70 months). We synthesize the evidence from 26 studies (78 estimates from 429 unique infants, of which at least 152 are female) reporting response latencies in infant–adult dyadic interactions. The data were collected between 1975 and 2019, exclusively in North America and Europe. Infants took on average circa 1 s to respond, and the evidence of changes in response over time was inconclusive. Infants’ response latencies are related to those of their adult conversational partners: an increase of 1 s in adult response latency (e.g., 400 to 1400 ms) would be related to an increase of over 1 s in infant response latency (from 600 to 1857 ms). These results highlight the dynamic reciprocity involved in the temporal organization of turn-taking. Based on these results, we provide recommendations for future avenues of enquiry: studies should analyze how turn-by-turn exchanges develop on a longitudinal timescale, with rich assessment of infants’ linguistic and social development.     

Learning in the liminal space: a semiotic approach to threshold concepts

The threshold concepts approach to student learning and curriculum design now informs an empirical research base comprising over 170 disciplinary and professional contexts. It draws extensively on the notion of troublesomeness in a ‘liminal’ space of learning. The latter is a transformative state in the process of learning in which there is a reformulation of the learner’s meaning frame and an accompanying shift in the learner’s ontology or subjectivity. Within the extensive literature on threshold concepts, however, the notion of liminal space has remained relatively ill-defined. This paper explores this spatial metaphor to help clarify the difficulties that some teachers observe in the classroom in regard to their students’ understanding. It employs a novel and distinctive approach drawn from semiotic theory to to provide some explanatory insight into learning within the liminal space and render it more open to analysis. The paper develops its argument through four distinct phases. Firstly it explores the spatial metaphor of liminality to gain further purchase on the nature of this transformative space. The second section introduces semiotic theory and indicates how this will be used through a series of graphical and visual devices to render the liminal space more open to analysis. The third section then employs semiotic analysis to nine dimensions of pedagogical content knowledge to gain further insight into what may characterise student conceptual difficulty within the liminal state. The fourth and concluding section emphasises the role of context in conceptual discrimination before advocating a transactional curriculum inquiry approach to future research in this field.     

Child psychological maltreatment in Palestinian families

OBJECTIVES: This study was designed to identify predictors of child psychological maltreatment (CPM) in Palestinian families. It examined the relative contributions of child characteristics, parents' sociodemographics, and economic hardship, in addition to family's characteristics such as family values, family ambiance, gender inequities, parental support, harsh discipline, and other forms of maltreatment, to psychological maltreatment. METHOD: The sample consisted of 1000 school age children who ranged in age from 12 to 16 years. Two school counselors carried the interviews with children at school, and with the available parent at home. RESULTS: Child school performance was specifically associated with CPM. The two-parent families and parents from refugee camps appeared to employ more psychological maltreatment of their children than single-parent families and parents from urban and rural areas. Parents who perceived that the family did not have enough money to meet the child's needs were more likely to abuse their children psychologically. Gender inequities, harsh discipline, family ambiance, and lack of parental support were the most salient predictors of CPM. Child psychological maltreatment occurred concurrently with other forms of maltreatment such as physical abuse and child's labor. Parental psychological maltreatment proved to be weakened with high traditional family values. CONCLUSION: A significant proportion of the sample could be considered psychologically maltreated. Intervention and prevention efforts should be focused on child welfare, educational programs aimed at high-risk parents, and mobilization of the community and social services agencies.     

The impact of family obligation on the daily activities and psychological well-being of Chinese American adolescents

A daily diary method was employed to examine the extent to which Chinese adolescents in the United States assist and spend time with their families, and the implications of such behaviors for their involvement in other activities and psychological well-being. Adolescents (N = 140) completed checklists in which they reported their activities and psychological well-being every day for a period of 2 weeks. Adolescents showed a greater propensity to balance family obligations with their academic demands than with their social life with peers on a daily basis. Girls experienced slightly more daily conflict between activities than boys. Neither the extent of involvement in family obligations nor the balancing of family obligations with other activities were associated with psychological distress among adolescents. These findings demonstrate the complex manner in which adolescents from immigrant families attempt to combine their cultural traditions with selected aspects of American society on a daily basis. In contrast to the expectations of some observers, the youths in this study appeared to accomplish such an integration with little cost to their psychological well-being.     

The effects of advance organizer and prerequisite knowledge passages on the learning and retention of science concepts

Fifty-five ninth-grade science students participated in this study which compared the effects of two pretreatments, an advance organizer and a prerequisite knowledge passage, on learning and retention measured at low (knowledge and comprehension) and high (application and analysis) levels of the cognitive domain. The effectiveness of the pretreatments was measured by a framework test and a prerequisite knowledge test prior to the beginning of instruction. An analysis of covariance, with IQ as the covariate, was performed on the framework test and the prerequisite knowledge test. It was found that the advance organizer group performed significantly better than the prerequisite knowledge group (p < 0.001) on the first framework test, and the prerequisite knowledge group performed significantly better (p < 0.001) than the advance organizer group on the prerequisite knowledge test. These results provide evidence that both passages were read and understood by the students and that the passages had their intended effects as preinstructional treatments. An analysis of covariance, with IQ as the covariate, was performed on the low-level questions, high-level questions, and total score for the posttest and retention test. The group means for the two question levels and the total score were not found to be significantly different (p > 0.05) for either the posttest or retention test. The results of this study do not provide evidence that an advance organizer facilitates learning and retention more than a preinstructional treatment that concentrates on developing prerequisite knowledge.     

Instructional design using an in-house built teaching assistant robot to enhance elementary school English-as-a-foreign-language learning

This paper presents a design for a cutting-edge English program in which elementary school learners of English as a foreign language in Taiwan had lively interactions with a teaching assistant robot. Three dimensions involved in the design included (1) a pleasant and interactive classroom environment as the learning context, (2) a teaching assistant robot designed and built by the researchers as instructional technology (instructional tool/medium), and (3) the need for improved motivation and learning outcomes and positive learning experiences of the students as the core research problem. This Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) led to better pedagogical effects on learning and teaching by (1) employing a vivid, enjoyable teaching approach; (2) adopting practical, interesting learning materials; and (3) creating a natural, enjoyable learning context. Both quantitative and qualitative findings of this study indicate that the students' English learning experiences were enhanced, as were their motivation and learning outcomes as a result of this HRI. This paper, instead of merely suggesting design criteria for robots, provides a set of instructional design guidelines that other researchers can follow to create an innovative and enjoyable English classroom that employs an interactive robot as an assistant for enhancing English acquisition while simultaneously reducing the pressure and teaching load of the English instructors.     

Ethics courses: Their impact on the values and ethical decisions of criminal justice students

Numerous articles and books advocate the importance of ethics as an essential component of a criminal justice curriculum. While there are several approaches suggested, one of the most popular methods of assuring coverage of this important topic is to add an ethics course to the curriculum either as a required or an elective course. Teaching students ethical theories, principles and providing them with the opportunity to discuss discipline specific ethics problems is thought to help contribute to the establishment of ethical practitioners.

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of a semester long criminal justice ethics course on the students' value orientations, and their perceptions of both the seriousness of ethical violations and their likelihood of engaging in such behaviors. Our findings are consistent with the results of researchers evaluating ethics courses in other disciplines. Implications for criminal justice ethics education are discussed.