School performance and gender differences in suicidal behaviour – a 30-year follow-up of a Stockholm cohort born in 1953

Astonishingly little is known about the relationship between high educational achievements and suicidal behaviour among women. This is remarkable given that a woman breaking into traditionally male-dominant spheres is a well established example of social-role marginality. The current study combines fatal and non-fatal suicidal behaviour and analyses, by means of logistic regression, the degree to which high school performance during pre-adolescence in the mid-1960s, in Sweden, had a detrimental effect on suicidal behaviour for women, as opposed to men, in adolescence and young adulthood. The Stockholm birth cohort study was used for this purpose. The results show that girls with both above and below average marks had an elevated risk of engaging in suicidal behaviour. However, this relation only held for girls who had grown up with supportive parental ambitions in terms of educational commitment. For boys, only low school performance was shown to be suicidogenic, irrespective of parental ambitions.     

Teaching for Social Justice: the Promise of Transformative Expectations for Urban Chicanx/Latinx Youth

Drawing on the concept of transformative expectations—that is, the instructional practices that demonstrate teachers’ belief systems for the educational justice and empowerment of Chicanx/Latinx youth—this qualitative study explored the expectancy effects of nine classroom teachers with social justice commitments in a school district in California. Through semi-structured interviews, teacher journaling, and artifacts of classroom practices, this study points to the importance of teacher disposition and socialization in developing classroom expectations, as well as helps to conceptualize the expectancies of academic rigor, social capital, empowering curriculum, and teacher caring from perspectives of justice and their importance in supporting students to meet or exceed instructional goals. Applying figured worlds and transformative expectations as the study’s analytic frameworks, teachers reported these four expectancies as important strategies for bringing social justice into the classroom, thereby prompting discussions of the future directions of teaching for social justice.     

Achievement in Science as a Function of the Mobility—Fixity Dimension

The characteristic of field‐independent subjects to function consistently in a field‐independent fashion (i.e. fixity) and of others to vary more according to circumstances (i.e. mobility) has been referred to as the Mobility‐Fixity Dimension. This dimension, based on the theories of Werner, Witkin and Pascual‐Leone suggests, that field mobile students perform better than fixed students in science courses. The main objective of this study, based on high school students (mean age = 16.5 years; SD = 1.0) in Venezuela, was to test the following predictions. (1) Mobile students would obtain a better performance than fixed students on variables such as introductory high school mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and earth science courses; and (2) among mobile students, those classified in the middle‐high range of the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) and the Figural Intersection Test (FIT), would obtain a better performance as compared to those in the lower‐middle range. Results obtained, in general, provide support for the first prediction. The differences between the performances of mobile and fixed groups were, however, significant (p < 0.05) only for the biology and earth science courses. Students in one of the high mobility groups obtained a better performance (in all courses) than not only the corresponding low mobility group but also a fixed group with high scores on both the GEFT and FIT, which provides support for the second prediction. It is concluded that problem‐solving ability in science courses may be strengthened through the mediation of the Mobility‐Fixity Dimension.     

Exercising older people´s brains in Costa Rica: Design principles for using information and communication technologies for cognitive activity and social interaction

This study is part of a design-based research project aimed at designing a learning intervention for enabling Costa Rican older people to use information and communication technologies for cognitive activity and social interaction. Data from relevant literature, a focus group with older adults, and interviews with professionals teaching older adults how to use information and communication technologies were analyzed, in order to create context-sensitive design principles that could guide the design of learning interventions that meet the needs of older learners. The analysis derived context-sensitive design principles that include wider topics that influence the learning process, such as emotions and stereotypes related to learning about and using information and communication technologies, as well as the social support to that learning. The resulting eight design principles argue for respectful learning environments, in-depth comprehension of changes related to aging, time and space to reflect on emotions related to the learning process, and acknowledgment of participants’ individuality.     

Success at Scale: Outcomes of Community-Based Neurodevelopment Intervention (CASITA) for Children Ages 6–20 months With Risk of Delay in Lima,Peru

This study is a randomized controlled trial of a 12-week community-based group parenting intervention (“CASITA”) in Lima, Peru. CASITA improved neurodevelopment in a pilot study of 60 Peruvian children and subsequently scaled to 3,000 households throughout the district. The objective of this study was to assess intervention effectiveness when implemented at scale. A total of 347 children ages 6–20 months (52.7% male, 100% identified as “mestizo”) at risk for developmental difficulties were randomized to immediate or delayed CASITA. At 3 months after enrollment, the immediate arm showed significantly higher overall development, based on the Extended Ages and Stages Questionnaire and Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment scores (Cohen’s ds = .36 and .31, respectively). Programs demonstrably effective at scale could help address children’s development risks worldwide.     

“Spanish as a foreign language” teachers’ profiles: inclusive beliefs, teachers’ perceptions of student outcomes in the TCLA program, burnout, and experience

The present study focuses on the Temporary Classroom of Linguistic Adaptation program (TCLA program) in which specialist teachers (Spanish as a foreign language teachers—SFL teachers) teach Spanish to immigrants who are not proficient in the language. We suggest that support for immigrant students in Spanish schools should adopt a new inclusive educational approach. The present investigation is a preliminary attempt at characterizing the profiles of SFL teachers by assessing, simultaneously, five relevant variables (through cluster analysis): inclusive beliefs, teachers’ perceptions of student outcomes in TCLA program, general burnout, diversity-related teacher burnout, and years of teaching experience. Eighty-one SFL teachers from 132 schools in Spain (EU) were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire. Cluster analysis found two clearly differentiated groups: the larger one, Innovative SFL Teachers and the smaller, Traditional SFL Teachers. The Traditional SFL Teachers are characterized by more years of experience, lower inclusive beliefs scores, lower teachers’ perception of student outcomes in the TCLA program scores, and higher burnout scores as compared with the Innovative SFL Teachers. Moreover, Traditional SFL Teachers conceptualize their teaching role as a "teacher of Spanish" whereas Innovative SFL Teachers see themselves much more as playing a supportive role.     

The effect of frequency of testing upon the measurement of achievement in an intensive time-series design

Progress in the development of an intensive time-series design for use in classroom situations has raised several questions regarding the validity of the data obtained. One such question is related to the effect of frequency of testing upon the data. This study was designed to determine the presence of such an effect. Use of the design with eighth grade students studying a unit on crustal evolution indicated that the frequency of data collection did not adversely affect student attitudes toward the science class nor did it have any measurable effect upon class achievement data. The results of a previous study were also replicated, giving increased confidence in the validity of the data yielded by the intensive time-series design as used in these studies.     

Reasoning strategies used by students to solve stoichiometry problems and its relationship to alternative conceptions,prior knowledge,and cognitive variables

Achievement in science depends on a series of factors that characterize the cognitive abilities of the students and the complex interactions between these factors and the environment that intervenes in the formation of students' background. The objective of this study is to: a) investigate reasoning strategies students use in solving stoichiometric problems; b) explore the relation between these strategies and alternative conceptions, prior knowledge and cognitive variables; and c) interpret the results within an epistemological framework. Results obtained show how stoichiometric relations produce conflicting situations for students, leading to conceptual misunderstanding of concepts, such as mass, atoms and moles. The wide variety of strategies used by students attest to the presence of competing and conflicting frameworks (progressive transitions, cf. Lakatos, 1970), leading to greater conceptual understanding. It is concluded that the methodology developed in this study (based on a series of closely related probing questions, generally requiring no calculations, that elicit student conceptual understanding to varying degrees within an intact classroom context) was influential in improving student performance. This improvement in performance, however, does not necessarily affect students' hard core of beliefs.     

Evaluation of two interventions to reduce aggressive and antisocial behavior in first and second graders in a resource-poor setting

We conducted a three-arm cluster randomized controlled trial (n = 2491) to evaluate a teacher delivered intervention to reduce aggressive and antisocial behavior and increase prosocial behavior in the classroom. A second aim of this trial was to establish whether combining this intervention with an intervention for parents was better than the teacher-only intervention. This evaluation was conducted in a resource-poor setting (Pereira, Colombia). The findings show that both interventions prevented increases in aggressive and antisocial behavior. However, the teacher-only intervention also had a positive impact on increasing prosocial behavior.