Popularity versus respect: school structure,peer groups and Latino academic achievement

This article begins with a discussion of recent critiques of Fordham and Ogbu’s argument on the ‘burden of acting white’. These critiques point to the stereotypical and homogeneous characterization of the black peer group by Fordham and Ogbu, as well as their inattention to the ways in which schools relegate into the lower tracks those students who behave too ethnically and who do not demonstrate proficiency with dominant cultural attributes. The second half of the article presents data showing that academic achievement is related to peer‐group membership and that schools are largely responsible for which peer group students join. Based on an ethnographic study at a predominantly Latino urban high school, I argue that Latino high achievers do not necessarily experience the ‘burden of acting white’ as Fordham and Ogbu suggest. This was due to the institutional practices at Hernandez High School, which ensured that high achievers and low achievers occupied different academic and social spaces, resulting in little interaction between the groups, and to the very different culture that prescribed the ways in which members of each group could achieve status.     

Comparison of anxiety levels of students in introductory earth science and geology courses

Students in geology and earth science courses were not anxious about taking these courses as measured by the State-Triat Anxiety Inventory. Students in each course were split into two grade groups. It was shown that students whose grades were in the higher group had low anxiety, which continued to be reduced during the course. Students in the lower grade group had high anxiety, which increased during the course. There was no difference between anxiety scores of males and females. In general, students who planned to elect additional courses had lower state anxiety and higher grades than students who did not plan to elect additional courses in geology and earth science.     

A Complex Systems Network Approach to Quantifying Peer Effects: Evidence From Ghanaian Preprimary Classrooms

Research on classroom peer effects has focused nearly exclusively on high-income countries and on academic skills. Little is known about peer effects in low-income countries and whether effects differ under different educational environments (e.g., teacher-directed versus child-centered, conditions of concentrated advantage or disadvantage). Based on a data set of Ghanaian preprimary classrooms in the Greater Accra Region collected in the 2015–2016 school year, we use complex system networks with multilevel modeling to study the presence and magnitude of peer effects. Results corroborated small statistically significant effects on academic and nonacademic skills (d = .06–.10). Peer effects on literacy were larger for children in public schools, who are relatively more disadvantaged than their private school counterparts. Teacher-directivity intensity did not moderate peer effects.     

Growth in emotion understanding across early childhood: A cohort-sequential model of firstborn children across the transition to siblinghood

Emotion understanding develops rapidly in early childhood. Firstborn children (N = 231, 55% girls/45% boys, 86% White, 5% Black, 3% Asian, 4% Latinx, M_age = 29.92 months) were recruited into a longitudinal study from 2004 to 2008 in the United States and administered a series of tasks assessing eight components of young children's emotion understanding from ages 1 to 5. Cohort sequential analysis across three cohorts (1-, 2-, and 3-year-olds) demonstrated a progression of children's emotion understanding from basic emotion identification to an understanding of false-belief emotions, even after controlling for children's verbal ability. Emotion understanding scores were related to children's theory of mind and parent reports of empathy, but not emotional reactivity, providing evidence of both convergent and discriminant validity.     

Nuclear power plants? Yes or no? Thank you! The argumentative use of tables and graphs / ¿Centrales nucleares? ¿Sí o no? ¡Gracias! El uso argumentativo de tablas y gráficas

Abstract

The present paper deals with how eleventh grade high school students and university undergraduate students studying environmental science use evidence to write an argumentative text. They were presented with a dilemma with four sets of data (two pro and two anti nuclear energy). Half the sample was given the data in graph format and the other half in table format. The four sets of data differed according to their complexity. We analysed the structure of argument, the use of the evidence (either provided or their own) according to the participants’ position on the dilemma, and the presence of confirmation bias. Our results show a good argumentative competence that does not seem to be affected either by the students’ educational level or data format. We observed an effect of the complexity of the data in relation to the participants’ position.     

Reverberating chords: implications of storied nostalgia for borderland discourses in pre-service teacher identity

The research that is the subject of this paper set out to interrogate pre-service teachers’ responses to issues of national identity, ideology, and representation in contemporary multicultural Canadian picture books. While the research focused on whether and how the literature could serve to inform and broaden pre-service teachers’ conceptualizations of diversity, we retrospectively decided to re-visit the focus group and interview data to know which of the 70 picture books had most engaged the teachers and why. We critically consider the implications of teachers’ attachments for social justice education and teachers’ cultivation of a critical, ‘borderlands’ discourse aware of self and open to others. The research suggests that a significant source of teacher knowledge and thinking is lodged in teachers’ personal memories of childhood texts, called touchstones. Touchstones were a place from which teachers implicitly began; certain stories struck particular chords, chords largely attributable to childhood memories. Most intertextual connections were personal, with some tangential to the text. While touchstones performed different functions depending on the subject position of the pre-service teachers, they pointed to the existence of an underlying position of teacher as nostalgic subject. Given the importance of this subject position for teachers’ responses to picture books, we explore critical reconceptualizations of nostalgia that can support the development of borderland discourses. We suggest that pre-service teachers need to be invited to individually and collectively examine their responses to both old and new touchstone stories. More nuanced research also needs to be conducted on the role of nostalgia in teacher formation, how it influences teacher practice, and how to best design teacher education courses to foster ‘borderland discourses’ related to the storying of teacher identity, especially with respect to popular ‘collectibles’ and core teaching texts like picture books.     

The Impact of Corporate Media News on Market Valuation

This article explores the influence of Web-based corporate reporting on the investors' valuation of companies in the information and communications technology industry. This study compiled 8,111 news items issued in the “Press Releases” tab of the firms' Web sites between January 2003 and April 2005, and analyzed what type of news items affects stock returns. The results show a positive price reaction to news regarding new customers, completion of acquisitions, strategic long-term decisions, and non-technological alliances. In contrast, the results show a negative price reaction to news regarding the launch of new or upgraded products.