Solidarity with the People: Organizing to Disrupt Teacher Alienation

Although research on teacher alienation and isolation has demonstrated the importance of developing collegial relationships, mentoring, and induction programs, there is limited research examining the ways to support critical educators with combatting their feelings of alienation and isolation as it relates to the larger sociopolitical dynamics they must endure. Within teacher education and teacher in-service development we must engage in research and approaches to learning that acknowledge the possibilities and potential of teachers to lead their development toward becoming critical and culturally relevant practitioners. Using an internal colonial framework where schooling is articulated as an extension of the colonial project, this article explores the reflections of ten educators, from the elementary to high school level, as they worked to create spaces for learning within a teacher-led, community based organization. Drawing from participant observations and interviews with organization members, this article explores the ways participation in a community based organization supported teachers with enduring the social and psychological consequences of the alienation they experienced in their schools. The data explore the ways in which participants worked to develop teaching practices drawing from anti-colonial perspectives and through their process developed a sense of solidarity with other teachers, which is discussed as three subthemes: shared beliefs, community, and commitment.     

Reading Comprehension and Predictability Effects on Sentence Processing: An Event‐Related Potential Study

Electrophysiology studies have identified two event‐related potentials that are modulated by predictive processes during language comprehension: the N400 and a frontal positivity. The N400 is smaller when words are presented within highly restrictive sentences, indicating reduced lexical retrieval costs. Violations of strong predictions generate larger frontal positivities, possibly reflecting inhibitory processes. More skilled comprehenders may exhibit enhanced predictive processing, but this possibility has seldom been investigated with event‐related potentials (ERPs). We analyzed the association between predictability ERP modulations and reading comprehension abilities. Twenty‐four undergraduate students were exposed to strongly and weakly constraining sentences, ending with an expected or unexpected final word. Their comprehension skills were assessed with a cloze task. Better comprehenders showed smaller N400s for expected words, and larger posterior positivities for unexpected endings, in strongly constraining contexts. These effects correlated with reading comprehension scores. The results suggest that better comprehenders take more advantage of predictions to reduce retrieval costs, and allocate more resources to postlexical integration processes.     

Learning to Count: Structured Practice With Spatial Cues Supports the Development of Counting Sequence Knowledge in 3-Year-Old English-Speaking Children

Research Findings: Children who speak English are slower to learn the counting sequence between 11 and 20 compared to children who speak Asian languages. In the present research, we examined whether providing children with spatially relevant information during counting would facilitate their acquisition of the counting sequence. Three-year-olds (n = 54) who played a 1–20 number board game in which numbers were grouped by decade into 2 rows learned significantly more of the counting sequence than children who played a linear version of the game or those who were in the control group. Both the row and linear versions of the game helped children improve their performance on an object counting task. Children’s performance on a number line task did not show an effect of either game intervention. Practice or Policy: These results suggest that counting practice that includes spatially informative cues can facilitate young English-speaking children’s learning of the challenging number sequence from 11 to 20.     

Patterns of theory use in qualitative research in higher education studies in Latin America: a geopolitical interpretation

The relationship between theory and qualitative research has been extensively examined in the literature and has emerged as a problematic matter. This debate has been driven forward mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries and has done scant justice to an understanding of these issues in regions of the South. This paper addresses this matter by drawing on a geopolitical perspective. The study here provides an analysis of 24 papers by Latin-American researchers in higher education, as included in the Web of Science between 2006 and 2015. Theories in Latin America are mainly produced in the North and exhibit two patterns: (i) critical perspectives are used to address local problems – ‘epistemic problematization’; and (ii) a nuancing of Northern theories so as to contextualize them – ‘epistemic nuancing’. Suggestions are also made for a new configuration of knowledge production in higher education studies – a model of knowledge from and for the South.     

The impact of gender and perceived academic supervisory support on new faculty negotiation success

The successful negotiation of one's first academic appointment contract can have lasting implications for academics and institutions alike. The present study investigated the impact of gender and perceived academic supervisor support (PASS) on negotiation outcomes using a sample of recently appointed assistant professors of management from internationally accredited business schools. Overall, women were less likely to engage in negotiations and were less effective than their male counterparts when bargaining for elements that revolved around direct compensation (e.g., salary, research funding). Further, it was observed that PASS moderated the relationship between gender and negotiation effectiveness such that highly supportive academic supervisors improved negotiation effectiveness for women, but had little impact for men. We conclude by outlining important practical implications of the current study and outline how interventions aimed at improving supervisor support in doctoral programmes may attenuate some of the observed negotiation discrepancies.     

Parent–Infant Room Sharing During the First Months of Life: Longitudinal Links With Behavior During Middle Childhood

Current recommendations encourage parent–infant room sharing for the first 6 months of life. This longitudinal study (N = 193) is the first to examine long-term relations of early room sharing with three domains of child behavior: sleep, behavior problems, and prosocial behavior. Information on room sharing was collected daily for infants’ first 6 months. At ages 6, 7, and 8 years, outcomes were assessed with maternal and teacher questionnaires and behavioral observations. Early room sharing was not related to sleep problems or behavior problems. Additionally, more weeks of room sharing were positively related to higher maternal ratings of child sleep quality and more prosocial behavior. In conclusion, early room sharing appears to be related to positive, but not negative, behavior outcomes in middle childhood.     

Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2): Evaluating the Swedish version by confirmatory factor analyses

The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) is one of the most frequently used instruments when assessing competitive state anxiety in sport psychology research. However, doubts have been expressed about the factorial validity of both the English and the Greek versions of the scale. Hence, a revised version of the inventory (CSAI-2R) has recently been suggested to be more psychometrically sound (Cox et al., ). In the present study, the aim was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the CSAI-2 using confirmatory factor analyses. A total of 969 athletes (571 men and 398 women) competing in 26 different sports completed the Swedish version of the CSAI-2. Three different factor structures were evaluated: the original three-factor model (with cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety and self-confidence), a two-factor model in which self-confidence was excluded, and a three-factor model containing 17 items (CSAI-2R). The results revealed that only the 17-item model displayed an acceptable fit to the data. Although some doubts remain about the amount of variance that can be attributed to error variance in the subscales, the results suggest that it is better to use the CSAI-2R rather than the original CSAI-2.     

Cortisol levels of caregivers in child care centers as related to the quality of their caregiving

The present study examined whether stress in professional caregivers – as reflected in salivary cortisol levels – is related to the quality of their caregiving behavior. The 221 professional female caregivers in 64 child care centers were observed in three different situations and saliva samples were taken three times during the morning. Results showed that higher levels of cortisol, particularly at the beginning of the workday, predicted lower-quality caregiver behavior beyond the contribution of three other predictors, namely a higher self-reported physical workload, more children under age two in the care group, and lower caregiver age. Contrary to the expectation, higher cortisol levels did not mediate the relation between higher self-reported physical workload and more children under age two on the one hand and lower-quality caregiving behavior on the other.