Participation in extracurricular activities and student achievement: evidence from German all-day schools

The major aim of educational effectiveness research is to examine and explain school, class, and teacher differences with respect to relevant educational criteria. Until now, in the large majority of studies, language and mathematics scores were used as a criterion. In the present study, the educational track students choose at the start of secondary education (at the age of 12) and their success in the chosen curriculum are examined in relation to primary school and classes (Grades 1 to 6). Two-level models show that students had higher aims in secondary education if they had attended primary Catholic schools and/or primary schools with high average curriculum advice. The latter schools were also highly effective with respect to achievement, and their students had a high socioeconomic status and background. Multilevel models with a cross-classified structure showed no direct long-term effects of primary schools and classes.     

Economic Recession and Inequality in Education: Children needing special services in focus

This study examines equality in education during a national recession when the supply of special services has decreased. Who gets selected for the scanty services? The need for and the availability of special services (remedial instruction, special education and psychological counselling) were studied with reference to students' social, family and personal factors. The sample included 906 sixth-graders from southern Finland and the study was carried out by means of questionnaires to students and teachers. A considerable gap was found between need and supply of special services. The need for services was widely related to the background factors. The selection process was biased against boys in remedial instruction, internalising children in psychological counselling, and it favoured students with more resources: those achieving well, being motivated and having a higher socio-economic status. The study reveals one possible pathway aggravating inequality in education.     

Accreditation and Power: A Discourse Analysis of a New Regime of Governance in Higher Education

This article studies discourses within the accreditation of Norwegian higher education conducted by the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT), using one concrete case (the accreditation of bachelor programs in nursing). Analysis of policy documents and accreditation reports are influenced by two of Foucault's concepts of power; governmentality and panopticon. The analysis provides insights into firstly, how the two forms of power are woven into the schemes used for quality control by redefining quality to be a quantifiable concept; secondly, how the supervision of quality gives privilege to specific types of knowledge; thirdly, how supervisory power is reformulated to require self-control mechanisms within higher education in terms of constant quality development and realization of unexploited potentials; and fourthly, how this power legitimates itself by making all parties guardians of quality control, deconstructing the difference between evaluator and evaluated.     

Peer and Faculty Mentoring for Students Pursuing a PHD in Gerontology

The Graduate Center for Gerontology at the University of Kentucky incorporates three levels of mentoring in its PhD program. This project assessed satisfaction with peer and faculty mentoring and explored their perceived benefits and purposes. Core and affiliate faculty and current and graduated students were surveyed. Participants seemed satisfied with the mentoring they were giving and receiving, although all groups discussed limitations. Peer mentors were seen as social support and advice givers, while faculty mentors were viewed as responsible for direction and skill-building. These results can contribute to the development of new mentorship programs and the modification of existing ones.     

Development of an Instrument to Measure Undergraduates’ Nanotechnology Awareness, Exposure, Motivation, and Knowledge

There are many educational interventions being implemented to address workforce issues in the field of nanotechnology. However, there is no instrument to assess the impact of these interventions on student awareness of, exposure to, and motivation for nanotechnology. To address this need, the Nanotechnology Awareness Instrument was conceptualized. This paper is a progress report of the instrument development process. Version 1 of the instrument was administered to 335 first-year students majoring in food and agriculture fields in a pre–post fashion relative to a brief exposure to nanotechnology in the classroom. Following item analysis of Version 1 responses, a revision of the instrument was completed. Version 2 was administered to 1,426 first-year engineering students for the purpose of conducting item and factor analyses. Results indicate that the Nanotechnology Awareness Instrument shows potential to provide valid information about student awareness of, exposure to, and motivation for nanotechnology. The instrument is not a valid measure of nano-knowledge and this subscale was dropped from the final version of the instrument. Implications include the use of the instrument to evaluate programs, interventions, or courses that attempt to increase student awareness of nanotechnology. Further study is necessary to determine how the Nanotechnology Awareness Instrument functions as a pre–post measure.     

A clinical rationale for assessing rapid automatized naming in children with language disorders

Three continuous rapid naming tasks (Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 1995) were administered to 2,450 American, English-speaking, academically achieving individuals with typical language development and intellectual ability (ages 6 to 21 years) and 136 individuals with primary language disorders (LD; ages 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 15-16). Naming time in seconds differed significantly (p < .01) between the groups for color naming (Task 1) at age 12, shape naming (Task 2) at age 6, and color-shape naming (Task 3) at ages 6, 7, 9, and 12. Naming accuracy did not differ significantly (p > .01) between groups at the majority of the age levels compared. In the normative group, naming speed increased with age in a monotonic progression. The developmental trajectory in the LD group was essentially parallel, but elevated. The percentages of individuals who failed the naming-time criteria for Task 3 (color-shape naming) differed significantly in the two groups at all ages compared (p < .05). These findings indicate that the requirements for two-dimensional, continuous naming (Task 3 color-shape naming) resulted in reduced naming speed (longer total times) and interference with fluency in language production in about half of the clinical sample.     

Long-term inhibition of Na+/H+ exchange attenuates cardiac remodeling after myocardial infarction in rats

Objective: In addition to pH regulation, Na⁺/H⁺ exchange (NHE) has been shown to facilitate cell growth and proliferation. However, the effects of long-term inhibition of Na⁺/H⁺ exchange on cardiac structural and functional remodeling post myocardial infarction (MI) are still controversial. The present study was therefore carried out to further investigate the effects of long-term treatment with cariporide, a specific inhibitor of NHE-1, on cardiac remodeling after MI in rats; Methods: Male Wistar rats that underwent coronary ligation were randomly selected for cariporide treatment starting 6 h after induction of MI or no treatment. Treatment was continued up to 6 weeks post MI, after which, the arterial, venous and left ventricular catheters were chronically implanted. Twenty-four h later, after hemodynamic signals were recorded in conscious rats, they were sacrificed and hearts were taken out for morphological examinations; Results: Cariporide treatment decreased the heart weight and heart weight to body weight ratio (bothP<0.05), decreased left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (P<0.001), improved myocardial contractility (dP/dt _max) (P<0.05) and tended to increase the survival of treated rats compared to that of untreated infarct rats; Conclusion: The results of the present study indicate that the long-term inhibition of NHE with cariporide can attenuate cardiac structural remodeling and improve left ventricular dysfunction in infarcted rats, and suggest that Na⁺/H⁺ exchange inhibition could be an effective therapeutic strategy for myocardial infarction-induced heart failure.     

Personal Storytelling as a Medium of Socialization in Chinese and American Families

The goal of this study was to determine how personal storytelling functions as a socializing practice within the family context in middle-class Taiwanese and middle-class European American families. The data consist of more than 200 naturally occurring stories in which the past experiences of the focal child, aged 2,6, were narrated. These stories were analyzed at 3 levels: content, function, and structure. Findings converged across these analytic levels, indicating that personal storytelling served overlapping yet distinct socializing functions in the 2 cultural cases. In keeping with the high value placed on didactic narrative within the Confucian tradition, Chinese families were more likely to use personal storytelling to convey moral and social standards. European American families did not treat stories of young children's past experiences as a didactic resource but instead employed stories as a medium of entertainment and affirmation. These findings suggest not only that personal storytelling operates as a routine socializing practice in widely different cultures but also that it is already functionally differentiated by 2,6.     

The role of sensory preconditioning in memory retrieval by preverbal infants

Infants’ memories are highly specific to their training stimuli; they rarely transfer learned responding. In two experiments, we asked whether sensory preconditioning facilitates the transfer of deferred imitation. In Experiments 1A and 1B, 6-month-olds were simultaneously preexposed to Puppets A and B and then saw target actions modeled on Puppet A. The infants associated the paired puppets and imitated the actions on Puppet B. In Experiment 2, the preexposure procedure was repeated, but the actions were modeled on Puppet A with a toy train in view. The infants also associated Puppet A and the train: Either object effectively reactivated both forgotten memories; thereafter, the infants again imitated the actions on Puppet B. These findings reveal that infants form specific and enduring associations between stimuli they have merely seen together. These associations facilitate the transfer of deferred imitation, both directly and indirectly, through connections to other associations.