The North Wind and the Sun

The north wind and the sun are good friends.But one day they quarrelabout something. “I am stronger than you.”the cold north wind says.“Indeed you arenot.I’m stronger than you,”answers the soft,warm sun. Just then they see a man walking along the road. “I can get that man’s hat off his head,”the wind says.     

The Interaction of Early Maternal Responsiveness and Children's Cognitive Abilities on Later Decoding and Reading Comprehension Skills

This longitudinal study evaluated the extent to which maternal responsiveness across early childhood and children's cognitive skills predicted children's 8-year decoding and reading comprehension skills for children who varied in biological risk (term, n = 83; preterm, n = 155). Patterns of maternal responsiveness during infancy (6, 12, and 24 months) and preschool (3 and 4 years) revealed 4 maternal clusters that varied in consistency and level of maternal responsiveness. Although not predictive of decoding skills, the interaction between children's 4-year cognitive ability and maternal responsiveness cluster predicted children's reading comprehension skills at 8 years of age, regardless of risk. Although consistently high levels of maternal responsive parenting across early childhood related to literacy outcomes for all children in the study, responsive parenting had a stronger relation to later reading comprehension skills for children with lower cognitive abilities, particularly when mothers demonstrated high responsiveness in children's infancy.     

School psychologists' perceptions regarding the practice of identifying reading disabilities: Cognitive assessment and response to intervention considerations

This study surveyed a national sample of school psychologists with respect to the identification of reading disabilities (RD). It covers school psychologists' opinions regarding perceived benefits of the use of cognitive assessment in RD identification, both within and outside of an IQ–achievement discrepancy model. The survey also solicited opinions about the nature of RD, particularly conceptions of general slow learners (and readers) versus those evidencing a discrepancy. Results related to school psychologists' concerns about job security, should IQ testing be reduced, are presented. Furthermore, the perceived benefits of a Response to Intervention (RTI) model, how school psychologists see themselves contributing to an RTI effort, as well as possible hurdles to RTI implementation are covered. Measurement of these perceptions may be beneficial in informing current and future service delivery models for RD identification as well as possible training needs of currently practicing school psychologists. Finally, the current work represents an effort to measure assessment acceptability for RD identification techniques. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

In Physics Education,Perception Matters

Student difficulties in science learning are frequently attributed to misconceptions about scientific concepts. We argue that domain‐general perceptual processes may also influence students' ability to learn and demonstrate mastery of difficult science concepts. Using the concept of center of gravity (CoG), we show how student difficulty in applying CoG to an object such as a baseball bat can be accounted for, at least in part, by general principles of perception (i.e., not exclusively physics‐based) that make perceiving the CoG of some objects more difficult than others. In particular, it is perceptually difficult to locate the CoG of objects with asymmetric‐extended properties. The basic perceptual features of objects must be taken into account when assessing students' classroom performance and developing effective science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching methods.     

Social Information Processing,Moral Reasoning,and Emotion Attributions: Relations With Adolescents’ Reactive and Proactive Aggression

Connections between adolescents’ social information processing (SIP), moral reasoning, and emotion attributions and their reactive and proactive aggressive tendencies were assessed. One hundred mostly African American and Latino 13‐ to 18‐year‐olds from a low‐socioeconomic‐status (SES) urban community and their high school teachers participated. Reactive aggression was uniquely related to expected ease in enacting aggression, lower verbal abilities, and hostile attributional biases, and most of these connections were mediated by adolescents’ attention problems. In contrast, proactive aggression was uniquely related to higher verbal abilities and expectations of more positive emotional and material outcomes resulting from aggression. Discussion focused on the utility of assessing both moral and SIP‐related cognitions, and on the potential influence of low‐SES, high‐risk environments on these findings.     

Difficulty and self-efficacy: An exploratory study

Serious games are becoming increasingly popular due to their association with increased learning outcomes when compared to traditional self-regulated learning activities. However, the majority of research examining the outcomes of serious games has focused almost exclusively on learning outcomes. This has resulted in a lack of research examining why these types of games result in increased positive outcomes, such as engagement or performance. This study seeks to address this gap in existing research by examining the relationship between game difficulty and participants’ engagement, performance and self-efficacy in a Pacman style maze navigation game. This required the use of hidden difficulty variations which participants were randomly assigned. Participants engaged with the game over a 5-days practice period. Results from this study suggest that difficulty plays a considerable role in influencing participants’ self-efficacy for the task. Self-efficacy has been consistently linked to positive outcomes such as increased engagement and performance. This highlights the importance of difficulty as a game design factor as well as providing an insight into the manner in which serious games could be further refined in order to increase user’s self-efficacy and associated positive outcomes. Implications for future serious games and self-efficacy research are discussed.     

Academic Follow-Up Data on Two Cohorts of High-Risk Transfer Children

Two cohorts of children from inner-city elementary schools were provided a tutoring intervention to help in their transition to new schools. Participants were third, fourth, and fifth grade children who were identified as having low-income status, evidencing lags on achievement tests, and experiencing stressful life events. The intervention involved an orientation program with twice weekly paraprofessional tutoring. Two and three year academic and sociometric follow-up data were collected. Those provided the intervention evidenced some improvements over time, and these changes were most prominent in the area of reading grades. Fewer significant findings were found on sociometric indices.     

Experimental Evaluation of the Value Added by Raising a Reader and Supplemental Parent Training in Shared Reading

Research Findings: In an effort toward developing a comprehensive, effective, scalable, and sustainable early childhood education program for at-risk populations, we conducted an experimental evaluation of the value added by 2 family involvement programs to the Texas Early Education Model (TEEM). A total of 91 preschool classrooms that served minority populations of low socioeconomic status were randomly assigned to TEEM, TEEM plus Raising a Reader (RAR), or TEEM plus RAR augmented by Family Nights. Assessments of oral language and print knowledge were completed by more than 500 children at the beginning and end of the school year. Multilevel analyses of covariance controlled for classroom nesting and individual differences in age, ethnicity, and pretest scores. Although RAR alone demonstrated no added value, augmentation of RAR with Family Nights demonstrated significant impacts on measures of oral language (ts = 1.81–2.51, .05 < ps < .01) and print knowledge (t = 2.39, p < .01). Practice or Policy: Thus, parent training in shared reading practices appears to be necessary for children to benefit from programs that enrich the home literacy environment. That the combined program particularly benefited children who started preschool lagging behind in school readiness (ts = 1.64–2.49, ps < .05) suggests that this comprehensive model offers hope for closing the achievement gap.     

The role of high school racial composition and opportunities to learn in students' STEM college participation

We analyze longitudinal data from students who spent their academic careers in North Carolina (NC) public secondary schools and attended NC public universities to investigate the importance of high school racial composition and opportunities to learn in secondary school for choosing a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) major. We consider school racial composition and opportunities to learn as contexts that shape students' decisions regarding college majors. Results of cross‐classified hierarchical logistic models indicate that attending schools with predominantly White students is negatively associated with declaring a STEM major and with graduating with a STEM major irrespective of students' own race. The finding suggests that for students in North Carolina, attending racially isolated White high schools is related to a decrease in adolescents' participation in STEM during college.