Early childhood directors as socializers of emotional climate

Early childhood centres are vibrant social communities where child and adult emotions are integral to learning. Previous research has focused on teaching practices that support children’s social-emotional learning; fewer studies have attended to relevant centre-level factors, such as the emotional leadership practices of the centre director. The present study qualitatively explored the role of directors in cultivating climates supportive of social-emotional teaching and learning. Program administrators (N = 12) were interviewed to inform a model of Positive Early Emotional Leadership. Findings indicate that administrators believe that they play a vital role in creating and maintaining positive centre emotional climates. Moreover, the ways in which directors influence the climate of the centre resemble the emotion socialization processes identified previously in parenting and teaching literatures. These findings connect developmental theory to educational practice, highlighting the potential connections among centre directors’ leadership practices, teachers’ emotional experiences at work, and children’s social and emotional learning.     

Evaluation of a short version of the Illinois Loneliness and Social Satisfaction Scale in a sample of students with and without special educational needs – an empirical study with primary and secondary students in Austria

The first aim of this study was to evaluate the appropriateness of a short version of the Illinois Loneliness and Social Satisfaction Scale with children with special educational needs. The second aim was to explore loneliness in relation to self‐perceived social integration, school well‐being and the social self‐concept of students from primary and secondary schools, in both inclusive and regular classes. This study had 1,115 student participants (408 fourth graders and 707 seventh graders), of whom 126 were diagnosed as having special educational needs. Factor analyses confirmed a unidimensional latent factor structure. The scale showed satisfactory reliability and the validity coefficients indicated that the scale is suitable for surveys including students with special educational needs. Generally speaking, the level of self‐rated loneliness is low. Nevertheless, students with special educational needs in inclusive classes felt significantly lonelier than students without special educational needs in inclusive classes.     

Jugend und Kultur – Zwischen Eminem,Picasso und Xavier Naidoo …

The Youth Culture Barometer provides recent data on cultural participation of the 14- to 24-year-olds in Germany. The focus is on cultural and artistic interests, the visit of cultural events, attitudes and desires for cultural visits, as well as cultural biography profiles in this age group. Thereby, culture is conceptualized as an active engagement in the “arts”.With the 2nd Youth Culture Barometer, that is now available, it is possible to have a look at comparisons over time, which reveal that age specific role models break up increasingly and that youthful interests can be classified as rather generation-specific influenced by current social underlying circumstances, like an alternated media- and leisure praxis. In addition, the milieu-specific factor—and in this case education—appears to be particularly imprinting.     

The relationships between elementary students' knowledge-in-use performance and their science achievement

This longitudinal study examines the relationship between students' knowledge-in-use performance and their performance on third-party designed summative tests within a coherent and equitable learning environment. Focusing on third-grade students across three consecutive project-based learning (PBL) units aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the study includes 1067 participants from 23 schools in a Great Lakes state. Two-level hierarchical linear modeling estimates the effects of post-unit assessments on end-of-year summative tests. Results indicate that post-unit assessment performances predict NGSS-aligned summative test performance. Students experiencing more PBL units demonstrate greater gains on the summative test, with predictions not favoring students from diverse backgrounds. This study underscores the importance of coherence, equity, and the PBL approach in promoting knowledge-in-use and science achievement. A systematically coherent PBL environment across multiple units facilitates the development of students' knowledge-in-use, highlighting the significance of designing science and engineering practices (SEPs) and crosscutting concepts coherently and progressively, with intentional revisitation of disciplinary core ideas (DCIs). The study also investigates how the PBL approach fosters equitable learning environments for diverse demographic groups, offering equitable opportunities through equity-oriented design. Contributions include a coherent assessment system that tracks and supports learning aligned with NGSS, emphasizing the predictive power of post-unit assessments, continuous monitoring and tracking. The implications of context similarity and optimal performance expectations within units are discussed. Findings inform educators, administrators, and policymakers about the benefits of NGSS-aligned PBL systems and the need for coherent and equitable learning and assessment systems supporting knowledge-in-use development and equitable opportunities for all learners.     

The impact of retrieval processes, age, general achievement level, and test scoring scheme for children’s metacognitive monitoring and controlling

This multi-phase study examined the influence of retrieval processes on children??s metacognitive processes in relation to and in interaction with achievement level and age. First, N?=?150 9/10- and 11/12-year old high and low achievers watched an educational film and predicted their test performance. Children then solved a cloze test regarding the film content including answerable and unanswerable items and gave confidence judgments to every answer. Finally, children withdrew answers that they believed to be incorrect. All children showed adequate metacognitive processes before and during test taking with 11/12- year-olds outperforming 9/10-year-olds when considering characteristics of on-going retrieval processes. As to the influence of achievement level, high compared to low achievers proved to be more accurate in their metacognitive monitoring and controlling. Results suggest that both cognitive resources (operationalized through achievement level) and mnemonic experience (assessed through age) fuel metacognitive development. Nevertheless, when facing higher demands regarding retrieval processes, experience seems to play the more important role.     

Supporting collaboration with technology: does shared cognition lead to co-regulation in medicine?

The theoretical distinctions between metacognition, self-regulation and self-regulated learning are often blurred which makes the definition of co-regulation in group learning situations even more difficult. We have started to explore co-regulation in the context of decision making in simulated emergencies where medical teams work together to manage patient cases. Our earlier work has described the relationship between collaborative decision-making in this context as well as discourse patterns that emerge in a simulated medical emergency (Lu & Lajoie, 2008). This paper examines the interactions that occur during this simulation that reflect the relationship between co-regulation and medical decision-making. There are two collaborative learning conditions, a traditional situation where the instructor facilitates collaboration by using a whiteboard to document the group’s construction of a medical argument (the traditional whiteboard condition, TW). The second condition uses technology to facilitate the collaboration, where individuals use laptops and an interactive whiteboard (IW) where they can interact with the problem list as it is being created. Our assumption was that the IW would facilitate communication beyond the teacher–student, to include student–student both within and between the various subgroups. The IW group could document their medical arguments by using a structured template for constructing, annotating and sharing arguments. We found that participants in the IW condition differed from the TW condition in that they engaged in more adaptive decision-making behavior early on in the intervention. Similar overall levels of metacognitive activity were found in both conditions but the pattern and timing of metacognitive categories varied. Specifically, the IW group engaged in more planning and orienting than the TW group at the outset of the problem. Early engagement and co-regulation occurred in the IW group which led to shared understandings and subsequently to effective patient management in latter sessions (11.5% vs. 3.6% in TW). Technology supported greater metacognitive activity overall (44% vs 29% in the non supported group). Furthermore, technology facilitated greater planning (23% vs. 10%) and orienting (10% vs 1%) early in the medical problem solving activity. We refer to specific indicators in the discourse that help operationalize the concept of co-regulation.     

Central processing energetic factors mediate impaired motor control in ADHD combined subtype but not in ADHD inattentive subtype

Participants with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are often impaired in visuomotor tasks. However, little is known about the contribution of modal impairment in motor function relative to central processing deficits or whether different processes underlie the impairment in ADHD combined (ADHD-C) versus ADHD inattentive (ADHD-I) subtype. The present study analyzes performance on the Visual Motor Integration Test relative to less effortful motor tests as well as on measures of energetics. Both ADHD groups showed evidence of impaired motor function on both visual-motor integration (VMI) and the less effortful motor tests. The ADHD-C group performed below the ADHD-I group on VMI, but their performance correlated highly with the measures of the energetic pools of arousal and effort. Different mechanisms may underlie impaired fine motor skills in ADHD. Central processing deficits contribute significantly to the deficit of ADHD-C but do not explain the motor impairment in ADHD-I.     

The design of technology-rich learning environments as metacognitive tools in history education

Research has shown that learners do not always engage in appropriate metacognitive and self-regulatory processes while learning complex historical topics. However, little research exists to guide the design of technology-rich learning environments as metacognitive tools in history education. In order to address this issue, we designed a metacognitive tool using a bottom-up approach. Thirty-two undergraduate students read an historical narrative text either with or without the benefit of the metacognitive tool. Results from process and product data suggest that learners using the metacognitive tool had better recall and that the tool helped them (a) notice that particular events in an historical narrative text are unexplained, and (b) generate hypothetical causes to explain the occurrence of such events. We discuss the implications of these findings for the development of the MetaHistoReasoning Tool, a technology-rich learning environment that assist learners in terms of regulating their learning while they accomplish authentic tasks of historical inquiry.     

Widening participation in sport-related studies in higher education: an exploratory study of symbolic struggles

This paper focuses on widening participation in higher education and the low recruitment of students from diverse backgrounds within sport-related programs. The purpose of the study has been to describe and increase the understanding of how the preconditions and premises for choosing to study ‘sport’ appear to students from diverse backgrounds, who have started their studies. An interview study was carried out with eight students from three institutes, based on a purposeful sample. The study draws on Bourdieu's analytical concepts of habitus, capital and practical sense. The findings indicate that the interviewees had sufficient symbolic and cultural capital to enable a ‘practical sense’ that choice and action were possible, including evaluating the consequences of choice. For some, this meant a choice that crossed boundaries. Achieving a greater widening of the recruitment to higher education in sport-related programs seems to need clarification of transformable capital.