An Intergenerational Summer Program Involving Persons with Dementia and Preschool Children

ABSTRACT

We implemented an intergenerational (IG) summer program at a colocated site for 2 consecutive summers to maximize continuity and enhance sustainability. We incorporated multiple methods to represent the views of key program stakeholders, including staff and administrators, parents who attended the program, and facilitators’ reports of the experiences of child and adult participants. We generated a list of themes and subthemes from each source and triangulated the data points. Despite the resources invested and the challenges faced, the program was well received and viewed as beneficial. These findings offer insight into the likelihood of sustainability for IG summer programming.     

Correcting Biased Cohen’s Kappa in NVivo

This study demonstrates that NVivo, a popular research tool for content analysis, produces biased Cohen’s kappa as it calculates the reliability statistic at the character level, which is unsuitable for most content-analytic studies adopting a higher unit of analysis (e.g., sentence, paragraph). Based on empirical data and a statistical simulation, this study proposes a method of bias correction applicable to situations where two independent raters conduct binary coding.     

Being First in Family: motivations and metaphors

First in Family (FiF) is an under-recognised equity grouping which may encompass low-SES, mature-aged, regional and remote, and Indigenous students. FiF tertiary students are more likely to be in a position of educational disadvantage over students who have other family members available to share the experience of university life and discuss aspirations. Building on previous research, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 FiF university students from a range of disciplines across three South Australian institutions. We analysed the interview data based on themes derived through readings of FiF literature, adding new ones as they emerged as part of the process of analysis. In this paper, we specifically focus on the interview responses which included metaphors or analogies. Metaphors provide a conceptual framework for thinking about a particular problem and drawing comparisons between unlike situations. Our experience as educators told us that students often subtly and unintentionally utilise metaphors when articulating lived experiences. We both specifically asked the FiF students to identify a metaphor that reflected their experience of being at university and also considered their use of metaphors in response to other questions. In exploring these metaphors, we have gained insight into students’ day-to-day experience of attending university and have gained information about their motivations and their struggles. When considered by university staff and policy-makers, this information could be used to guide the development of strategies that may help future FiF students.     

The influence of education on violent conflict and peace: Inequality, opportunity and the management of diversity

This article examines the ways in which education and educational policy impact upon the likelihood and dynamics of violent conflict. It argues that education is rarely directly implicated in the incidence of violent conflict but identifies three main mechanisms through which education can indirectly accentuate or mitigate the risk of conflict: through the creation and maintenance of socio-economic divisions, including horizontal inequalities between ethnic groups; through processes of political inclusion and exclusion; and through accommodation of cultural diversity. It further suggests that designing conflict-sensitive education systems is particularly problematic because the implications of these three principal mechanisms often pull in different directions.     

School quality signals and attendance in rural Guatemala

This study analyzes school dropout in rural Guatemala using event history data and unusually detailed data on schools and teachers. Significant results for language of instruction, teacher education and fighting between students demonstrate the importance of accounting for school context influences on an outcome that has, historically, been analyzed mainly as a function of family background. Less support is found for the contention that dropout is lower in schools that are better at maximizing student achievement. Finally, using interaction analysis some of the school effects vary significantly by student gender and ethnicity. The various linkages between school features and dropout highlight the complicated reality of identifying the kinds of features of schools that are valued by poor families.     

QuickSmart: a basic academic skills intervention for middle school students with learning difficulties

QuickSmart is a basic academic skills intervention designed for persistently low-achieving students in the middle years of schooling that aims to improve the automaticity of basic skills to improve higher-order processes, such as problem solving and comprehension, as measured on standardized tests. The QuickSmart instructional program consists of three structured, teacher- or teacher aide-directed, 30-minute, small-group lessons each week for approximately 26 weeks. In this study, 42 middle school students experiencing learning difficulties (LD) completed the QuickSmart reading program, and a further 42 students with LD took part in the QuickSmart mathematics program. To investigate the effects of the intervention, comparisons were made between the reading and mathematics progress of the intervention group and a group of 10 high-achieving and 10 average-achieving peers. The results indicated that although the standardized reading comprehension and mathematics scores of QuickSmart students remained below those of comparison students, they improved significantly from pretest to posttest. In contrast, the standardized scores of comparison students were not significantly different from pretest to posttest. On measures of response speed and accuracy gathered using the Cognitive Aptitude Assessment System (CAAS), QuickSmart students were able to narrow the gap between their performance and that of their high- and average-achieving peers. Implications are drawn regarding the importance of interventions that emphasize the automaticity of basic academic skills for students with learning difficulties.