Will Obama's My Brother's Keeper and Similar Initiatives Have a Positive Impact on Low-Income Students?

Barack Obama's My Brother's Keeper is designed to narrow persistent gaps that boys and young men of color confront often and to help all young people achieve their potential in college and career. An important part of this initiative is comprehensive mentoring that supports students in schools and in communities. Because ethnic-minority students have extremely low graduation rates in high school and college, an essential question is addressed: Can My Brother's Keeper and similar initiatives with a mentoring component be effective in helping minority students to achieve success in elementary and secondary schools and in college?     

Academic socialization,parental educational expectations,and academic self‐efficacy among Latino adolescents

This study examined the direct association between parental educational expectations and adolescents’ academic self‐efficacy, as well as the moderating influence of parental academic socialization messages. Participants were 148 Latino parent–adolescent dyads with the majority of Mexican origin (80.4%). Most of the parent participants were mothers (85.8%). Adolescents were 13 (46%) or 14 (54%) years of age, and 53% identified as female. Adolescents reported their academic self‐efficacy and perceptions of their parents’ educational expectations; parents reported on their academic socialization messages of shame/pressure and effort regarding academics. The results suggest that, after accounting for parents’ level of education and immigrant status, parental educational expectations were positively associated with adolescent academic self‐efficacy. This association was stronger among adolescents whose parents reported transmitting fewer messages of shame/pressure and academic effort. These results point to the importance of nuances in the content and type of academic socialization messages within Latino families.     

Beyond educational attainment: The importance of skills and lifelong learning for social outcomes. Evidence for Europe from PIAAC

Empirical evidence suggests that educational attainment nurtures people's social outcomes and promotes active participation in society and stability. However, it is unclear to what extent other types of human capital also correlate with social outcomes. Hence, we explored the opportunity offered by the PIAAC survey through its provision of information on educational attainment, observed individual key skills proficiency, and participation in adult education and training (adult lifelong learning). We therefore studied the association between these human capital variables and social outcomes, and more specifically interpersonal trust and participation in volunteering activities. Results revealed that these social outcomes were affected not only by the formal qualification obtained, determined by the education variable, but also throughout the life‐cycle. Indeed, education and training when undertaken during adult life have a significant impact, especially on volunteering. The fact that the skill proficiency also plays a significant role is extremely relevant, as skills are more likely to change over the life‐cycle, either in a positive or negative way. Whilst the formal education received is constant after exiting the educational system, skills reflect competences more accurately: first, because those with the same level of education may have different skill levels because of differences in the quality of education or ability; second, because skills can vary over time. For example, they may increase with work experience or informal education, or decrease as a result of depreciation and ageing. These findings suggest that social outcomes are prone to be affected by many factors other than formal education, suggesting that policy makers can implement recommendations even after formal education has been completed.     

Adjustment scales for preschool intervention: Extending validity and relevance across multiple perspectives

A series of studies extended psychometric research on the Adjustment Scales for Preschool Intervention (ASPI). The ASPI is a multidimensional measure of preschool emotional and behavioral adjustment for use within formal early childhood educational programs. These studies used a multiple method, multisource approach to provide additional evidence for the reliability and validity of the ASPI. Findings documented inter‐rater reliability of the ASPI across key informants within early childhood educational programs—teachers and teacher assistants. Findings supported concurrent validity of the ASPI with direct observations of preschool classroom adjustment problems and the developmentally salient constructs of temperament and emotion regulation. Implications for policy, practice, and future research are discussed. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 725–736, 2004.     

The relationship between individual instructional characteristics and the overall assessment of teaching effectiveness across different instructional contexts

There is an ongoing debate in the student evaluation of teaching literature about whether an overall rating or factorial dimensions of teaching effectiveness should be used in personnel decisions. Marsh and his colleagues have advocated the use of a weighted average approach to computing overall evaluations. A policy-capturing experiment was carried out where students in three different instructional contexts made overall evaluations of hypothetical instructors based on a manipulation of the teaching factors in Marsh's SEEQ. The results indicated (1) amount learned was consistently the most important factor affecting overall evaluations; (2) course difficulty was consistently the least important factor affecting overall evaluations; and (3) there was a strong similarity among the three groups in the relative importance of the various teaching factors in arriving at an overall evaluation. The implications of this research are discussed, as well as directions for future research.     

Development of system thinking skills in the context of earth system education

The current study deals with the development of system thinking skills at the junior high school level. The sample population included about 50 eighth‐grade students from two different classes of an urban Israeli junior high school who studied an earth systems‐based curriculum that focused on the hydro cycle. The study addressed the following research questions: (a) Could the students deal with complex systems?; (b) What has influenced the students' ability to deal with system perception?; and (c) What are the relationship among the cognitive components of system thinking? The research combined qualitative and quantitative methods and involved various research tools, which were implemented in order to collect the data concerning the students' knowledge and understanding before, during, and following the learning process. The findings indicated that the development of system thinking in the context of the earth systems consists of several sequential stages arranged in a hierarchical structure. The cognitive skills that are developed in each stage serve as the basis for the development of the next higher‐order thinking skills. The research showed that in spite of the minimal initial system thinking abilities of the students most of them made some meaningful progress in their system thinking skills, and a third of them reached the highest level of system thinking in the context of the hydro cycle. Two main factors were found to be the source of the differential progress of the students: (a) the students' individual cognitive abilities, and (b) their level of involvement in the knowledge integration activities during their inquiry‐based learning both indoors and outdoors. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Chinese and Canadian Children's Evaluations of Lying and Truth Telling: Similarities and Dfferences in the Context of pro-and Antisocial Behaviors

The present study compared Chinese and Canadian children's moral evaluations of lie and truth telling in situations involving pro- and antisocial behaviors. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-old Chinese and canadian children were presented 4 brief stories. Two stories involved a child who intentionally carried out a good deed, and the other2 stories involved a child who intentionally carried out a bad deed. When story characters were questioned by a teacher as to who had committed the deed, they either lied or told the truth. Children were asked to evaluate the story characters' deeds and their verbal statements. Overall, Chinese children rated truth telling less positively and lie telling more positively in prosocial settings than Canadian children, indicating that the emphasis on self-effacement and modesty in Chinese culture overrides Chinese children's evaluations of lying in some situations. Both Chinese and canadian children rated trugh telling positively and lie telling negatively in antisocial situations, reflecting the emphasis in both cultures on the distinction between misdeed and truth/lie telling. The findings of the present study suggest that, in the realm of lying and truth telling, a close relation between sociocultural practices and moral judgment exists. Specific social and cultural norms have an impact on children's developing moral judgments, which in turn, are modified by age and experience in a particular culture.