What Preschool Classroom Experiences Are Associated With Whether Children Improve in Visuomotor Integration?

Research Findings: This study examined the contribution of several class-room experience measures (classroom characteristics, teacher characteristics, and teacher–child interactions) to preschoolers’ improvement in visuomotor integration. Children (N = 467) ranged in age from 3 to 5 years old and were enrolled in 115 classrooms in 5 U.S. states. Children’s visuomotor integration was measured twice (on average 5.2 months apart) using the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (visuomotor integration subtest). Hierarchical linear models controlling for background characteristics and inhibitory control showed that children improved more in visuomotor integration when they were in classrooms with fewer 3-year-olds, when their teacher had at least a bachelor’s degree, and when teachers demonstrated high quality in their interactions. Practice or Policy: Visuomotor integration, and specifically the ability to copy designs with a writing utensil, is a robust indicator of children’s school readiness and longitudinal achievement. U.S. preschoolers gained more on visuomotor integration in classrooms with fewer 3-year-old children that were taught by a college-educated teacher and when such classrooms provided high-quality organizational and instructional interactions. These results expand the outcomes linked to early childhood education experiences and emphasize the need for well-prepared early childhood teachers who interact with children effectively.     

Longitudinal effects of induction on teaching skills and attrition rates of beginning teachers

The teaching profession faces a shortage as well as a decline of teaching skills. A possible way to mitigate this is to implement evidence-based induction arrangements. Seventy-one schools with 338 beginning secondary education teachers were randomly allocated to an experimental or a control group. The experimental schools used induction arrangements; the authors measured the effects of these arrangements by using repeated lesson observations and by comparing the rates at which beginners in the control and experimental groups left the teaching profession. Three years later, 14% of the control group and 12% of the experimental group had left. Leaving the profession could be explained by a lack of certification and low initial teaching skill levels. The experimental group exhibited greater improvement in teaching skills compared to the control group. Workload reduction influenced the skill level negatively, and coaching and observing had a strong positive influence on the skill level in Year 3.     

Promoting Metacognitive Decision-Making in Teacher Education

Effective teachers are characterized by their abilities to make thoughtful, deliberate, and informed adaptations while teaching (Hoffman & Pearson, 2000). These in-the-moment teaching decisions are guided by a complex web of teacher knowledge. Raising teachers' awareness of the decisions they make on a moment-by-moment basis may aid in thoughtful, more deliberate decision-making and more robust instruction. We charge that preservice teachers can acquire this skill, as well. This article highlights practices employed in preservice teacher education courses as a means to promote awareness of, and engagement with, in-the-moment teaching decisions. Using examples from mathematics, social studies, and literacy methods courses, we describe our processes to intentionally cultivate preservice teachers' adaptive teaching skills through metacognitive decision-making.     

Perceived stress,executive function,perceived stress regulation,and behavioral outcomes of adolescents with and without significant behavior problems

Despite school‐based services, adolescents with maladaptive behavior experience negative outcomes, highlighting the need for insight into factors that contribute to and escalate behavior problems during middle school—a high‐risk period. We examined how perceived school stress, stress regulation (engagement/disengagement coping, involuntary responses), and executive function of 79 middle schoolers with and without significant behavior problems were related to internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Results showed students with significant behavior problems (a) had lower executive function abilities and higher peer stress, (b) used less engagement coping, and (c) reported more maladaptive behaviors than typical peers. For all students, school‐based stress positively predicted behavior problems and use of stress regulation techniques, with group moderating effects. Involuntary responses to stress positively predicted maladaptive behaviors, whereas engagement/disengagement coping predicted internalizing behaviors only. As a mediator, engagement coping decreased the relationship between perceived stress and behavior problems. Based on these findings, we highlight important prevention and intervention areas.     

Exploring indicators of engagement in online learning as applied to adolescent health prevention: a pilot study of REAL media

Educational technology research and development - Engagement is central to the effectiveness of online health messages and the related educational programs that aim to deliver these messages to the...     

Discourse appropriation and category boundary work: casual teachers in the market

With the increasing casualisation of the teacher labour force, there is little written on the experiences of casual teachers and the challenges they face in brokering professional identities within constantly shifting and uncertain work contexts. Being a category bound casual teacher (a product of category boundary work) is a complex subject position. The aim of this article is to advance our understandings of the identity work inherent in casual relief teachers (CRTs) performativity. Anti-essentialist theories support this exploration of CRT subjectivities and processes of discourse appropriation. Using collective biography methodology as re-storied memory work, this article speaks back to neoliberal politics of casualisation. The stories draw attention to how both experienced practitioners and newly graduated teachers might ‘do’ category boundary work within the complexity of school politics as they navigate the uncertainty of gaining and maintaining employment in the Education market.     

Structural marginalisation,othering and casual relief teacher subjectivities

Produced through market relations of neoliberal managerialism, teacher subjectivities are becoming progressively commodified. With the increasing casualisation of the teaching workforce, the well-being and status of casual relief teachers (CRTs) can be seen as an area of concern, at risk of ‘flexploitation’. More than just a convenient labour pool, CRTs operate on the margins of school communities, a space fraught with a range of issues. In many instances, CRTs experience less job satisfaction; less rapport with students and colleagues and less access to school information, professional development, resources and teaching materials. This article draws on a positioning theory to frame the discursive production of CRT selves within the neoliberal milieu. It offers a detailed analysis of collective biographies that explore narrative formations of casual teaching. Schooling discourse is replete with metaphorical language that frames teacher positioning, and a range of existing metaphors in CRT literature highlight their vulnerability in particular. Rather than offering an analysis that addresses casual teacher performance as a problem to be solved, this article proposes that the relationship between ‘structural marginalisation and the ‘othering’ that CRTs can experience is associated with the politics of market-related performativity.