Prenatal cocaine exposure: a comparison of 2-year-old children in parental and nonparental care

Effects of prenatal cocaine exposure and parental versus nonparental care on outcome at 2 years of age were examined. The sample included 83 cocaine-exposed and 63 nonexposed children and their caregivers; 49 and 34 of the cocaine-exposed children experienced parental and nonparental care, respectively. Prenatal drug exposure was not related directly to children's outcome at 2 years of age. However, compared with cocaine-exposed children in parental care, those in nonparental care experienced a more optimal environment and performed better in several developmental domains at 2 years of age in spite of being at greater neonatal risk. Further analyses suggested that this protective effect of nonparental care was in part due to nonkin rather than kin care.     

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.     

Examining the effects of a highly rated science curriculum unit on diverse students: Results from a planning grant

This article reports on the results of a planning grant studying the effects of a highly rated curriculum unit on a diverse student population. The treatment was introduced to 1500 eighth grade students in five middle schools selected for their ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity. Students were given pre‐, post‐, and delayed posttests on a Conservation of Matter Assessment and measures of motivation and engagement. This quasi‐experiment found statistically significant posttest results for achievement, basic learning engagement, and goal orientation. Analyses of disaggregated data showed that subgroups of students in the treatment condition outscored their comparison group peers (n = 1500) in achievement in all cases, except for students currently enrolled in ESOL. Analysis of video data of a diverse group of four students as the unit was enacted suggests that students entered a learning environment that permitted them to function in different, but consistent ways over time; that is, the frequency of students' manipulation of objects showed a different pattern of engagement for each of the four students compared with patterns of verbal responses such as the use of scientific terms. The results of this planning grant paved the way for a large study of the scale‐up of highly rated curriculum units. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 912–946, 2005     

A Comparison of the Nontraditional Students' Experience on Traditional Versus Nontraditional College Campuses

The majority of research on nontraditional students has been conducted in environments where they constitute a significant portion of the college population. For the most part, this research found few problems and indicated that nontraditional students' college experiences are positive. This article compares the experience of nontraditional students at two types of campuses—a traditional campus where older students constitute a small percentage of the student population and two branch campuses where there is a substantial number of older students. The findings indicate areas in which a lack of age diversity may have an impact on the nontraditional students' experience.     

Medical libraries, bioinformatics, and networked information: a coming convergence?

Libraries will be changed by technological and social developments that are fueled by information technology, bioinformatics, and networked information. Libraries in highly focused settings such as the health sciences are at a pivotal point in their development as the synthesis of historically diverse and independent information sources transforms health care institutions. Boundaries are breaking down between published literature and research data, between research databases and clinical patient data, and between consumer health information and professional literature. This paper focuses on the dynamics that are occurring with networked information sources and the roles that libraries will need to play in the world of medical informatics in the early twenty-first century.     

The language of science and the high school student: The recognition of concept definitions: A comparison between hindi speaking students in India and english speaking students in Australia

Sixteen concept words (mass, length, area, volume, solid, liquid, gas, element, compound, mixture, electron, proton, neutron, atom, molecule, and ion) associated with the theme, the nature of matter were described as simple text book definitions after examination of classroom notes and school texts of the last three decades. Sixteen multiple-choice items all of the same form were constructed for each of the concept definitions. The English version of the sixteen item test was given to 1635 high school students in Tasmania (where the language of instruction and the home language is English) and the Hindi version of the test was given to 826 students from the Bhopal/Barwani region of India where the medium of instruction is Hindi. The English and Hindi speaking data are compared from the point of view of development, performance for individual items, and overall performance at grade 10. A number of linguistic hypotheses are examined and reported upon. Although the overall score at grade 10 was identical (10.8/16) for both groups there are differences in development overall and for individual items which are of interest. Overall, the science specificity of the Hindi words does not appear to confer any clearly defined advantage or disadvantage though again there are some interesting individual anomolies.     

Childhood emotional invalidation and adult psychological distress: the mediating role of emotional inhibition

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a model in which chronic emotional inhibition mediates the relationship between a history of childhood emotional invalidation or abuse and adult psychological distress. METHOD: One hundred and twenty-seven participants completed a series of self-report questionnaires, and a subset of this group (n=88) completed an additional measure of current avoidant coping in response to a laboratory stressor. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate and compare a full and partial mediational model. RESULTS: Findings strongly supported a model in which a history of childhood emotional invalidation (i.e., psychological abuse and parental punishment, minimization, and distress in response to negative emotion) was associated with chronic emotional inhibition in adulthood (i.e., ambivalence over emotional expression, thought suppression, and avoidant stress responses). In turn, emotional inhibition significantly predicted psychological distress, including depression and anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSION: This study found support for a model in which the relation between recollected negative emotion socialization in childhood and adult psychological distress was fully mediated by a style of inhibiting emotional experience and expression. Although it is likely that childhood emotional inhibition is functional (e.g., reduces parental distress and rejection), results suggest that chronic emotional inhibition may have long-term negative consequences for the inhibitor.     

Short-term professional learning that focuses on beliefs and practice: Improvements in preschool teachers’ ongoing literacy practice

An intervention study was conducted with preschool teachers to address their beliefs and practice in the area of language and literacy. A total of 27 preschool teachers, each from different early childcare centers, participated in three 1-day professional learning sessions over the course of 9 months. Learning sessions focused on three different language and literacy topics. Study participants completed a pre- and post-session questionnaire and were observed in the classroom before and after each session. Significant differences were observed in both their beliefs and practice after the intervention. Specifically, preschool teachers’ beliefs were related to their practice in two areas: oral language and vocabulary; and book reading. Based on the data, a focus on beliefs and practice in future short-term PL or workshop models may support successful outcomes in teaching practice.