Future Avenues for Educational Neuroscience From the Perspective of EARLI SIG 22 Conference Attendees

The 2018 EARLI SIG 22 Neuroscience and Education conference aimed to facilitate the discussion and sharing of research and translation in educational neuroscience. In this article, we first describe and evaluate the approach taken in organizing the conference, which followed recommendations from the educational neuroscience community. We then summarize responses to a survey that captured delegates' visions of research and translation, their intentions following the conference, and the support they need moving forward. From 88 completed surveys, we first note a common desire for more discussions and collaborations across disciplines, and between teachers and researchers. We highlight particularly novel ideas that are not frequently addressed in the community so far, including discussion of ethical issues, inclusion of learners in research development, open resources for teacher training in neuroscience, and mentoring networks for community members. In sharing these ideas, we highlight future directions for the field as it continues to develop.     

How Meaning Modifies Drawing Behavior in Children

Two hundred and nine children aged 6–10 years and 40 adults were asked to draw perceptually ambiguous drawings to which two different meanings could be attributed, each meaning inducing a particular parsing of the model. These models were presented with one meaning in a first phase and another meaning in a second phase. For each, we analyzed whether participants modified their movement sequences in ways that were determined by the model's meaning. The results showed that the participants' drawing was to some degree sensitive to meaning at all ages. However, sensitivity to meaning differed as a function of the model and, more precisely, of the type of parsing induced by meaning. Thus, the way information is segmented into representational units may account for the relation between the what and the how of drawing.     

Effects of Student Displacement in Louisiana During the First Academic Year After the Hurricanes of 2005

The combined impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 left the education system in the Gulf Coast region of the United States with tremendous challenges to rebuild infrastructure, reestablish services, and accommodate the movements of students that occurred as result of the storms. This article focuses on Louisiana's public school students, of whom 1/4 were displaced as a result of the storms. It explores the experiences of students and the effects of student movements on student achievement and on the state's public education system during the first academic year following the hurricanes. Results suggest that, overall, the education system handled the disruptions of the disaster relatively well. However, more detailed examinations show that some displaced students had problems such as nonenrollment or poor attendance, mental health or behavioral problems, and academic setbacks. Negative achievement effects, which were small overall, were most pronounced among students who remained displaced for the duration of the academic year, and appeared to be mitigated by students' tendency to enroll in schools with higher student performance than their original schools. Additional results show that the negative effects were associated with both the number of schools attended and the amount of school time lost. However, these analyses do not include the displaced students who did not reenroll in a Louisiana public school. These students constitute more than a 1/4 of displaced students and tended to be those who are most at risk for poor academic outcomes.     

Marguerite Sechehaye and Renee: a feminist reading of two accounts of a treatment

In this paper I explore what it means to write as a woman by uncovering Marguerite Sechehaye's unclaimed contributions to psychoanalysis through a feminist reinterpretation of her writing. Analyzing two discrepant accounts of a treatment relationship, a first‐hand account written by Renee, a young woman who was Sechehaye's patient, and Sechehaye's own writing about this case, I interpret the shifting voices in these accounts and discover a method of “locating the feminine not‐said” [Showalter, 1985] in women's writing. This feminist understanding of Sechehaye's work involves entering women's stories, often informed and inflected by male perspectives, in order to uncover subtexts of resistance to and revision of a dominant view. I argue that the dilemma Sechehaye faced reflects a contradiction in the education of women: to learn a dominant discourse is necessary to gaining entry and voice within any of the professions, yet taking on a dominant discourse often means leaving one's knowledge as a woman largely unclaimed, obscuring a critical and original perspective.     

Knowledge about word structure in beginning readers: what specific links are there with word reading and spelling?

The present study had two aims: (1) to examine kindergarten (Kg) and first grade (G1) children’s early word structure knowledge, that is letter, phonological, morphological, and orthographic knowledge, and (2) to provide evidence of specific links between these various types of knowledge and word reading and spelling performance assessed in G1. A short longitudinal study was conducted with French-speaking children. Beyond phonological and morphological knowledge, identified here as in many other studies, the results provided evidence of a level of orthographic knowledge in the Kg children who exhibited an ability to process graphotactic constraints (i.e., legal combinations of letters). Moreover, whatever the type of items (affixed, pseudo-affixed, regular, or irregular words) being processed, either in reading or in spelling, letter naming was seen to be the strongest predictor of reading and spelling performance. The second important predictor related to phonological knowledge and more particularly phoneme extraction as a proximal predictor. Morphological knowledge appeared to be less important, and finally, the smallest contribution was made by orthographic knowledge.     

The Relation Between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension: Evidence From Mediation and Longitudinal Models

We examined the role of a hypothesized factor in reading comprehension: morphological awareness, or the awareness of and ability to manipulate the smallest meaningful units or morphemes. In this longitudinal study, we measured English-speaking children’s morphological awareness, word reading skills, and reading comprehension at Grades 3 and 4, in addition to their phonological awareness, vocabulary, and nonverbal ability as control measures. Path analyses revealed that word reading skills partially mediated the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension at each grade. Further, children’s early morphological awareness partially explained children’s gains in reading comprehension, and their early reading comprehension partially explained their gains in morphological awareness. These findings support the predictions of recent models of reading comprehension: that morphological awareness impacts reading comprehension both indirectly through word reading skills and directly through the language system and that morphological awareness underpins the development of reading comprehension (e.g., Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005).     

Achievement Profiles of Students in High School Vocational Training Programs

Vocational training (VT) allows young people to receive specialized training in a short period and enter the labor market with a qualification. However, VT is often seen as an unglamorous educational route, despite the fact that there are few admission requirements and that it prepares students for jobs with good conditions. Furthermore, the characteristics of VT students have been poorly documented empirically. To fill this gap, this study first examined the achievement profiles of 368 VT students based on three criteria: academic performance, academic persistence, and behavioral engagement. A two-step classification provided four groups: three profiles of students who persisted and successfully completed their training program and a fourth profile of students who withdrew from their program. The motivational and individual characteristics of the students from each profile were then examined based on six variables: motivation (self-efficacy and task value [importance, interest, cost, and perceived utility value of the training program]), gender, and age. The results showed that the profiles differed based on all the characteristics examined except student gender. Overall, the data contribute to better understanding the characteristics of VT students, which may guide teaching practices to better ensure the success of these students.     

Warning readers to avoid irrelevant information: When being vague might be valuable

Students are often provided with instructions that are intended to influence their attention to particular sections or elements of their reading materials. To date, the bulk of the work on such prereading instructions has focused on drawing reader attention to relevant text information. In the current project, we examined whether instructions might also be useful in helping readers ignore irrelevant (albeit inherently interesting) information in text. In two experiments, prereading instructions asked readers to (a) focus on specific relevant text segments, (b) ignore specific irrelevant text segments, (c) maintain an awareness that the text contained irrelevant segments without specifically identifying them, or (d) read without warnings. Participants generally exhibited longer reading times and enhanced recall for irrelevant segments compared to base content, except in cases for which general instructions warned about but did not specifically identify those irrelevant elements. The implications of these findings for research on seductive details and text processing, as well practical applications for the design of reading instruction, are discussed.