Daily reports of witnessing and experiencing peer harassment in middle school

Two studies examined daily incidents of peer harassment in urban middle schools. Sixth-grade students (M age = 11 years) described their daily personal experiences and witnessed accounts of peer harassment, and rated their negative feelings across a 2-week period. In Study 1 (n = 95), within-subject analyses across 4 days revealed that both personally experienced and witnessed harassment were associated with increases in daily anxiety, whereas witnessing harassment buffered students against increases in humiliation on days when they personally experienced harassment. Evidence for witnessing as a buffer against increases in humiliation and anger was also found in Study 2 (n = 97) that included 5 daily reports. Witnessing harassment also protected students against increases in negative self-perceptions.     

Signs of resilience: assets that support deaf adults' success in bridging the deaf and hearing worlds

A multiple-case exploratory study is used to describe intrapersonal, behavioral, and environmental assets that may build bridges for Deaf adults between the Deaf and hearing worlds. A study of three exemplary former community college students provides new information about internal resources that may empower Deaf individuals to achieve work and social success in interaction with environmental support, despite the vulnerabilities associated with their deafness. This study identifies 15 assets that may support resilience in Deaf adults, including authenticity and comfort with solitude. The authors hypothesize that social authenticity and comfort with solitude may be resilience-fostering intrapersonal assets of unique importance in the Deaf community. From the positive psychology perspective of recognizing and building on human strengths, the authors suggest that support of mutual asset-building with learning partners in the classroom is one way professors might promote optimal student achievement and life success for all students.     

What’s next?: the LGBTQ video game archive

This essay describes the author’s new project: a digital archive documenting the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) content in video games. The LGBTQ game archive covers approximately 30 decades of game content at present, and nearly 500 games. This essay describes the project’s origins, the methods used to research the game content, and some initial findings. Finally, some particular surprises from the project are discussed, which point to areas for future LGBTQ games research.     

A DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH TO MATHEMATICS TESTING FOR UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS AND COURSE PLACEMENT

Decisions on admissions to university and placement into university courses are usually based on the results of achievement (as in secondary school exams) and/or aptitude (in intelligence-type tests and SAT). This paper argues that in a situation where educational provision at secondary school level is highly unequal, a third approach to testing offers an alternative which is preferable both on grounds of theory of cognitive psychology and because it yields much better discrimination.The Alternative Admissions Research Project at University of Cape Town has developed a mathematics test according to the dynamic testing approach as advocated by Miller (1990) for admission of African students from grossly under-resourced schools, as well as for placing these and other students into a diversifying first year curriculum. This approach aims to assess the ability of a candidate to learn from authentic academic material within the test. This paper focuses on the reasons for the development of the mathematics test and the process by which the test questions were developed and piloted. The reliability of the test and correlations of this test with subsequent mathematical performance data are discussed.Following the encouraging data for the test as an admission mechanism, the value of the dynamic testing approach for furnishing additional information for placement into an increasingly varied curriculum at first year level was investigated. This enabled the piloting of more topics and more comprehensive validation of this type of testing. The paper concerns itself with the reliability and predictive value of each of the topics in this placement test for a range of core courses in various faculties and the extent to which these tests can identify potentially at risk students who should be placed onto an appropriate curriculum.     

Review of measurements used in computing education research and suggestions for increasing standardization

Background and context: The variables that researchers measure and how they measure them are central in any area of research, including computing education. Which research questions can be asked and how they are answered depends on measurement.

Objective: To summarize the commonly used variables and measurements in computing education and to compare them to best practices in measurement for human-subjects research.

Method: Systematic literature review analyzing 197 papers published during 2013–2017 in computing education research venues.

Findings: The review illuminates common practices related to: variables measured (including learner characteristics), measurements used, and type of data analysis. The paper lists standardized measurements that were used and highlights commonly used variables for which no standardized measures exist.

Implications: The paper concludes with information about best practices currently being used in the community that should be continued, as well as pointing out practices that could be improved along with recommendations for how to begin to adopt those best practices.     

Causal Learning Across Culture and Socioeconomic Status

Extensive research has explored the ability of young children to learn about the causal structure of the world from patterns of evidence. These studies, however, have been conducted with middle-class samples from North America and Europe. In the present study, low-income Peruvian 4- and 5-year-olds and adults, low-income U.S. 4- and 5-year-olds in Head Start programs, and middle-class children from the United States participated in a causal learning task (N = 435). Consistent with previous studies, children learned both specific causal relations and more abstract causal principles across culture and socioeconomic status (SES). The Peruvian children and adults generally performed like middle-class U.S. children and adults, but the low-SES U.S. children showed some differences.     

Learn before lecture: A strategy that improves learning outcomes in a large introductory biology class

Actively engaging students in lecture has been shown to increase learning gains. To create time for active learning without displacing content we used two strategies for introducing material before class in a large introductory biology course. Four to five slides from 2007/8 were removed from each of three lectures in 2009 and the information introduced in preclass worksheets or narrated PowerPoint videos. In class, time created by shifting lecture material to learn before lecture (LBL) assignments was used to engage students in application of their new knowledge. Learning was evaluated by comparing student performance in 2009 versus 2007/8 on LBL-related question pairs, matched by level and format. The percentage of students who correctly answered five of six LBL-related exam questions was significantly higher (p < 0.001) in 2009 versus 2007/8. The mean increase in performance was 21% across the six LBL-related questions compared with <3% on all non-LBL exam questions. The worksheet and video LBL formats were equally effective based on a cross-over experimental design. These results demonstrate that LBLs combined with interactive exercises can be implemented incrementally and result in significant increases in learning gains in large introductory biology classes.     

Learning to teach science in urban schools by becoming a researcher of one’s own beginning practice

An urgent goal for science teacher educators is to prepare teachers to teach science in meaningful ways to youth from nondominant backgrounds. This preparation is challenging, for it asks teachers to critically examine how their pedagogical practices might adaptively respond to students and to science. It asks, essentially, for new teachers to become researchers of their own beginning practice. This study explores the story of Ben as he coauthored a transformative action research project in an urban middle school as part of a teacher education program and, later, over his first year of teaching at that same school. We describe how Ben and his partner teacher created innovative spaces for science learning. This offered Ben an opportunity to make some of his deeply engrained pedagogical beliefs come alive within a context of distributed expertise, which provided for him a space of moderate risk where he could afford the chances of failure without undermining how he felt about his own capacity as a teacher. Our study highlights the importance of creating reform opportunities within the context of teacher education programs that may help beginner teachers construct positive images of teaching that they can hold on to in their future practice.