Interactivity Defuses the Impact of Mathematics Anxiety in Primary School Children

Math anxiety impedes performance in simple arithmetic tasks. Anxiety constrains working memory capacity and particularly the attentional functions of the central executive. The experiment reported here explored how interactivity mitigated the impact of math anxiety on the performance of elementary school students with simple additions. It manipulated two independent variables. The first was the length of the additions—involving either 7 or 11 number tokens (the value of the tokens ranged from 1 to 20). The other was the level of interactivity: in the low interactivity condition participants could not touch or point to the number tokens that configured the sums, and in a high interactivity condition participants could manipulate the tokens as they saw fit in deriving their answer. The length of the addition had an impact on accuracy, with longer sums leading to poorer performance. However, overall, performance in the high interactivity condition was superior, in terms of accuracy, absolute calculation error and efficiency, than performance in the low interactivity condition. Mathematics anxiety significantly predicted performance in the low interactivity condition, but not in the high interactivity condition. These results suggest that working memory resources are augmented through interactivity with the physical problem presentation, defusing the impact of anxiety on performance.     

Maternal socialization of positive affect: the impact of invalidation on adolescent emotion regulation and depressive symptomatology

This study examined the relations among maternal socialization of positive affect (PA), adolescent emotion regulation (ER), and adolescent depressive symptoms. Two hundred early adolescents, 11-13 years old, provided self-reports of ER strategies and depressive symptomatology; their mothers provided self-reports of socialization responses to adolescent PA. One hundred and sixty-three mother-adolescent dyads participated in 2 interaction tasks. Adolescents whose mothers responded in an invalidating or "dampening" manner toward their PA displayed more emotionally dysregulated behaviors and reported using maladaptive ER strategies more frequently. Adolescents whose mothers dampened their PA more frequently during mother-adolescent interactions, and girls whose mothers reported invalidating their PA, reported more depressive symptoms. Adolescent use of maladaptive ER strategies mediated the association between maternal invalidation of PA and early adolescents' concurrent depressive symptoms.     

What Schools Need to Know About Fostering School Belonging: a Meta-analysis

Belonging is an essential aspect of psychological functioning. Schools offer unique opportunities to improve belonging for school-aged children. Research on school belonging, however, has been fragmented and diluted by inconsistency in the use of terminology. To resolve some of these inconsistencies, the current study uses meta-analysis of individual and social level factors that influence school belonging. These findings aim to provide guidance on the factors schools should emphasise to best support students. First, a systematic review identified 10 themes that influence school belonging at the student level during adolescence in educational settings (academic motivation, emotional stability, personal characteristics, parent support, peer support, teacher support, gender, race and ethnicity, extracurricular activities and environmental/school safety). Second, the average association between each of these themes and school belonging was meta-analytically examined across 51 studies (N?=?67,378). Teacher support and positive personal characteristics were the strongest predictors of school belonging. Results varied by geographic location, with effects generally stronger in rural than in urban locations. The findings may be useful in improving perceptions of school belonging for secondary students through the design of policy, pedagogy and teacher training, by encouraging school leaders and educators to build qualities within the students and change school systems and processes.     

Learning set-ups

A child reaching toddler stage is ready to learn about the basic shapes that comprise much of his/her world. With an accent on fun, here are some simple activities designed to teach children how to identify and distinguish between the shapes ... of things to come! Doris Allen is a career teacher in early childhood education. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Oswego Community Day Care center, and has co-authored an article on handwriting in the current edition of theBook of Knowledge. Angela Collins is currently a kindergarten teacher in an Open Education program based on the British Primary System model, and during the summers directs remedial reading programs.     

Pathways from parental stimulation of children’s curiosity to high school science course accomplishments and science career interest and skill

Curiosity is fundamental to scientific inquiry and pursuance. Parents are important in encouraging children’s involvement in science. This longitudinal study examined pathways from parental stimulation of children’s curiosity per se to their science acquisition (SA). A latent variable of SA was indicated by the inter-related variables of high school science course accomplishments, career interest, and skill. A conceptual model investigated parental stimulation of children’s curiosity as related to SA via science intrinsic motivation and science achievement. The Fullerton Longitudinal Study provided data spanning school entry through high school (N?=?118). Parental stimulation of curiosity at age 8 years comprised exposing children to new experiences, promoting curiosity, encouraging asking questions, and taking children to a museum. Intrinsic motivation was measured at ages 9, 10, and 13 years, and achievement at ages 9, 10, and 11 years. Structural equation modelling was used for analyses. Controlling for socio-economic status, parental stimulation of curiosity bore positive and significant relations to science intrinsic motivation and achievement, which in turn related to SA. Gender neither related to stimulation of curiosity nor contributed to the model. Findings highlight the importance of parental stimulation of children’s curiosity in facilitating trajectories into science, and relevance to science education is discussed.     

The role of community college counselors as validating agents on men of color student success

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of counselors in providing validation for men of color in community colleges. Through protocol writing, 13 counselors from seven community colleges responded to open-ended questions asking them to reflect and describe strategies they employed when advising and counseling men of color. Thematic analysis using a combination of detailed, selective, and wholistic reading approaches, as described by van Manen (1990), was employed to identify themes reflecting different forms of validation. Findings from this study demonstrate the critical role of community college counselors as validating agents in affirming men of color as being capable of college success, helping them build confidence, affirming them as individuals, and providing opportunities for academic and personal development. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Reception Studies in the Rhetoric of Science

This article encourages the increased attention to issues of reception in rhetoric of science, according with the sentiment but not the argument of Paul, Charney, and Kendall's “Moving beyond the Moment.” In particular, it offers two works as exemplary of the disciplinary maturity that has occasioned this focus on reception, Ceccarelli's monograph, Shaping Science with Rhetoric, and Harris's collection, Rhetoric and Incommensurability.     

Border work: Teachers’ expressions of their literacy-related professional development needs in a First Nations school

This paper reports on a case study of teachers’ expressions of their literacy-related professional development needs in a First Nations school located in Ontario, Canada. The paper construes the work of the teachers as “border work” and argues that their literacy teaching work was complex and tied to an ongoing legacy of colonialism. Four interrelated themes are discussed. The paper recommends improving compensation and job security for educators in First Nations schools and supporting them to see themselves as knowledgeable professionals who can entertain sophisticated notions of literacy that consider its relationship to situation including culture.