Individual differences in school mathematics performance and feelings of difficulty: The effects of cognitive ability, affect, age, and gender

The aim of the study was to identify possible individual differences effects on school mathematics performance and feelings of difficulty (FOD). Cognitive ability (general and domain-specific), affect (anxiety and achievement need), age, and gender were considered the main sources of individual differences. The effect of the testing experience (i.e., the repeated exposure to the testing situation) was also taken into account. Two hundred forty three subjects, of both genders, from 13 to 15 years of age were tested with three task batteries: the cognitive ability, the affective battery and the school mathematics battery. Ratings of the difficulty of each of the mathematics items were also collected. A second testing of the affective battery, mathematical tasks and FOD was effected one year after the first. A series of path analyses and ANOVAs were performed on the data. It was found that ability directly influenced performance whereas both ability and affect influenced FOD. Feelings of difficulty were also influenced by performance. Age differentiated FOD only at the 2nd testing. Gender interacted with both person and task characteristics and had an effect on FOD but not on performance.     

Visual‐attentional span and lexical ­decision in skilled adult readers

The goal of the study was to examine the association between visual‐attentional span and lexical decision in skilled adult readers. In the span tasks, an array of letters was presented briefly and recognition or production of a single cued letter (partial span) or production of all letters (whole span) was required. Independently of letter recognition and phoneme awareness, width of partial recognition span predicted substantial variance only in detection of letter misorderings in words, while partial span efficiency made small contributions to decisions on regular words and pseudowords, but not strange words. With a production format and the inclusion of short‐term phonological memory, neither partial‐span nor whole‐span measures contributed positive independent variance to word and nonword decisions. The results provide meagre support for the idea that skilled adult readers with a wide visual‐attentional span might process words more effectively than those with a narrow span during lexical decision.     

A Structural Model of Public and Private Schools

A structural equation approach was utilized to evaluate a theoretical model of schooling for the High School and Beyond 1980 seniors data. The model of schooling included home background, academic orientation, extra-curricular activity, educational aspiration, occupational aspiration, and present achievement as latent variables. The results indicate that the model applied equally as well to both public and private school seniors; both academic orientation and extra-curricular activity were superior for private school seniors when controlling for home background variation; and both educational and occupational aspirations and student achievement of public school seniors exceeded that of private school seniors when controlling for home background, academic orientation, and extra-curricular activity variation.     

Closing the Circle: Action research partnerships towards better learning and teaching in schools

This paper addresses the call for evidence-based practice by describing an initiative in school-university partnership that has led to the establishment of a community of teacher researchers whose investigations provide the evidence upon which they make decisions to improve their teaching. This is a new way of approaching the idea of evidence-based practice, where the evidence comes through personal testimony that 'rings true'. In this mode of research the processes of research are shared so that the outcomes of the research may be disseminated through 'transferability' rather than 'generalisability'. The first part describes the partnership, which involved the adaptation of existing structures in the school (staff development) and the university (accreditation) to create a new more democratic, more productive relationship. The second part of the paper describes the work of one teacher who applied the principles from her own learning within the teacher group to her management of her students' learning in such a way that the excitement of independent learning that had been a feature of the teacher group was transferred to the students. The third part of the paper addresses the politics of such research and makes a case for including teachers' and students' knowledge of their own practice as evidence to inform policy development.     

Book reviews

Publishing Research Quarterly -     

Conversations on day care programming

This article presents segments of a number of conversations between Georgia McMurray (above, right), former Commissioner of the Agency for Child Development of the Human Resources Administration of the City of New York, currently serving as Chairperson of the Alliance for Children, and Deborah Diamond (above, left), formerly of Teachers College, Columbia University, and the Teaching Resource Center of the City University of New York's Graduate Center, currently Director of CHROMA/SPECTRUM Instructional Products, Ltd. The highlights presented here are from their initial discussions concerning the need for a position paper on day care...the state of the art, and actual directions in the field at the grass roots level.     

Hyperhydration using different hydration agents does not affect the haematological markers of the athlete biological passport in euhydrated volunteers

ABSTRACT

Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) is an indirect approach, implemented by WADA, aimed at detecting blood manipulation based on abnormal changes in haematological markers. Cases report the use of hyperhydration as masking method during anti-doping urine sample collection which could potentially mask suspicious fluctuations on ABP profiles. This study investigated the hyperhydration effect on haemoglobin concentration, reticulocyte percentage and OFF-hr score (an algorithm based on haemoglobin concentration and reticulocyte percentage), with and without recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) administration. A five-week clinical study performed; Baseline and rHuEPO Phase. Water and a sports drink were used as hyperhydration agents. To examine the hyperhydration effect on the normal ABP profile per volunteer, hyperhydration was implemented at 0, 24 and 48 hours during the baseline. During the rHuEPO phase, volunteers received Epoetin beta (3000 IU) with hyperhydration to be implemented at 0, 24 and 48 hours after drug administration. Blood and urine samples were collected and analysed according to WADA guidelines. No significant effect on ABP markers was observed due to hyperhydration at any time during the study. Pre- and post-hyperhydration data were not statistically different compared to individual baseline data. In conclusion, hyperhydration does not affect the ABP haematological markers under the examined conditions.