The effect of causal diagrams on text learning

We examined the effect of studying a causal diagram on comprehension of causal relationships from an expository science text. A causal diagram is a type of visual display that explicitly represents cause-effect relationships. In Experiment 1, readers between conditions did not differ with respect to memory for main ideas, but the readers who studied the causal diagram while reading the text understood better the five causal sequences in the text even when study time was controlled. Participants in Experiment 2 studied only the causal diagram or only the text. There were no differences in memory for main ideas or the causal sequences between these groups. Results indicate that causal diagrams are not merely redundant with text and that causal diagrams affect understanding of causal relationships in the absence of a text. These findings supported the causal explication hypothesis, which states that causal diagrams improve comprehension by explicitly representing the implicit causal structure of the text in a visual format.     

Self‐report objective measures of personality for children: A review of psychometric properties for RQC

Knoff (1995) indicated that Referral Question Consultation (RQC) can be applied to personality assessment and suggested several self‐report objective measures that could be consistent with this approach. The current article reviews the tools mentioned by Knoff, including the Children's Personality Questionnaire, The Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory, The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–Adolescents, The Personality Inventory for Youth, and The Self Report of Personality (SRP) from the Behavior Assessment System for Children. Each review addressed the reliability of the scales and composite scores, validity, usefulness of results for planning interventions, the empirical basis for analyses of individual items, and whether each measure accounted for response biases. The appropriateness of each for use with RQC, and individual strengths and weaknesses varied considerably. Therefore, practitioners should keep each test's limitations in mind when using it for intervention planning, and future research is needed to validate the tools for this purpose. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Heroes and villains: the insistence of the imaginary and the novice teacher’s need to believe

This paper stems from research in Australia examining pre-service teacher and mentor teacher experiences on the practicum. The paper focuses on findings from the research, highlighting the tendency among the pre-service teachers to either valorise or demonise their mentor teachers, reflective of what we describe, following Kristeva and Britzman, as their powerful need to believe. The paper draws on psychoanalytic theory in order gain insights into this process, viewing the pre-service teachers’ accounts of their mentors as fantasies that serve a stabilising function in order to manage the intense emotional demands of schools and classrooms. The paper concludes with considerations of how teacher educators might ameliorate the ideality of novice teachers, reflecting the insistence of the imaginary, and hence enable them to benefit more from the practicum experience. We briefly suggest the use of tools that work within the symbolic register to exercise a mediating role in the context of these intense demands.     

Variation in clinical placement supervisors’ conceptions of and approaches to supervision in a veterinary internship programme

Good teaching that supports final year students’ learning in clinical placements is critical for students’ successful transition from an academic environment to professional practice. Final year internship programmes are designed to encourage student-centred approaches to teaching and deep approaches to learning, but the extent to which clinical supervisors adopt a student-centred teaching approach is unknown. Survey data (n?=?117) from veterinary supervisors were analysed using phenomenography. The results revealed qualitative differences in supervisors’ conceptions of and approaches to supervision. Quantitative statistical analysis was used to investigate relationships between supervisors’ conceptions and approaches. These analyses identified the types of supervisor experiences more likely to encourage students to participate in clinical practice in ways that will help them transition successfully to independent professional practice. The results have value for clinical educators and administrators seeking to improve the quality of placement supervision in a range of professional education programmes.     

Relationship of reading fluency assessment data with state accountability test scores: A longitudinal comparison of grade levels

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandated statewide accountability testing and focused the accountability conversation on reading. Therefore, the current study examined the relationship between curriculum‐based measurement for reading (R‐CBM) and state accountability test scores, potential grade differences in relationship magnitude, and differences in relationship magnitude among R‐CBM and Maze as they compare to state test scores. Data for 5,472 students in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 8 were correlated and resulted in corrected coefficients that ranged from .51 (eighth graders) to .71 (third graders) for R‐CBM and .49 (eighth graders) to .54 (seventh graders) for Maze. The coefficients between R‐CBM and state test scores were significantly larger for third and fifth graders than those for eighth graders. No significant differences in magnitude were found between the correlation coefficients for state test scores to R‐CBM and to Maze among seventh or eighth graders. Potential implications and suggestions for future research are included. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 527–535, 2006.     

Childhood sexual abuse: Long-term effects on psychological and sexual functioning in a nonclinical and nonstudent sample of adult women

The purpose of this study was to explore how the experience of childhood sexual abuse is related to long-term psychological and sexual functioning in a nonclinical and nonstudent community sample of women. Questionnaires were distributed to 1,500 nurses and returned anonymously. Fifty-four women who had been sexually abused as children (age 15 or younger) responded. These subjects were then matched with 54 nonabused control subjects. Although there was no difference on a measure of self-esteem, the abused group reported more symptoms of distress on the Global Severity Index and on seven out of nine subscales of the Derogatis Brief Symptom Inventory. They also reported more disturbance on a scale which examined psychological symptoms that have been commonly reported in the literature to be particularly associated with sexual abuse. These differences between the abused and nonabused groups were evident even after controlling for differences in subjects' perceptions of parental emotional support. Unlike the results for psychological adjustment, however, the abused subjects did not differ from the control subjects on self-reported levels of sexual satisfaction or sexual dysfunction.     

Role playing games for scientific citizenship

Research has shown that video games can be good for learning, particularly for STEM topics. However, in order for games to be scalable and sustainable, associated research must move beyond considerations of efficacy towards theories that account for classroom ecologies of students and teachers. This study asks how a digital game called Citizen Science, built using tropes and conventions from modern games, might help learners develop identities as citizen scientists within the domain of lake ecology. We conducted an expert-novice study, revealing that games literacy was a mediating variable for content understanding. In a follow-up classroom implementation, games literacy also operated as a variable, although students drove the activity, which mediated this concern. The teacher devised a number of novel pedagogies, such as a field trip, in response to the unit. We found evidence for the most powerful learning occurring through these activities that were reinforced via the curriculum. Students were most engaged by Citizen Science??s most ??gamelike?? features, and learners took up the core ideas of the game. Users also reported the experience was short of commercial gaming experiences, suggesting a tension between game cultures for learning and schools.     

Role of student engagement in the resilience of african american adolescents from low‐income rural communities

The study sought to determine whether behavioral and psychological engagement in middle school served a protective or promotive role, thereby contributing to the resilience of African American youth from low‐income rural communities. Teacher reports of adjustment (i.e., aggression, academic competence, popularity) in the sixth grade were gathered. Data on behavioral and psychological engagement across the seventh and eighth grade were collected from student self‐reports. In the ninth grade, achievement data were obtained from school grades and peer assessments measured aggression. To identify profiles across multiple behavioral measures that increase risk, early adjustment configurations were derived from sixth grade teacher reports. Regression analyses indicated that youth with Troubled, Tough, and Disengaged profiles were at risk for difficulties in subsequent achievement and/or aggression. In addition, behavioral and psychological engagement had a main effect relation with achievement and/or aggression, indicating that engagement served a promotive role. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Relationship between pre‐intervention data and post‐intervention reading fluency and growth: A meta‐analysis of assessment data for individual students

Curriculum‐based measurement is commonly used within a response‐to‐intervention framework to assess the effectiveness of intervention and to triage students into intervention tiers (e.g., the lowest 10% receive a Tier 3 intervention, and those in the 11th to 25th percentiles receive a Tier 2 intervention). We conducted a meta‐analysis of 18 studies to examine the relationship between pre‐intervention assessments and post‐intervention level and growth in reading fluency. The results indicated that several pre‐intervention measures were moderately related to post‐intervention fluency, but only a percentage of comprehension questions answered during baseline assessments, reading fluency age or grade‐based standard scores (SS), and word attack SS resulted in even a small to moderate relationship with reading growth. Moreover, there was no significant difference between the correlation of any two pre‐intervention measures with reading growth, which suggested that all of the measures were equally poorly related to reading growth. Implications for research and practice are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.