Birth order and parental and sibling involvement in sex education. A nationally-representative analysis

This analysis set out to identify associations between birth order and sexual health outcomes, focusing on family involvement in sex education and early sexual experiences. The third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles is a stratified probability sample survey of 15 162 men and women aged 16–74 in Britain. Logistic regression was conducted to identify odds ratios for the association between birth order and sexual health outcomes. Multiple logistic regression was performed adjusting for socio-demographic factors and sibling number. Middle-born and last-born men had lower odds of reporting ease talking to parents about sex around age 14 and learning about sex from their mothers. Last-born women had lower odds of reporting a parental main source of sex education or having learned about sex from their mother. Findings represent an exploratory analysis in an under-researched area, and provide the basis for further research on the association between birth order and parental involvement in sex education, as well as the role and impact of sex education provided by older siblings.     

A Multivariate Generalizability Analysis of Data from a Performance Assessment of Physicians' Clinical Skills

Although multivariate generalizability theory was developed more than 30 years ago, little published research utilizing this framework exists and most of what does exist examines tests built from tables of specifications. In this context, it is assumed that the universe scores from levels of the fixed multivariate facet will be correlated, but the error terms will be uncorrelated because subscores result from mutually exclusive sets of test items. This paper reports on an application in which multiple subscores are derived from each task completed by the examinee. In this context, both universe scores and errors may be correlated across levels of the fixed multivariate facet. The data described come from the United States Medical Licensing Examination^® Step 2 Clinical Skills Examination. In this test, each examinee interacts with a series of standardized patients and each interaction results in four component scores. The paper focuses on the application of multivariate generalizability theory in this context and on the practical interpretation of the resulting estimated variance and covariance components.     

University research centers as knowledge translation platforms: leveraging structure,support and resources to enhance multisectoral collaboration and advocacy

Tertiary Education and Management - Knowledge Translation Platforms (KTPs) have drawn attention as multidisciplinary institutional structures that broker evidence to policy and practice. University...     

New Opportunities or Closing Doors? How Correctional Facility Tours Impact Students’ Thoughts about Correctional Careers

Children may say they want to grow up to be a police officer, but we typically do not hear children saying they want to work in a prison or jail when they grow up. Given negative media attention of correctional facilities, it may not be surprising that many students enter criminal justice programs uninterested in correctional careers. Correctional facility tours can be useful for exposing criminal justice students to careers they may not have previously considered or ones about which they held negative stereotypes. Drawing on the premises of Experiential Learning Theory and using student essays, we address the following research questions: (1) Does attending a jail or prison tour influence how students think of correctional officers and correctional careers? (2) What perceptions do students have of correctional officers prior to attending a jail or prison tour and what do students think of correctional officers after the tour?     

UNDERSTANDING PARTICIPATION RATES IN POST-16 MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS: CONCEPTUALISING AND OPERATIONALISING THE UPMAP PROJECT

We report on a project currently in progress that aims to identify through research the range of factors (individual, school and out-of-school, including home) and their interactions that influence post-16 (i.e. post-compulsory) participation in mathematics and physics in the UK and to assess their relative importance among different student populations. In this project, we are beginning to elucidate the views of students and examine the sources of these views by exploring the contexts in which both school and university students experience barriers or opportunities and form their identities with regard to participation in mathematics and physics. Our focus in this paper is on our methodology, the reasons for it and how and why our approach to data collection developed during the project. We situate our work within a mixed-methods approach, using multilevel modelling and discourse analysis to analyse and interpret our findings that derive from our own questionnaires, interviews and ethnography and from existing large-scale datasets. We argue that greater acknowledgement in the education literatures that investigate student participation in mathematics and science needs to be made than is usual of the range of factors, including unconscious forces that may affect participation.     

When Is Teleconsultation Acceptable to School Psychologists?

ABSTRACT

School psychologists report a desire to increase consultation with teachers but are limited by competing job demands. Consultation via videoconference (i.e., teleconsultation) offers one possible means of increasing consultant availability to teachers, but little is known about the acceptability of this technology in actual practice. In this exploratory study, we conducted an online survey to assess the conditions under which school consultants would use teleconsultation to assist teachers remotely. Sixty-two school psychology practitioners, trainers, and trainees completed a choice-based conjoint survey designed to assess teleconsultation acceptability in the context of varying commute times, consultee comfort levels, and student problem severities. Findings suggest important differences in teleconsultation acceptability in the context of real-world tradeoffs. Implications of these results are discussed, as well as the potential for using conjoint analysis to better understand technology decisions among school consultants.     

Racial Formation and Success among Korean High School Students

This article ethnographically examines the relationship between success, racial identity, and racial formation among Korean students in one New Jersey public high school. Using Racial Formation theory (Omi & Winant, [1986. Racial formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge]; Winant, [1994. Racial conditions: Politics, theory, comparisons. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press]), the author demonstrates how students at this particular high school use competing racial projects of neutrality and visibility to embrace and/or contest the dominant, white notion of what it means to be an academically successful student. The findings emphasize the need to look beyond cultural explanations of success and failure to include an analysis of the ways that schools themselves affect the constantly shifting terrain of racial formation. Melissa Marinari is a PhD candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies. She has also been a high-school teacher of Spanish since 1992     

Results From a Randomized Controlled Trial of the Motheread/Fatheread Early Literacy Intervention: Evidence of Impact in a Rural Community

Research Findings. A randomized controlled trial evaluated the impact of Motheread/Fatheread Colorado (MFC), an early childhood literacy intervention, on parent reading behaviors and their preschool-aged children’s literacy skills. Parents in the experimental condition participated in MFC; control parents did not. Dependent variables included measures of parental behavior supportive of reading in the home, and parent- and teacher-reported child literacy outcomes. Parents in the intervention group reported spending significantly more time reading with their children and a significantly greater use of interactive reading skills than parents in the control condition. Children in the intervention group scored significantly higher than children in the control group on parent-reported language and reading skills immediately following the intervention. There was no significant difference in immediate post-intervention teacher reports of child literacy skills. However, up to 15-months after program completion, children in the intervention condition had greater gains in teacher-reported language skills than children in the control condition. Results suggest that MFC is a promising intervention for changing the home literacy environment and children’s literacy outcomes. Practice/Policy. Motheread/Fatheread may be a good fit for organizations interested in implementing interventions aimed at improving home literacy for preschool-aged children.     

Examination of peer-group contextual effects on aggression during early adolescence

Peer group contextual effects of aggressive behavior among middle school students (6th-8th graders) were examined using a short-term longitudinal design. More specifically, the homophily hypothesis that peer group membership influences individual-level bullying and fighting was evaluated with multilevel sex-specific models of individual- and peer-level aggression scores. Peer groups were identified via social network analysis. Intraclass correlation coefficients yielded through hierarchical linear modeling demonstrated substantial within-group similarity on self-reported bullying and fighting, suggesting that students affiliate with individuals who bully and fight at the same frequency. Peer group bullying and fighting was associated with individual-level behavior, even after controlling individual baseline levels for males and females. However, peer contextual effects explained more variance in individual bullying than individual fighting. This differential impact of peer group membership suggests that future studies consider peer relations across subtypes of aggression.     

Preschoolers mistrust ignorant and inaccurate speakers

Being able to evaluate the accuracy of an informant is essential to communication. Three experiments explored preschoolers' (N=119) understanding that, in cases of conflict, information from reliable informants is preferable to information from unreliable informants. In Experiment 1, children were presented with previously accurate and inaccurate informants who presented conflicting names for novel objects. 4-year-olds-but not 3-year-olds-predicted whether an informant would be accurate in the future, sought, and endorsed information from the accurate over the inaccurate informant. In Experiment 2, both age groups displayed trust in knowledgeable over ignorant speakers. In Experiment 3, children extended selective trust when learning both verbal and nonverbal information. These experiments demonstrate that preschoolers have a key strategy for assessing the reliability of information.