Competency beliefs,positive affect,and gender stereotypes of elementary students and their parents about science versus other school subjects

Iowa students and parents completed related attitude and belief questionnaires about school subjects. Grade K–3 students received simpler questionnaires than did Grade 4–6 students or parents. Among Grade 4–6 children, girls perceived higher competence in reading than did boys, but boys perceived higher competence in physical science. All children perceived physical science competence lower than reading or math competence. Parents perceived boys as more competent in science. Girls like reading more than boys did; boys and girls did not differ in liking of science. Grade 4–6 children also expected lower grades in and attached lower importance to physical science than to reading. Parents perceived science as more important for boys and expected higher performance of boys. Jobs related to math or science were seen as more male dominated. These results provided a more comprehensive picture of attitudes and beliefs about science in the elementary school than had existed and suggested that attitudinal gender differences related to physical science begin to develop by the earliest elementary school years. Policy implications are that intervention programs designed to promote gender equity should be extended to the early elementary school years and also should address parental attitudes. Additional implications for policy and research are discussed. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 719–747, 1999     

New Metrics for Employee Development

Organizations are increasingly concerned about human resource accountability and have turned to HR metrics as an economical way to assess results from human resource activities. Unfortunately, many existing development metrics have limited utility. In this article, we review and discuss existing metrics for employee development. Then, we present five new development metrics and that can provide a core set of metrics for any type of organization. These metrics will provide new perspectives that older metrics do not, and lead to better human resource development decisions.     

Effectiveness of Spanish intervention for first-grade English language learners at risk for reading difficulties

The effectiveness of an explicit, systematic reading intervention for first-grade students whose home language was Spanish and who were at risk for reading difficulties was examined. Participants were 69 students in 20 classrooms in 7 schools from 3 districts who initially did not pass the screening in Spanish and were randomly assigned within schools to a treatment or comparison group; after 7 months, 64 students remained in the study. The intervention matched the language of instruction of their core reading program (Spanish). Treatment groups of 3 to 5 students met daily for 50 min and were provided systematic and explicit instruction in oral language and reading by trained bilingual intervention teachers. Comparison students received the school's standard intervention for struggling readers. Observations during core reading instruction provided information about the reading instruction and language use of the teachers. There were no differences between the treatment and comparison groups in either Spanish or English on any measures at pretest, but there were significant posttest differences in favor of the treatment group for the following outcomes in Spanish: Letter-Sound Identification (d = 0.72), Phonological Awareness composite (d = 0.73), Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised Oral Language composite (d = 0.35), Word Attack (d = 0.85), Passage Comprehension (d = 0.55), and two measures of reading fluency (d = 0.58-0.75).     

Judgments and Reasoning About Parental Discipline Involving Induction and Psychological Control in China and Canada

This study examined judgments and reasoning about four parental discipline practices (induction or reasoning and three practices involving “psychological control”; Barber, 1996; two forms of shaming and love withdrawal) among children (7–14 years of age) from urban and rural China and Canada (N = 288) in response to a moral transgression. Children from all settings critically evaluated love withdrawal and preferred induction. Despite being perceived as more common in China than in Canada, with age, parental discipline based on shaming or love withdrawal was increasingly negatively evaluated and believed to have detrimental effects on children's feelings of self‐worth and psychological well‐being. Some cultural variations were found in evaluations of practices, perceptions of psychological harm, and attribution of parental goals.     

Does maternal employment influence poor children’s social development?

Various initiatives over the past 40 years have aimed to strengthen children’s early learning and social development. One policy theory—manifest in recent welfare reforms—postulates that requiring single mothers to work more outside the home will advance children’s well-being. We first examine whether young children’s social development is related to maternal employment among 405 women who entered welfare-to-work programs in 1998. For girls, age 24–42 months, we found that their mother’s recent employment duration was significantly associated with a lower incidence of aggressive behavior and inattentiveness, measured by two scales from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 2/3). Yet these relationships with employment were weaker than more robust associations observed for proximal child-rearing practices, including the frequency of reading with the child, enforcing a regular bedtime, the propensity to spank the child, as well as levels of maternal depression. We then assess whether broader measures of the mother’s economic security help to predict these proximal determinants of development. We observed that food security and indicators of job quality consistently predicted the proximal factors. Structural equation models (SEM) provided additional evidence that these broader indicators of economic security, but not recent employment per se, operated through parenting practices and maternal depression to influence girls’ and boys’ social development. These results are consistent with recent findings from random-assignment experiments, showing that employment gains rarely affect child outcomes unless mothers’ income and broader economic security also improve.     

Toward a better understanding of student perceptions of writing feedback: a mixed methods study

This explanatory sequential mixed methods study investigated the writing feedback perceptions of middle and high school students (N = 598). The predictive and mediational roles of writing self-efficacy and perceptions of writing feedback on student writing self-regulation aptitude were examined using mediation regression analysis. To augment the quantitative findings, the explanations students provided for either liking or disliking writing feedback were explored using open-ended questions. Quantitative findings revealed that students’ perceptions of the feedback they receive about their writing partially mediated the relationship between writing self-efficacy and writing self-regulation aptitude. Qualitative data suggested ways in which students perceive writing feedback—both positive and negative. Collectively, the quantitative and qualitative data illustrate the influential role writing feedback perceptions plays in middle and high school student writing motivation and self-regulation beliefs.     

A Counselling Framework for Caribbean Children and Families Who Have Experienced Migratory Separation and Reunion

This paper presents research findings on childrens’ responses to migratory separation and later reunion in Caribbean families and the needs of these families when parents migrate and leave their children behind. Implications of this type of separation on children, parents and surrogate caregivers are discussed. The challenges that counsellors in both the ‘sending’ and host countries face working with this population are also examined and suggestions made for psychosocial intervention and guidelines for counselling in both societies. The need for culturally competent counsellors to work with the growing population of immigrants in North America and Europe is indicated.     

Gender,prior knowledge,interest, and experience in electricity and conceptual change text manipulations in learning about direct current

The present study investigated relationships between gender, interest and experience in electricity, and conceptual change text manipulations on learning fundamental direct current concepts. Conceptual change text has been shown to lead to better conceptual understanding of electrical concepts than traditional didactic text, but previous research suggested that the effect interacted with the gender of the participants. We hypothesized that interest moderated this interaction. In this study, men and women who had higher or lower interest in electricity and greater or lessor experience with electricity read conceptual change or traditional text. When interest level, experience, and prior knowledge were not included in the analysis, both gender and text type produced significant main effects. When interest level, experience, and prior knowledge were included in the analysis, conceptual change text led to better understanding of electricity concepts than did the traditional text, and the effect of gender was eliminated. This finding supports the hypothesis that prior interest level, experience, and knowledge mediate apparent gender differences in learning about electricity. It suggests that conceptual change text manipulations are likely to be effective for both men and women. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 34: 107–123, 1997.     

The Innovative School: Organization and Instruction

Researchers in the area of educational effectiveness should attempt to develop a new theoretical framework. A critical analysis of the current models of educational effectiveness research is provided and reveals that a dynamic model of effectiveness must: (a) be multilevel in nature, (b) be based on the assumption that the relation of some effectiveness factors with achievement may be curvilinear, (c) illustrate the dimensions upon which the measurement of each effectiveness factor should be based, and (d) define relations among the effectiveness factors. In principle, each factor that refers to the classroom, school, and system, can be measured by taking into account five dimensions: frequency, focus, stage, quality, and differentiation. Examples of measuring effectiveness factors operating at different levels using these 5 dimensions are given. More attention in describing in detail factors associated with teacher behaviour in the classroom is given, since this is seen as the starting point for the development and the testing of the dynamic model. Finally, suggestions for the next steps in the development of other parts of the model are provided.