Immediate and long-term effects of a cognitive intervention on intelligence,self-regulation,and academic achievement

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a package of activities, knows as “Portfolio”, on cognitive functioning, self-regulation, and academic achievement. The study was carried out with a group of 40 students from Compulsory Secondary Education (mean age 13 years old) during 12 hours distributed over two school years. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest-1 and posttest-2 design was employed. Treatment consisted of the administration of specifically selected tasks, assessed in previous studies, from the psycho-pedagogical Instrumental Enrichment Program, the Philosophy for Children Program, and Project Intelligence. The students were evaluated in the criteria variables at the beginning and at the end of treatment, and once again two years later. The results indicate that the procedure was effective in all the variables studied and that gains observed at posttest-1 were maintained for at least two years after the intervention. Some relevant conclusions and suggestions at the educational and scientific level are commented upon.     

Tennessee Promise: A Response to Organizational Change

Community colleges in Tennessee, either directly or indirectly, experienced unprecedented change as a result of Tennessee Promise. The present study explored how student support service administrators at three community colleges responded to organizational change as a result of the Tennessee Promise legislation. Investigators selected community colleges for the multi-site case study because the legislative impact would be actualized by the preparations made to serve incoming Promise recipients. The delivery of orientation services framed organizational change because the service staff facilitate connections and provide information to incoming students. Challenges like a shifting population, ill-equipped infrastructure, inadequate remediation support, heightened interest for social engagement opportunities, misinformation, and unmet fiscal needs left administrators seeking coherence through the change process. Investigators found community college administrators react to change similarly. Administrators acknowledged change as continuous, created a culture of innovation among stakeholders, and were not afraid to fail as responses to the organizational change phenomenon.     

Assessment matters—Maximizing campus responsibility for the writing assessment process

The Writing Across the Curriculum movement sensitized institutions to the need for institutionwide commitment to improving student writing. At the University of South Florida, a widely used rubric has offered a powerful method for moving from spoken commitment to real change.     

Young children’s reading for pleasure with digital books: six key facets of engagement

This paper offers a new characterisation of young children’s (2–8 years) reading for pleasure (RfP) with digital books. This characterisation is rooted in a re-contextualisation of Anna Craft’s conceptualisation of twenty-first century childhoods in Creativity and education futures (Stoke on Trent, Trentham, 2011) and a review of the literature concerning young children’s RfP with digital books. The paper develops Craft’s (2011) work by considering the ways in which digital books can resource the ‘4Ps of digital childhood’ in reading for pleasure. Six facets of reader engagement, nested within Craft’s (2011) 4Ps, are presented: affective, creative, interactive, shared, sustained and personalised reading engagements. It is argued that this characterisation of young children’s reading engagements can enrich our understanding of the affordances of digital books in relation to RfP in the twenty-first century. The paper thus offers an important new contribution, going beyond established work in the field, which typically explores digital books in relation to children’s learning, product design or developmental outcomes.     

Promoting Parents' Social Capital to Increase Children's Attendance in Head Start: Evidence From an Experimental Intervention

Improving children's attendance is a high priority for Head Start and other early childhood education programs serving low-income children. We conducted a randomized control trial in a major northern city to evaluate the impact of a low-cost intervention designed to promote parents' social capital as a potential influence on children's attendance in Head Start centers. The intervention assigned children to treatment group classrooms based on (a) neighborhood of residence (geography condition) or (b) the geography condition plus the opportunity for parents to form partnerships in support of their children's attendance, or to control group classrooms according to Head Start guidelines only. We did not find impacts on average attendance throughout the year. However, the intervention did lead to increased attendance during the winter when average center attendance was lowest. There were no impacts on fall or spring attendance. Follow-up exploratory analyses of focus groups with parents and staff suggested that parents' level of connection and trust, self-generated partnership strategies, and commitment to their children's education may be factors by which parents' social capital expands and children's attendance improves.     

Teacher stance in creative learning: A study of progression

This paper reports focused findings from a qualitative scoping study undertaken in four sites in England focusing on progression in creative learning (PICL) (February 2005–January 2006), funded by Creative Partnerships, a national development programme. The study sought to explore how progression in creative learning can be described in two curriculum areas. The paper introduces the analytic framework which emerged from the study, and summarises some of the key findings, with a particular focus on teacher stance, taking this slice of analysis further than is done in the original research report and discussing in particular teachers’ attitudes toward creative learning and toward teaching for creative learning.     

Academic progress of children who attended a preschool for abused children: a follow-up of the keepsafe project

OBJECTIVE: This study was undertaken to assess academic progress of children 1 to 5 years after graduating from the C. Henry Kempe Center's Therapeutic Preschool Day Treatment Program. METHOD: Information was gathered through chart review; telephone surveys of care providers, relatives, and social service workers; as well questionnaires on all children who attended the therapeutic preschool day treatment program between 1984 and 1989, including the 24 children reported on by Oates, Gray, Schweitzer, Kempe, and Harmon, 1995. RESULTS: Classroom placement was determined for 27 of the 44 graduates (61.4%), 14 of whom (51.9%) were in a regular classroom, 10 (37.0%) in special education, two (7.4%) in residential treatment, and one (3.7%) was receiving home schooling. Twenty-two of the 27 children (81.5%) improved or remained in the same grade and type of classroom as they had been staffed into at the time of their graduation from the preschool day treatment program. Factors thought to affect stability of classroom placement were studied, of which frequency of family moves was the only significant variable. Its significance was in the direction opposite to that expected. The most effective method of locating families was to contact the Department of Social Services who provided information used to find 60% of them. CONCLUSIONS: Intervention in a therapeutic preschool day treatment program was found to be beneficial, as it enabled most of the children to progress appropriately in public school.     

Validity of the comprehensive receptive and expressive vocabulary test in assessment of children with speech and learning problems

The current researchers investigated construct, predictive, and differential validity for the Comprehensive Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test (CREVT). Participants were 243 public school students, ages 5.5 to 17.25 years. They represented four primary disabilities: Learning Disability (n = 115), Learning Disability with Speech Impairment (n = 29), Mental Retardation (n = 40), and Speech Impairment (n = 59). Adequate construct validity for the CREVT was documented, using the Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children–III as a criterion. Also, the CREVT significantly predicted the scores on the Wide Range Achievement Test–3. Lastly, the CREVT effectively differentiated between students with disabilities. These findings suggest that the CREVT may be helpful in identifying the presence of learning problems. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 39: 613–619, 2002.