The rational adolescent: Discipline policies, lawsuits, and skill acquisition

The paper estimates the response of student truancy and long-run labor market outcomes to discipline policies in middle and secondary school. Simultaneous determination of student behaviors and school policies motivates an instrumental variables strategy. Because judicial climate influences administrators’ fear of discipline-related lawsuits, measures of judicial–legal climate at the state-level court are used as instruments for local discipline policies. Results indicate that the state-level judicial–legal climate does appear to influence administrators’ discipline policies; that students appear to be truant less often when discipline is stricter; and that school and long-run labor participation outcomes appear higher for students from schools with stricter discipline policies.     

The relationship between sport tourists’ perceived value and destination loyalty: an experience-use history segmentation approach

ABSTRACT

Understanding active sport tourists’ profiles and nurturing their destination loyalty are important considerations in the tourism market. Loyal tourists are valuable because they tend to revisit a focal destination and elicit positive word-of-mouth. Focusing on a snow-based active sport tourism context, this study was conducted to examine (1) the usefulness of experience-use history (EUH) as a segmentation tool and (2) the relationship between perceived value factors (i.e. quality, emotional response, monetary price, behavioral price, and destination reputation) and destination loyalty in each EUH group. Data were collected from the Niseko ski resort in Japan (N?=?328). Based on the EUH variables (i.e. length and frequency of snow-based sport participation), participants were categorized into four segments (i.e. novice, short-active, long-inactive, and expert). The results showed significant differences among EUH groups in terms of their socio-demographics (e.g. gender, age, and income). A series of regression analyses also showed that each segment’s destination loyalty was uniquely enhanced by perceived value factors. Specifically, perceived quality was a significant antecedent of destination loyalty for sport tourists in the novice group. For those in the short-active, long-inactive, and expert groups, perceived emotional response significantly predicted destination loyalty. Perceived reputation of the destination was also important to enhance destination loyalty for the short-active group whereas perceived monetary price was positively associated with the long-inactive group’s destination loyalty. Marketing managers in snow-based sport tourism destinations can utilize the findings to increase the loyalty of active sport tourists, which will improve their competitiveness in the marketplace.     

A large-scale evaluation of the KiVa antibullying program: grades 4-6

This study demonstrates the effectiveness of the KiVa antibullying program using a large sample of 8,237 youth from Grades 4-6 (10-12 years). Altogether, 78 schools were randomly assigned to intervention (39 schools, 4,207 students) and control conditions (39 schools, 4,030 students). Multilevel regression analyses revealed that after 9 months of implementation, the intervention had consistent beneficial effects on 7 of the 11 dependent variables, including self- and peer-reported victimization and self-reported bullying. The results indicate that the KiVa program is effective in reducing school bullying and victimization in Grades 4-6. Despite some evidence against school-based interventions, the results suggest that well-conceived school-based programs can reduce victimization.     

Evaluating the effectiveness of university widening participation activities in rural Australia

This article explores the effect university widening participation activities have had in improving access to university of students from rural government-run schools in New South Wales, Australia. An effective effort to evaluate the success of widening participation programs in rural Australia, specifically New South Wales, has not been achieved to date. This article addresses this issue in three distinct ways. First, previous efforts to evaluate widening participation effectiveness are explored and their successes and failings are described. Second, a method to rigorously evaluate university-run outreach programs in Australia’s unique socio-cultural context is constructed and explained. Third, this method is employed using a sample of Australian rural schools to evaluate outreach effectiveness. A mixed-method design combining multilevel growth models and in-depth interviews of careers advisors revealed teacher support of university outreach presence in schools did not necessarily translate to an opinion of outreach effectivity in raising university access levels. This was supported by quantitative analyses showing widening participation efforts in rural New South Wales have had little to no effect on the progression of rural students to university between 2010 and 2016.     

Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice in Neurofeedback Training for Attention

Modernizing classroom pedagogical practice requires openness to revisiting previously held assumptions and theories about what constitutes authentic teaching/learning cycles. The ever‐growing gap between the number of stimuli that students are exposed to and their available attentional resources indicates that sustained attention may have increasing value transitioning into 21st‐century learning environments requiring self‐reflection, collaborative learning, and self‐directed decision‐making. Neurofeedback has shown promise in laboratory and clinical settings as a tool for building sustained attention, but little in situ research has been completed in bringing the technology into the school for empirical testing. Furthermore, attentional research lacks connections between neural network modeling and observable neuromarkers for attention. This article aims to bridge these distinct concepts to support an understanding of the potential impacts of neurofeedback training (NT) and to provide a framework for other Mind, Brain, and Education researchers planning in situ NT studies.     

“Big Deals” and Squeaky Wheels: Taking Stock of Your Stats

This article describes a half-day pre-conference focused on the ins and outs of assessing “Big Deals.” The presenters gave an overview of issues related to “Big Deals,” and engaged the attendees in discussions about their own experiences with the topic. They then detailed the process of assessing “Big Deals” at their institution, including their methods for evaluating usage statistics. Attendees were provided with sample Excel spreadsheets for hands-on exercises to practice applying the methods described.     

Differences between good and poor child writers on fMRI contrasts for writing newly taught and highly practiced letter forms

During fMRI imaging, 12 good and 8 poor writers aged 11 wrote a newly taught pseudoletter and a highly practiced letter. Both letters were formed from the same components, but the pseudoletter had a novel configuration not corresponding to a written English letter form. On the first fMRI contrast between the newly taught pseudoletter and highly practiced letter, based on a group map, good and poor writers significantly activated many common regions; but the poor writers showed spatially more extensive brain activation than did the good writers. The additional regions of significant activation may reflect inefficiency in learning a new letter form. For the second contrast between the highly practiced and newly taught letters, individual brain activation analyses, based on exact clusters, showed that good and poor writers differed significantly in activation only in left fusiform. This individual fusiform activation correlated significantly with behavioral measures of automatic letter writing and expressive orthographic coding. Multiple regression in which both individual fusiform activation and individual orthographic coding were entered explained significant variance in written composition. Results are discussed in reference to the role of the orthographic loop, from internal letter form to external letter writing by hand, in writing letters and composing. The overall results are consistent with prior brain and behavioral studies of writing.