Preservice teachers’ attitudes,attributions, and stereotypes: Exploring the disadvantages of students from families with low socioeconomic status

In many educational systems, students from families with low socioeconomic status (SES) often score lower in academic achievement than their high SES peers. Even though this effect is well-documented and research on teachers’ stereotypical beliefs and attitudes is steadily increasing, the studies so far did not specifically focus on students’ SES. In the current study, we explored preservice teachers’ implicit attitudes and their stereotypical and prejudiced beliefs toward low SES students as well as their causal attributions for the low educational success of low SES students. Results showed that teachers had negative implicit attitudes toward low SES students and that they more strongly associated competences and good learning and working habits with high SES students. The correlations highlighted the role that stereotypes play in causal attributions. Participants who more strongly associated low SES with competence and good working and learning behaviors were less likely to endorse internal attributions but were more likely to emphasize external attributions. Hence, when preservice teachers see low SES students as having high ability, they also strongly view the educational system as a source of the disadvantages that low SES students experience in school.     

Sicily: A Frontier in the Centre of the Sea?

ABSTRACT

As part of the Ancient Maritime Dynamics project, this study uses a new interpretive methodology to model the creation and use of maritime places in the western-Mediterranean basin. In turn, the results of this modelling suggest that the waters around the island of Sicily acted as a frontier, distinguishing a distinct zone of activity in the western Mediterranean as well as a western maritime community that segregated itself from other sailors and merchants elsewhere in the sea.     

Socioeconomic trends in school bullying among Finnish adolescents from 2000 to 2015

Bullying at school has far-reaching impacts on adolescent well-being and health. The aim of this study was to examine trends in bullying at school according to socioeconomic adversities among Finnish adolescents from 2000 to 2015. A population-based school survey was conducted biennially among 14–16-year-old Finns between 2000 and 2015 (n = 761,278). Distributions for bullying, being bullied and socioeconomic adversities were calculated. Associations between bullying involvement, time and socioeconomic adversities were studied using binomial logistic regression with results shown by odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals. At the population level, the likelihoods of bullying and being bullied varied only slightly between 2000 and 2015. Bullying and being bullied were associated with socioeconomic adversities (low parental education, not living with both parents and parental unemployment in the past year). Unlike in the general population, the likelihoods of bullying and being bullied increased markedly among adolescents with most socioeconomic adversities. The increased socioeconomic differences in bullying involvement observed in this study add to the mounting evidence of polarization of adolescent health and well-being. Socioeconomic adversities should be considered in the prevention of bullying at school. In addition, socio-political measures are needed to decrease socioeconomic inequalities among Finnish adolescents.     

Adverse childhood experiences among children placed in and adopted from foster care: Evidence from a nationally representative survey

Despite good reason to believe that children in foster care are disproportionately exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), relatively little research considers exposure to ACEs among this group of vulnerable children. In this article, we use data from the 2011–2012 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), a nationally representative sample of non-institutionalized children ages 0–17 in the United States, to estimate the association between foster care placement and exposure to an array of ACEs. In adjusted logistic regression models, we find that children placed in foster care or adopted from foster care, compared to their counterparts, were more likely to experience parental divorce or separation, parental death, parental incarceration, parental abuse, violence exposure, household member mental illness, and household member substance abuse. These children were also more likely to experience ACEs than children across different thresholds of socioeconomic disadvantage (e.g., children in households with incomes below the poverty line) and across different family structures (e.g., children in single-mother families). These results advance our understanding of how children in foster care, an already vulnerable population, are disproportionately exposed to ACEs. This exposure, given the link between ACEs and health, may have implications for children’s health and wellbeing throughout the life course.     

Socioeconomic Implications of Telecommunications Liberalization: India in the International Context

Telecommunications restructuring have evolved differently in Asia and Latin America. While Asian governments have moved cautiously in bringing changes to the sector, Latin American nations have implemented radical ownership and market transformations. The Indian telecommunications reform falls in between these two general regional trends. The choice of a high component of competition, increased private participation, and no privatization of the national carrier set conditions that will trigger unique socioeconomic effects. This article identifies and highlights the likely implications of the Indian reform on key economic and social issues, such as the cost of services, cross-subsidies, network interconnection, private investments, universal services, employment, and the possible rise of an information-intensive economy. It does so by comparing and contrasting the Indian experience with dominant reform strategies elsewhere in the developing world.     

The forgotten role of teachers in students’ educational aspirations. School composition effects and the buffering capacity of teachers’ expectations culture

Research on students’ aspirations, an important predictor of educational attainment, is mostly focused on individual-level determinants, reflecting the classical status attainment model. Studies have suggested a school composition effect, but ignore school processes. Inspired by new insights in school effects research looking at teachers’ expectations at the school level, we investigate the mediating and moderating role of teachability culture in the relationship between SES composition and aspirations. Multilevel analyses of data (2013–2014) from 2.354 students and 502 teachers across 30 Flemish secondary schools show that teachers’ shared expectations can compensate for the detrimental effects of low SES composition on aspirations.     

The role of socioeconomic background and prior achievement for students’ perception of teacher support

Abstract

Building on the sociological work by Lareau, this study examined the association between students’ socioeconomic background, prior achievement and the perception of teacher support within the classroom. We expected that students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds would be more critical about the support they receive in the classroom and rate their teachers more negatively, while those with higher prior achievement would perceive teacher support more positively. Multilevel models confirmed that there is a negative association between wealth and students’ perception of two dimensions of teacher support, and a negative association between parental educational attainment and one dimension of teacher support. Our findings were in line with the ‘sense of entitlement’ theory by Lareau. Having higher prior achievement was associated with a more positive perception of teacher support, but did not seem to interact with socioeconomic background.     

How socioeconomic status,executive functioning and verbal interactions contribute to early academic achievement in Chinese children

The present study investigated the relative importance of executive functioning, parent–child verbal interactions, phonological awareness and visual skills on reading and mathematics for Chinese children from low-versus middle-socio economic status (SES) backgrounds. A total of 199 kindergarten children were assessed on executive functioning, verbal interactions, phonological awareness, visual skills, mathematics and word reading in Chinese and English. Results revealed that low-SES children exhibited lower levels of cognitive-linguistic skills, verbal interactions, reading and mathematics achievement than their middle-SES counterparts. Path analyses also indicated that executive functioning and verbal interactions made significant and direct contributions to mathematics, and indirect contributions to reading through phonological awareness. These results suggest that executive functioning and verbal interactions provide the foundation for phonological awareness and visual skills, which in turn affect reading and mathematics achievement. Overall, findings underscore the potential importance of SES inequalities, cognitive-linguistic skills and parental verbal input to their children for early reading and mathematics achievement.     

A three-level mobility management scheme for hierarchical mobile IPv6 networks

INTRODUCTION Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) (Johnson et al., 2004) was proposed to maintain network connectivity in the next generation Internet. However, communication quality of MIPv6 degrades because of the high signaling overhead and the long signaling delay when a mobile node (MN) performs handover. Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) (Soliman et al., 2005) was proposed to improve the performance of MIPv6, where the Mobility Anchor Point (MAP) handles mobility in- side the local domain…     

Effects of socioeconomic status and language use on academic language proficiency in children with a migration background: An evaluation using quantile regressions

Academic language proficiency (ALP) is supposed to contribute to success across school subjects and to be a hurdle for students, in particular for those from families with a migration background. The present study investigated the effects of language use (i.e., use of the majority and/or a minority language) at home and at free time as well as of families’ socioeconomic status (SES) on ALP. We used quantile regression and OLS regression approaches to examine the joint contributions of these factors for three facets of ALP in German primary school students with a migration background (N = 1,629). Results underline the role of SES across the whole distribution of the three ALP facets, whereas the role of majority language use differed between the three facets. Furthermore, interaction effects between SES and majority language use at home were observed mainly at high quantiles showing that the positive effect of using the majority language at home increases with higher SES particularly in students with higher ALP. The results are discussed in light of theoretical approaches on the role of SES and language use for ALP of students with a migration background.