Learning environment and students’ classroom behavior differences between effective,average, and ineffective urban elementary schools for Hispanic students

Educational Research for Policy and Practice - This study examined whether there are significant differences between effective, average, and ineffective urban schools with regard to (a)...     

“Inhabitants of the Earth”: Reasoning About Folkbiological Concepts in Wichi Children and Adults

Across the world, people form folkbiological categories to capture their commonsense organization of the natural world. Structured in accordance with universal principles, folkbiological categories are also shaped by experience. Here we provide new evidence from the Wichi—an understudied indigenous community who live in the Chaco rainforest and speak their heritage language. A total of 44 Wichi (6- to 8-year-olds, 9- to 12-year-olds, adults) participated in an induction task designed to identify how broadly they attribute an invisible biological property (e.g., an internal organ) from 1 individual (either a human, nonhuman animal, or plant) to other humans, nonhuman animals, plants, natural kinds, and artifacts. Research Findings: These results (a) clarify the content of the Wichi’s categories and the words they use to describe them, (b) showcase the power of covert (unnamed) categories, and (c) fortify the view that human-centered reasoning is not a universal starting point for reasoning about nature. Practice or Policy: Implications of these findings for early science education are discussed. In particular, we discuss (a) how the Wichi’s construal of the natural world may be best integrated when they reach the (Western science–inspired) classroom and (b) how the current results bear on central issues in early science education more broadly.     

Nouns Mark Category Relations: Toddlers'' and Preschoolers'' Word-Learning Biases

Recent research suggests that preschool children approach the task of word learning equipped with implicit biases that lead them to prefer some possible meanings over others. The noun-category bias proposes that children favor category relations when interpreting the meaning of novel nouns. In the series of experiments reported here, we develop a stringent test of the noun-category bias and reveal that it is present in children as young as 2 years of age. In each experiment, children participated in a 5-item match-to-sample task. Children were presented with a target item (e.g., a cow) and 4 choices, 2 of which belonged to the same superordinate category as the target (e.g., a fox and a zebra) and 2 of which were thematically related to the target (e.g., milk and a barn). In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that novel nouns prompt preschool children to attend to superordinate-level category relations, even in the presence of multiple thematic alternatives. In Experiment 2, we ascertain that the bias is specific to nouns; novel adjectives do not highlight superordinate category relations. In Experiment 3, we demonstrate the noun-category bias in 2-year-olds. The nature and utility of the noun-category bias are discussed.     

The association of school environment to student teachers' satisfaction and teaching commitment

A supportive school environment is crucial to the enhancement of student teaching experiences. This study assesses student teachers' perceptions of secondary school environments, and then relates the perceptions to their satisfaction with school experiences and teaching commitment. The results show that considerable disparities between student teachers' perceptions of actual and preferred school environments and suggest certain directions for improvement. Student teachers' perceptions about their school environments, especially in the areas of professional interest and staff freedom, were positively associated with their satisfaction. Several school environmental aspects influenced the total years they planned to teach and their intention to teach at the placement schools.     

School-based family socialization and reading achievement in the inner city

Reading comprehension test scores of 826 black, inner-city children in 41 classes, grades one through six, were regressed on scores on comparable tests taken one year earlier, on several other control variables, and on the amount of exposure to a program intended to help parents create conditions in the home to stimulate academic achievement. Two variables (prior reading-comprehension scores and program intensity), accounted for nearly all the reliable variance in the posttest scores in analyses carried out with individuals and class medians as the units. Students and classroom groups intensively exposed to the program gained .5 to .6 grade equivalents more than those less intensively exposed during the year.     

Tracing culture in children’s thinking: a socioecological framework in understanding nature (Rastreando la cultura en el pensamiento infantil: una socioecología para comprender la naturaleza)

ABSTRACT

There is considerable agreement that cognitive development is shaped by culture. Less clear, however, is the mechanism by which culture exerts its influence as cognition unfolds. Prior work has primarily focused on culture as a species-specific medium of cognitive development or as an explicative factor of cognitive capacities. Here we describe a more recent alternative, the culture-as-ecosystem approach. In this view, concepts are embedded within epistemological orientations providing pervasive, widely distributed framework theories that organize people’s knowledge, learning and behaviour. To illustrate the promise of this approach, we review new evidence about how the Wichi, an indigenous population from the Chaco region in North Argentina, reason about hunhat lheley (inhabitants of the earth). By adopting the culture-as-ecosystem approach, we identified a distinct socioecological framework, undocumented elsewhere. This framework, evidenced in young children and adults, is well aligned with Wichi epistemology. We hope that highlighting the theoretical promise and empirical power of the culture-as-ecosystem approach will offer new insights into the intriguing interface between culture and cognition in development.     

Classroom Learning Environments in Urban Elementary,Middle, and High Schools

The purpose of the present study was to investigate student gender, subject area, and grade level differences in students' perceptions of their classroom learning environment. Over 13,000 students from 96 urban elementary, middle, and high schools that served predominantly minority students completed a modified version of the Classroom Environment Scale (CES) and the Instructional Learning Environment Questionnaire (ILEQ). Female students generally reported higher scores for their perceptions of the learning environment than did male students. There were very few differences by subject area, but there were many statistically and educationally significant differences by grade level. In general, middle school classes had less favorable perceptions of their learning environment than did either elementary or high school classes.     

Mother-child conversations about pictures and objects: referring to categories and individuals

The distinction between individuals (e.g., Rin-Tin-Tin) and categories (e.g., dogs) is fundamental in human thought. Two studies examined factors that influence when 2- to 3-year-old children and adults focus on individuals versus categories. Mother-child dyads were presented with pictures and toys (e.g., a picture of a boat or a toy boat). Conversations were coded for references to generic categories ("Dogs are furry"), ostensive labels ("This is a dog"), or specific individuals ("Lassie"). Overall, pictures generated more talk about categories; objects generated more talk about individuals. However, when objects could not be manipulated, speakers expressed relatively more category references. These results suggest that representations (in the form of pictures or objects-on-display) encourage young children and parents alike to think about categories.     

Collective Effects of Individual,Behavioral, and Contextual Factors on High School Students’ Future STEM Career Plans

This study explored the structural relationships among secondary school students’ conceptions, self-regulation, and strategies of learning science in mainland China. Three questionnaires, namely conceptions of learning science (COLS), self-regulation of learning science (SROLS), and strategies of learning science (SLS) were developed for investigating 333 Chinese high school learners’ conceptions, metacognitive self-regulation, and strategies in science. The confirmatory factor analysis results verified the validity of the three surveys. Moreover, the path analyses revealed a series of interesting findings. Learners with lower-level COLS, namely “memorizing,” “testing,” and “practicing and calculating,” tended to use surface learning strategies such as “minimizing scope of the study” and “rote learning.” However, learners’ higher-level COLS, namely “increase of knowledge,” “applying,” “understanding,” and “seeing in a new way,” had complicated connections with their SROLS and SLS. On the one hand, learners’ higher-level COLS had negative relations to “minimizing scope of the study” and “rote learning.” On the other hand, their higher-level COLS were powerful predicators for their metacognitive self-regulation and further affected their use of “deep strategy” and “rote learning.” Though Chinese secondary students with higher-level COLS usually have a negative view of “rote learning,” the functioning of their metacognitive self-regulation may change their initial attitudes towards the surface strategy. Learners with higher-level COLS still used “rote learning” as a prior step for achieving deep learning. Therefore, we concluded that the SROLS played an important mediating role between the COLS and SLS and may change learners’ original intention to utilize learning strategies.