THE EFFECTS OF A GOOD-BEHAVIOR CONTRACT ON THE CLASSROOM BEHAVIORS OF SIXTH-GRADE STUDENTS1

The effects of a good-behavior contract on the on-task behavior, disruptive behavior, daily assignment completion, and weekly grades of four sixth-grade students were examined in a public school classroom. The contract consisted of presenting the students with a list of good conduct and assignment completion goals and a list of disruptive behaviors coupled with a list of rewards and penalties that could be earned. The rewards and penalties made use of existing facilities and classroom privileges. At the beginning of each morning work period, the teacher negotiated the good-behavior contract with each experimental subject. During the negotiations, the teacher emphasized student self-management and encouraged each student to earn a reward by achieving the good-conduct goals and completing the contract assignments. An isolated work area was provided to allow students the opportunity to remove themselves from their desks for a fixed period of 15 min. At the end of the work period, the teacher determined whether each student earned a choice of reward or penalty dependent on assignment completion and whether the teacher had observed disruptive behaviors. Thus, the contract permitted the student to negotiate the goal behaviors and contingencies with the teacher. Throughout the study, the students were in agreement with the teacher on whether a choice of reward or penalty had been earned. The contract was introduced for different children at different times, constituting a multiple-baseline analysis. On-task behavior and daily assignment completion increased, weekly grades were higher, and disruptive behavior decreased when the contract was in effect. Three contrast subjects were selected from the class as model students who consistently produced acceptable assignments and who did not engage in high rates of disruptive and/or off-task behaviors. When the contract was in effect for the experimental subjects, their performance compared favorably with the contrast subjects, who never received the daily contract. The results demonstrated that the contract was effective within the confines of the facilities and contingencies readily available in a public school classroom setting.     

Parents’ attitudes toward the perceived usefulness of Internet-related instruction in preschools

Integrating Internet-related applications into preschool instructional activities can enable children to develop multiple aspects of their learning abilities as well as their cognitive, affective, and relevant skills. Because of the trends toward an Internet society and parents’ expectations from preschools, many teachers have considered parents’ perceptions about the usefulness of the Internet in daily life and in workplace settings. This study examined the impacts of parents’ attitudes toward Internet use and their expectations of preschools to use Internet-related applications. We administered a questionnaire in Taiwan comprising five factors: usefulness, work value, preschool expectations, teacher competence, and learning performance. The survey data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings revealed that parents perceived the Internet as an innovative and useful tool that enhances their lives and improves their work performance. Their perceptions toward the usefulness and work value of Internet-related practices positively influenced their attitudes toward preschool expectations, and acknowledge the pedagogical advantages associated with integrating Internet-related applications into teaching for developing young children’s learning abilities. The implications of the findings are also discussed in this paper.     

The teacher's role in promoting collaborative dialogue in the classroom

Background Research on student‐led small‐group learning in schools going back nearly four decades has documented many types of student participation that promote learning. Less is known about how the teacher can foster effective groupwork behaviours. Aims This paper reviews research that explores the role of the teacher in promoting learning in small groups. The focus is on how students can learn from their peers during small‐group work, how teachers can prepare students for collaborative group work, and the role of teacher discourse and classroom norms in small‐group dialogue. Method Studies selected for review focused on student‐led small‐group contexts for learning in which students were expected to collaborate, reported data from systematic observations of group work, and linked observational data to teacher practices and student learning outcomes. Results and conclusions This review uncovered multiple dimensions of the teacher's role in fostering beneficial group dialogue, including preparing students for collaborative work, forming groups, structuring the group‐work task, and influencing student interaction through teachers' discourse with small groups and with the class. Common threads through the research are the importance of students explaining their thinking, and teacher strategies and practices that may promote student elaboration of ideas.     

The relationship between short-term mentoring benefits and long-term mentor outcomes

Little is known about the short- and long-term benefits mentors gain from their mentoring relationships. This study examined the extent to which short-term proximal benefits reported by mentors (improved job performance, recognition by others, rewarding experience, and loyal base of support) predicted the long-term distal outcomes of mentor career success, work attitudes and behavioral intentions to mentor in the future. Mentors’ reports of short-term mentoring benefits significantly predicted their work attitudes and their intentions to mentor again in the future, but were unrelated to their career success. Upon closer inspection, short-term instrumental mentor benefits (improved job performance, recognition by others) were more important in predicting mentor work attitudes, whereas short-term relational mentor benefits (rewarding experience, loyal base of support) were more important in predicting intentions to mentor in the future. Implications for mentoring theory, future research, and practice are discussed.     

INDIRECT FACILITATION OF ON-TASK BEHAVIOR PRODUCED BY CONTINGENT FREE-TIME FOR ACADEMIC PRODUCTIVITY1

This study investigated the relationship between on-task behavior and the academic performance of three low achieving and disruptive children in an elementary school special-education class. A number of researchers have postulated that the direct elimination of off-task or disruptive behavior is a necessary prior requirement when increases in academic performance are sought in special-education classrooms composed of low achievers with below-average socioeconomic environments. The present research program investigated this issue and measured the incidence of on-task behavior and its relationship to changes in the performance of a variety of academic tasks brought about by the opportunity to engage in daily free-time activities. Three children from a class of eight “educably mentally handicapped” students were chosen as target subjects, as their repertoires seemed to be especially defective. These children were observed by the first author for 90-minute sessions three days a week, and data regarding on-task behavior were obtained by the use of an interval recording technique. In conjunction with the teacher, the first author also monitored the academic performance of the children in six structured activities—answer completion from boardwork instructions, task completion from handout assignments, comprehension of reading assignments and vocabulary recognition, accuracy of direction-following to audiotaped instructions, quality of copied handwriting, and the matching of appropriate phonetic sounds to pictured objects and situations. Following baseline sessions during which both on-task and academic performance was measured, several experimental sessions were conducted during which free-time was given noncontingently. During these sessions, no reliable changes in student performance were observed. Subsequently, the teacher and experimenters defined a specified percentage of correct completion of each of the six categories of skill performance as necessary for the achievement of the free-time reinforcer, during each experimental session. As a result, both the academic productivity and the on-task measures of behavior were observed to increase, even though reinforcement was not directly contingent upon on-task behavior. The subsequent reinstitution of noncontingent free-time was followed by lower rates of both output and on-task behavior. The final reintroduction of contingent free-time for academic productivity again produced substantial increases in both work accomplished correctly and on-task behavior. Corresponding increases in productivity were noted for most nontarget children as well. While the present investigation has shown a high correspondence between productivity and on-task behavior, we must keep in mind that on-task behavior can be defined in many different ways. It remains possible that differences in the degree of correlation between outcome measures and the topography of “work” activity may relate to the degree to which the specific on-task behaviors measured are actually required for the outcome behavior. The failure of many researchers to identify a direct relationship between “appearances” and output may be inherently a measurement problem.     

Ageing and the group-reference effect in memory

The present study examines age differences in the memory benefits from group-referncing. While prior work establishes that the memory performance of younger and older adults similarly benefits from relating information to the self, this study assessed whether those benefits extend to referencing a meaningful group membership. Young and older adult participants encoded trait words by judging whether each word describes themselves, describes their group membership (selected for each age group), or is familiar. After a retention interval, participants completed a surprise recognition memory test. The results indicate that group-referencing increased recognition memory performance compared to the familiarity judgements for both young and older groups. However, the group-reference benefit is limited, emerging as smaller than the benefit from self-referencing. These results challenge previous findings of equivalent benefits for group-referencing and self-referencing, suggesting that such effects may not prevail under all conditions, including for older adults. The findings also highlight the need to examine the mechanisms of group-referencing that can lead to variability in the group-reference effect.     

Knowing who knows what and who knows whom: Expertise recognition,network recognition,and individual work performance

We tested the relationship between individuals' expertise recognition and work performance, the role of job resourcefulness (i.e. individuals' ability to garner resources to overcome obstacles) as a mediator, and network recognition as a moderator in the link between expertise recognition and job resourcefulness. We found that the positive impact of expertise recognition on work performance was mediated by job resourcefulness, but network recognition did not play a moderating role.     

HOW ELEMENTARY STUDENTS REFERRED FOR COMPENSATORY READING INSTRUCTION PERFORM ON SCHOOL‐BASED MEASURES OF WORD RECOGNITION,FLUENCY, AND COMPREHENSION

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine how elementary students referred for compensatory remedial reading services performed on several key reading process variables: total word recognition errors while reading brief passages, significant or meaning‐changing errors, comprehension, and reading rate. In order to maximize ecological validity, the students were assessed by the school‐based reading specialist/teacher using assessment materials normally used in diagnostic evaluations of students referred for compensatory reading instruction. Although performance across all variables was below instructional levels for students’ assigned grades, both word recognition variables and comprehension approached instructional levels. Reading rate alone was consistently and significantly below several previously identified standards of performance. We feel that poor performance in rate may be an indicator of fluency problems (including automaticity in word recognition and text phrasing). Suggestions for instruction to overcome difficulties in fluency were presented.     

Developmental differences in recall and recognition: The relationship between rehearsal and memory as test expectation changes

An overt rehearsal procedure was used to study the relationship between children's rehearsal strategies and their memory performance under different conditions of test expectation. Previous work has shown that developmental differences in rehearsal content affect recall performance. This study was designed to address the question of why active rehearsal content results in superior recall performance. The equivalence of recognition-memory performance for third- (age 9) and sixthgraders (age 12) suggests that developmental differences in recall are due to the effects of rehearsal content on item retrieval from permanent memory. In addition, the data indicate that third- and sixth-graders can differentiate between expected recall and recognition tests and, with the exception of the sixth-grade boys, use this information to modify their rehearsal content. These differences in rehearsal content, as a function of the type of test expected, corresponded to changes in recall performance.     

Novel object detection and recognition system based on points of interest selection and SVM classification

Due to the progression in computer vision technology, object recognition systems have gained considerable research interest. Though there are numerous object recognition systems in the literature, there is always a constant demand for better object recognition systems. Taking this as a challenge, this work proposes a novel object recognition system based on points of interest and feature extraction. Initially, the points of interest of the image are selected by means of Derivative Kadir-Brady (DKB) detector and the neighbourhood pixels of a particular window size are selected for further processing. The gabor and curvelet features are extracted from the area of interest, followed by the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification. The performance of the proposed object recognition system is evaluated against three analogous techniques in terms of accuracy, precision, recall and F-measure. On experimental analysis, it is proven that the proposed approach outperforms the existing approaches and the performance of the proposed work is satisfactory.     

Basculer vers un travail médiatisé distant : quand la reconnaissance du/au travail devient une activité à part entière

In this article, we examine the conditions of acceptance of new work organisations (remote mediated work) from their impact on the recognition of work. Based on a case study in a higher education institution, we propose to characterise the consequences of these transformations on professional practices and on new modes of recognition. The methods used attempt to account for these transformations by relying on the extended periods of telework in the year 2020. We identify four recognition processes which lead us to characterise the beginnings of a “recognition activity”, which acts as a meta-labour in that it embodies: a work on work.     

教师课堂教学中的自我表露对学生评价的影响

采用2×3的被试间设计研究课堂教学中教师的自我表露对学生评价的影响.被试分别以视频(录音)形式观看(收听)无表露、表露个人成长经历、表露工作的讲座片断,并对讲座中教师进行评价.结果表明:(1)表露个人经历在视频组和录音组都表现出评价上的优势.(2)热情——冷淡维度,表露工作情况视频比录音评价更高;稳重-轻浮维度,无表露情况视频比录音评价更高.(3)录音组中,高年级对表露和无表露组的评价差距与低年级无显著差异.     

Individual differences in visual word recognition: insights from the English Lexicon Project

Empirical work and models of visual word recognition have traditionally focused on group-level performance. Despite the emphasis on the prototypical reader, there is clear evidence that variation in reading skill modulates word recognition performance. In the present study, we examined differences among individuals who contributed to the English Lexicon Project (http://elexicon.wustl.edu), an online behavioral database containing nearly 4 million word recognition (speeded pronunciation and lexical decision) trials from over 1,200 participants. We observed considerable within- and between-session reliability across distinct sets of items, in terms of overall mean response time (RT), RT distributional characteristics, diffusion model parameters (Ratcliff, Gomez, & McKoon, 2004), and sensitivity to underlying lexical dimensions. This indicates reliably detectable individual differences in word recognition performance. In addition, higher vocabulary knowledge was associated with faster, more accurate word recognition performance, attenuated sensitivity to stimuli characteristics, and more efficient accumulation of information. Finally, in contrast to suggestions in the literature, we did not find evidence that individuals were trading-off their utilization of lexical and nonlexical information.     

Systematic reinforcement: academic performance of underachieving students

The effect of contingent tangible and social reinforcement on academic performance was investigated in an experimental classroom of 25 selected underachieving students. Measures were taken of both teacher and child behavior during a baseline and two experimental treatment periods. During Treatment I, a point system with tangible backup reinforcers was combined with contingent social reinforcers dispensed by the teaching staff to assess the effects on three measures of academic performance (i.e., per cent of time at work, work output per minute, and accuracy). During Treatment II, the contingencies for the tangible reinforcers were terminated while social reinforcement was continued to see if the positive effects of Treatment I on academic performance would persist. The results show that with combined tangible and social reinforcers, students' work time, rate of output per hour, and accuracy in all activities substantially increased. After termination of the tangible reinforcers, the students maintained their high rates of output per hour and accuracy for the remaining period of the study while the total amount of time at work returned to the baseline level.     

IDENTITIES IN HARMONY: GENDER–WORK IDENTITY INTEGRATION MODERATES FRAME SWITCHING IN COGNITIVE PROCESSING

Professional women's identity integration—the perceived compatibility between work and gender identities—plays a role in how task or relationship information is processed. Seventy female business school students were primed with either their professional or their gender identity. Business women with higher identity integration showed an assimilation effect to the primed cue. Specifically, they showed higher task orientation than relationship orientation in a recognition task when primed with their professional identity, but less so when primed with their gender identity. Business women with lower identity integration showed a contrast effect to the primed cue: Their recognition reflected a task-relationship orientation opposite to the primed cue. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding women's performance at work.     

A Path to Teacher Happiness? A Sense of Meaning Affects Teacher–Student Relationships,Which Affect Job Satisfaction

Meaningful work and meaningful relationships at work have been highlighted for their potential desirable consequences for employees and organizations. The present research focuses on teaching, as a potentially meaningful occupation, and suggests that teachers’ sense of meaning at work affects teacher–student relationships, which in turn affect teachers’ job satisfaction. This hypothesized path is examined in two complementary studies. In Study 1, 312 teachers completed self-report measures of their sense of meaning at work, perceived relationships with students, and job satisfaction. Results, based on structural equation modeling analysis, showed a good fit of the data to the theoretical model. In Study 2, 120 teachers completed daily measures of their sense of meaning at work, relationships with students, and job satisfaction. Results, based on HLM analyses, confirmed daily effects of teachers’ sense of meaning on teacher–student relationships, and daily effects of perceived teacher–student relationships on teachers’ job satisfaction. These findings point to a potential path through which teachers’ sense of meaning at work may affect work outcomes and attitudes. The theoretical and practical implications for the effects of meaningfulness and relationships at work for researchers, educators, and organizations are discussed.     

Organizational expectations of the novice teacher

The study focuses on the teacher as an organization person, that is, a professional working in an organizational setting, and forms part of its administrative and human fabric. The purpose of the article is to describe the novice teachers expectations from teaching as a profession and from the school as a work organization. The novice teachers who participated in trainee programs at five large teacher training colleges in Israel, completed a self-report questionnaire. The questionnaire items expressed teachers expectations of their work at the outset of their professional career. Facet Theory was the methodological approach used for the study. It was found that novice teachers expectations focus on the following areas of interest and activity expectations of professional and social recognition; expectations of responsive conduct on the part of students; of involvement and support from parents, and of collegiality from other staff, parents and the principal; and expectations that teaching and those associated with it will contribute to strengthening the teachers professional sense of self. The findings were also examined based on self-psychology perspectives. The article discusses the implications of these expectations pertaining to teacher training.     

Shyness and emotion‐processing skills in preschoolers: a 6‐month longitudinal study

The present study utilized a short‐term longitudinal research design to examine the hypothesis that shyness in preschoolers is differentially related to different aspects of emotion processing. Using teacher reports of shyness and performance measures of emotion processing, including (1) facial emotion recognition, (2) non‐facial emotion recognition, and (3) emotional perspective‐taking, we examined 337 Head Start attendees twice at a 24‐week interval. Results revealed significant concurrent and longitudinal relationships between shyness and facial emotion recognition, and either minimal or non‐existent relationships between shyness and the other aspects of emotion processing. Correlational analyses of concurrent assessments revealed that shyness predicted poorer facial emotion recognition scores for negative emotions (sad, angry, and afraid), but not a positive emotion (happy). Analyses of change over time, on the other hand, revealed that shyness predicted change in facial emotion recognition scores for all four measured emotions. Facial emotion recognition scores did not predict changes in shyness. Results are discussed with respect to expanding the scope of research on shyness and emotion processing to include time‐dependent studies that allow for the specification of developmental processes. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Frequency of measurement and data utilization as factors in standardized behavioral assessment of academic skill

A study was conducted to investigate the effects on students' spelling achievement of variations in teacher assessment procedures. Teachers measured student spelling performance at a constant level of task difficulty using different measurement frequencies and different rules to interpret the data. Each teacher wrote two consecutive 3-week goals for improved spelling performance for two sets of 100 spelling words and then measured student performance either daily or weekly by dictating randomly selected words from each 100-word list. Teachers were trained to apply either a predetermined set of decision rules or their own judgment to the data to decide if the spelling program they had implemented for the student was effective. Ineffective programs were changed or modified. Results indicated that daily measurement was significantly more effective than weekly measurement in increasing spelling achievement and that, under certain conditions, decision rules were more effective than teacher judgment in determining when to make program changes or modifications.This research was conducted pursuant to Contract 300-77-0491 between the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped (now called Special Education Programs) and the University of Minnesota Institute for Research on Learning Disabilities.     

School Perceptions of Children Raised by Grandparents

Increasing numbers of children raised by grandparents are students in schools. Their substitute family structure and precursors to the emergence of this family structure have implications for the children's school performance. Research suggests teachers view these children as at risk for difficult school functioning. The aforementioned judgment is problematic because teacher expectations, attributions, and biases are associated with stereotype threat that impacts student performance adversely. The author compares children raised by grandparents with children raised by parents and foster parents. The author examines the children's perceptions of their teachers' views of their school performance. He also examines the children's general feelings about school. Participants in the study were 6,550 students in Grades 6–8 from the nationally representative Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey. Nonparametric statistical analyses reveal children raised by grandparents believe teachers' view their school performance negatively when compared with children living with both parents. Strategies are described to improve the children's performance in school and to foster favorable teacher perceptions.