Multi-Informant Assessment of High-Achieving Students’ Behavioral and Emotional Strengths

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Multi-informants, such as parents and teachers, are commonly considered as resources when evaluating students’ emotional and behavioral skills. This...     

Parental Indulgence: Profiles and Relations to College Students’ Emotional and Behavioral Problems

Research on indulgent parenting and its relation to college students is both limited and inconsistent. Further, all the studies have used a variable-centered approach. To fill the gap in the current literature, the aims of this study were to explore profiles of parental indulgence and their associations with college students’ emotional and behavioral problems. The sample in this study consisted of college students from two universities. Participants were asked to take an online survey about their perceptions of their parents’ indulgent parenting practice and their own well-being. Results from latent profile analyses suggested distinct profiles of parental indulgence for mothers and fathers. Further, these profiles demonstrated differential associations with college students’ anxiety and depressive symptoms, emotional dysregulation, and alcohol use. Implications were also noted.     

Economic Disadvantage and Young Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Problems: Mechanisms of Risk

This study aimed to establish potential mechanisms through which economic disadvantage contributes to the development of young children’s internalizing and externalizing problems. Prospective data from fetal life to age 3 years were collected in a total of 2,169 families participating in the Generation R Study. The observed physical home environment, the provision of learning materials in the home, maternal depressive symptoms, parenting stress, and harsh disciplining practices were all analyzed as potential mediators of the association between economic disadvantage and children’s internalizing and externalizing problem scores. Findings from structural equation modeling showed that for both internalizing and externalizing problems, the mechanisms underlying the effect of economic disadvantage included maternal depressive symptoms, along with parenting stress and harsh disciplining. For internalizing but not for externalizing problem scores, the lack of provision of learning materials in the home was an additional mechanism explaining the effect of economic disadvantage. The current results suggest that interventions that focus solely on raising income levels may not adequately address problems in the family processes that emerge as a result of economic disadvantage. Policies to improve the mental health of mothers with young children but also their home environments are needed to change the economic gradient in child behavior.     

Correction to: Medical Students’ Efforts to Integrate and/or Reclaim Authentic Identity: Insights from a Mask-Making Exercise

Journal of Medical Humanities - The authors would like to correct a misspelling in the name of one of the authors due to a typographical error. The name should read Atur Turakhia, not Artur...     

Teachers’ Knowledge of Evidence-Based Interventions and Available School Resources for Children with Emotional and Behavioral Problems

School professionals need to be prepared to support children with emotional and behavioral problems. Teachers in particular should be aware of the resources provided by their school as well as the evidence-based practices available to support children with behavioral problems. This study explored general education teachers’ knowledge of 10 evidence-based interventions as well as resources and data collected at their schools to support children with mental health problems. Participants included 239 general educators from 5 school districts. Overall, most teachers had not heard of 9 out of 10 of the evidence-based programs presented. Teachers were also not sure whether their schools provided specific assessments and interventions to support children. One particularly noteworthy finding was that 57% of teachers were not sure whether their schools provided functional behavioral assessment and intervention planning. Findings illuminate a need for continued work in this area.     

‘Faultless’ ignorance: Strengths and limitations of epistemic definitions of confabulation

There is no satisfactory account for the general phenomenon of confabulation, for the following reasons: (1) confabulation occurs in a number of pathological and non-pathological conditions; (2) impairments giving rise to confabulation are likely to have different neural bases; and (3) there is no unique theory explaining the aetiology of confabulations. An epistemic approach to defining confabulation could solve all of these issues, by focusing on the surface features of the phenomenon. However, existing epistemic accounts are unable to offer sufficient conditions for confabulation and tend to emphasise only its epistemic disadvantages. In this paper, we argue that a satisfactory epistemic account of confabulation should also acknowledge those features which are (potentially) epistemically advantageous. For example, confabulation may allow subjects to exercise some control over their own cognitive life which is instrumental to the construction or preservation of their sense of self.     

Emotional Intelligence Profiles in College Students and Their Fathers’ and Mothers’ Parenting Practices

The present study has two objectives: first, to analyze whether the dimensions that make up emotional intelligence (attention, clarity, and repair) give rise to different profiles of university students, and secondly, to determine whether these different profiles are differentially associated with the parenting practices that students report with regard to their fathers and mothers. Results obtained indicate the existence of different profiles of college students. The profile that corresponds to adequate emotional skills presents a lower score in attention, but higher scores in clarity, and especially in mood repair. The other two profiles are inadequate, in the first case because a higher score in emotional attention is accompanied by low scores in mood repair, and in the second case because low scores are presented in all three dimensions. Likewise, we verified the existence of significant differences in the educational practices of parents, the adequate profile is characterized by greater use of parenting dimensions considered to be positive, and at the same time, lower scores on dimensions considered to be negative. One of the dysfunctional profiles is associated with higher scores in positive practices, and is also associated with higher scores in practices considered to produce a negative effect. The second dysfunctional profile is associated with higher scores on the dimensions considered to be negative and lower scores on positive dimensions.     

Exploring the Assessment of and Relationship Between Elementary Students’ Scientific Creativity and Science Inquiry

The purposes of this study were to (a) develop and validate instruments to assess elementary students’ scientific creativity and science inquiry, (b) investigate the relationship between the two competencies, and (c) compare the two competencies among different grade level students. The scientific creativity test was composed of 7 open-ended items designed to assess divergent creativity and 2 open-ended items to assess convergent creativity. The science inquiry tests were composed of an open-ended inquiry (O-inquiry) test and a multiple-choice inquiry test (M-inquiry). The aforementioned instruments were verified with satisfactory validities and reliabilities in a pilot study. A total of 321 elementary students from grades 3, 4, 5 and 6 participated in the study to determine the performance differences detected by these instruments. It was found that both convergent and divergent creativity were significantly (p < .001) related with O-inquiry and M-inquiry. Analyses of variance revealed that there were significant grade-level main effects for scientific creativity and science inquiry. Post-hoc pair-wise comparisons revealed significant gaps between the 3rd graders’ performances on scientific creativity and science inquiry and the performances of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. Implications for curricular design and science teaching are discussed.     

Fathers’ Emotional Resources and Children’s Socioemotional and Behavioral Adjustment Among Children with Learning Disabilities

This study examined a cumulative model of risk/protective factors at the individual level (child’s sense of coherence; attachment with father) and family level as manifested by fathers’ emotional resources (fathers’ negative/positive affect; attachment avoidance/anxiety), to explain socioemotional adjustment among children age 8–12 years with or without learning disabilities (LD). Participants were 205 father–child dyads: 107 fathers and their children with LD; 98 fathers and their non-LD children. Preliminary analyses indicated significant group differences on all child measures. Path analysis revealed high fit between the theoretical model and empirical findings; moreover, the model’s components revealed partially different patterns of relations for the two populations. Thus, the current study suggested the potentially important role of fathers’ positive and negative affect and fathers’ avoidant and anxious attachment for children’s socioemotional and behavioral adjustment and children’s mediating variables. Discussion focused on understanding the value of these fathers’ emotional factors and their children’s characteristics for well-adjusted functioning.     

Students’ Perceptions of School Climate During the Middle School Years: Associations with Trajectories of Psychological and Behavioral Adjustment

A cross-domain latent growth curve model was used to examine the trajectories of change in student perceptions of four critical dimensions of school climate (i.e., teacher support, peer support, student autonomy in the classroom, and clarity and consistency in school rules and regulations) among 1,451 early adolescents from the beginning of sixth through the end of eighth grade; and the effects of such trajectories on the rate of change in psychological and behavioral adjustment. Findings indicated that all of the dimensions of perceived school climate declined over the 3 years of middle school. Furthermore, declines in each of the dimensions of perceived school climate were associated with declines over time in psychological and behavioral adjustment. Moreover, the direction of effects between each dimension of perceived school climate and psychological or behavioral adjustment were often unidirectional rather than bi-directional, underscoring the role of perceived school climate in the psychological and behavioral health of early adolescents. Gender and socioeconomic class differences in these patterns are noted.     

Correction to: Privacy rights and ‘naked’ statistical evidence

Philosophical Studies - A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01640-1     

EFL Teachers’ Verbal and Nonverbal Immediacy: A Study of its Impact on Students’ Emotional States,Cognitive Learning,and Burnout

Effective teacher–student interaction is an essential element of an ideal classroom which promotes the opportunity for expanded learning and stimulates the connections between students and teacher. The focus of the present study is on an instructional communication element that is teacher immediacy. It is defined as the mutual sensory and psychological stimulation between teacher and students. It can be verbal or nonverbal. Verbal immediacy is characterized as stylistic differences in expression from which like–dislike is inferred and includes using humor or personal examples, getting feedback, or even calling students by name. Nonverbal immediacy encompasses behaviors such as appropriate eye contact, the use of gestures, movement about the classroom, smiling, and vocal variety. In particular, the present study sought to explore the impact of English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ perceived verbal/nonverbal immediacy on students’ self-actualization, stress-control, and self-esteem. Moreover, it examined the role of EFL teachers’ immediacy behaviors in students’ cognitive learning and emotional exhaustion, which is a burnout subscale. To this end, 206 EFL students participated from selected universities of Mashhad, a city in northeast of Iran. The respondents were asked to complete five inventories about themselves and the previous EFL teacher they had had classes with. The results of structural equation modeling demonstrated that teacher immediacy behavior had a positive significant impact on all student-related variables: stress tolerance (β?=?.65, t?=?7.59), self-actualization (β?=?.69, t?=?8.02), self-esteem (β?=?.63, t?=?7.71), burnout (β?=?.31, t?=?4.05), and cognitive learning (β?=?.45, t?=?6.08). The highest impact was exerted on self-actualization and self-esteem.     

Behavioral and Emotional Problems on the Teacher’s Report Form: A Cross-National,Cross-Clinic Comparative Analysis of Gender Dysphoric Children and Adolescents

For gender dysphoric children and adolescents, the school environment may be challenging due to peer social ostracism and rejection. To date, information on the psychological functioning and the quality of peer relations in gender dysphoric children and adolescents has been studied via parental report, peer sociometric methods, and social interactions in laboratory play groups. The present study was the first cross-national investigation that assessed behavior and emotional problems and the quality of peer relations, both measured by the Teacher’s Report Form (TRF), in a sample of 728 gender dysphoric patients (554 children, 174 adolescents), who were referred to specialized gender identity clinics in the Netherlands and Canada. The gender dysphoric adolescents had significantly more teacher-reported emotional and behavioral problems than the gender dysphoric children. In both countries, gender dysphoric natal boys had poorer peer relations and more internalizing than externalizing problems compared to the gender dysphoric natal girls. Furthermore, there were significant between-clinic differences: both the children and the adolescents from Canada had more emotional and behavioral problems and a poorer quality of peer relations than the children and adolescents from the Netherlands. In conclusion, gender dysphoric children and adolescents showed the same pattern of emotional and behavioral problems in both countries. The extent of behavior and emotional problems was, however, higher in Canada than in the Netherlands, which appeared, in part, an effect of a poorer quality of peer relations. Per Bronfenbrenner’s (American Psychologist, 32, 513–531, 1977) ecological model of human development and well-being, we consider various interpretations of the cross-national, cross-clinic differences on TRF behavior problems at the level of the family, the peer group, and the culture at large.     

The Precalculus Concept Assessment: A Tool for Assessing Students’ Reasoning Abilities and Understandings

This article describes the development of the Precalculus Concept Assessment (PCA) instrument, a 25-item multiple-choice exam. The reasoning abilities and understandings central to precalculus and foundational for beginning calculus were identified and characterized in a series of research studies and are articulated in the PCA Taxonomy. These include a strong understanding of ideas of rate of change and function, a process view of function, and the ability to use covariational reasoning to examine and represent how two covarying quantities change together. This taxonomy guided the PCA development and now provides the theoretical basis for interpreting and reporting PCA results. A critical element of PCA's design was to identify the constructs essential for learning calculus and to employ methods to assure that PCA items are effective in assessing these constructs. We illustrate the role that cognitive research played during both the design and validation phases of the PCA instrument. We also describe our Four-Phase Instrument Development Framework that articulates the methods used to create and validate PCA. This framework should also be useful for others interested in developing similar instruments in other content areas. The uses of PCA are described and include (a) assessing student learning in college algebra and precalculus, (b) comparing the effectiveness of various curricular treatments, and (c) determining student readiness for calculus.     

From Addition to Multiplication … and Back: The Development of Students’ Additive and Multiplicative Reasoning Skills

This study builds on two lines of research that have so far developed largely separately: the use of additive methods to solve proportional word problems and the use of proportional methods to solve additive word problems. We investigated the development with age of both kinds of erroneous solution methods. We gave a test containing missing-value problems to 325 third, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. Half of the problems had an additive structure and half had a proportional structure. Moreover, in half of the problems the internal and external ratios between the given numbers were integer, while in the other cases numbers were chosen so that these ratios were noninteger. The results indicate a development from applying additive methods “anywhere” in the early years of primary school to applying proportional methods “anywhere” in the later years. Between these two stages many students went through an intermediate stage where they simultaneously applied additive methods to proportional problems and proportional methods to additive problems, switching between them based on the numbers given in the problem.     

Students’ Perceptions of Academic and Business Dishonesty: Australian Evidence

Publicly available information indicates that the collapse of the high-profile corporations during the recent past were due to the unethical actions of a number of major players, including high level managers in those corporations. These examples of the ethical misdeeds of corporate actors have influenced accounting professional bodies and academic institutions around the globe to revisit the issue of ethical training of business and accounting students—the corporate managers of tomorrow. However, little is known about the ethical perceptions of business and accounting students, and business academics are finding it challenging to develop and promote ethics-based accounting and business curricula. This study addresses the research gap. It explores the ethical perceptions of accounting and business students in two Australian universities using three paradigms, that is, whether there are differences between regional and metropolitan, male and female, older and younger accounting students with respect to their ethical perceptions. Empirical evidence provided in this study suggests that while there are no differences in ethical perceptions of the regional and metropolitan accounting and business students, female and older students are found to be more ethical compared to male and younger students.