Successive teacher expectation effects across the early school years

The capacity for teacher expectation effects to interact and compound across a child's schooling offers a largely untested mechanism for magnifying or minimizing effects. This study examined four types of long-term teacher expectation effects: within-year effects of single teachers, cross-year effects of single teachers, mediated effects of single and multiple teachers, and compounded effects of multiple teachers. Participants were 110 students tracked from preschool through Grade 4 on measures of achievement and teacher expectations. Evidence was found for within-year but not direct cross-year effects. However, path models demonstrated enduring indirect effects of teacher expectations on cross-year achievement. Multiple years of teacher expectation effects were additive in predicting student achievement at fourth grade, with similar effects for teachers' over- and underestimates of student ability. The study extends understanding of longer-term teacher expectation effects.     

The development of optimism and perceived attainment from elementary school to junior high school

Optimism (a perception of future improvement of children's own achievement levels) and perceived present attainment were examined developmentally in relation to academic achievement and motivation. Subjects were 507 Japanese third-, fifth-, and seventh-grade children. After categorization as high or low on perceived attainment (H/L) and optimism (h/l), two (Hh, Ll), three (Hh, Lh, Ll), and four (Hh, Hl, Lh, Ll) groups were obtained in the third, fifth, and seventh grades, respectively. These groups showed characteristic features in terms of motivation- and achievement-related measures. Both optimism and perceived attainment explained the differences in scores on the measures between the two third-grade groups. In grades 5 and 7 perceived attainment was the primary factor explaining the group differences, while the optimism dimension was a secondary factor, whose influence was stronger in grade 7. The results are discussed in relation to the development of self-perceptions, as well as changes in learning environment between elementary school and junior high school.     

Context sensitivity in children's reasoning about ability across the elementary school years

Children's sensitivity to context when making inferences about ability was investigated. In three studies, elementary school children (ages 5 to 10, total N = 332) were asked to reason about the relation between academic ability and the speed with which characters completed puzzle tasks. Participants were primed to interpret the characters' task completion rates with reference to either (1) the character's perceptions of the difficulty of the task, or (2) the character's level of effort on the task. Children who were primed to consider the perceived difficulty of the task were more likely to view ability as a static quality, a pattern of reasoning that included a tendency to associate task completion rates with ability, and to agree that not all individuals are capable of achieving high levels of success. These results provide evidence that even early elementary school children are sensitive to subtle contextual cues when making inferences about ability, and are consistent with the possibility that children make use of implicit cues available to them in their social environment to derive meaning from achievement situations.     

Action-control beliefs and behaviors as predictors of change in adjustment across the transition to middle school

Abstract

We examined longitudinal changes in young adolescents’ (N=368) action-control beliefs, coping behaviors, and adjustment (i.e., positive and negative affect, depression, aggression) across the transition from elementary school to middle school. Results indicated greater inter-individual instability in adjustment during this transition than during the previous school year. Using ordinary least-squares (OLS) growth models to extract intra-individual change scores for each variable (i.e., slopes and intercepts), we conducted a series of stepwise regressions to determine which features of control beliefs and coping behaviors best predicted changes in adjustment across the transition to middle school. We found that negative coping behaviors (i.e., antisocial coping) consistently predicted negative changes in the adjustment variables (e.g., greater depression, more aggression), whereas positive beliefs and behaviors did not consistently predict changes in the adjustment variables.     

Modification of school attendance for an elementary population

The staff and students of a school composed of Grades 1 through 3 participated in a program to increase school attendance. Children earned the opportunity to attend part or all of a monthly party by their attendance. Immediate feedback occurred each morning by placing stars on a classroom chart for each child present. The school's attendance during the program was compared both with attendance during preceding years and with attendance at other schools. The experimental school's attendance improved dramatically to become the best of all elementary schools in the system.     

The relationship between three types of aggression and peer relations in elementary school children

Previous studies have repeatedly found that aggression causes various internalizing and externalizing problems. Despite the robust relationship, exactly how aggression causes these problems remains unclear, although it is plausible to postulate that this occurs both directly and indirectly (via other behavioural factors). One possible indirect factor might be the aggravation of peer relations. The poor peer relations of aggressive children could make them isolated psychologically or physically from peers, which in turn might result in depressive or disruptive problems. This study examined the relationships between three types of aggression and peer relations in Japanese elementary school children. The three aggression types comprised reactive-expressive (i.e., verbal and physical aggression), reactive-inexpressive (e.g., hostility), and proactive-relational aggression (i.e., aggression that can break human relationships, for instance, by circulating malicious rumours). Participants were 1581 children in grades 4 to 6 (752 boys and 829 girls), all of whom completed the Proactive-Reactive Aggression Questionnaire for Children to measure three types of aggression and the Peer Relation Questionnaire to measure peer relations (mutual understanding, self-disclosure, and similarity of taste) and number of friends. Hierarchical regression analyses of the data showed that higher scores of relational aggression were significantly associated with higher scores of all of the peer relations and the number of friends, and that higher scores of inexpressive aggression were significantly associated with lower scores of all except for self-disclosure in the peer relations. These findings suggest that among the three types of aggression, relational aggression leads to the best friendship in both dyadic relations and the number of friends, whereas inexpressive aggression to the poorest friendship. The implications of these findings with respect to internalizing and externalizing problem behaviours for aggressive children are discussed.     

The development of conceptual categories of attention during the elementary school years

The purpose of this study was to explore the development of children's conceptual understanding of attention by focusing on their awareness of various subtypes of attention. Adults, fifth graders (mean age = 11.16 years), and third graders (9.16 years) participated in a Similarity Judgment task in which they rated the similarity of pairs of cognitive scenarios involving various attentional processes. These similarity judgments were submitted to an extended similarity tree analysis (EXTREE; J. E. Corter & A. Tversky, 1986) and the interpretations of the clusters and features that emerged were confirmed by participants in an Attribute Rating task. Three changes were found with increasing age: (1) Less emphasis was placed on the surface features of the scenarios, (2) more attentional subtypes were identified, and (3) more emphasis was placed on the role of effort in attention. We conclude that during elementary school and beyond children came to understand that intentional, effortful cognitive processes can mediate between the external world and our conscious experiences of it.     

Pauses in elementary school children's verbatim and gist free recall of a story

The aim of the research was to explore the function of pauses in children's oral verbatim and gist-based free recall, assuming that pauses indicate cognitive processing. The main question guiding this research was whether verbatim and gist recall constituted two different ways of cognitive processing associated with different time patterns of speech. Elementary school children (n = 180) between the ages of 8 and 10 years heard a story and were then instructed to either retell the story verbatim or retell its gist. They orally recalled the story for the first time immediately after hearing the story and again 1 week later. The results confirmed the main hypothesis of independence of verbatim and gist traces in that mean pause lengths were longer when verbatim retrieval was asked for as compared to gist retrieval. High correct gist recall was characterized by more and shorter pauses, indicating fluent retrieval.     

From terrible twos to sassy sixes: The development of vocabulary and executive functioning across early childhood

Across the early childhood period of development, young children exhibit considerable growth in their executive functioning (EF) and vocabulary abilities. Understanding the developmental trajectory of these seemingly interrelated processes is important as both early vocabulary and EF have been shown to predict critical academic and socio-emotional outcomes later in childhood. Although previous research suggests that EF and vocabulary are correlated in early childhood, much of the existing longitudinal research has focused on unidirectional relations among preschool child samples. The current large-scale study, therefore, sought to examine whether children's vocabulary and EF abilities are bidirectionally related over time across four measurement waves in early childhood (i.e., at ages 2, 3, 4, and 6). At each timepoint, children's vocabulary skills were positively correlated with their concurrent EF abilities. After controlling for child sex and maternal education status, the best-fitting, cross-lagged panel model was a unidirectional model whereby children's early vocabulary scores predicted their later EF performance at each timepoint. Although age 2 EF significantly predicted age 3 vocabulary size, this association was no longer significant after accounting for maternal education status. Our results illustrate that vocabulary size plays an important role in predicting children's later EF performance across various timepoints in early childhood, even after controlling for children's initial EF scores. These findings have important implications for intervention research as fostering early vocabulary acquisition may serve as a possible avenue for improving EF outcomes in young children.

Research Highlights

• Children's vocabulary size is positively correlated with their concurrent executive functioning skill at ages 2, 3, 4, and 6
• Young children's early vocabulary scores predict their later EF performance across measurement waves, even after controlling for initial EF skill
• There is stability in children's relative vocabulary size and executive functioning performance over time in early childhood

     

Community and school choice: Geographies of care and responsibility

This paper draws on elements of critical discursive psychology in order to explore some of the issues and concerns raised by parents' responses to the policy and practice of school choice. Drawing on data from a group of mothers of diverse social class and racial backgrounds, this paper examines the dilemmas some mothers engage with in their role as chooser—reconciling competing rationalities for choosing or trying to manage contradictions. A central argument of this paper is that the policy and political context shaping the emergence of school choice in Britain has provisionally secured the development of certain trends in education—consumerism, individualism and competition. Alongside and coupled with this has been the veneration of a narrow utilitarian conception of parents as consumers of education services, defined as people who share the capacity and willingness to maximize the utility of their decisions in a rationally self‐interested way. This paper questions the value of this approach as a framing for understanding the aspirations, motivations and fantasies informing parents' school choice and highlights instead the ways in which some mothers articulate the importance of community in their decision‐making practices. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

学校资源对青少年早期幸福感发展的影响：意向性自我调节的纵向中介作用

通过对1214名初中生历时3年的3次追踪测量,考察了青少年早期的学校资源、意向性自我调节及幸福感的发展趋势,并对意向性自我调节在学校资源与幸福感发展间的纵向中介作用机制进行检验。结果发现,在青少年早期,学校资源具有相对的稳定性,意向性自我调节及幸福感均呈线性增长;学校资源对幸福感发展的作用机制表现为:一方面,学校资源通过意向性自我调节的初始水平分别对幸福感的初始水平和发展速度起间接作用,另一方面,学校资源通过意向性自我调节的发展速度对幸福感的发展速度起间接作用。结论:青少年早期,学生的学校资源水平保持稳定,意向性自我调节和幸福感的发展均呈线性递增趋势;学校资源能够通过意向性自我调节的初始水平和发展速度对幸福感的发展起间接作用。     

Unfounded beliefs among teachers: The interactive role of rationality priming and cognitive ability

Previous research suggests that unfounded beliefs (UB)—such as conspiracist beliefs and beliefs in the supernatural—stem from similar cognitive and motivational mechanisms. More specifically, it has been demonstrated that cognitive ability is negatively associated with UB but only among individuals who value epistemic rationality. The present study goes beyond previous correlational studies by examining whether the negative association between cognitive ability and UB can be strengthened through a subtle rationality prime. In a large scale online experiment (N = 762 French teachers), we demonstrate that priming rationality (vs. control) does enhance the negative relationship between cognitive ability and adherence to supernatural beliefs, as well as conspiracy mentality (d = 0.2). This effect was not obtained for illusory pattern perception. This study's usefulness as a “proof of concept” for future interventions aimed at reducing UB prevalence among the general public is discussed.     

Creativity and genius as epistemic virtues: Kant and early post-Kantians on the teachability of epistemic virtue

There is a classical paradox in education that also affects the epistemic virtues: the paradox inherent in the demand to develop general strategies for training persons to be free and creative individuals. This problem becomes particularly salient with respect to the epistemic virtue of creativity, the more so if we consider a radical form of creativity, namely, genius. This paper explores a historical constellation in which rigorous claims about the standards for knowledge and morality were developed, along with a highly influential notion of genius: the philosophy of Kant and of immediate post-Kantian philosophers. The paper shows how in this historical moment came together a new notion of “science,” a theory of “genius” and of virtues, and an analysis of the promises and difficulties inherent in educating a virtuous or creative individual. In this constellation of ideas, there also emerges a potentially fruitful account of how to teach intellectual creativity.