Peer teaching: Students teaching students to increase academic performance

Peer teaching among students has a powerful role in the learning process and has been studied and recognized as an effective teaching method. Research on peer teaching applied in different contexts has shown that learning through the process of teaching others increases students' academic performance. In Indonesia, some research on peer teaching has been conducted, but there has been no research on peer teaching in the context of theological studies. Hence, this empirical study aims to verify whether peer teaching is effective when applied in a theological school setting. In this study, students of a homiletics course were the research sample. Results show that peer teaching had a positive effect on students' academic performance. However, further research is recommended on the application of peer teaching in other subject areas to confirm the effectiveness of peer teaching in a theological school context.     

Discourse Patterns and Collaborative Scientific Reasoning in Peer and Teacher-Guided Discussions

In this study we examined the discourse components, interaction patterns, and reasoning complexity of 4 groups of 12 Grade 8 students in 2 science classrooms as they constructed mental models of the nature of matter, both on their own and with teacher guidance. Interactions within peer and teacher-guided small group discussions were videotaped and audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed in a variety of ways. The key act of participants in both peer and teacher-guided groups was working with weak or incomplete ideas until they improved. How this was accomplished differed somewhat depending on the presence or absence of a teacher in the discussion. Teachers acted as a catalyst in discussions, prompting students to expand and clarify their thinking without providing direct information. Teacher-guided discussions were a more efficient means of attaining higher levels of reasoning and higher quality explanations, but peer discussions tended to be more generative and exploratory. Students' discourse was more varied within peer groups, and some peer groups attained higher levels of reasoning on their own. Ideas for using the results of these analyses to develop teachers' and students' collaborative scientific reasoning skills are presented.     

School engagement trajectories in adolescence: The role of peer likeability and popularity

This accelerated longitudinal study examined how peer status (i.e., peer likeability and popularity) is involved in adolescents' school engagement trajectories. A large sample of students was followed from Grades 7 to 11 (N = 1116; M_age = 13.79 years). Students' school engagement and peer status were assessed using self-reports and peer nominations, respectively. Latent growth curve modeling revealed that different engagement dimensions were differentially associated with peer status. Likeability was positively related to both behavioral and emotional engagement in Grade 7, but not to behavioral and emotional disaffection. In contrast, popularity was related to less behavioral engagement and more behavioral disaffection at the start of secondary education, but not to emotional engagement and disaffection. Moreover, students' aggressive behavior moderated the relation between popularity and behavioral engagement in Grade 7, denoting the risk of popularity in combination with average and high levels of aggression. Results suggest that adolescents' popularity may interfere with meeting academic demands in general and with showing engagement in particular.     

Our teacher likes you,so I like you: A social network approach to social referencing

A teacher is a social referent for peer liking and disliking when students adjust their evaluations of a peer based on their perceptions of teacher liking and disliking for this peer. The present study investigated social referencing as an intra-individual process that occurs over time, using stochastic actor-oriented modeling with RSiena. The co-evolution of peer-perceived teacher liking and disliking networks with peer liking and disliking networks was analyzed in 52 fifth-grade classes in the Netherlands, with 1370 students (M_age = 10.60). Results showed that when a student viewed the teacher to like a peer, this student would also like this peer. Regarding disliking, there was a stronger effect in the opposite direction, indicating that students' disliking a peer increased the likelihood that they would view the peer as disliked by the teacher as well. In sum, partial evidence for social referencing as an intra-individual process was found. For teachers this implies that the cues they provide regarding their liking of a student, and not necessarily their disliking, may affect individual peers' liking of this student.     

A Multilevel Analysis of the Effects of Parents, Teachers and Schools on Student Values

Do schools influence the values of the students who attend them? This study examines the influence of parents, peer groups, teachers and the schools on student values as assessed by the Schwartz Value Survey. A sample of students at Grade 12 was chosen from 11 South Australian secondary schools of a wide variety of types, and the students, their parents and their teachers completed the Value Survey, and students also provided sociodemographic information. The data were analysed using the HLM multilevel analysis program with respect to the four higher order value components, namely self-transcendence, self-enhancement, conservation and openness to change in order to identify student level and school level effects on the values held by the students. Results showed that sex of student, language background, the Christian involvement of the student, parental social position and the values held by parents and peer groups had much greater effects upon the students' values than the schools and their teachers. Further research involving a larger number of schools in a wider variety of settings is suggested to build on this exploratory study.     

Elementary School Counseling and Peer Relations

It was the purpose of this study to compare the effects of counseling and selected guidance techniques upon 5th and 6th grade elementary school students' peer relationships. Sociometric status and teacher ratings of their students' social skills were selected as criteria. Subjects were selected from students who were in the lower half of their classes in sociometric status and who indicated that they wanted to get along better with their peers. From each of 7 classrooms an equal number of subjects was randomly assigned to each of 3 treatment conditions: (1) counseling, (2) teacher-guidance, and (3) control. When the treatment conditions were compared, no statistically significant differences were found among them.     

Sharing and Confronting Propositions in Collaborative Inquiry Learning

This study investigates how collaborative knowledge construction within an inquiry learning environment can be assisted with scaffolds that aim to support students' hypothesis generation process. Sixty-six students on a university preparatory track worked collaboratively on a kinematics task. The instructional goal was to develop students' understanding of one-dimensional kinematics. All students completed a proposition test in which they indicated their individual opinions about the truth-value of specific propositions. Subsequently, students were coupled into dyads and assigned to one of three conditions: (a) a shared proposition scratchpad (expression builder), (b) a shared proposition table, and (c) a control condition. Students in the scratchpad condition were given an expression builder consisting of dropdown menus with pre-defined variables and relations. Students in the shared proposition table condition could combine individual opinions about the truth-value of a proposition into one shared proposition table that highlighted differences in opinion. Students in the control condition received no extra support related to propositions. Learning outcomes were assessed using a variety of pre- and posttests. The findings indicate that students supported with the shared proposition table showed significant gains for qualitative knowledge about relations. The number of unique propositions students discussed during the learning session was a significant predictor of learning gains. A more detailed analysis of students' interaction protocols suggests that students differed in their task perceptions, their interaction patterns, and their use of prior knowledge.     

Presentism,Redemption, and Moral Development

This paper explores what could justify some intuitive temporal asymmetries regarding redemption and the distribution of ills and goods throughout an agent's lifespan. After exposing the inadequacies of causal explanations – based on our differential ability to affect the future, but not the past – a metaphysical explanation is outlined in relation to three competing temporal‐ontological profiles of agents, and their varying accounts of a being's development. Only one of those conceptions of agents – supported by Presentism, the thesis that everything is present – offers an account justifying the intuitive temporal asymmetries. Finally, consequences are then drawn for the possibility of true redemption.     

Expanding Perspectives: Systemic Approaches to College Students Experiencing Depression

Family and peer systems significantly influence college students' mental health. Nevertheless, many clinicians use treatment models that fail to consider multiple factors from different systems of individuals' lives. The authors discuss research highlighting the influence of students' systems on their mental health, specifically depression. Next, they provide a brief introduction to systems theory and approaches and use 2 case illustrations to present systemic approaches for treating students with depression. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Development of the Japanese Version of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire – Elementary School (AEQ-ES-J)1,2

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a Japanese version of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire – Elementary School (AEQ-ES), which assesses enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom experienced by elementary school students within the settings of attending class, doing homework, and taking tests. Japanese elementary school students (n = 863 for the first survey; n = 332 for the second survey) participated in the questionnaire survey. The results showed that the psychometric properties of the Japanese AEQ-ES were comparable to those of the original version. Moreover, the results showed that students' achievement emotions were associated with their control and value appraisals, as well as their academic motivation, learning strategies, academic performance, and support from teachers. These results indicated that the Japanese version of the AEQ-ES was a good measure of elementary school students' emotions and supported the propositions of the control–value theory of achievement emotions.     

Elaborating the Connection between Social Class and Classism in College

Scholarship has documented the challenges that face college students of marginalized economic backgrounds, an issue that is relevant for Community Psychology because of the field's commitment to social justice. Community psychologists are concerned with facilitating access to social resources such as education across the full range of social identities. The current study builds on recent research that has identified the key role of classism in students' struggles. We developed a new measure of college student financial stress in order to investigate the relationship between indices of social class (financial stress, subjective social status, and parental education) and indices of classism (institutional, interpersonal, and citational). We also explored whether race or immigration status moderated these relationships in a sample of diverse students (N = 278). Findings show that students' current financial stress has the strongest relationship with classism, and immigration status moderates the exposure to citational classism. Specifically, we found evidence for perpetuation of classism among U.S. born students higher on the social class ladder. Implications for future research include the importance of considering multiple domains of social class, studying social class in a context‐specific way, and differentiating dimensions of classism. Findings also suggest that financial stress is an important focus in the work to support marginalized students, and that classist narratives need to be addressed among students of higher social class.     

Exploring multicultural classroom dynamics: A network analysis

Students' relationships with peers and teachers strongly influence their motivation to engage in learning activities. Ethnic minority students, however, are often victimized in schools, and their educational achievement lags behind that of their majority group counterparts. The aim of the present study was to explore teachers' multicultural approach within their classrooms as a possible factor of influence over students' peer relationships and motivation. We utilized the novel methodology of estimating psychological networks in order to map out the interactions between these constructs within multicultural classrooms. Results indicate that a multicultural approach is directly connected to student motivation for both ethnic majority and minority students. Social integration within peer groups, however, seems to be a possible mediator of this relationship for the ethnic minority students. Due to the hypothesis generating nature of the psychological network approach, a more thorough investigation of this generated mediation hypothesis is called for.     

THE EFFECTS OF RECIPROCAL PEER TUTORING AND GROUP CONTINGENCIES ON THE ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN

We evaluated the effects of reciprocal peer tutoring combined with group reinforcement contingencies on the arithmetic performance of 12 underachieving fifth-grade students. Results indicated that the intervention increased the students' arithmetic performance to a level indistinguishable from their classmates during treatment and 12-week follow-up phases. Pre-, post-, and follow-up sociometric data indicated that the students who participated in the treatment groups increased their amount of peer affiliation with other treatment group members.     

A Preliminary Analysis of Counseling Students' Attitudes Toward Counseling Women and Women of Color: Implications for Cultural Competency Training

In this study, 56 counseling students responded to peer‐generated presentations on counseling women and counseling women of color. Qualitative methodology was used to identify students' racial, ethnic, and gender attitudes in counseling contexts. Implications for cultural competency training are provided.     

College Students Use Implicit Personality Theory Instead of Safer Sex1

Many college students engage in high levels of unsafe sexual behavior that puts them at risk for HIV infection. To better understand the dynamics underlying college students' unsafe behavior, focus group discussions were conducted with 308 students (146 men and 162 women). The results showed that, instead of consistently using condoms, many college students use implicit personality theories to judge the riskiness of potential sexual partners. Specifically, partners whom college students know and like are not perceived to be risky, even if what students know about these individuals is irrelevant to HIV status. The students determine the riskiness of partners they do not know well based on superficial characteristics that are also generally unrelated to HIV status. Therefore, AIDS prevention interventions for college students must expose the ineffectiveness of the students' use of implicit personality theories to determine potential partners' riskiness, and the “know your partner” safer sex guideline should be abandoned.     

Comment les étudiants se perçoivent-ils en fonction de leur origine sociale ? Étude de contenu du stéréotype

The aim of the present research is to study the content of the stereotypes associated with students' high and low socio-economic status (SES), using free association, Brigham's percentages and McCauley & Stitt's diagnostic ratio methods. Independently of the method used, the results show that low SES students are somehow positively perceived. This is not the case with negative traits, in particular those related to intellectual abilities, which are differently associated to the stereotype depending on the method used. Additionaly, the results show that a stereotype of high SES students can be identified, for which intellectual and academic dimensions seem to be central. Limits of this study and particular interest regarding its implications (i.e. stereotype threat) are discussed.     

The relation of student behavior, peer status, race, and gender to decisions about school discipline using CHAID decision trees and regression modeling

Peer nominations and demographic information were collected from a diverse sample of 1493 elementary school participants to examine behavior (overt and relational aggression, impulsivity, and prosociality), context (peer status), and demographic characteristics (race and gender) as predictors of teacher and administrator decisions about discipline. Exploratory results using classification tree analyses indicated students nominated as average or highly overtly aggressive were more likely to be disciplined than others. Among these students, race was the most significant predictor, with African American students more likely to be disciplined than Caucasians, Hispanics, or Others. Among the students nominated as low in overt aggression, a lack of prosocial behavior was the most significant predictor. Confirmatory analysis using hierarchical logistic regression supported the exploratory results. Similarities with other biased referral patterns, proactive classroom management strategies, and culturally sensitive recommendations are discussed.