The effect of family processes on school achievement as moderated by socioeconomic context

This longitudinal study examined a model of early school achievement in reading and math, as it varies by socioeconomic context, using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. A conceptual model was tested that included features of family stress, early parenting, and school readiness, through both a single-group analysis and also a multiple-group analysis. Latent profile analysis was used to identify subgroups of more advantaged and less advantaged families. Family stress and parenting were shown to operate differently depending on the socioeconomic context, whereas child-based school readiness characteristics were shown to operate similarly across socieodemographic contexts. Implications for intervention are discussed.     

Implicit theories moderate the relation of positive future fantasies to academic outcomes

We hypothesized and observed that the degree to which students endorsed entity theories - the view that intelligence is fixed rather than malleable - attenuated the affective benefits and exacerbated the achievement drawbacks of positive fantasies in the academic domain. Positive fantasies only predicted low anger and anxiety for schoolchildren who did not strongly endorse entity theories (Study 1), and positive fantasies only predicted poor final school grades for vocational students who did strongly endorse entity theories (Study 2). An experiment indicated that for university students with stronger entity theories, positive fantasies demanded relatively little attention (Study 3), suggesting that positive fantasies obscure the opportunity for the preemptive self-regulation which promotes successful performance.     

Évaluation de l’orthographe des élèves dysphasiques en situation de narration communicative : variations selon le type d’orthographe,lexicale versus morphologique

IntroductionThe overall goal of the study was to draw, in French language, a complete picture of spelling abilities in young students with SLI, enrolling in ordinary classes.ObjectiveThe main aim was to show how the developmental trajectories of lexical spelling and the morphological spelling are different when a large age span is observed (7 to 18 years old).MethodsThe spelling abilities were evaluated through a narrative communicative. Two groups of students with SLI (7–11 years and 12–18 years) were compared with two groups of typical students matched on chronological age.ResultsThe lexical spelling was acquired before the morphological spelling for SLI and typical participants. At 12–18 of age, the SLI participants did not produce more lexical errors than the typical group. For the lexical spelling, at 7–11 years, the SLI participants had a specific difficulty with the segmentation of the words: they produced words that do not exist in the language and which by definition have no morphological markers.ConclusionThe SLI participants need more time to learn than the typical participants. At 7–11 years, before learning of morphology, they must be able to control segmentation the segmentation of words. The low number of morphological errors in the school SLI group of 7–11 years is not necessarily a sign of difficulty. The increase in the number of errors at 12–18 years is the sign that this problem has been exceeded and that the learning of the written morphological markers can really begin.     

Children’s effortful control and academic achievement: do relational peer victimization and classroom participation operate as mediators?

Given that early academic achievement is related to numerous developmental outcomes, understanding processes that promote early success in school is important. This study was designed to clarify how students’ (N = 291; M age in fall of kindergarten = 5.66 years, SD = 0.39 year) effortful control, relational peer victimization, and classroom participation relate to achievement, as students progress from kindergarten to first grade. Effortful control and achievement were assessed in kindergarten, classroom participation and relational peer victimization were assessed in the fall of first grade, and achievement was reassessed in the spring of first grade. Classroom participation, but not relational peer victimization, mediated relations between effortful control and first grade standardized and teacher-rated achievement, controlling for kindergarten achievement. Findings suggest that aspects of classroom participation, such as the ability to work independently, may be useful targets of intervention for enhancing academic achievement in young children.     

Responsabilidad social universitaria: influencia de valores y empatía en la autoatribución de comportamientos socialmente responsables

Training socially responsible professionals at university level has become a UNESCO-recognized mission. This paper reviews the study of Academic Social Responsibility from the Psychology standpoint, and develops a novel analysis approach for assessing the impact of higher education in acquiring social responsibility behaviors, based on a MIMIC analysis. Three scales were administered, based on an accidental non-probabilistic sampling and a transversal survey research: human values, multidimensional empathy and self-attribution of socially responsible behaviors. The sample included 860 students from Ibero-American Universities. The results show that university students display a high frequency of socially responsible behaviors but not a more prosocial intentionality in these behaviors. As regards frequency scale of socially responsible behavior, influence is evident of value dimensions, such as conservation and openness to change with the subscales of empathy perspective taking and personal distress. Regarding the intentionality scale, the variables that contribute to the self-attribution of socially responsible behavior are value dimensions: conservation and self-transcendence, along with the subscales of empathy appertaining to fantasy. Conclusion This research provides information on the psychological variables that have implications for humans to be socially responsible, which will allow the University to respond to the impact of training qualified professionals with great respect to their duty in the society.     

The “impact factor style of thinking”: A new theoretical framework

Over the last few years, university policy in developed countries has placed too much emphasis on assessing publications on the basis of the impact factor. Any scientific material that has not been published in a journal indexed in the Journal Citation Reports is academically irrelevant. Hence, researchers strive hard to publish in such journals. Failure to achieve this means not having a successful career or receiving any academic recognition. A thorough analysis of the effects of this phenomenon on the researcher community leads to the conclusion that the overestimation of the impact factor is likely to cause disappointment among many researchers. Researchers only have two options: adopting a politically correct behavior, that is, following the “impact factor style of thinking”, or accepting the futility of their research regardless of its relevance. This is an example of the involvement of university policy habitus obsessed impact index. O policy impact index is accepted, or is doomed to academic ostracism, and exclusion from participation in all university policy.     

Dispositional Mindfulness,Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms and Academic Burnout in Chinese Adolescents Following a Tornado: The Role of Mediation through Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy

Limited research has been conducted on dispositional mindfulness, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and academic burnout in Chinese adolescents following a tornado. The present study investigated the ways in which dispositional mindfulness is related to PTSD symptoms and academic burnout in Chinese adolescents following a tornado by considering the role of regulatory emotional self-efficacy. A total of 431 Chinese adolescents (mean age: 14.75 years) who had experienced a severe tornado 9 months prior to this study were recruited for this study. The results indicated that our model fit the data well [χ²/df = 2.774, CFI = 0.952, TLI = 0.934, RMSEA (90% CI) = 0.064 (0.051–0.077)], and revealed that regulatory emotional self-efficacy partially mediates the relationships between dispositional mindfulness and PTSD symptoms and academic burnout, respectively. The clinical implications and limitations of our research, and recommendations for future research, are discussed in this paper.     

An Evaluation of the Word Triad Method for Monitoring Spelling Progress

Although spelling skill progress has typically been studied within the context of students' responses to written story starters (Deno, Marsten, & Mirkin, 1982; Fuchs & Fuchs, 2011; Hosp, Hosp, & Howell, 2007; Shinn & Shinn, 2002), there has been little research conducted within a curriculum-based measurement framework that has studied spelling progress monitoring on a weekly basis throughout an entire school year. The authors evaluated spelling progress using word triads, defined as a group of 3 words (with the same number of letters) that have a similar phonetic or morphological structure. Successful spelling of word triads as the unit of analysis has the potential to be more useful diagnostically to teachers than successful spelling of single words as the unit of analysis. An alternating series of three 15-word spelling tests were administered weekly to 10 third- and fourth-grade classrooms in the same school district throughout the school year for 8 rounds (1 round = 3 weeks of different but phonetically and/or morphologically similar word lists). Results indicate steady progress throughout the school year in the correct spelling of word triads (despite teacher reporting of no explicit spelling instruction in classrooms using in the words employed in the study). Correlations between the number of correctly spelled word triads with standard scores from a group-administered communication arts test were significant and comparable to alternate spelling test scoring methods. The authors conclude with limitations of the study and implications for practitioners.     

Extracurricular Participation and Course Performance in the Middle Grades: A Study of Low-Income,Urban Youth

The transition to middle/junior high school is associated with declines in students’ academic performance, especially among low‐income, urban youth. Developmental psychologists posit such declines are due to a poor fit between the needs of early adolescents—industry, identity, and autonomy—and the environment of their new schools. Extracurricular participation during these years may act as a buffer for youth, providing a setting for development outside the classroom. The current study examines participation within and across activity settings among low‐income, urban youth in New York City over this transition. Using the Adolescent Pathways Project data, this study explores how such participation relates to course performance. We find that a large percentage of youth are minimally or uninvolved in extracurricular activities during these years; that participation varies within youth across time; and that the association between participation and course performance varies by activity setting. Youth who participate frequently in community or athletic settings or have high participation in two or more settings are found to have higher GPAs in the year in which they participate and youth who participate frequently in the religious setting are found to have lower GPAs. High participation in more than two settings may be detrimental.     

Internalizing symptomatology and academic achievement: Bi-directional prospective relations in adolescence

Prior research has documented negative, concurrent relations between internalizing symptomatology and academic achievement among adolescents. The present study provided the first rigorous, longitudinal examination of the bi-directional, prospective relations between adolescent internalizing symptomatology and academic achievement. One hundred and thirty adolescents reported depression and anxiety annually from 6th through 10th grades, and GPA records were obtained annually from schools. Results showed that (a) high depression and anxiety at the beginning of a school year predicted lower GPA during that school year, and (b) low GPA in any school year predicted higher depression and anxiety at the beginning of the following school year. These findings underscore the tight link between adolescent internalizing symptomatology and academic achievement.