Monday, March 18, 2024

Transitional Kindergarten positive impacts

 Transitional Kindergarten (TK) is a relatively recent entrant into the U.S. early education landscape, combining features of public pre-K and regular kindergarten. This study provides the first estimates of the impact of Michigan’s TK program on 3rd grade test scores. 

The authors find that TK improves 3rd grade test scores by 0.29 (math) and 0.19 (English Language Arts) standard deviations relative to a counterfactual that includes other formal and informal early learning options. These impacts are notably large relative to the prior pre-K literature.

Spatial Determinants of Educational Access

This paper studies the extent to which educational access is determined by sorting based on heterogeneous preferences over school attributes, or local institutions that constrain residential location and school choice---such as school catchment areas and housing regulation, using data from a large school district in the United States. The model replicates the responses of house prices and school enrollment to quasi-experimental variation in school peer composition and school transportation provision. 

Low-income families prioritize proximity to schools while high-income families and families with high-skilled children place more value on school peer composition. The authors use the model to evaluate how the geography of neighborhood sorting influences the aggregate and distributional outcomes of a school-choice expansion (place-based) and a housing voucher (people-based) policy. 

The authors find that both policies result in net welfare losses, with only marginal improvements in school peer composition for the average low-income family. Although eligible families benefit from these policies, the negative impact falls on families who currently invest in their children's education by residing in expensive neighborhoods. Under both policies, higher-income families are less exposed to the inflow of low-income children into their schools, either because of their longer distance from target neighborhoods or because of the cost imposed by residential zoning regulation on voucher recipients.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Do school grades influence parental support?

 


Study into parents' support behavior in relation to school grades indicates that low-income families support children regardless of grades, while higher-income families prioritize aiding lower-grade children


The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) has researched parents' support behavior in relation to school grades. The study shows that low-income families support their children equally regardless of grades, while parents from higher income groups tend to give more support to children with lower grades. It also raises the question of whether these patterns contribute to low social mobility, as parents of high-achieving children from lower social classes do not have the same resources and strategies at their disposal as parents of low-achieving children from higher social classes.

Whether a child brings home good or poor grades may influence the extent to which parents support their children. Much of the research to date has assumed that parents with a higher socio-economic status (SES) are more likely to support the child with poorer grades than the child with good grades. In low SES families, on the other hand, it has been assumed that only children with the best chances of academic success are supported. A recent study by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), however, does not find support for this theory, at least in families with lower incomes.

Philipp Dierker, a PhD student at the MPIDR and the University of Helsinki, along with his co-author Martin Diewald (Bielefeld University), used data from the German TwinLife study to investigate how parents' behavior towards their children changes as a function of academic performance. "Unlike previous research, we did not focus on children's cognitive abilities, but instead we looked at how parents support their children depending on how well they perform academically by evaluating parents' reactions to their children's school grades," explains Dierker.

Twin pairs serve as a data set

Data from the first three surveys of the TwinLife study were used in the research. The results of the cohorts born in 2003 and 2004 were analyzed for both identical and fraternal same-sex twins. At the time of the first survey, the children were on average 11 years old. By the third interview, they were on average 13 years old. "It is particularly valuable that the children were asked directly about the kind of support they received from their parents. In this way, we could rule out the possibility that parents are exaggerating their own support for their children so as not appear to be neglecting their children" says Dierker. Specifically, the students were asked how their parents supported them in the following areas:  

  • With homework and communication with school
  • Encouragement and expectations
  • Encouraging cognitive development (e.g. by reading or making music together)

Over three surveys, the researchers assessed how these three forms of support changed in relation to school performance. "The study of twin pairs does have some potential limitations. For example, there may be systematic differences in how parents of twins and parents of non-twins interact with their children. Previous research, however, has not established that twins are treated differently than siblings by their immediate family, so we believe that our results are generalizable beyond twin families," Dierker explains.

One parent group supports both children equally

"We conclude from our results that parents in families with a lower socio-economic status do not make any distinction when it comes to supporting their children. Our study reverses the assumption that families with a lower social status only support children with the best chances of advancement," says the Rostock researcher. However, the research does show that in families with a higher socio-economic status, parents do in fact provide more support for the child with the poorer grades. This may be because of a fear of social decline which is a stronger motivator in families with a higher social status. "Here we see more help with homework and communication with the school, and more expectations and encouragement. We assume that highly educated parents also try to encourage their possibly less gifted child through forms of support that are not directly aimed at promoting cognitive skills".  Without future surveys this study cannot show whether this support is effective and whether these efforts are successful.

Influence on social mobility

These studies are important additions to the study of social mobility. "High-achieving children from lower social classes do not have the same resources, networks and support as children from higher social classes who are protected from social decline by their parents. The question remains to what extent these differences in parental support contribute to low social mobility for the next generation," says Dierker.

Friday, March 15, 2024

High schools fail to understand and support the college, career and aspirations for Black and Latinx Boys


Carey offers an in-depth case study of three Black and two Latinx boys in 11th grade at a linguistically and ethnically diverse urban school, which he calls Metropolitan Collegiate Public Charter School (Metro). Over the course of an academic year, Carey interviewed the students about their school’s college-going culture and how it influenced their conceptions of their postsecondary future selves. 

Metro employed what Carey calls a “college-over-everything-else” culture. College posters adorned the school walls year-round, students regularly attended college and recruitment fairs, teachers wore the insignia of their alma maters every week and students were required to apply to colleges.

Carey found that Metro prioritized the “what” and “how” of college access—answering “What is a college degree?” and “How do I secure one?”—but paid little attention to the “why” or how college would help a student fulfill his future ambitions. Answering the “why” question was especially important for this group of Black and Latinx boys; many of them would be the first in their families to attend and graduate from college. 

Carey’s study also found that, while some students had clear career ambitions, their ability to align college majors with these careers varied. And, despite the school’s college-going culture, some students did not have a clear plan for a future career. 

Finally, Carey found that the participants in his study struggled to envision their lives after the age of 23, around the time when they graduate from college. The study participants generally envisioned a modest life, characterized by minimal stress, financial stability and personal satisfaction. But, students like Perdido were not able to offer many specifics. For Perdido, a “good life,” was a “steady life,” free from financial worries. Plans for civic engagement, hobbies, volunteerism and even joyous pursuits were all absent from Perdido’s vision of his future life.   

Study of long-term student engagement challenges “one great teacher” narrative


A positive relationship with a teacher at an early age may help children to feel more engaged with school, but not necessarily in the long term, new research shows.

The finding comes from a University of Cambridge study of more than 3,600 young people in Australia, using data gathered at several points between the ages of eight and 15. The students’ levels of school engagement – meaning their interest in school and willingness to learn – fluctuated during this period, especially during the pivotal transition from primary to secondary education.

While depictions of teaching in popular culture sometimes imply that one teacher can transform a student’s school career, the results of the study suggest that student engagement patterns are more nuanced and are likely to require a sustained and collective effort to build positive relationships both between teachers and students, and students and their peers.

The study found that any long-term effects from students having a strong relationship with their teacher early in primary school were, at best, slight. Conversely, the finding implies that every teacher can potentially make a positive difference to a student’s commitment and sense of wellbeing in school, regardless of how disengaged they may have felt in the past, because that engagement is constantly prone to change.

The study was led by Ioannis Katsantonis, a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

 “Even if a teacher works incredibly hard to help a child in primary school, that does not necessarily mean that five or 10 years later, you are going to find a student who is settled, happy and committed to learning,” he said. “Some aspects of student engagement do remain stable but there is also a large amount of fluctuation. This is particularly true during the primary to secondary transition.”

Relatively few studies have explored how student engagement develops during early adolescence. Some of those which have, however, suggest that in the first years of secondary school, student engagement levels often decline.

The Cambridge study sought to understand more about how these engagement patterns change. It also examined how far they are linked both to students’ earlier interactions with teachers at primary school, and their sense of ‘belonging’ in secondary school: how far they feel accepted, included, and respected by teachers and classmates alike.

The data for the study came from a sample of 3,643 participants in the ‘Growing up in Australia’ study, a long-term project which is following the development of thousands of people born in Australia between March 1999 and February 2000.

This includes survey-based information about the participants’ school engagement levels, gathered both when they were aged 10/11, at the end of primary school; and when they were 12/13, at the start of secondary school. It also contains measures of school belonging at age 12/13, and information from teacher surveys, measuring the strength of their relationships with the same students at an earlier stage, when they were eight or nine.

In addition, the researchers examined whether engagement affects later academic achievement, using the scores in Australian National Assessment Programme – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests, taken when the students were 14/15.

Overall, the researcher found that between ages 10/11 years and 12/13 years, the students could be clustered into three fairly clear groupings: those who were “mostly disengaged”, those who seemed “moderately engaged”, and those who were “highly engaged”. A substantial proportion, 15%, were mostly disengaged at age 10/11, and this rose slightly to 18% as they started secondary school. Boys were more likely to be in this group than girls.

More surprisingly, however, many students transitioned to different groups between the two time points. About 43% of students who were mostly disengaged at age 10/11 changed groups by the time they were 12/13; 34% of the moderately engaged group, and 49% of the highly engaged students, also switched categories. This shows that engagement fluctuates considerably between primary and secondary school.

There was no evidence that any significant positive effects on engagement deriving from students having a strong bond with their teacher at age eight or nine persisted  as they got older. In fact, the study found this had no impact on student engagement at age 10/11, and only a very weak effect on preventing disengagement at age 12/13.

A sense of general belonging within the school community at age 12/13 was strongly linked to higher engagement at the same age, however. In other words, when students feel that they are respected and valued not just by their teachers, but also by their peers, they are more likely to show greater positivity and commitment.

The study also provides some evidence that students who feel more engaged at the start of secondary school experience long-term academic benefits. Those who fell into the moderately or highly engaged categories at age 12/13 generally performed better in standardised numeracy, writing, and spelling tests two years later.

This relationship between engagement and academic outcomes points to the need to ensure that the relational ‘school climate’ – an umbrella term referring to the respect, values and relationships that define students’ experiences at school – is consistently positive and inclusive, Katsantonis said. 

“One of the most important things to grasp about young people’s school engagement is that continuity is not guaranteed,” he added. “Teachers matter significantly to children, but they do so at every stage. Continual and consistent attention to the school environment is vital.”

The findings are reported in the journal, Australian Educational Researcher.

 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Study tracks shifts in student mental health during college


A four-year study by Dartmouth researchers captures the most in-depth data yet on how college students' self-esteem and mental health fluctuates during their four years in academia, identifying key populations and stressors that the researchers say administrators could target to improve student well-being.

The study also provides among the first real-time accounts of how the coronavirus pandemic affected students' behavior and mental health. The stress and uncertainty of COVID-19 resulted in long-lasting behavioral changes that persisted as a "new normal" even as the pandemic diminished, including feeling more stressed, less socially engaged, and sleeping more.

The researchers tracked more than 200 Dartmouth undergraduates in the classes of 2021 and 2022 for all four years of college. Students volunteered to let a specially developed app called StudentLife tap into the sensors that are built into smartphones. The app cataloged their daily physical and social activity, how long they slept, their location and travel, the time they spent on their phone, and how often they listened to music or videos. Students also filled out weekly behavioral surveys, and selected students gave post-study interviews.

The study—which is the longest mobile-sensing study ever conducted—is published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. The researchers will present it at the Association of Computing Machinery's UbiComp/ISWC 2024 conference in Melbourne, Australia, in October. The team made their anonymized data set publicly available—including self-reports, surveys, and phone-sensing and brain-imaging data—to help advance research into the mental health of students during their college years.

Andrew Campbell, the paper's senior author and Dartmouth's Albert Bradley 1915 Third Century Professor of Computer Science, said that the study's extensive data reinforces the importance of college and university administrators across the country being more attuned to how and when students' mental well-being changes during the school year.

"For the first time, we've produced granular data about the ebb and flow of student mental health. It's incredibly dynamic—there's nothing that's steady state through the term, let alone through the year," he said. "These sorts of tools will have a tremendous impact on projecting forward and developing much more data-driven ways to intervene and respond exactly when students need it most."

First-year and female students are especially at risk for high anxiety and low self-esteem, the study finds. Among first-year students, self-esteem dropped to its lowest point in the first weeks of their transition from high school to college but rose steadily every semester until it was about 10% higher by graduation.

"We can see that students came out of high school with a certain level of self-esteem that dropped off to the lowest point of the four years. Some said they started to experience 'imposter syndrome' from being around other high-performing students," Campbell said. "As the years progress, though, we can draw a straight line from low to high as their self-esteem improves. I think we would see a similar trend class over class. To me, that's a very positive thing."

Female students—who made up 60% of study participants—experienced on average 5% greater stress levels and 10% lower self-esteem than male students. More significantly, the data show that female students tended to be less active, with male students walking 37% more often.

Sophomores were 40% more socially active compared to their first year, the researchers report. But these students also reported feeling 13% more stressed than during their first year as their workload increased, they felt pressure to socialize, or as first-year social groups dispersed.

One student in a sorority recalled that having pre-arranged activities "kind of adds stress as I feel like I should be having fun because everyone tells me that it is fun." Another student noted that after the first year," students have more access to the whole campus and that is when you start feeling excluded from things."

In a novel finding, the researchers identify an "anticipatory stress spike" of 17% experienced in the last two weeks of summer break. While still lower than mid-academic year stress, the spike was consistent across different summers.

In post-study interviews, some students pointed to returning to campus early for team sports. Others specified reconnecting with family and high school friends during their first summer home, saying they felt "a sense of leaving behind the comfort and familiarity of these long-standing friendships" as the break ended, the researchers report.

"This is a foundational study," said Subigya Nepal, first author of the study and a PhD candidate in Campbell's research group. "It has more real-time granular data than anything we or anyone else has provided before. We don't know yet how it will translate to campuses nationwide, but it can be a template for getting the conversation going."

The depth and accuracy of the study data suggest that mobile-sensing software could eventually give universities the ability to create proactive mental-health policies specific to certain student populations and times of year, Campbell said.

For example, a paper Campbell's research group published in 2022 based on StudentLife data showed that first-generation students experienced lower self-esteem and higher levels of depression than other students throughout their four years of college.

"We will be able to look at campus in much more nuanced ways than waiting for the results of an annual mental health study and then developing policy," Campbell said. "We know that Dartmouth is a small and very tight-knit campus community. But if we applied these same methods to a college with similar attributes, I believe we would find very similar trends."

 

Weathering the pandemic

When students returned home at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the researchers found that self-esteem actually increased during the pandemic by 5% overall and by another 6% afterward when life returned closer to what it was before. One student suggested in their interview that getting older came with more confidence. Others indicated that being home led to them spending more time with friends talking on the phone, on social media, or streaming movies together.

The data show that phone usage—measured by the duration a phone was unlocked—indeed increased by nearly 33 minutes, or 19%, during the pandemic, while time spent in physical activity dropped by 52 minutes, or 27%. By 2022, phone usage fell from its pandemic peak to just above pre-pandemic levels, while engagement in physical activity had recovered to exceed the pre-pandemic period by three minutes.

Despite reporting higher self-esteem, students' feelings of stress increased by more than 10% during the pandemic. Since the pandemic, stress fell by less than 2% of its pandemic peak, indicating that the experience had a lasting impact on student well-being, the researchers report.

In early 2021, as students returned to campus, the reunion with friends and community was tempered by an overwhelming concern of the still-rampant coronavirus. "There was the first outbreak in winter 2021 and that was terrifying," one student recalls. Another student adds: "You could be put into isolation for a long time even if you did not have COVID. Everyone was afraid to contact-trace anyone else in case they got mad at each other."

Female students were especially concerned about the coronavirus, on average 13% more than male students. "Even though the girls might have been hanging out with each other more, they are more aware of the impact," one female student reported. "I actually had COVID and exposed some friends of mine. All the girls that I told tested as they were worried. They were continually checking up to make sure that they did not have it and take it home to their family."

Students still learning remotely had social levels 16% higher than students on campus, who engaged in activity an average of 10% less often than when they were learning from home. However, on-campus students used their phones 47% more often. When interviewed after the study, these students reported spending extended periods of time video-calling or streaming movies with friends and family.

Social activity and engagement had not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels by the end of the study in June 2022, recovering by a little less than 3% after a nearly 10% drop during the pandemic. Similarly, the pandemic seems to have made students stick closer to home, with their distance traveled cut by nearly half during the pandemic and holding at that level in the time since.

Campbell and several of his fellow researchers are now developing a smartphone app known as MoodCapture that uses artificial intelligence paired with facial-image processing software to reliably detect the onset of depression before the user even knows something is wrong.

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Explicit socioemotional learning can have a key role in PE lessons

 

Teachers might be more motivated to help students engage with their emotions and build their resilience when this work is part of lessons, rather than as an add-on intervention, a new study has found.

Using socioemotional learning to support children to develop communication skills, handle stress and accept failure works best as part of everyday teaching - rather than when it is not organically linked to the school life and curriculum, reseachers have said.

The study, by Eleni Dimitrellou, George Koutsouris and Alison Pearson from the University of Exeter’s School of Education, is published in the journal Pastoral Care in Education.

Dr Dimitrellou said: “There is a need to explicitly introduce socioemotional oriented teaching in secondary education to ensure young adolescents enjoy positive short-term and long-term outcomes linked with positive attitudes toward self and others, positive behaviour, wellbeing and academic success.”

Dr Koutsouris said: “Teachers felt a curriculum based around social and emotional learning had a place not only in primary where some think it might be more suited but in secondary schools as well. These are skills learned in a developmental continuum where students need to cultivate some basic skills first before being in the position to develop more complex ones.

“Teenagers are more likely to experience emotional challenges, and even if they are equipped with effective strategies to regulate their emotions in primary education they should be able to access this form of support in secondary school.”

Academics worked in partnership with one mainstream secondary school in the South West of England for two months during the summer term in 2022. Two teacher trainees and one qualified PE teacher designed, evaluated, and planned a sequence of four lessons focusing on integrating socioemotional-oriented teaching in PE using a lesson study approach, originating in Japan.

As part of the study, PE teachers worked together with students in a range of activities. In one case the PE teachers taught students team building by asking them to work together in pairs to climb a wall while one of them was blindfolded. At the start of the activity, students had to discuss and agree on a strategy to meet this target. In the end, they had to reflect on their abilities and discuss what went well and wrong and how things could have been done differently.

Two distinct views among participating teachers emerged. One one hand, there was a view that the core structure and content of the subject should remain unchanged. Experienced teachers involved in this discussion questioned the introduction of socioemotional oriented teaching in PE lessons, expressing concerns that it might prevent children from learning physical development skills.

However, teacher trainees seemed more open to recognising the benefits that explicitly teaching social and emotional skills might bring to students. There was the belief that students who struggle, especially emotionally and socially, might reap more benefits from such an approach. This might reflect how emotions and mental health are more openly discussed by younger generations.