A randomized controlled trial of a smartphone-based well-being training in public school system employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 114(8), Nov 2022, 1895-1911; doi:10.1037/edu0000739Whereas the extraordinary pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic on student mental health have received considerable attention, less attention has been placed on educator well-being. School system employees play a vital role in society, and teacher levels of well-being are associated with the educational outcomes of young people. We extend extant research on the prevalence and correlates of educator distress during the pandemic by reporting on a pragmatic randomized wait-list controlled trial (N = 662; 64% teachers) of an innovative menta...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - March 17, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A randomized controlled trial of a smartphone-based well-being training in public school system employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whereas the extraordinary pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic on student mental health have received considerable attention, less attention has been placed on educator well-being. School system employees play a vital role in society, and teacher levels of well-being are associated with the educational outcomes of young people. We extend extant research on the prevalence and correlates of educator distress during the pandemic by reporting on a pragmatic randomized wait-list controlled trial (N = 662; 64% teachers) of an innovative mental health promotion strategy implemented during the pandemic; a free 4-week smartphone-base...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - March 17, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Do jigsaw classrooms improve learning outcomes? Five experiments and an internal meta-analysis.
“Jigsaw” is a peer learning procedure derived from social interdependence theory, which suggests that individuals positively linked by a common goal can benefit from positive and promotive social interactions (Aronson & Patnoe, 2011). Although jigsaw has often been presented as an efficient way to promote learning, empirical research testing its effect on learning remains relatively scarce. The goal of the present research is to test the hypothesis that a jigsaw intervention would yield a meaningful effect size (d = .40) on learning outcomes, in 5 randomized experiments conducted among sixth-graders. The jigsaw interve...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - March 17, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Can small changes matter? Reducing cognitive load in educational media supports low-income preschoolers’ vocabulary learning.
Preschoolers can learn vocabulary from educational videos, but children from low-income backgrounds often do not learn as effectively as their higher income peers. We investigated whether adding attention-directing cues to media (Study 1) and slowing the pacing of media (Study 2) supported vocabulary learning for preschoolers from low-income homes. We hypothesized that children would benefit from the reduced top-down processing demands in Study 1 (N = 80), and from the additional processing time in Study 2 (N = 70). Both studies utilized counterbalanced within-subjects designs with each child participating in both the expe...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - March 17, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The interplay of motivation and volitional control in predicting the achievement of learning goals: An intraindividual perspective.
Self-regulated learning can be conceptualized as the pursuit of learning goals by means of self-initiated control processes. Models of self-regulated learning postulate that goal-directed processes unfold within individuals from motivational states through volitional-control processes to goal achievement. Thus far, this hypothesis has mostly been tested with cross-sectional data, which cannot capture intraindividual processes. In contrast, the present study used a combination of intensive longitudinal questionnaire data and logfile data to capture intraindividual processes that lead to goal achievement. We tested medical s...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - March 17, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Pushing the boundaries of education research: A multidimensional approach to characterizing preschool neighborhoods and their relations with child outcomes.
This study uses novel administrative data to characterize the institutional resources, indicators of social organization, and structural determinants of development for the neighborhoods surrounding 195 preschools across nine U.S. cities. Using latent profile analysis, preschool neighborhoods were grouped into four profiles reflecting different combinations of community characteristics. These neighborhood profiles predicted low-income preschoolers’ (N = 1,230; M age = 4.18 years) language/literacy, executive function, and approaches to learning at the end of the 2009 or 2010 academic year, with particularly positive outc...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - February 24, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Learning to read in environments with high risk of illiteracy: The role of bilingualism and bilingual education in supporting reading.
In this study, we assessed primary school children’s (N = 830) French and local language (Abidji, Attié, Baoulé, Bété) phonological awareness, vocabulary, and oral language comprehension skills and French reading skills. Further, we explored differences in quality between monolingual French and bilingual local language–French schools that may contribute to differences in children’s language and literacy performance. We found that bilingual local language–French homes were associated with better language outcomes than local language–only homes, reflecting advantages associated with early bilingual exposure. On...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - February 24, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Initial and evolving perceptions of value and cost of engaging in undergraduate science course work and effects on achievement and persistence.
Undergraduates often report problematic perceptions of low value and high cost in their initial science courses. These beliefs often predict poor performance and retention, and also strengthen over time. Few studies have examined how profiles of value and cost beliefs emerge, and fewer track students’ transitions across profiles over a course and their implications for learning outcomes. We observed undergraduates’ value and cost perceptions for a science course at the beginning, middle, and end of a semester; fit latent profiles and latent transitions; and examined both how students’ demographics predicted profile m...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - February 14, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Working memory and numeracy training for children with math learning difficulties: Evidence from a large-scale implementation in the classroom.
Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 114(8), Nov 2022, 1866-1880; doi:10.1037/edu0000732We explored the challenges, limitations, and potential effectiveness of a large-scale computerized working memory and numeracy intervention in the classroom with children at risk of mathematical learning disabilities (n = 428, Mage = 83.85 months, 41% female). Children were assigned to four different treatment protocols (working memory [WM], working memory plus numeracy [NWM], numeracy [NUM], and active control [AC]) that were implemented as part of normally scheduled class activities for 1 year. Wide variability in training exposure ...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - February 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Working memory and numeracy training for children with math learning difficulties: Evidence from a large-scale implementation in the classroom.
We explored the challenges, limitations, and potential effectiveness of a large-scale computerized working memory and numeracy intervention in the classroom with children at risk of mathematical learning disabilities (n = 428, Mage = 83.85 months, 41% female). Children were assigned to four different treatment protocols (working memory [WM], working memory plus numeracy [NWM], numeracy [NUM], and active control [AC]) that were implemented as part of normally scheduled class activities for 1 year. Wide variability in training exposure highlighted the challenges of implementing an ecologically valid large-scale classroom int...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - February 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Supporting climate change understanding with novel data, estimation instruction, and epistemic prompts.
Texts presenting novel numerical data can shift learners’ attitudes and conceptions about controversial science topics. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying this conceptual change. The purpose of this study was to investigate two potential mechanisms that underlie learning from novel data: numerical estimation skills and epistemic cognition. This research investigated combinations of two treatments—a numerical estimation and epistemic cognition intervention—that were designed to enhance people’s ability to make sense of key numbers about climate change when integrated into an existing interventi...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - February 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Resilience, not grit, predicts college student retention following academic probation.
Malleable, noncognitive psychological factors such as grit and resilience are seen as critical for academic success and have garnered significant attention from researchers and policymakers. However, there is nontrivial overlap between these two constructs, and it remains unclear whether grit, resilience, or both, constitute the optimal target(s) for retention research and intervention development. The purpose of this study was to compare how grit and resilience predict retention in a diverse, multicollege sample of U.S. undergraduates (N = 4,023) with and without a history of academic probation. When looking across all st...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - February 7, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Supporting vocabulary development within a multitiered system of support: Evaluating the efficacy of supplementary kindergarten vocabulary intervention.
We evaluated the impact of a supplemental, small-group kindergarten vocabulary intervention designed to reinforce content taught in core classroom instruction implemented within a multitiered system of support (MTSS) framework. Kindergarten teachers implemented a published vocabulary program with all their students during whole-class instruction for 15 min to 20 min per day over the course of the year. We identified students at risk for language and learning difficulties who scored below the 30th percentile on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–4 (PPVT-4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007) and randomly assigned them in clusters to eith...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - February 7, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
