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This research addresses the issue of how to support students' representational fluency—the ability to create, move within, translate across, and derive meaning from external representations of mathematical ideas. The context of solving linear equations in a combined computer algebra system (CAS) and paper‐and‐pencil classroom environment is targeted as a rich and pressing context to study this issue. We report results of a collaborative teaching experiment in which we designed for and tested a functions approach to solving equations with ninth‐grade algebra students, and link to results of semi‐structured interviews with students before and after the experiment. Results of analyzing the five‐week experiment include instructional supports for students' representational fluency in solving linear equations: (a) sequencing the use of graphs, tables, and CAS feedback prior to formal symbolic transpositions, (b) connecting solutions to equations across representations, and (c) encouraging understanding of equations as equivalence relations that are sometimes, always, or never true. While some students' change in sophistication of representational fluency helps substantiate the productive nature of these supports, other students' persistent struggles raise questions of how to address the diverse needs of learners in complex learning environments involving multiple tool‐based representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the 2017 Navigating Research Report "How Academic Users Understand, Discover and Utilize Reference Resources" of the Oxford University Press related to student engagement with easily available and library-acquired reference materials. Topics discussed include 75 percent of free library-acquired reference materials used by students, students from English-speaking regions use free available study materials and student behavior.

The successful publication of peer reviewed academic journal articles is an essential achievement for early career researchers (ECRs) seeking to establish themselves in their profession. However, this journey can pose several significant challenges for ECRs. We use an autoethnographic approach that draws deeply on our lived experience as ECRs to capture our recent and current experiences of negotiating the academic journal article publication journey to explore the tensions, contradictions, and benefits encountered in the journey. We critically examine challenges we experienced in choosing a target journal and negotiating the follow‐up process; undertaking revisions; and our experiences of limitations and possibilities in peer review and editorial support. While the peer review journal writing process has played a significant role in supporting us to become more effective ECRs, we also highlight challenges we faced negotiating ethical quandaries in this space, as well as illustrate how our preconceptions of a simple publication journey were confounded by subsequent experience of the complex realities of the space. We also suggest that educational interventions are indicated to provide ECRs support in foundational knowledge about what constitutes valuable revisions, an effective paper, and the scope of issues that can be addressed to make a paper more effective, with reference to the possibility of academic mentoring to support this need. Finally, we explore our findings in light of the tensions imposed by the relative inexperience and lack of power yielded by ECRs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of legal access to marijuana on student performance stemming from a voter‐approved initiative legalizing marijuana for those 21 and older in the State of Washington. Using panel data from a medium‐sized public university, we use a within‐student and within‐class estimator to show that legalization reduces students' grades, with an effect size about one‐half the impact of gaining legal access to alcohol. Consistent with how marijuana consumption affects cognitive functioning, we find that students' grades fall furthest in courses that require more quantitative skills. These effects are largely driven by men and low performers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how students' network size, distance, prestige, and connections to influential individuals impact academic performance. Larger and closer networks facilitate information exchange, but may also increase distractions that decrease productivity. We resolve this ambiguity using administrative data from a business school that features random assignment of students to multiple overlapping sets of peers, allowing us to calculate degree, closeness, eigenvector, and Katz‐Bonacich centrality for each node. We find that increasing closeness centrality within the network negatively affects student performance measured by grade point average, suggesting that synergy reduction and information processing costs outweigh benefits from greater information access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I exploit differences in the generosity of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits across states and over time to investigate the link between UI and children's academic achievement. Estimates show that a 1% increase in maximum weekly UI benefits reduces the probability that a child repeats a grade by around 0.03 percentage points. The effect is concentrated among children of low‐ and middle‐income families. This paper's findings, which are the first in the literature to show evidence of a positive effect of UI on children's educational outcomes, provide insight into the role of UI in the human capital accumulation of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines academic peer effects in college. Unique new data from the Berea Panel Study allow us to focus on a mechanism wherein a student's peers affect her achievement by changing her study effort. Although the potential relevance of this mechanism has been recognized, data limitations have made it difficult to provide direct evidence about its importance. We find that a student's freshman grade point average is affected by the amount her peers studied in high school, suggesting the importance of this mechanism. Using time diary information, we confirm that college study time is actually being affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests how the race and ethnicity of one's college classmates affect academic performance. Incoming students at a Catholic college are assigned to their first semester, team-taught, required course. Statistical tests support that this assignment is uncorrelated with a variety of student characteristics. Controlling for team fixed effects and student characteristics, I find evidence of racial peer effects that differ for white students and students of color. White students earn higher grades in classes with more students of color. Students of color with more nonwhite classmates earn lower grades; these effects occur exclusively among those with lower SAT scores. ( JEL I21, I28) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of literature has linked chronotype and sleep to school performance. Chronotype is under the control of the circadian clock and refers to sleep timing and diurnal preferences. Chronotype changes with age and is latest during adolescence, giving rise to a mismatch between the (late) circadian clock and the (early) school clock. In general, evening (late) chronotypes obtain lower grades. School performance is influenced by many other factors, such as motivation, intelligence, and conscientiousness. Some of these factors also relate to chronotype. The present paper reviews the literature on the relationship between chronotype and school performance, with the aim of suggesting hypotheses about the mechanisms behind this complex phenomenon and exploring solutions for an optimized school system. Based on the literature reviewed, we hypothesize that chronotype has both a direct and an indirect effect on school performance. The indirect effect is mediated by factors such as conscientiousness, learning/achieving motivation, mood, and alertness. In addition, time of day of testing plays an important role since the chronotype effect on grades is strongest in the morning and disappears in the afternoon. Strategies to decrease the mismatch between the adolescent circadian clock and the school clock could involve light interventions to advance the students' sleep timing, delays in school starting times, and rearrangements of test schedules (tests later in the day). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hierarchical linear models have become a familiar method for accounting for a hierarchical data structure in studies of science and mathematics achievement. This paper illustrates the use of cross-classified random effects models (CCREMs), which are likely less familiar. The defining characteristic of CCREMs is a hierarchical data structure defined by multiple random factors at higher levels. We illustrate CCREMs using data for approximately 10,000 students from more than 250 high schools who attended one of 27 four-year postsecondary institutions. The appropriate use of CCREMs helps to ensure unbiased estimates of effects and credible inferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]