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A homogeneous distribution of students in a class is accepted as a key factor for overall success in primary education. A class of students with similar attributes normally increases academic success. It is also a fact that general academic success might be lower in some classes where students have different intelligence and academic levels. In this study, a class distribution model is proposed by using some data science algorithms over a small number of students' dataset. With unsupervised and semi-supervised learning methods in machine learning and data mining, a group of students is equally distributed to classes, taking into account some criteria. This model divides a group of students into clusters by the considering students' different qualitative and quantitative characteristics. A draft study is carried out by predicting the effectiveness and efficiency of the presented approaches. In addition, some process elements such as quantitative and qualitative characteristics of a student, data acquisition style, digitalization of attributes, and creating a future prediction are also included in this study. Satisfactory and promising experimental results are received using a set of algorithms over collected datasets for classroom scenarios. As expected, a clear and concrete evaluation between balanced and unbalanced class distributions cannot be performed since these two scenarios for the class distributions cannot be applicable at the same time.

This research analyzed how university students of education perceive the formation of self-conception in classroom situations. The following questions were asked: (1) Which factors have positive and negative impact on students' self-conception? and (2) How does the teacher's action appear in this regard? This study applied the narrative research approach. Altogether 70 students participated in the study. The data collection method used empathy-based frame stories. The data was analyzed first with the method of the analysis of narratives. In the second round of analysis, the variation between the students' narratives were compared following the idea of the method of empathy-based stories in research. Group-related factors influencing on students' self-conception, student-related factors influencing on self-conception and the teacher-related factors influencing the student's self-conception are introduced as findings. According to the findings it seemed that the teacher's educational psychological game sense (EPGS) could be named as the defining factor that lies in the intersection of the student-related factors, the group-related factors, and the teacher-related factors.

Background: Whilst much interest is focused on gender, and classroom-level influences such as and classroom composition and teaching style on achievement, attitudinal outcomes have not received the same attention. This paper focuses on alienation from learning as one sub-dimension of school alienation. School alienation is a relevant issue for all those engaged in supporting students to thrive and have positive outcomes, as it is related to learning and social behaviour, and eventually achievement. Purpose: This explorative study considered how classroom gender composition and perceived teaching style affected the development of alienation from learning in primary and secondary schools. Methods: A multi-level analysis, based on quantitative longitudinal data gathered in Luxembourg, was undertaken. The database included information gathered during three consecutive waves (2016-2018) from 338 primary school students and 376 secondary school students. Findings: Our results indicate that the gender gap in alienation from learning was more pronounced in primary school. A student-centred supportive teaching style (classroom level) decreased alienation from learning in primary school for boys -- closing the gender gap; that is to say, it did change the difference in alienation between girls and boys. In secondary school, only individual-level perceived teaching style was associated with alienation if teaching style was simultaneously considered on both individual and classroom level. A high proportion of male students in the classroom seemed to go along with a higher alienation among all students in secondary school. Conclusion: This exploratory study indicates that teaching style may be a crucial factor for the attitudes towards school of all students, suggesting that employing student-centred and supportive styles could help to prevent school alienation.

This study investigates the impact of the presence of students identified as having special needs (SEN) on their classmates' achievements in reading comprehension. Multi-level regression modelling was conducted with the data of more than 75,000 fourth graders of 4,937 classes in Austria. Students' scores of reading comprehension were used as the dependent variable in the models. The number of students with SEN was used as the independent variable, besides other class-level predictors like the socio-economic status or the self-concept. To disentangle individual from classroom composition aspects, variables at the individual level were used as independent variables as well (gender, age, first language, number of books at home, socio-economic background, kindergarten attendance, and self-concept). Results show only a small relationship (Cohen's d = -0.16) between the presence of students with special needs on their classmates' national standard scores, in particular compared to other class-composition effects like socio-economic status or self-concept.

In the educational literature on peer effects, attention has been brought to the fact that the mechanisms creating peer effects are still to a large extent hidden in obscurity. The hypothesis in the study reported in this article was that the Frame Factor Theory (FFT) can be used to reveal such mechanisms. Using data from the Swedish TIMSS 2015 (N = 3761 students in 179 classes), a multilevel structural equation model (M-SEM) was specified in accordance with the FFT. As predicted, the SEM-model verified a strong relationship between class composition and a latent variable of limitations on instruction, a variable which in turn had a great impact on individual students' results in TIMSS 2015. The study hereby seems to reveal a fundamental mechanism of peer effects and provides evidence for the FFT.

Many school administrators face difficulties hiring teachers with the requisite job credentials and qualifications. In this paper, we argue for the potential of salary structures to influence teacher staffing. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to examine whether restructuring teacher compensation salary schedules is associated with attracting larger shares of teachers with the necessary baseline qualifications for the job (i.e., "highly qualified teachers" or HQT) in a non-collective bargaining state. Fixed effects regression using panel data from 2012-2014 for 80 of South Carolina's public school districts was used to address the purpose of the study. The percent of classes not taught by HQT was found to increase as districts become more backloaded. This provides supporting evidence concerning the benefits of frontloading salary schedules. Additionally, potential drawbacks of frontloading salary schedules should be examined to improve the knowledge base of the potential costs relative to benefits of frontloading salary structures. [Note: The page range (24-34) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range for this article is p6-15.]

Students' executive functions (EFs) are linked to school success. Although school-age children spend much of their time interacting with peers, few studies have explored how children's classmates may promote EF development in elementary school. In this study, we test whether mean levels and variability in classmates' EF skills are associated with growth in individual students' accuracy and speed on EF tasks among third, fourth, and fifth graders (N = 806). We find that classmates' speed, but not accuracy, on EF tasks is linked to significant improvements in individual students' EFs over the school year. Classmates' average EFs, as indexed by faster accurate responses on EF tasks, are associated with improvements in individual students' speed on EF tasks. These results were robust to the inclusion of individual students' general processing speed. In contrast, variability in classmates' accuracy and speed on EF tasks was not associated with individual students' EF growth. Our results highlight the role of peers and the school context for EF development in middle childhood.

At-risk students are overrepresented in disadvantaged segregated primary schools. Often, these students begin with an educational delay and have less parental support, which makes them more dependent on the quality of their education. Since quality of education depends in great measure upon mechanisms at the class level, it is crucial to gain insight into the interrelations between class input, teacher process variables and student outcomes. A multilevel path analysis was conducted to explore the relationship between socioeconomic and ethnic class composition, teacher trust in students, teaching learning strategies, and reading comprehension in socially and ethnically disadvantaged segregated primary classes. A reading comprehension test, teacher questionnaire and video observations of language lessons were administered (September-October 2013) to a sample of 7- and 8-year-old students (n = 271) and their 22 teachers. The socioeconomic and ethnic class situation had a significant impact on teaching learning strategies, which in turn was positively related to students' reading comprehension. Our findings underline the key role of teaching learning strategies, which mediates the relationship between the socioeconomic and ethnic class composition and reading comprehension in disadvantaged, segregated primary classes. Policy implications, limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

I describe how a policy aimed at increasing achievement among students labeled EL initially went awry--and how a researcher-district partnership persevered to rectify it. The policy, which called for 100% EL classrooms, produced unintended consequences. Critical discussion of empirical evidence and district-solicited input from multiple constituencies brought to light sociocultural, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic factors. This shift enabled policymakers to rectify the policy, allowing integration of ELs with non-EL peers.

Interventions that target on-task behavior are essential, as on-task behavior is linked to the amount of learning that occurs in a classroom. "On-Task in a Box" is a manualized intervention to increase on-task behavior that utilizes video modeling and self-monitoring in conjunction with group contingencies. The current study evaluated the effects of the "On-Task in a Box" intervention on student on-task behavior and work completion when implemented as a classwide intervention. A multiple probe design across three elementary classrooms was utilized. All three classrooms demonstrated increases in the level of classwide on-task behavior as measured through direct observation, but mixed results were found for work completion, measured by teacher direct behavior ratings. Teachers generally rated the intervention as effective and relatively easy to implement.

Student attendance is both a critical input and intermediate output of the education production function. However, the malleable classroom-level determinants of student attendance are poorly understood. We estimate the causal effect of class size, class composition, and observable teacher qualifications on student attendance by leveraging the random classroom assignments made by Tennessee's Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) Project class size experiment. A 10-student increase in class size increases the probability of being chronically absent by about 3 percentage points (21%). For Black students, random assignment to a Black teacher reduces the probability of chronic absence by 3.1 percentage points (26%). However, naive mediation analyses suggest that attendance is not a mechanism through which class size and same-race teachers improve student achievement.

According to dimensional comparison theory (DCT), students evaluate their ability in one domain (e.g., math) by comparing their achievement in that domain with their achievement in other domains (e.g., English). Primarily in research on students' academic self-concept, these comparison processes have been found to lead to positive associations within subjects (e.g., the better the student's achievement in math, the higher that student's math self-concept) but negative associations between subjects (e.g., better skills in math than in English lead to a relatively lower self-concept in English than in math; Möller & Marsh, 2013). However, less is known about dimensional comparison effects in evaluations of others, for example, students' ratings of their teachers. In the present study, we used data from a large-scale assessment of teaching quality in Germany (N = 6,479 students from 401 classes in Grades 5 to 10) and examined the associations between students' grades and their teaching-quality ratings in mathematics and German language classes. In line with DCT, the results revealed positive within-subject associations and negative between-subjects associations: Most importantly, dimensional comparison effects were also found at the classroom level and remained stable even after achievement test scores were controlled for.

Although much literature highlights the importance of teacher expectations for students' academic success, a very small number of studies used large-scale data to examine school-level factors associated with group-level teacher expectations -- defined as expectations that teachers have for many students in their class or school, rather than for a specific student -- in the US context. Using contextual data provided by mathematics and science teachers participating in the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, the current study addressed this issue with paying attention to the roles of principal support and professional learning community in group-level teacher expectations. We found that both principal support and professional learning community were positively associated with group-level teacher expectations, even after controlling for other variables. We also found that much of the relationship between principal support and group-level teacher expectations was explained by professional learning community. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Comparing teachers' self-assessment to classes' assessment of quality of teaching can offer insights for educational research and be a valuable resource for teachers' continuous professional development. However, the quality of teaching needs to be measured in the same way across perspectives for this comparison to be meaningful. We used data from 622 teachers self-assessing aspects of quality of teaching and of their classes (12229 students) assessing the same aspects. Perspectives were compared with measurement invariance analyses. Teachers and classes agreed on the average level of "instructional clarity," and disagreed over "teacher-student relationship" and "performance monitoring," suggesting that mean differences across perspectives may not be as consistent as the literature claims. Results showed a nonuniform measurement bias for only one item of "instructional clarity," while measurement of the other aspects was directly comparable. We conclude the viability of comparing teachers' and classes' perspectives of aspects of quality of teaching.

Development of fraction number line estimation was assessed longitudinally over five time points between fourth and sixth grades. Although students showed positive linear growth overall, latent class growth analyses revealed three distinct growth trajectory classes: Students who were highly accurate from the start and became even more accurate (n = 154); students who started inaccurate but showed steep growth (n = 121); and students who started inaccurate and showed minimal growth (n = 197). Younger and minimal growth students typically estimated both proper and improper fractions as being less than one, failing to base estimates on the relation between the numerator and denominator. Class membership was highly predictive of performance on a statewide-standardized mathematics test as well as on a general fraction knowledge measure at the end of sixth grade, even after controlling for mathematic specific abilities, domain general cognitive abilities, and demographic variables. Multiplication fluency, classroom attention, and whole number line estimation acuity at the start of the study predicted class membership. The findings reveal that fraction magnitude understanding is central to mathematical development. [This paper was published in "Developmental Psychology" (EJ1098744).]

Although peer victimization in school mainly takes place between children in the same classroom or grade and bullying is generally seen as a group process, little is known about how stability and change in classroom composition affect peer victimization. Hence, this study addressed the following questions: (a) Are newcomers in the classroom more likely to become victims? (b) Does a stable classroom, where children generally have the same classmates over time, lead to less change in bully nominations? To address these questions, this article examined 3 waves of bully nominations in a sample of 3,254 children (50% boys; age 8-12) in 31 elementary schools, displaying three types of schools: stable or unstable administrative or pedagogical multigrade. Both research questions were answered by longitudinal social network analyses of the school-wide networks. The meta-analyzed results of these analyses with small effect sizes showed that (a) although stable classrooms do not necessarily show less change in bully nominations than in unstable classrooms, victim-bully ties are more likely to develop among students in the same grade or same classroom and (b) newcomers were more likely to become victims, more so in unstable schools than in stable schools.

There is a wide range of activity in the higher education sector labelled 'students as partners' and 'co-creation in learning and teaching'. Several frameworks have been proposed to map and categorise existing partnership and co-creation roles, activities, research, and practice. In this paper, I synthesise some of these frameworks to illustrate how the predominant focus in the international literature has been on partnership projects that select small groups of often already super-engaged or privileged students to participate. In contrast, co-creation in learning and teaching, embedded within the curriculum and involving a whole class of students, has been largely overlooked. I explore the potential of co-creating learning and teaching with a whole class of students (including face-to-face, blended, and online settings, and including lectures, tutorials, laboratories, and other methods of teaching); in other words, it is co-creation integral to students' programmes and courses of study. I argue that whole-class approaches to co-creation may be inherently more inclusive of students than other approaches to co-creation and that this approach both relies upon, and contributes towards, building positive relationships between staff and students, and between students and students. I explore some of the challenges of whole-class co-creation in learning and teaching, and I also argue that the benefits suggest this is currently an underutilised and researched approach internationally.

This exploratory study examines the use of the micro-blogging service "Twitter" in multiple sections of a pre-service teacher education program in a diverse, urban university. The use of Twitter aimed to encourage student-student and student-teacher interactions, thus enhancing social presence and diminishing the sense of isolation in online classes. Data were obtained by monitoring student Twitter and blog posts, as well as from a student survey where students indicated how they perceived their sense of belonging to a community of learners. Findings indicate that students' conversations revolved around five themes: (a) field experience, (b) emotions, (c) cooperating teacher, (d) class, and (e) relationships. Their conversations were also classified into three sub-categories based on intended audience: (a) students, (b) teacher, and (c) no one in particular. The results from the survey indicate that the group with the least interaction was the group that indicated feeling more engaged in the learning process and more connected to other learners. Implications of these findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.

A study regarding students' perceptions of digital storytelling as a learning tool was conducted in the fall of 2012. The population consisted of 12 students participating in an Administrative Theory course as part of their doctoral program in K-12 or higher education administration at a Carnegie Doctoral Research University in Georgia. During the eight-week course, students created digital stories that synthesized an auto-ethnography with leadership theory using Bolman and Deal's (2011) four-framework approach to leadership. This allowed students to demonstrate the practice of continual reflection and assessment, a commitment to technology, diversity, and in-depth understanding of the knowledge and skills required of educational leaders. The purpose of this non-experimental qualitative study was to examine student's perceptions of utilizing digital storytelling in educational leadership coursework. The research question was: What are students' perceptions of digital storytelling as a tool for learning in Educational Leadership coursework? Findings are arranged by the 4 themes which emerged from the analysis of the data; assignment components, learning, identity development, and class cohesion.

There have been several attempts to integrate Web 2.0 technologies including podcasts, weblogs, wikis, and virtual 3D communities into language education thus far. Second Life, a virtual 3D community, might create unique opportunities for language learners specifically in the following ways: As a source of authentic interaction with target language speakers, a venue for language classes, and an autonomous study opportunity for learners. In this context, this study reports Second Life experiences of American students learning Turkish as a foreign language in the University of Florida, the USA and of Turkish students learning English as a foreign language at Gazi University, Turkey. The interviews demonstrated that both groups of students regarded Second Life as a contribution to authentic interaction with native language. Furthermore, the experiences indicated Second Life served as a good bridge for cultural competence and an inevitable tool to foster less threatened learning experiences despite challenges encountered on the way.

The aim of this study is to reveal the effect of FLA (foreign language anxiety) in native/non-native speaker of English classrooms. In this study, two groups of students (90 in total) of whom 38 were in NS (native speaker) class and 52 in NNS (non-native speaker) class taking English as a second language course for 22 hours a week at Erzincan University in Turkey were administered foreign language speaking anxiety scale. The students reported their opinion about this 23-item questionnaire. Collecting the data, results were analyzed by SPSS (Statistical Program for Social Sciences) 15 program. The mean score of each item was measured and the results were discussed in detail by explaining the percentages of students' thoughts. Additionally, the level of classroom anxiety was measured for finding whether there was any significant difference between the two groups. The findings showed that there was no significant difference between the groups statistically in terms of classroom anxiety, but the mean scores showed that students in NS class were more anxious than those in NNS class. (Contains 5 tables.)

Teacher recommendations are an important factor in the process of track placement, but research has shown that they are biased by pupils' social background. Pupils from higher socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to get the advice to enrol in an academic track than pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds, irrespective of prior achievement. Previous studies looked primarily at individual pupil or parent characteristics and their influence on teacher recommendations. However, in this article, the authors argue that the class context forms the frame of reference within which a teacher forms his/her recommendation for pupils. Therefore, this article investigates class composition effects on teacher recommendations at the transition between primary and secondary education in Flanders. More specifically, we look at the socio-economic, ethnic and ability composition of a class. Multilevel logistic models were tested on data collected in 36 primary schools in the cities of Ghent and Antwerp in May 2015. The results show that only the ability composition of the classroom exerts a frame-of-reference effect on teacher recommendations for academically versus practically oriented tracks. A pupil with a low individual ability in a low-ability class was more likely to get the advice to enrol in an academically oriented track than an equally able pupil in a high-ability class. This study demonstrated the limited importance of class composition in teacher recommendations, but calls for more research on teacher bias in the process of track assignment.

This study, Helping Alleviate Statistical Anxiety with Computer Aided Statistics Classes, investigated whether undergraduate students' anxiety about statistics changed when statistics is taught using computers compared to the traditional method. Two groups of students were questioned concerning their anxiety about statistics. One group was taught statistics using the traditional "calculator and paper/pencil" method while the other group was taught statistics using computers to perform the required calculations. Frequency distributions and the chi-square test of independence indicated there were significant differences between the two groups. Students in the computer class had significantly less statistical anxiety than students in the traditional class. (Contains 9 tables.)

The present study used data for 30 classes across 10 middle and high school teachers to evaluate the stability of class-level ratings on the Responsive Environmental Assessment for Classroom Teaching across time. Teachers collected data on 2 occasions and students' ratings (N = 806) were aggregated to the class-level. Classes were arranged into 2 groups on the basis of the latency between repeated administrations (M[subscript groups] = 8.1 and 15.1 weeks). Correlations between class ratings were slightly larger among classes in the first group (range = 0.73 to 0.87) relative to the second group (range = 0.62 to 0.75) which had a larger gap in time between data collections. Results provide evidence for the stability of students' perceptions of the instructional environment when those ratings are interpreted at the level of a class and support ongoing work to establish norms and benchmarks to guide interpretation.

This study evaluates the effects of classroom peers on standardized testing achievement for all third- and fourth-grade students in the Philadelphia School District over 6 school years. With a comprehensive individual-and multilevel data set of all students matched to teachers, classrooms, and schools, two empirical strategies are employed. The first relies on the observable distribution of students among classrooms within a particular grade and school in any given year. As a test of robustness, a second strategy is employed, which depends on the idiosyncratic variation in classroom composition based on the random assignment of students entering the school at abnormal times during the academic year. Based on these empirical strategies, this study finds statistically significant classroom peer effects on standardized achievement, though the degree to which they impact performance differs based on peer characteristics.

Three arguments regarding racial equity have arisen in the school choice debate. Choice advocates charge that choice will improve access to quality schools for disadvantaged minority students (Chubb & Moe 1990; Coons & Sugarman, 1978; Godwin & Kemerer, 2002; Viteritti, 1999). Critics argue that choice is unlikely to benefit minority students, but they are divided as to why this may be the case. Some maintain that unfettered choice leads to racial segregation (Henig, 1996; Mickelson, 2005; Saporito, 2003); others maintain that while choice may be successful in reducing segregation at the building level, choice programs may be problematic to the extent that they segregate schools at the classroom level (Wells & Crain, 1997; Wells, Holme, & Vasudeva, 2000; Wells & Roda, 2009; West, 1994). I use data from the eighth-grade wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to examine these questions. Results indicate that the racial composition of magnet schools is not statistically different from regular public schools; however, magnet schools are more heterogeneous at the classroom level, but only with respect to White/Hispanic racial composition. In particular, honors classes in magnet schools are significantly more diverse than honors classes in regular public schools, but only with regard to White/Hispanic diversity.

Our university hosts a diverse student cohort and, in certain discipline areas, international students and domestic students whose first language is not English outnumber their English-speaking peers. On the whole, group projects with these cohorts are challenging, and in particular, the allocation of marks is fraught with difficulty. Awarding the same mark to all group members is often viewed as unfair, and resented by those who feel either disadvantaged or exploited by group members they view as less able or less willing to share the workload. However, the allocation of individual marks to group members is equally difficult and elicits the same cries of injustice. In this study, 165 first-year university students were surveyed before and after the completion of assessed group projects in their different discipline areas. The findings reveal that students wanted some say into how marks were allocated and that students' attitudes towards the allocation of group marks differed, depending on whether they were first- or second-language speakers of English. In this article, we explore the reasons for these differences and discuss the future of this vexed assessment model.

In this paper, we assume that students' achievement is influenced not only by a set of individual appraisals such as beliefs about their personal efficacy but also by a set of more systemic factors related to beliefs about their class efficacy as a group. Literature and research review supports that students' beliefs about their efficacy, both as individuals and as groups, are important predictors of their achievements at school. However, little research has been presented to date that jointly explores the impact of these two sets of beliefs on academic achievement. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present an integrated view of individual and collective efficacy beliefs, exploring the relationship between them and their causal relationship with students' achievement. Two cross-sectional studies were developed in the Portuguese secondary school context with 385 and 1,794 students, using "Academic Self-Efficacy Scale" and "Students Collective Efficacy Scale" to assess individual and collective efficacy beliefs. The main results showed that individual efficacy beliefs were stronger predictors of students' grades than collective efficacy beliefs, especially when the specific domain of achievement they refer to was considered (for instance, levels of mathematics self-efficacy had a stronger impact on mathematics grades than on Portuguese grades). Moreover, moderating effects of gender and type of school (public vs. non-public) were found, suggesting that collective efficacy beliefs play a more significant role among boys and among students from public schools.

The purpose of the study was to measure the effects of higher level, inquiry-based science curricula on students at primary level in Title I schools. Approximately 3,300 K-3 students from six schools were assigned to experimental or control classes (N = 115 total) on a random basis according to class. Experimental students were exposed to concept-based science curriculum that emphasized "deep learning" though concept mastery and investigation, whereas control classes learned science from traditional school-based curricula. Two ability measures, the Bracken Basic Concept Scale-Revised (BBCS-R, Bracken 1998) and the Naglieri Nonverbal Intelligence Test (NNAT, Naglieri 1991), were used for baseline information. Additionally, a standardized measure of student achievement in science (the MAT-8 science subtest), a standardized measure of critical thinking, and a measure for observing teachers' classroom behaviors were used to assess learning outcomes. Results indicated that all ability groups of students benefited from the science inquiry-based approach to learning that emphasized science concepts, and that there was a positive achievement effect for low socio-economic young children who were exposed to such a curriculum.

Expectancy-Value Questionnaire (EVQ) measures student expectancy beliefs and task values of the domain content (Eccles & Wigfield, 1995). In this study the authors examine measurement invariance of EVQ in the domain of physical education between elementary and middle-school students. Participants included 811 students (3rd-5th grades) from 13 elementary and 903 (6th-8th grades) from 13 middle schools. Students completed the EVQ in their physical education classes within the same semester. A series of hierarchical steps for testing the measurement invariance were conducted based on means and covariance structures. The results suggest that the questionnaire possesses configural and metric invariance, but noninvariant item intercepts between these two groups of students ([vertical bar][Delta]CFI [vertical bar] greater than 0.05). EVQ can be used to measure expectancy-value constructs in physical education for both middle-school and elementary students. Yet the noninvariant item intercepts posted questions on how the measured construct difference should be interpreted. (Contains 1 figure and 5 tables.)

Relatively few functional assessment and intervention studies have been conducted in preschool classrooms with children of typical development who engage in high incidence problem behaviors. Moreover, limited studies have used functional assessment procedures with the class as the unit of analysis. This study included functional analyses and a function-based differential reinforcement procedure for 2 preschool classrooms referred for behavioral consultation services because multiple students were engaging in disruptive behavior. Results indicated that function-based differential reinforcement interventions resulted in reductions in children's disruptive behavior and teachers rated assessment and intervention procedures as acceptable. The authors discuss the results in terms of functional assessment and function-based intervention research and practice in preschool classrooms. (Contains 2 figures.)

In this study done at a community college in South Florida, the achievements of students who spoke English as their second language who had attended their K-12 education outside the United States in their home countries, in a U.S. college course on world geography are compared with the achievements of students in the same classes who spoke English as their first language and who had attended their K-12 education in U.S. schools. It is important to mention that 25% of the students who had attended their K-12 education in U.S. schools in this research were taking college classes at the same time they were studying at high school. In order to help level the playing field for both groups of students, the courses, which were 29 classes each, were taught in a classroom setting using visual computerized technology including PowerPoint presentations, DVDs, virtual fieldtrips, and online exploration of geographic data to explain all points of pedagogical interest instead of relying solely on direct instruction based on the textbooks used for these classes. Attendance was taken orally by the researcher for each class and these attendance sheets were the basis for determining student participation. Only students who attended all or all but one of the classes were included in the study. One of the important components of this study was the exposure of the students to highly visual and, hence, contextual, classroom lessons. The results of this research show no significant difference between the rates of achievement of the two groups, a resounding success in and of itself, given the difference in language proficiency levels of non-U.S.- and U.S.-educated students, although there are two interesting anomalies. There are very slight, non-statistically significant indications of superior achievement by the non-U.S.-educated students in human geography, cartography, and overall scores, and very slight, non-statistically significant indications of superior achievement by the U.S.-educated students in physical geography. (Contains 2 tables.)

When students display disruptive behaviors, it interferes with their own, and other students' learning and with the teacher's ability to instruct during academic activities. This study investigated the effects of a classwide interdependent group contingency on the on/off-task behaviors of an at-risk student in a first-grade classroom in a private Midwestern school. The student was referred for intervention due to his high rates of off-task behavior and low levels of academic engagement. An ABAB withdrawal design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention to improve the target student's behavior as well as that of his classroom peers. Results suggested that the intervention decreased the individual student's off-task behavior and increased academic engagement while also having positive effects on overall behavior in the classroom.

The purpose of this study is to propose a 6-T model (Tool, Toy, Telephone, Territory, Treasure of Information, and Trade) to explore college students' Internet-related attitudes, and to examine whether gender and grade level make any difference in their attitudes. Data from 1069 participants were collected from 96 Taiwanese universities and colleges. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis validated the proposed 6-T model and shows that it can well explain the 6-T factors. Each T's magnitude of path coefficient shows that for these college students, the most recognized factors were Tool and Toy, followed by Treasure of information, Territory, and Trade, and that the least weighted factor was Telephone. Male students seem to have had a more positive attitude toward the Internet-related Toy and Telephone dimensions than did female students, and graduate students seem to have had a more positive attitude toward the Internet-related Tool, Information, and Trade dimensions than did undergraduate students. This study discusses limitations, future research directions, and implications for college educators and administrators. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

Twitter, Google Docs and their cousins shrink the spaces between cultures even as they expand the reach of a typical classroom. How can a teacher use them to promote social justice? In Sarah Brown Wessling's English class, students are about to give Little Red Riding Hood a makeover. For weeks, her students at Johnston High School in Johnston, Iowa, have been breaking down several classic fairy tales, discussing ways in which they both construct and confirm their ideas about gender roles. Using examples from the stories, they then dig deeper--exploring concepts such as oppression and objectification in society. Finally, in a culminating activity called the Genders Game, Wessling challenges groups of students to rewrite the familiar tales. Immediately, students turn to Google Docs--a free, Web-based service that allows users to create and edit documents while collaborating with each other in real time. Wessling, the 2010 National Teacher of the Year, could just as well be talking about today's teachers and their use of Web-based technologies and social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter. In her classes, she has seen their value in fostering collaboration and in extending the learning experience beyond the 50-minute block.

This paper estimates the causal effect of taking a course in quantitative reasoning on students' academic performance and classroom peer-group composition at a liberal arts college. To identify effects, the paper compares the outcomes of otherwise similar students who barely passed a baseline quantitative skills assessment (not taking the course) with students who barely failed (taking the course). The regression-discontinuity estimates show little impact on academic outcomes for student close to the passing cutoff, including grades on subsequent courses with quantitative content, but we are unable to distinguish small from zero effects. Exogenous course assignment does affect the composition of students' classroom peer groups in subsequent years. The effects can only be generalized to students in the vicinity of the passing threshold (but not students with much worse quantitative skills at the baseline). We discuss implications for research and policy on remediation. (Contains 4 figures and 4 tables.)