Child-centered versus teacher-directed teaching practices: Associations with the development of academic skills in the first grade at school

This study examined the effects of first-grade teachers’ emotional support on task persistence and academic skills in the sixth grade and the mediational role of children’s academic self-concept in these effects. Participants were 524 children (263 boys, [Formula: see text] age in the first grade = 7.47 years), their first-grade homeroom teachers ( n = 53), and sixth-grade math ( n = 34) and literacy ( n = 34) teachers. Academic skills were tested, and students’ task persistence was reported by teachers in the first and in the sixth grade. Students reported on their academic self-concept and their first-grade teacher’s emotional support retrospectively in the sixth grade. First-grade teachers’ emotional support had low facilitative effect on children’s task persistence in language and math lessons, and it supported reading skills. Teacher’s emotional support was related to higher self-concept in reading, and it mediated the effect of emotional support on task persistence and reading skills.

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Elementary school teachers adapt their instructional support according to students’ academic skills

International Journal of Behavioral Development ◽

10.1177/0165025415575764 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 39 (5) ◽

pp. 391-401 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Noona Kiuru ◽

Jari-Erik Nurmi ◽

Esko Leskinen ◽

Minna Torppa ◽

Anna-Maija Poikkeus ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Elementary School Teachers ◽

Instructional Support ◽

Subsequent Development ◽

First Grade ◽

Academic Skills ◽

Second Grade ◽

Math Skills ◽

Reading And Math ◽

And Mathematics ◽

Reading And Mathematics

This study examined the longitudinal associations between children’s academic skills and the instructional support teachers gave individual students. A total of 253 Finnish children were tested on reading and math skills twice in the first grade and once in the second grade. The teachers of these children rated the instructional support that they gave each child in reading and mathematics. The results showed that the poorer the student’s reading and math skills were, the more support and attention the student received from his or her teacher later on. However, instructional support did not contribute positively to the subsequent development of the students’ academic skills. The person-oriented analyses showed that a relatively small group of children, that is, those showing the poorest academic skills, received the largest dose of teacher support, both with respect to reading and mathematics.

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Automatic Detection of Gaze and Body Orientation in Elementary School Classrooms

Frontiers in Robotics and AI ◽

10.3389/frobt.2021.729832 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

Author(s):

Roberto Araya ◽

Jorge Sossa-Rivera

Keyword(s):

Verbal Behavior ◽

Teaching Practices ◽

Daily Practice ◽

First Grade ◽

The Body ◽

Body Orientation ◽

Motion Sensors ◽

The Gaze ◽

Honest Signals ◽

Mean Square Errors

Detecting the direction of the gaze and orientation of the body of both teacher and students is essential to estimate who is paying attention to whom. It also provides vital clues for understanding their unconscious, non-verbal behavior. These are called “honest signals” since they are unconscious subtle patterns in our interaction with other people that help reveal the focus of our attention. Inside the classroom, they provide important clues about teaching practices and students' responses to different conscious and unconscious teaching strategies. Scanning this non-verbal behavior in the classroom can provide important feedback to the teacher in order for them to improve their teaching practices. This type of analysis usually requires sophisticated eye-tracking equipment, motion sensors, or multiple cameras. However, for this to be a useful tool in the teacher's daily practice, an alternative must be found using only a smartphone. A smartphone is the only instrument that a teacher always has at their disposal and is nowadays considered truly ubiquitous. Our study looks at data from a group of first-grade classrooms. We show how video recordings on a teacher's smartphone can be used in order to estimate the direction of the teacher and students’ gaze, as well as their body orientation. Using the output from the OpenPose software, we run Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to train an estimator to recognize the direction of the students’ gaze and body orientation. We found that the level of accuracy achieved is comparable to that of human observers watching frames from the videos. The mean square errors (RMSE) of the predicted pitch and yaw angles for head and body directions are on average 11% lower than the RMSE between human annotators. However, our solution is much faster, avoids the tedium of doing it manually, and makes it possible to design solutions that give the teacher feedback as soon as they finish the class.

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Reciprocal associations between executive function and academic achievement: A conceptual replication of Schmitt et al. (2017)

10.31234/osf.io/q3uza ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Alexa Ellis ◽

Sammy F. Ahmed ◽

Selin Zeytinoglu ◽

Elif Isbell ◽

Susan D. Calkins ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Academic Achievement ◽

Early Childhood ◽

Executive Function ◽

Math Achievement ◽

First Grade ◽

Academic Skills ◽

Literacy Achievement ◽

Developmental Age ◽

Bidirectional Associations ◽

Reciprocal Associations

The goal of the current study was to conduct a conceptual replication of the reciprocal associations between executive function (EF) and academic achievement reported in Schmitt et al. (2017). Using two independent samples (N (STAR) = 279, and N (Pathways) = 277), we examined whether the patterns of associations between EF and achievement across preschool and kindergarten reported in Schmitt et al. (2017) replicated using the same model specifications, similar EF and achievement measures, and across a similar developmental age period. Consistent with original findings, EF predicted subsequent math achievement in both samples. Specifically, in the STAR sample, EF predicted math achievement from preschool to kindergarten, and kindergarten to first grade. In the Pathways sample, EF at kindergarten predicted both math and literacy achievement in first grade. However, contrary to the original findings, we were unable to replicate the bidirectional associations between math achievement and EF in either of the replication samples. Overall, the current conceptual replication has revealed that bidirectional associations between EF and academic skills might not be robust to slight differences in EF measures and number of measurement occasions, which has implications for our understanding of the development EF and academic skills across early childhood. The present findings underscore the need for more standardization in both measurement and modeling approaches – without which the inconsistency of findings in published studies may continue across this area of research.

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UNEQUAL RETURNS TO CHILDREN’S EFFORTS

Du Bois Review Social Science Research on Race ◽

10.1017/s1742058x20000016 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

pp. 417-438

Author(s):

Calvin Rashaud Zimmermann ◽

Grace Kao

Keyword(s):

Gender Gap ◽

Social Stratification ◽

Educational Achievement ◽

First Grade ◽

Academic Skills ◽

Black Girls ◽

Noncognitive Skills ◽

Teachers Perceptions ◽

Race Ethnicity ◽

And Gender

AbstractResearch demonstrates the importance of noncognitive skills for educational achievement and attainment. Scholars argue that gender differences in noncognitive skills contribute to the gender gap in education. However, the intersection of student race/ethnicity and gender remains underexplored. Studies that examine how noncognitive skills affect gender or racial disparities in teachers’ perceptions of academic skills often assume that children’s noncognitive skills have the same benefit for all children. This is questionable given that research suggests that racial biases affect teachers’ perceptions of children’s noncognitive skills. Using national data, our paper examines how first-grade teachers’ ratings of approaches to learning affect their ratings of children’s academic skills. We also test if teachers’ ratings of children’s noncognitive skills have similar benefits across racial/ethnic and gender categories. We use two unidimensional approaches and an intersectional approach to gauge whether an intersectional approach gives us additional leverage that the unidimensional approaches obscure. The two unidimensional approaches reveal important results that suggest that children are differentially penalized by race/ethnicity or gender. Our race/ethnicity findings suggest that, in comparison to White children with identical noncognitive skills and test scores, teachers penalize Black children in math and advantage Asian children in literacy. Findings from our gender analyses suggest that teachers penalize girls in both math and literacy. Our intersectional findings indicate that an intersectional approach gives us additional leverage obscured by both unidimensional approaches. First, we find that Black girls and Black boys are differentially penalized in math. Secondly, for teachers’ ratings of literacy, our results suggest that teachers penalize Asian girls but not Asian boys in comparison to White boys. We discuss the implications of our study for understanding the complex relationship between noncognitive skills and social stratification.

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