Teachers’ visual processing of children’s off-task behaviors in class: A comparison between teachers and student teachers

As teachers are responsible for responding instantaneously to students’ statements and actions, the progress of the class, and their teaching purpose, they need to be able to engage in responsive teaching. Teachers obtain information about students’ learning by observing them in the classroom, and subsequently make instructional decisions based on this information. Teachers need to be sensitive to student behaviors and respond accordingly, because there are students who follow the teacher’s instructions and those who do not in every classroom. Skilled teachers may distribute their gaze over the entire class and discover off-task behaviors. So how does a teacher’s visual processing and noticing ability develop? It is important to clarify this process for both experienced teachers and student teachers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is a difference in visual processing and the ability to notice off-task behaviors in class between teachers and student teachers through gaze analysis. Using an eye tracking device, 76 teachers and 147 student teachers were asked to watch a video, and gaze measurements were collected. In the video, students exhibiting off-task behaviors in class were prompted by their classroom teacher to participate in the lesson. After the video, the participants were asked if they could identify the students who had displayed off-task behaviors and whom the teachers had warned. The results showed that teachers gazed at students engaging in off-task behaviors in class more often and noticed them at a higher rate than student teachers did. These results may be attributed to differences in the experiences of visual processing of relevant information in the classroom between teachers and student teachers. Thus, the findings on teachers’ visual processing by direct measurement of gaze will be able to contribute to teachers’ development.

Implementing lung cancer screening in primary care: needs assessment and implementation strategy design

Lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography (CT) could help avert thousands of deaths each year. Since the implementation of screening is complex and underspecified, there is a need for systematic and theory-based strategies. Explore the implementation of lung cancer screening in primary care, in the context of integrating a decision aid into the electronic health record. Design implementation strategies that target hypothesized mechanisms of change and context-specific barriers. The study had two phases. The Qualitative Analysis phase included semi-structured interviews with primary care physicians to elicit key task behaviors (e.g., ordering a low-dose CT) and understand the underlying behavioral determinants (e.g., social influence). The Implementation Strategy Design phase consisted of defining implementation strategies and hypothesizing causal pathways to improve screening with a decision aid. Three key task behaviors and four behavioral determinants emerged from 14 interviews. Implementation strategies were designed to target multiple levels of influence. Strategies included increasing provider self-efficacy toward performing shared decision making and using the decision aid, improving provider performance expectancy toward ordering a low-dose CT, increasing social influence toward performing shared decision making and using the decision aid, and addressing key facilitators to using the decision aid. This study contributes knowledge about theoretical determinants of key task behaviors associated with lung cancer screening. We designed implementation strategies according to causal pathways that can be replicated and tested at other institutions. Future research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies and to determine the contexts in which they can be effectively applied.

Middle School Teachers’ Perceptions of and Use of Classroom Management Strategies and Associations With Student Behavior

Disruptive student behavior in middle school is associated with negative outcomes including poor grades, low achievement scores, dropout, lost teaching time, teacher burnout, and societal expenditures. Classroom Behavior Management (CBM) strategies are effective at reducing disruptive behavior, decreasing teacher stress, and increasing achievement with elementary students, but less is known regarding these strategies for middle school students. The purpose of the current study was to assess (a) the rates of disruptive and on-task student behaviors in middle school classrooms, overall and by academic context including individual seatwork, group/partner work, small group instruction, and whole group instruction; (b) the rates of observed (appropriate and inappropriate commands, labeled and unlabeled praise, opportunities to respond; appropriate response to rule violations) and self-reported (appropriate commands, reprimands for inappropriate behavior, strategic ignoring, if/then contingencies, and send to principal’s office) CBM strategies; and (c) relationships between observed teacher strategy use and rates of disruptive and on-task behaviors. The results indicated that there was wide variability in teachers’ use of CBM strategies, their perceptions of the effectiveness of CBM strategies, and the frequency of disruptive student behavior. In addition, overall, teachers demonstrated low rates of appropriate responses to disruptive behavior. Notably, appropriate responses to disruptive behavior had the strongest association with total rates of disruptive and on-task behaviors. The implications of these findings for teacher training are discussed.

Component Analysis of Training and Goal Setting, Self-Monitoring, and Tactile Prompting on Early Childhood Educators’ Behavior-Specific Praise

Multicomponent interventions have successfully increased early childhood teachers’ rates of behavior-specific praise (BSP); however, package interventions do not allow for nuanced examinations of intervention components. We examined the effects of an intervention package with training, goal setting, self-monitoring, and tactile prompting on early childhood teachers’ BSP rates using an add-in, multiple probe, component analysis. In addition, we measured child on-task behaviors to assess the relation between increased BSP rates and children behavior. We used visual analysis and found that each component increased teachers’ BSP rates; two out of three teacher participants needed the most intense intervention (tactile prompting) to reach mastery criterion. Variable generalized BSP statements to other children in the class occurred between baseline and intervention components. The percentage of child on-task behaviors systematically increased in relation to higher BSP rates.

The role of active teaching, academic self-efficacy, and learning behaviors in student performance

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate a theoretical framework that examines and extends understanding of the role of cognitive/information processing, learning motivation and learning task behaviors in facilitating student engagement, course persistence and academic performance. Design/methodology/approach Student subjects were used to collect survey data. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the impact of active teaching, academic self-efficacy and task avoidance on the dependent variables – course grade, course persistence and expectancy for success. Findings Active teaching and academic self-efficacy were positive predictors of course grade while task avoidance was a negative predictor of course grade. Course persistence was positively impacted by academic self-efficacy and diminished by task-avoidance behaviors. Academic self-efficacy was shown to positively impact expectancy for success. Practical implications The results confirm the importance of adopting active teaching techniques, the need for periodic opportunities for experienced academic success and the need for coaching on self-regulation of study habits and class attendance behaviors. Originality/value This study builds on prior calls for more investigations on the role of teaching style on student psychological responses, engagement, learning task behaviors and academic performance. The teaching and learning processes were examined on four levels – attention/engagement, encoding, processing/synthesizing and learning task behaviors. In addition, prior work was extended by incorporating behavioral indicators (e.g. task avoidance) of learning motivation as opposed to reliance on self-reported levels of motivation that may have not been consistent with actual behaviors.