Posttraumatic Growth

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with an understanding of how trauma can set up challenges and obstacles to student academic success and realistic responses by educators and schools to assist students. The chapter begins with an overview of the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study by Felitti et al. and explores the correlations between experienced childhood trauma and negative medical and social problems. The chapter will discuss the neurologic changes that can occur from childhood trauma and/or toxic stress and the common behavioral manifestations that create educational problems for students. The chapter will discuss the need for school social workers, as they can provide significant benefits to struggling students, educators, and school administrators. Additionally, the use of posttraumatic growth techniques to increase efficiency in classroom behavior, curriculum mastery, and lifelong coping will be discussed with final ideas proposing future research needs.

The Relationship of Classroom Behavior and Income Inequality to Literacy in Early Childhood

This chapter addresses the association between nurturing prosocial classroom behavior in young children, literacy, and income inequality. Literacy will be explored as it relates to social competence in the classroom as influenced by income inequity. One highlighted area of importance is a play-based, child-focused environment that is culturally sensitive and responsive to the needs of the whole child. Socioeconomic disparities in literacy skills have been increasing over the past 40 years. This subject must be addressed in order to effectively meet the cognitive, social, and emotional needs of each individual child. Literacy skills are developed during early childhood. It is also the case that limited literacy during early childhood increases the risk of children displaying aggressive behavior at school as they progress to higher grades. For these reasons, tackling the problem during the early years with developmentally appropriate adult-child interventions are what is needed to reverse the trends placing an increasing number of young children at-risk of academic underachievement.

Practice-Based Educational Research

Incoming PK12 general education teachers beginning their careers are not wanting to have individuals with intellectual disabilities in their classroom due to a lack of special education experience and knowledge. This practice-based qualitative narrative dissertation study explored student teacher individual perceptions and experiences on special education classroom behavior and inclusion for elementary public-school general education student teachers. The practice-based problem was the negative views pre-service K12 educators held for classroom inclusion and personal perceptions of individuals with intellectual disabilities. The study sample included 10 student teacher college students enrolled in one Texas early childhood program. Schlossberg's Transition Model was used as the practice-based conceptual framework and data were gathered from interviews and analyzed using Clandinin and Connelly's procedures for narrative analysis. The findings determined pre-service general education teachers are not always provided adequate inclusion training.

Research on Learning State Based on Students’ Attitude and Emotion in Class Learning

In basic education, timely and accurate grasp of students’ classroom learning status can provide real-time information reference and overall evaluation for teachers and managers, which has a very important educational application value. At present, a lot of information technology is applied in the analysis of classroom student behavior state, and the state analysis technology based on a classroom video has the characteristics of strong timeliness, wide dimension, and large capacity, which is especially suitable for the analysis and acquisition of students’ classroom state, and attracts the attention of major educational technology companies. However, the current student state acquisition technology based on video analysis lacks large scenes and has low practicability, and finally, the video-based student classroom behavior state analysis technology mainly focuses on a single behavior feature, which cannot fully reflect the student’s classroom behavior state. In view of the above problems, this study introduces the face recognition algorithm based on a student classroom video and its implementation process, improves the hybrid face detection model based on a traditional model, and proposes the neural network algorithm of student expression recognition based on a visual transformer. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm based on students' classroom videos can effectively detect students’ attention and emotional state in class.

Enhancing Classroom Management Skills: Efficacy of a Supplemental Multi-Platform Intervention for Preservice Teachers

Many teachers are ill-prepared to apply practices that can both preempt and address challenging behaviors that interfere with academic instruction. We evaluated the efficacy of a supplemental multi-platform (direct instruction, guided practice, and mixed reality simulations) intervention designed for preservice teachers who do not have opportunities to participate in formal classroom management courses. Efficacy of the intervention was assessed through the quality of classroom management plans, the presentation and implementation of the plan in the virtual classroom, and classroom management self-efficacy. Results indicated that preservice teachers successfully developed quality proactive classroom management plans but struggled to present and implement their plans. However, self-efficacy increased indicating that participants believed they were better able to manage classroom behavior than they did prior to the intervention. Implications of these outcomes are discussed with an emphasis on how adequate opportunities to practice acquired classroom management skills are included in budget-challenged teacher preparation programs.

Emerging School Readiness Profiles: Motor Skills Matter for Cognitive- and Non-cognitive First Grade School Outcomes

A promising approach for studying school readiness involves a person-centered approach, aimed at exploring how functioning in diverse developmental domains conjointly affects children’s school outcomes. Currently, however, a systematic understanding lacks of how motor skills, in conjunction with other school readiness skills, affect a child’s school outcomes. Additionally, little is known about longitudinal associations of school readiness with non-academic (e.g., socioemotional) school outcomes. Therefore, we examined the school readiness skills of a sample of Dutch children (N = 91) with a mean age of 3 years and 4 months (46% girls). We used a multi-informant test battery to assess children’s school readiness in terms of executive functions (EFs), language and emergent literacy, motor skills, and socioemotional behavior. During the spring term of a child’s first grade year, we collected academic and non-academic (i.e., EFs, motor skills, socioemotional- and classroom behavior, and creative thinking) school outcomes. A latent profile analysis revealed four distinct profiles. Children in the “Parent Positive” (29%) profile were rated positively by their parents, and performed variably on motor and language/emergent literacy skills tests. The second profile–“Multiple Strengths” (13%)–consisted of children showing strengths in multiple domains, especially with respect to motor skills. Children from the third profile–“Average Performers” (50%)–did not show any distinct strengths or weaknesses, rather displayed school readiness skill levels close to, or just below the sample mean. Finally, the “Parental Concern” (8%) profile was characterized by high levels of parental concerns, while displaying slightly above average performance on specific motor and language skills. Motor skills clearly distinguished between profiles, next to parent-rated EFs and socioemotional behavior, and to a lesser extent emergent literacy skills. School readiness profiles were found to differ in mean scores on first grade academic achievement, parent- and teacher-rated EFs, motor skills, parent-rated socioemotional functioning, and pre-requisite learning skills. The pattern of mean differences was complex, suggesting that profiles could not be ranked from low to high in terms of school outcomes. Longitudinal studies are needed to disentangle the interaction between emerging school readiness of the child and the surrounding context.

Recognition of Psychological Characteristics of Students’ Behavior Based on Improved Machine Learning

Contemporary classroom teaching requires the combination of students’ classroom behavior and their psychological activities and appropriately changes the teaching mode according to students’ psychological characteristics. This paper analyzes the traditional characteristic recognition algorithm, and after improving its deficiencies, an improved characteristic extraction algorithm is proposed, based on the actual situation of classroom learning. This new algorithm can effectively improve the students’ psychological feature prediction; with the support of this algorithm, a comprehensive analysis model with classroom behavior recognition and psychological feature recognition is constructed; also, the functional structure of the system is built up. Through experimental research, the model proposed in this paper is analyzed, and the experimental data has approved that the systemic model could play an important role in classroom teaching.

Praise or Criticism? How Should Teachers Give Effective Feedback in the Classroom Teaching?

Tere are many factors that affect students' academic performance. Early studies emphasized students’ existing foundations, their own abilities (Stigler, Lee & Stevenson, 1986), family factors (Wang, 2015), school or class organizational structure (Angrist, & Lavy, 1999; Häkkinen, Kirjavainen & Uusitalo, 2003), cultural factors (Stigler, Stevenson, 2005; Geary, Bow-Thomas, Fan & Siegler, 1993) and other influences on their academic performance. However, the research on the influence of teacher factors has only received attention since the 1980s. Researchers explored the relationship between teachers’ classroom behavior and students’ academic performance, trying to focus on the teaching process (Lockheed & Komenan, 1989), teacher guidance (Brophy, 1988), teacher feedback (Gettinger, & Stoiber, 1999), Teacher planning and preparation (Peterson, Marx & Clark, 1978) explored the causes that can significantly affect students' academic performance.

Concepciones sobre enseñanza-aprendizaje del profesorado y su práctica educativa en clases de ciencias naturales

En este artículo se presentan los resultados de una investigación cuyos objetivos fueron identificar las concepciones sobre la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de 62 profesores de Sonora (México), que imparten clases de ciencias naturales en secundaria, y estudiar la relación de estas concepciones con su práctica educativa en el aula. Para la obtención de los datos se realizaron observaciones de las clases y se aplicó una entrevista semiestructurada a los profesores. Un análisis cualitativo a las respuestas del profesorado en la entrevista indicó que la concepción sobre la enseñanza más frecuente fue la de transición entre una perspectiva tradicional y una constructivista, seguida de la tradicional. La concepción constructivista fue la menos frecuente. Por otro lado, el análisis de la práctica educativa de los profesores en el aula indicó un predominio del modelo de enseñanza tradicional de transmisión-recepción, aunque aproximadamente la mitad de los profesores incorporaron en sus prácticas algunas estrategias de enseñanza constructivistas. El análisis de la relación entre las concepciones de los profesores y sus prácticas educativas mostró algunas incoherencias. En general, los profesores presentaron una enseñanza más tradicional en su comportamiento en clase que lo manifestado en la entrevista sobre cómo enseñan. Estos resultados presentan implicaciones en el diseño de cursos de formación y actualización docente. This article presents the results of an investigation whose objectives were to identify the conceptions about teaching and learning of 62 teachers of Sonora (Mexico), who teach natural sciences in secondary school, and to study the relationship of these conceptions with their educational practice in the classroom. To obtain the data, classroom observations were made and a semi-structured interview was applied to the teachers. A qualitative analysis of the teachers' responses in the interview indicated that the most frequent conception of teaching was the transition between a traditional and a constructivist perspective, followed by the traditional one. The constructivist conception was the least frequent. On the other hand, the analysis of the teachers' educational practice in the classroom indicated a predominance of the traditional transmission-reception teaching model, although approximately half of the teachers incorporated some constructivist teaching strategies in their practices. The analysis of the relationship between the teachers' conceptions and their educational practices showed some inconsistencies. In general, teachers presented a more traditional teaching in their classroom behavior than what was manifested in the interview about how they teach. These results have implications for the design of teacher training and updating courses.