The role of adolescent social inclusion in educational attainment among vulnerable youth.

BACKGROUND: Completing high school enables access to educational and employment opportunities associated with better physical and mental health and improved quality of life. Identifying modifiable factors that promote optimal educational trajectories for youth experiencing disadvantage is an important research focus. Social inclusion has been theorised to play a role in promoting better educational outcomes for this priority population, however limited research has examined this relationship. METHOD: This study used three waves of data from the state-representative Australian arm of the International Youth Development Study (IYDS) (youngest cohort, N = 733; 54% female, 95% Australian born) to examine the extent to which vulnerability in primary school (Grade 5; Mage = 10.97, SD = 0.38) and social inclusion in mid-adolescence (Year 10; Mage = 15.50, SD = 0.53), were associated with school completion in young adulthood (post-secondary; Mage = 19.02, SD = 0.43). RESULTS: Regression models identified an interaction between social inclusion and vulnerability (OR = 1.37, 95% CI [1.06, 1.77], p = .016), indicating that the association between vulnerability and school completion varied as a student's level of social inclusion increased. Higher social inclusion was beneficial for youth with lower levels of vulnerability but did not appear to influence school completion for the most vulnerable students. CONCLUSIONS: For many young people, promoting social inclusion may support engagement in education and play a protective role. However, further research is needed to better understand the role of social inclusion for highly vulnerable youth, particularly the mechanisms via which social inclusion may have differential effects on school completion.

Becoming Culturally Responsive: Equitable and Inequitable Translations of CRE Theory into Teaching Practice.

Research on Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) to date has mostly focused on identifying the aspects of education that already work for Black, Indigenous, and Students of Color. Building on this important literature base, this qualitative study examines the implementation, rather than the identification, of CRE practices. The seven New York City public schools that participated in the study were making school-wide changes for CRE as part of a program for Competency-Based Education (CBE) for personalizing learning for students. Both CRE and CBE are employed in schools to address common issues associated with educational inequities such as irrelevant lessons, teacher biases, one-size-fits-all instruction, and systemic racism. Based on interviews with teachers at the study schools, our findings demonstrated that teachers translated CRE theory into their CBE practice in three key ways: (1) deficit practices, where instructional choices were treated as neutral; (2) access practices, where instruction was differentiated but was not culturally responsive; and (3) transformative practices, where student agency challenged traditional structures. We argue that for schools and educators to meaningfully grapple with the issues of power they seek to address by engaging in CRE, they must embrace and nurture a more radical CRE imagination that leads to deeper school transformation.

Towards the Contributing Factors for the Inconsistency Between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teachers' Equity-Oriented Cognition and Practices.

Backgrounds and Aims: Though EFL teachers now generally hold an equity-oriented mindset, they are often blamed for not implementing equitable practices in the actual teaching. The contributing factors causing cognition-practice inconsistency should be recognized and highlighted to ensure equitable teaching. Therefore, by taking an interpretative qualitative approach, this study explored in-depth the contributing factors that caused the mismatch between EFL teachers' equity-oriented cognition and practices. Methods: We adopted classroom observation and stimulated recall interviews with 10 university teachers to examine the contributing factors that lead to cognition-practice inconsistency. Results: Our results showed two experiential factors (unpleasant schooling experiences and limited effective training) and five contextual factors (unfavorable student factors, inharmonious classroom climate, toxic school contexts, equity-deficient education system, and negative social cultures) mediated the relationship between teachers' equity-oriented cognition and practices. Conclusion: The findings shed light on an association between influential factors and teachers' equity-oriented cognition-practice mismatch. Moreover, an equity-oriented teaching framework was thus proposed to help eliminate the constraining effect of these factors.

An astonishing regularity in student learning rate.

Leveraging a scientific infrastructure for exploring how students learn, we have developed cognitive and statistical models of skill acquisition and used them to understand fundamental similarities and differences across learners. Our primary question was why do some students learn faster than others? Or, do they? We model data from student performance on groups of tasks that assess the same skill component and that provide follow-up instruction on student errors. Our models estimate, for both students and skills, initial correctness and learning rate, that is, the increase in correctness after each practice opportunity. We applied our models to 1.3 million observations across 27 datasets of student interactions with online practice systems in the context of elementary to college courses in math, science, and language. Despite the availability of up-front verbal instruction, like lectures and readings, students demonstrate modest initial prepractice performance, at about 65% accuracy. Despite being in the same course, students' initial performance varies substantially from about 55% correct for those in the lower half to 75% for those in the upper half. In contrast, and much to our surprise, we found students to be astonishingly similar in estimated learning rate, typically increasing by about 0.1 log odds or 2.5% in accuracy per opportunity. These findings pose a challenge for theories of learning to explain the odd combination of large variation in student initial performance and striking regularity in student learning rate.

Educational equity amidst COVID-19: Exploring the online learning challenges of Bedouin and Jewish Female Preservice Teachers in Israel.

Amidst COVID-19, teacher education has shifted to online learning. Although much is known about digital inequity in routine times, little is known about it under constrained conditions, particularly among women of minority groups. The study's goal was to explore the online-learning challenges encountered by (minority) Bedouin female preservice teachers (n = 41) compared to those encountered by (majority) Jewish counterparts (n = 60). Data from reflections (N = 101), focus groups (2), and (68) interviews underwent qualitative-constructivist content analysis. Group comparisons revealed socioculturally-based differential learning pathways, leading to educational inequities. We discuss possible ways to ensure equitable online teacher education using the "digital divide" perspective.

An empirical analysis of double reduction education policy based on public psychology.

To effectively reduce the homework burden and off-campus training burden of students in the compulsory education stage in China, China adopts the double reduction policy to carry out corresponding governance in the field of education. This study aims to explore the public's psychological cognition of the current education system under the implementation of the double reduction policy. The public's opinion data on education concepts under the implementation of the double reduction policy are collected, then the SPSS software and Amos software to quantitatively analyze the public's educational concept data are used, and a corresponding structural model equation to analyze the public's opinion on the implementation of the double reduction policy is established. The psychological concepts of all aspects of education are observed, the public's psychological views on education under the implementation of the double reduction policy are finally obtained, the ideological connotation of popularizing the double reduction policy for the general public is provided, and the balanced development of the domestic education system for the implementation of the double reduction policy is ensured. Two suggestions are made in order to provide a corresponding reference for the public's psychological cognition research on the current education system under the implementation of the double reduction policy.

Accessible and Insightful Scientific Learning Experiences Using the Microorganism Haloferax volcanii.

Early exposure to science is critical to incite interest in scientific careers, promote equity and retention in STEM fields, and increase the general understanding of the scientific method. For many educators, however, the myriad resources that many scientific experiments require are not readily available. Microbiology experiments in particular can often be inaccessible for a lot of classrooms. In addition, microbiological studies often involve eukaryotic microbes and bacteria while excluding an entire domain of life: archaea. Archaea are more closely related to eukaryotes than are bacteria, and although all prokaryotic cells lack a nucleus, various key aspects of the cell biology of archaea and bacteria are fundamentally different. In addition to being useful for teaching about the diversity and evolution of living organisms, these differences between archaea and bacteria can also be harnessed to teach and emphasize other important biological topics. Haloferax volcanii is a non-pathogenic model haloarchaeon that allows for safe, affordable, and accessible microbiological experiments, as the requirement of high-salt media to grow H. volcanii presents a low risk of contamination. Here, we describe how H. volcanii can be used in the classroom and outline a protocol demonstrating their resistance to a broad spectrum of antibiotics, underscoring the distinct cell biology of bacteria and archaea. Finally, we introduce strategies and protocols to perform this and other H. volcanii experiments such that they can be performed based on the resources available in a high school or undergraduate classroom.

Teacher Cognition and Practice of Educational Equity in English as a Foreign Language Teaching.

Teachers involved in English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching play a significant role in the process of moving toward educational equity. Teacher cognition is very influential in shaping teacher practice and thus affects students' academic performance. However, although the role of EFL teachers as equity agents has been recognized, few studies have explored EFL teachers in-depth in terms of their cognition and practice. Moreover, no review studies have given sufficient attention to the task of elucidating the interrelations between EFL teachers' cognition and practices in the context of educational equity. Therefore, to provide a novel perspective and generate fresh insights into this research field, the current study attempts to explain the connotations of these constructs, highlights the interplay between EFL teachers' equity-oriented cognition and practice, and identifies both experiential and contextual factors that might have an effect throughout the teaching process. Finally, practical implications and directions for teachers, researchers, policy-makers, and social justice leaders who are interested in actualizing education as a means of attaining equity are also discussed.

White Reprieves and Black Rage: The Augmentation of Educational Policy and Racial Protests in the Era of COVID-19.

COVID-19 imploded the notion of educational equity, as school closures forced educational institutions to grapple with the equity of specific policies, subsequently reigniting a national and international discourse on systemic racism. Due to the uncertainty and debilitating impact of COVID-19 on schools, testing facilities, students, and the American economy, educational institutions temporarily suspended, staunch rules and institutional norms. Entry and exit exams that would otherwise serve as systemic barricades, historically precluding Black Americans from gaining entrance into the bastions of white privilege, became subject to white reprieves.

[Increase of educational inequity at the transformation to higher secondary schools in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic: low achievers and low motivated students as particular risk group]. / Zunahme von Bildungsungerechtigkeit durch die COVID-19-Pandemie beim Übergang in die Sekundarstufe II: Leistungsschwache und wenig motivierte Schüler*innen als besonders vulnerable Gruppe.

When learning at home, students face higher demands in regards of self-regulated learning compared to learning at school. In order to cope with the demands of distance learning, high levels of self-management, self-motivation, and self-organization are required. This can be-according to the resource model of coping with developmental tasks (Fend et al. 2009)-supported by familial, school-related and personal resources. Based upon this theoretical approach, a survey was conducted with 593 students just after their transition to upper secondary schools in autumn 2021 on distance learning and relevant resources. They spent about one month in the new school before they had to cope with a 4-month long period of distance learning. Four regression models were estimated using step-wise inclusion of the different resources described in the paper. The analyses confirm above all the great importance of personal resources (academic achievement, learning motivation, general self-efficacy) for coping with the demands of distance learning. Low achievers and low motivated students prove to be particularly at risk in the context of distance learning. Therefore, this vulnerable group requires special attention and support both, in future periods of remote teaching as well as following the pandemic.

Factors predicting secondary school language course enrollment and performance among U.S. heritage speakers of Spanish.

Introduction: While a growing body of research indicates that Spanish language courses can promote Spanish maintenance and lead to overall improved educational outcomes among heritage speakers, there is little empirical or longitudinal evidence of factors that shape their enrollment in Spanish language courses at the secondary level. To address this issue, the current study takes a large-scale, longitudinal approach to investigate rates of enrollment in secondary school (6th-12th grade) Spanish and other non-English language courses, as well as factors that predict heritage speakers' enrollment and performance in non-English language courses. Method: We analyzed subsample data from the Miami School Readiness Project (MSRP), a large-scale, longitudinal study consisting of 17,341 heritage speakers of Spanish (47% female, 95.4% Hispanic/Latino, 82.8% received free/reduced-price lunch, and 18.3% with a disability) who were followed from 4 years old until the end of high school. Results: In general, Heritage speakers enrolled in Spanish language courses at a higher rate than other non-English language courses (52.2 and 25.3%, respectively). Enrollment patterns varied across different type of languages and grade level. Student-level factors including disability status, poverty status, early behavioral problems, and prior academic achievement significantly predicted students' enrollment in Spanish and performance in non-English language courses. Discussion: Findings shed light on the long-term patterns of language study of this growing segment of the US school population with implications for future research and school policies that seek to improve heritage language learning and maintenance as well as equitable access to language education for language-minority students.

How many students could continue learning during COVID-19-caused school closures? Introducing a new reachability indicator for measuring equity of remote learning.

This paper proposes a new reachability indicator to analyze the effectiveness of remote learning policies adopted by ministries of education in response to school closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The indicator provides the share of students that can potentially be reached by remote learning policies given the availability of necessary household assets such as radios, televisions, computers and internet access. The results of this analysis outline the stark inequities in access to remote learning, suggesting that at a minimum, more than 30 % of schoolchildren globally cannot be reached by remote learning policies due to the high variation in access to assets for remote learning that exists within and between the world regions. The analysis finds that wealth and area of residence are key factors affecting the reachability of remote learning policies, suggesting that children who reside in rural areas and/or belong to the poorest households in their country are at the greatest risk of being left behind.

The Effects of Cooperative Learning on Peer Relations, Academic Support, and Engagement in Learning Among Students of Color.

Despite Brown vs. Board of Education, prejudice still exists in the American school system. These attitudes can give rise to negative social experiences for students of color (i.e., discrimination), negatively impacting their mental and physical health and creating disparities in educational outcomes. Rather than seeking to ameliorate these negative experiences, our approach attempts to address the underlying prejudices and, in so doing, reduce these disparities. Using 4 waves of data from a cluster randomized trial (N = 15 middle schools, 1,890 students, 47.1% female, 75.2% White), we hypothesized that cooperative learning, which has been shown to reduce prejudice in previous research, would create positive gains in peer relatedness, perceptions of academic support, and engagement in learning, and that gains would be larger for students of color; our results confirmed these hypotheses. Our findings highlight the potential role of cooperative learning in reducing disparities and creating greater equity in education.

Differing Views of Equity: How Prospective Educators Perceive Their Role in Closing Achievement Gaps.

Hiring is an opportunity for school districts to find educators with values and beliefs that align with district goals. Yet beliefs are difficult to measure. We use administrative data from more than ten thousand applications to certificated positions in an urban California school district in which applicants submitted essays about closing achievement gaps. Using structural topic modeling (STM) to code these essays, we examine whether applicants systematically differ in their use of these themes and whether themes predict hiring outcomes. Relative to white applicants, Hispanic and African American applicants are more likely to identify structural causes of inequities and discuss educators' responsibilities for addressing inequality. Similar differences in themes emerge between applicants to schools with different student populations. Techniques like STM can decipher hard-to-measure beliefs from administrative data, providing valuable information for hiring and decision making.

School choice & social stratification: how intra-district transfers shift the racial/ethnic and economic composition of schools.

The liberation model hypothesizes that school choice liberates students from underperforming schools by giving them the opportunity to seek academically superior schooling options outside of their neighborhoods. Subsequently, school choice is hypothesized to diminish stratification in schools. Data from one urban school district is analyzed to test these hypotheses. We specifically examine which factors influence the propensity for parents to participate in choice, and how school choice changes the racial/ethnic and economic composition of schools. We further examine how school choice influences similar changes within distinct sociogeographic areas within the district. We find that families who are zoned to more racially/ethnically and economically diverse schools in sociogeographically diverse areas are more likely to participate in school choice. We also find that intra-district choice is associated with a slight increase in social stratification throughout the district, with more substantial stratification occurring in the most demographically diverse areas and schools.

El crítico asunto de la equidad escolar: un estudio multicasos / O assunto critico da eqüidade escolar: um estudo multicaso / The critical matter of school equity: a multicase study

La equidad escolar se constituye en una problemática compleja para las instituciones educativas, por cuanto el sistema educativo se ha configurado históricamente en forma tal, que la segmentación por grupos poblacionales -según el puesto ocupado por los individuos en la sociedad- y la poca atención a los grupos más desfavorecidos, han conducido a una inequidad histórica que se afronta en el momento actual mediante políticas compensatorias y focalizadas, cuyo propósito central es evitar que la polarización entre ricos y pobres sea más severa. Significa, entonces, que las diferencias de los individuos en la sociedad en cuanto a la cantidad y la calidad de educación alcanzada puede cuestionarse desde la pregunta por la justicia. En este sentido, el acceso a un bien cultural como el educativo, tan apreciado para la sociedad, pasa por el filtro de las diferencias socioeconómicas. En consecuencia, las condiciones desiguales en que se logra acceder a una educación con calidad, dependen menos de las capacidades y méritos de los individuos o de la realización de sus derechos. Esta situación se muestra en cinco casos de política educativa del Distrito Capital, durante las administraciones de los alcaldes Mockus y Peñaloza, tendientes a promover la equidad educativa: colegios de subsidios a la demanda, colegios en concesión, colegios de competencias laborales, colegios de nivelación para la excelencia, y los demás colegios que no hacen parte de un programa particular sino de la acción gubernamental del distrito orientada a la calidad, la eficiencia y la equidad.

A eqüidade escolar é uma problemática complexa para as instituições educativas por quanto o sistema educativo tem-se configurado historicamente de tal maneira que a segmentação por grupos populacionais -segundo a posição dos indivíduos na sociedade- e a pouca atenção fornecida aos grupos mais desfavorecidos, têm-se tornado numa ineqüidade histórica a qual é afrontada atualmente mediante políticas compensatórias e focalizadas, cujo propósito principal consiste em evitar que a polarização entre os ricos o os pobres seja mais severa. Isto quer dizer, então, que as diferenças dos indivíduos na sociedade com referência à quantidade e à qualidade da educação obtida podem ser questionadas a partir da pergunta sobre a justiça. Neste sentido, o acesso a um bem cultural como é a educação com qualidade, tão apreciado pela sociedade, passa pelo filtro das diferenças socioeconômicas. Em conseqüência, as condições desiguais mediante as quais se pode ter acesso a uma educação com qualidade dependem menos das capacidades e dos méritos dos indivíduos ou da realização dos seus direitos. Na perspectiva desta situação se apresentam cinco casos de política educativa no Distrito Capital da Colômbia durante as administrações dos prefeitos Mockus e Peñalosa que tinham como objetivo promover a eqüidade educativa: colégios de subsídios à procura, colégios de nivelação para a excelência e outros colégios que não pertencem a nenhum programa em particular mas a ação governamental do distrito orientada à qualidade, à eficiência e à eqüidade.

School equity has become a complex problem for educational institutions as the educational system has been configured historically in a way that the population group segmentation - according to the position of individuals in society - and the scarce attention to the underprivileged groups have led to a historical inequity that is being faced nowadays by means of compensatory and focused policies whose main aim is to prevent that polarization between rich and poor groups be more severe. This means, then, that the individuals' differences in society with reference to quantity and quality of education levels reached can be questioned from the perspective of justice. Accordingly, this situation is shown in five cases of educational policy at the Colombian Capital District, during the Mockus and Peñalosa mayor administrations. These policies aimed at promoting educational equity: demand-subsidy high schools, labor competence high schools, excellence leveling-up schools and other educational institutions that do not belong to a particular program, but to the district governmental action oriented to school quality, efficiency and equity.