Are ambitious children more resilient?

Traditional teaching methods may be putting off math students Traditional teaching methods, where the teacher stands at the front and dictates to the class, may be affecting students' attitudes toward math, suggest researchers at the University of Manchester. The initial findings of the Economics and Social Research Council-funded study were presented at the British Educational Research Association's annual conference. More than 13,000 11- to 16-year-old students and 128 teachers at 40 secondary schools across England were asked to complete questionnaires detailing the kind of activities they experienced in math lessons. Traditional activities such as copying the teacher's notes from the board and being asked questions by the teacher were most frequently cited, ahead of alternative learning approaches such as using media-like magazines and videos in class. Students who reported a more traditional teaching experience in their lessons also named math as their least favorite subject. The results of a 2009 review from the Johns Hopkins School of Education's Center for Research and Reform in Education, Effective Programs in Middle and High School Mathematics: A Best-Evidence Synthesis, found that the most successful programs for teaching math focus on changing daily teaching practices, particularly the use of cooperative learning methods, and encourage student interaction.

RAND Corporation: focus on K-12 education A new report from the RAND Corporation describes recent RAND work related to K-12 education, including teacher pay for performance, measuring teacher effectiveness, school leadership, school systems and reform, and out-of-school time. Headlines include: No evidence that incentive pay for teacher teams improves student outcomes Incorporating student performance measures into teacher evaluation systems (Recommendations include: (1) promote consistency in the student performance measures that teachers are allowed to choose, and (2) use multiple years of student achievement data in value-added estimation, and, where possible, use average teachers' value-added estimates across multiple years.) First-year principals in urban school districts: how actions and working conditions relate to outcomes (A key finding of this study was that teacher capacity and cohesiveness were the school and district conditions most strongly related to student outcomes.) When viewing the report online, each headline links to the corresponding RAND report on the topic.

Are ambitious children more resilient? Can career aspirations at age seven provide valuable insights into children's emotional state and their ability to overcome difficult family circumstances? A Centre for Longitudinal Studies working paper examines the role of young children's career aspirations in the association between family poverty and emotional and behavioral problems. Using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, researchers tested a path model linking family poverty and maternal qualification to children's emotional and behavioral problems via their career aspirations. The findings suggest that career aspirations are related to maternal qualifications but not family poverty or behavioral problems. Family poverty is significantly associated with behavioral problems, but is moderated by career aspirations. More ambitious children from poor backgrounds are less likely to have behavior problems than equally disadvantaged seven-year-olds who have lower career aspirations.

Two programs for at-risk children meet "near top tier" evidence standard The Top Tier Evidence initiative, a resource used by federal officials to identify social programs meeting the Congressional Top Tier evidence standard, has identified Child FIRST and Parent Management Training - the Oregon Model (PMTO) as "Near Top Tier." The initiative's expert panel (1) found evidence from well-conducted randomized controlled trials that these programs produce sizable reductions in child maltreatment and juvenile crime, respectively; and (2) believes that each program needs just one additional step to qualify as Top Tier - a replication trial to confirm the initial findings and establish that they generalize to other sites. The evidence summary for Child FIRST can be seen here and the evidence summary for PMTO can be seen here.