How gender identity is assessed directly shapes how students are supported in elementary schools in the United States. Despite the existence of gender diversity, calls for more inclusive science, and ...recommendations from national research associations and societies to incorporate and emphasize the voices of individuals with diverse gender identities, most studies exploring gender disparities in education have relied heavily on the assumption of a gender binary. As a result, the omission of diverse gender identities from educational research in the elementary years is troubling. To address this area of need, the current article summarizes the opportunities for and constraints surrounding inclusive evaluation of gender identity in the elementary school years. We begin with a brief review of common methods used to assess gender identities for children in elementary school, including the strengths and limitations of each. We next contextualize these measures by outlining the current state-level barriers to including diverse gender identities in assessments of gender. In highlighting the best available practices and the structural systems of oppression realized through state-level policies that perpetuate an inability to represent student voices across the gender spectrum, we conclude with a call to action to inspire the evolution of best practices in the service of all students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
The independent curriculum provides teachers with the opportunity to innovate in the learning process. As a replacement for the 2023 curriculum, the independent curriculum has a different paradigm ...from the previous curriculum, namely emphasizing teacher independence to manage learning with a focus on student achievement. This research uses a qualitative approach and descriptive research type to describe the SD/MI teacher paradigm regarding Independent Curriculum learning in Jayapura City. This research was conducted at MIN Jayapura City. Techniques for collecting research procedures through observation, in-depth interviews and documentation. Meanwhile, the analysis method uses the Creswel model analysis technique. The research results show that the SD/MI teachers' paradigm regarding learning in the independent curriculum is as follows: (1) Independent curriculum-based learning emphasizes the achievement of learning outcomes (CP) at each phase rather than at each grade level; (2) Teachers have more freedom in managing learning; (3) Learning must be relevant to the needs and characteristics of students; (4) Technology-based learning; (5) An independent curriculum requires teacher collaboration; (6) Learning oriented towards developing the Pancasila Student Profile and Rahmatan Lil Alamin Student Profile (P5 PPRA); (7) The independent curriculum emphasizes differentiated learning.
Incorporating computational thinking (CT) ideas into core subjects, such as mathematics and science, is one way of bringing early computer science (CS) education into elementary school. Minimal ...research has explored how teachers can translate their knowledge of CT into practice to create opportunities for their students to engage in CT during their math and science lessons. Such information can support the creation of quality professional development experiences for teachers. We analyzed how eight elementary teachers created opportunities for their students to engage in four CT practices (abstraction, decomposition, debugging, and patterns) during unplugged mathematics and science activities. We identified three strategies used by these teachers to create CT opportunities for their students: framing, prompting, and inviting reflection. Further, we grouped teachers into four profiles of implementation according to how they used these three strategies. We call the four profiles (1) presenting CT as general problem-solving strategies, (2) using CT to structure lessons, (3) highlighting CT through prompting, and (4) using CT to guide teacher planning. We discuss the implications of these results for professional development and student experiences.
As the COVID-19 pandemic upended the 2019–2020 school year, education systems scrambled to meet the needs of students and families with little available data on how school closures may impact ...learning. In this study, we produced a series of projections of COVID-19-related learning loss based on (a) estimates from absenteeism literature and (b) analyses of summer learning patterns of 5 million students. Under our projections, returning students are expected to start fall 2020 with approximately 63 to 68% of the learning gains in reading and 37 to 50% of the learning gains in mathematics relative to a typical school year. However, we project that losing ground during the school closures was not universal, with the top third of students potentially making gains in reading.
Off-task activity is ubiquitous in classrooms, yet little understood. Building on recent work that illustrates the utility of off-task activity to disrupt relations of power among students, this ...article explores the potential functions of off-task participation during collaborative mathematics problem-solving. We examined 56 instances of off-task participation across 12 collaborative problem-solving sessions in a fourth grade classroom during a collaborative inquiry unit on place value. Results show that the majority of instances functioned to support the collaborative problem-solving process. Further, off-task participation often succeeded in shifting collaborative dynamics after on-task bids to shift dynamics failed. Off-task activity seemed to introduce new storylines that served as discursive tools to navigate local social hierarchies. We close by situating an understanding of the resources that students bring into collaborative learning through off-task activity within conversations on inclusive pedagogies.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement
This study found that off-task activity can often help students manage collaborative dynamics during mathematics small-group work. Off-task activity helped students warm up to collaboration, gain the attention of others, recruit others into participation, gain access to collaboration, extend the task, and resist concentrated authority. Moment-to-moment analysis of four vignettes from the study show that the storylines introduced by off-task activity offered students new ways of being and relating that helped shift dynamics. These results suggest that off-task activity offers resources for students to manage their participation and may be an important characteristic of inclusive, student-centered, collaborative classrooms.
A solid foundation in math is important for children's long‐term academic success. Many factors influence children's math learning—including the math content students are taught in school, the ...quality of their instruction, and the math attitudes of students' teachers. Using a large and diverse sample of first‐grade students (n = 551), we conducted a large‐scale replication of a previous study (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 2010, 1860; n = 117), which found that girls in classes with highly math anxious teachers learned less math during the school year, as compared to girls whose math teachers were less anxious about math. With a larger sample, we found a negative relation between teachers' math anxiety and students' math achievement for both girls and boys, even after accounting for teachers' math ability and children's beginning of year math knowledge, replicating and extending those previous results. Our findings strengthen the support for the hypothesis that teachers' math anxiety is one factor that undermines children's math learning and could push students off‐track during their initial exposure to math in early elementary school.
Prior research showed that girls learned less math when their teachers were highly math anxious. In this large‐scale replication, we found that both boys and girls learn less math in classrooms with highly math anxious teachers, replicating and extending the previous study’s findings.
Curriculum materials explicitly designed to foster teacher learning represent a prominent route to professional development (PD) for teachers. However, it is unclear whether PD can be delivered ...successfully in the form of teacher self-study of curriculum materials, or whether it has to be scaffolded additionally by an expert. This study investigated effects of expert scaffolding in science-related PD for elementary school teachers with regard to proximal teacher outcomes (i.e., teacher beliefs and motivations), instructional quality, and student achievement. Moreover, mediation of PD effects through proximal teacher outcomes and teachers' instruction was examined. Seventy-three teachers and 1,039 students participated in the study. Expert scaffolding was implemented in a 3-tiered way: A first group (18 teachers) received PD with extensive scaffolding, a second group (18 teachers) was provided with reduced expert scaffolding, and a third group (18 teachers) received no expert scaffolding and was provided with the curriculum materials only (self-study group). A baseline group (19 teachers) did not participate in science-related PD and completed questionnaires on teacher outcomes only. Scaffolded PD was significantly superior to PD through self-study in terms of teacher beliefs and motivation, instructional quality, and student achievement. Contrary to our hypothesis, PD effects on student learning were mediated only to a small extent by teacher beliefs. However, teachers' instruction emerged as a substantial mediator of PD effects on student achievement. The results highlight the advantages of additional expert scaffolding in PD based on curriculum materials for the preparation of elementary school teachers for teaching science.
This study addresses how to help elementary science teachers explore the uncertainty inherent in scientific activity and support elementary students to engage in more complex and authentic ...investigations. We describe a district partnership focused on understanding how to support elementary teachers to adapt curricula to promote science practices. We then present a close analysis of how teachers navigated ideas about uncertainty during their work exploring tools to adapt their curriculum. We argue that an essential aspect of the teachers’ work was developing a more nuanced view of scientific uncertainty, including more precise goals for students’ engagement in scientific activity and a repertoire of strategies for supporting students to engage with scientific uncertainty without unduly increasing uncertainty for teachers. We trace three strategies that appeared to help teachers negotiate and develop this more nuanced view: beginning with complex phenomena, iterating on investigations, and leveraging variability in students’ ways of conducting investigations. The findings have implications for the design of professional development programs for elementary teachers, particularly the support that teachers might need to negotiate a nuanced set of teacher and student roles when seeking to engage students more authentically in science practices.
This study investigated developmental trajectories of reading and math using latent-growth-curve analyses across multiple academic skills, measures, and multiple time periods within a single sample. ...Reading-related growth was marked by significant individual differences during the early elementary-school period and nonsignificant individual differences during the late elementary-school period. For math-related skills, nonsignificant individual differences were present for early math growth and significant individual differences were present in late elementary-school. No clear pattern of cumulative, compensatory, or stable development emerged for either reading-related or math skills. These differing growth patterns highlight developmental complexities and suggest domain-specific differences in achievement growth that are potentially associated with contextual factors.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement
Our article addresses the importance of developmental processes in reading and math. We took advantage of a large longitudinal data set to compare the similarity of developmental patterns across several reading and math skills. We found that individual differences in growth rates were greater in the early elementary school years (K-2) for reading than for math, but in later elementary school (third-fifth grades) individual differences in growth were greater for math than for reading. Our results suggest that domain-specific contextual factors may influence these developmental patterns and these differences could have important implications for the manipulation of associated contextual factors and future intervention development.
This study aimed to examine the unique longitudinal role of theory of mind (ToM) on reading comprehension among primary school children, while controlling for other influencing factors. It also ...examined how this impact varies by grade, text genre, and processing level. A sample of 430 Chinese children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 was observed over a period of 6 months. For each grade, longitudinal hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the unique contribution of ToM to reading comprehension across different text genres and processing levels. By controlling for variables such as reading frequency, decoding, vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, listening comprehension, and executive function, ToM cannot predict the overall reading comprehension of children in Grade 2, but can predict it of children in Grades 4 and 6. For specific text genres, ToM predicted narrative comprehension in both Grades 4 and 6 and expository comprehension only in Grade 6. For specific processing levels, ToM predicted advanced comprehension in Grades 4 and 6 and basic comprehension only in Grade 6. Furthermore, ToM predicted advanced narrative and expository comprehension in Grades 4 and 6, and basic expository comprehension in Grade 6. These findings highlight the important role of ToM in reading comprehension development, particularly in the middle and upper stages of primary school. These results lay the foundation for further research on exploring the underlying mechanisms of the impact of ToM on reading comprehension and provide a social-cognitive perspective to enhance the development of reading comprehension.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement
We determined when and where reading minds (theory of mind) contribute to reading texts (reading comprehension) in elementary school students through a comprehensive analysis. Our study demonstrated that reading minds uniquely affect reading texts only in the middle and upper stages of primary school. However, its impact was confined to specific text genre types and comprehension processing levels. These findings underscore the importance of recognizing social-cognitive factors' influence on reading comprehension in educational settings.
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