We study the effect of the world's largest school feeding program on children's learning outcomes. Staggered implementation across different states of a 2001 Indian Supreme Court Directive mandating ...the introduction of free school lunches in public primary schools generates plausibly exogenous variation in program exposure across different birth cohorts. We exploit this to estimate the effect of program exposure on math and reading test scores of primary school-aged children. We find that prolonged exposure to midday meals has a robust positive effect on learning achievement. We further investigate various channels that may account for this improvement including complementary schooling inputs, heterogeneous responses by socio-economic status, and intra-household redistribution.
•Prolonged exposure to school nutrition improves math and reading test scores.•The effects are more pronounced when complemented with learning infrastructure.•All children, irrespective of gender or wealth, benefit equally from the program.•The learning impact is comparable to those from more direct learning interventions.
In many Internet videos authors appear in front of the camera to present their particular view on a topic. Given the high consumption rate of Internet videos by teenagers, we explored the pros and ...cons of using these videos to learn about complex topics, compared to learning from textual web pages. Specifically, we studied how 207 primary school students (grades 4–6) evaluated and integrated multiple and multimodal web pages (text or video) while learning about the pros and cons of bottled water. Results showed no major role of modality in students' source memory, as measured by citations in their responses to an integration question and their memory for sources. Nevertheless, modality exerted a strong influence on students' beliefs about the topic because, after the study period, they defended the views described in the videos more than those presented in texts. Finally, modality tended to influence students’ integration, with participants who learned from two textual webpages including almost twice as many inferences in their responses as those who learned from two videos. We discuss the results in light of current theories of evaluation and integration of multimodal information and (shallow) digital reading, and we elaborate on the pros and cons of using Internet videos in Primary School.
•Primary school students watched Internet videos and read textual Web pages about a controversy.•Modality played no major role in students' source memory.•Internet videos exerted a strong influence on students' beliefs about the topic.•Textual web pages tended to improve students' integration.
This study analyzes the interactions based on student gender that are promoted by future primary school teachers, with three distinct profiles in the subjects of natural sciences and math. The three ...teacher profiles combine socioemotional variables related to the teaching of these two subjects and variables related to gender bias. 17 class videos of both mathematics and natural sciences in the context of pre-service teacher preparation were analyzed regarding the interactions that took place. A prevalence of interactions directed towards boys was found. Regarding the type of profile, it was found that pre-service teachers with masculine traits promoted more interactions with gender equity. The implications for primary teacher preparation and for the creation of school environments in which girls are encouraged to engage in mathematics and natural sciences are discussed.
To identify the risk factors for stillbirth (SB).
This case-control study was carried out between 1 December 2019 and 30 April 2020. Women whose fetuses died after the 28
th
week of gestation, but ...before delivery and women whose newborns were alive and healthy after delivery were examined. The main variables recorded included maternal age, educational level, medical and obstetrical past histories, number of antenatal visits, whether the woman was referred or not, body mass index (BMI), and sex of newborn. Fisher exact test, t-test and logistic regression were used for comparison. p < .05 was considered statistically significant.
Our frequency of SB was 54/1000 births (63 SB out of 1167 deliveries). Significant risk factors for SB were referred parturient (aOR = 7.76, 95%CI = 2.84-21.20), past-history of SB (aOR = 6.54, 95%CI = 1.27-33.63), primary school educational level (aOR = 5.60, 95%CI = 3.63-9.06), pregnancy followed up by a general practitioner (aOR = 5.38, 95%CI = 1.13-25.65 and BMI ≥30kg/m
2
(aOR = 3.51, 95%CI = 1.32-9.38).
When the above-identified risk factors are present, pregnancy and delivery should be well followed up, if we want to reduce the frequency of SB.
Due to the importance of education for sustainable heritage preservation, it is imperative to pay attention to how heritage is taught in the education system. As a multicultural country with a rich ...cultural heritage, Malaysia is home to four world heritage sites. This paper investigates Malaysia's new primary school curriculum to determine to what extent the core curriculum cultivates an awareness of and sense of respect for heritage. The results reveal a focus on Malaysian intangible cultural heritage in some core subjects, such as history, Bahasa Malaysia, art, and music education.
•Education is critical for sustainable preserving of heritage.•As a multicultural country with a rich cultural heritage, Malaysia is home to four world heritage sites.•This paper investigates Malaysia's new kurikulum standard sekolah rendah (KSSR) in respect to heritage education.•The results showed that, there is a focus on Malaysian cultural heritage in some core subjects.
School education is crucial for personal/social development. To confirm the demand for special education any child is required to be assessed. Instruments that measure children’s intellectual ...abilities aid teachers to adapt their teaching environments once pupils with special needs are recognized. This correlational study’s intention was developing, validating and implementing a psychometric test to assess reasoning skill among children. Some of the influencing factors such as age, gender and parents’ educational level were meanwhile investigated. Hence, three subtests that assess abstract, quantitative, nonverbal, matrix and visual reasoning were selected under the supervision of scholars of the field to develop a psychometric test whose internal consistency was calculated through Pearson Coefficient Correlation by giving the test to 150 volunteer participants. All the calculated values declared high internal consistency. Then, 222 male and female preschool, first grade and second grade students were selected through multiple stage stratified sampling to participate in the study. Their reasoning ability was compared based on age, gender and parents’ educational level using ANOVA and tukey tests in SPSS22. The findings regarding age and parents’ educational level were controversial: younger children had better reasoning skills also children of fathers with lower academic degrees outperformed their peers. No statistically significant difference was observed regarding gender. Such findings could help educational policy makers and scholars of educational psychology to fill the gaps of educational contents and environments specifically during early school education. The developed instrument assists teachers modify teaching methods and environments to help weaker children flourish cognitively.
Research into classroom dialogue suggests that certain forms are especially productive for students' learning. Despite the large number of studies in this area, there is inadequate evidence about the ...prevalence of the identified forms, let alone their productivity. However, scarcity is widely presumed. The overall aim of the study reported in this article was to examine the extent to which the forms are embedded within current practice in English primary schools. Video-recordings of two lessons from each of 36 classrooms formed the database, with two subjects from mathematics, English and science covered in each classroom. Each lesson was coded per turn for the presence of 'dialogic moves' and rated overall for the level of student involvement in specified activities. Results revealed that the supposedly productive forms were not always as scarce as sometimes presumed, while also highlighting huge variation in their relative occurrence. They also point to the role of professional development (PD) for teachers in promoting use of some forms.
Background
Problem‐solving in early and middle childhood is of high relevance for cognitive developmental research and educational support. Previous research on science problem‐solving has focussed ...on the process and strategies of children handling challenging tasks, but less on providing insights into the cognitive network that enables science problem‐solving.
Aims
In this study, we aimed to investigate whether performance in science problem‐solving is mainly determined by domain‐specific rule knowledge, by domain‐general cognitive abilities or both.
Methods
In our study, 215 6‐ to 8‐year‐old children completed a set of three domain‐specific rule knowledge tasks and three corresponding problem‐solving tasks that were content‐coherent, as well as a vocabulary task, and a reasoning task.
Results
Correlational and regression analyses revealed a negligible impact of domain‐specific rule knowledge on corresponding problem‐solving tasks. In contrast, the associations between problem‐solving performance in different domains and the associations between problem‐solving performance and domain‐general abilities (vocabulary and reasoning) were comparably strong.
Conclusions
The findings suggest that science problem‐solving in primary school children primarily relies on domain‐general cognitive abilities. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to cognitive theories and early science education.
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