Age-related changes in sustained attention for older children from high poverty communities in the USA

Sustained attention influences academic achievement because maintaining focus on a task for an extended period supports the acquisition of new skills. Investigating the development of sustained attention has been an important topic in educational and psychological research. This study includes secondary analysis of data collected as part of a larger project that provided opportunities for children to learn chess after school. This study analysed data related to sustained attention, which was measured by the Continuous Performance Task across one academic year in a predominantly African American sample. This sample consists of 149 participants (n = 66 females, M age = 9.57 years, SD = 0.89 years) attending schools in high poverty communities in the USA. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to examine changes in sustained attention in ethnic minority students from high poverty areas using a longitudinal design. A repeated-measures ANOVA was used to conduct statistical analysis. The results indicated that participants’ performance on the sustained attention task improved significantly from the beginning to the end of the school year. Although past studies have examined changes in sustained attention in children using this same task, no studies have used a repeated-measures design in ethnic minority samples. These findings demonstrate the possibility that sustained attention improves continuously in children, despite the difficulties associated with growing up in high poverty environments

Country-Level Research Review: EdTech in Ghana

This document presents a review of the research landscape in Ghana in relation to EdTech research focused at the level of school-based education (not including higher education). The search strategy identified research literature, policy documents, grey literature, and communications with key experts and stakeholders. A growing body of relevant EdTech research is identified to have been undertaken in Ghana. After undertaking searches for relevant literature since 2007, 132 research articles or papers were identified for inclusion. The review provides an overview of trends in this literature in addition to identifying key actors and projects. It also considers how existing research on EdTech in Ghana relates to five research topics that will be the focus of future EdTech Hub research. In combination with political economy analysis, the research identifies potential areas for new research which would be practical and likely to have high impact

Evidence-Based Teaching: Effective teaching practices in primary school classrooms

Understanding and measuring effective teaching practices in low- and middle-income countries is a complex process that requires a contextualised knowledge of teaching quality, as well as adaptable instruments that can reliably capture teachers’ varied classroom behaviours. One approach developed with these purposes in mind is Teach Primary, a classroom observation framework designed and revised in 2021 by the World Bank. This framework captures the time teachers spend on learning and the quality of teaching practices which help to enhance pupils’ cognitive and socio-emotional skills, as well as aspects of the physical environment which may influence teaching quality. Using the Teach Primary framework, this article examines evidence regarding effective instructional practices in primary school classrooms, with highlighted examples from low- and middle-income countries. It also sheds light on the criticality of instrument contextualisation, given variations in how practices can be valued and implemented in different settings and how structural quality factors can influence teachers’ use of strategies. Challenges and limitations relating to the use of the Teach Primary framework are discussed, along with implications for teacher education and evaluation

Graphic organizers and metacognition in students: A scoping review

Graphic organisers (GOs) are visual representations of information contained in the text that illustrate how concepts are connected and how text is structured. Metacognition (MC) is defined as “learning about learning”. GOs have been suggested to support metacognition, However, the literature on the relationship between GO and MC is large and heterogeneous. This means it is challenging for students and teachers to decide what kind of GO to use/ teach, and how to use/ teach them to facilitate students’ learning by enhancing their metacognition. In this study, a scoping review will be conducted aiming to provide a comprehensive map of the research on this topic by mainly answering the question of how does the use/ teach of Graphic organisers affect metacognition

Effects of different learning environments on late primary school students’ Decision-making Competence in Socio-Scientific Issues

The main focus of the present study is to explore different ways of training late primary school students to make informed decisions on socio-scientific issues, namely issues that involve scientific knowledge and affect their local community and the society in general. The research design features three supplementary experiments employing a variety of data collection and data analysis methods. Experiment 1 adopts an experimental pre-test post-test design with three learning conditions (Explicit instruction, Guided Discovery and Unguided Discovery) and whole-class interventions and aims to determine the most effective learning environment for primary school students to master decision-making skills in the context of socio-scientific issues. The sample consisted of 190 11-year-old students from four primary schools in Greece and showed that Explicit Instruction and Guided Discovery were significantly more effective than Unguided Discovery. When taking into account achievement Level, though, only Explicit Instruction closed the achievement gap, while Guided Discovery favoured high-achieving students. Experiment 2 employs one-to-one think-aloud tasks with 30 students to capture their reasoning while they are making their decisions. Experiment 2 provides context to the question under study and insight as to why and how one of the learning conditions promotes better learning outcomes. The results showed that students in the Explicit instruction tended to pay more attention to the process they were following and listed the next steps, as well as they provided more explanations on their rationale when making a decision. However, they also seemed to be less independent than students assigned in the Guided and Unguided Discovery conditions asking for the teacher’s confirmation more often. Experiment 3 features thematic analysis of student’s socio-scientific views of vegetarianism that results in two thematic maps of the risks and benefits students associate with vegetarianism. The analysis showed that students hold many misconceptions about vegetarianism and that the decision-making intervention did not have a significant effect on students’ knowledge of vegetarianism.The study has been funded by Onassis Foundation, the Faculty of Education at University of Cambridge and Caius Fund by Gonville & Caius colleg

The Relationship Between Students’ Metacognition and Graphic Organisers: A Scoping Review

Metacognition is a complex cognitive function that is considered to be one of the most important goals of education. One of the most effective ways to enhance metacognition suggested in the literature is using graphic organisers. However, it is unclear how graphic organisers can facilitate metacognition and what the relationship between them is. The present study is a scoping review that fills this gap and maps the current literature regarding metacognition, graphic organisers, and their relationship. Online databases were used to identify papers, from which 25 of them were selected. The results of the review show that there are three types of graphic organisers-metacognition relationship: (1) graphic organisers are used in interventions to enhance metacognition, (2) a combination of graphic organisers and metacognition activities is used in interventions to enhance learning outcomes, and (3) graphic organisers are used to evaluate metacognition. The review also highlights the need for further studies in the field that use experimental design and include younger learners, and diverse subjects, learning domains and contexts. The present study concludes by offering instructional insights for designing metacognition interventions by utilising graphic organisers as aids