The moderating role of school facilitating conditions and attitudes towards ICT on teachers' ICT use and emphasis on developing students’ digital skills

Although information and communication technology (ICT) has impacted many areas of society, its use in school contexts is still limited. In this study, we focused on teachers' attitudes towards ICT and the school facilitating conditions and examined their relationships to the teachers' emphasis on developing students' digital information and communication skills (TEDDICS) and ICT use. Furthermore, we tested whether school facilitating conditions moderated the relationships of attitudes and ICT use with TEDDICS. Overall, 552 teachers in primary and secondary education participated in our survey, and we analysed the resultant data via structural equation modelling. The results showed that positive attitudes towards ICT and ICT use were positively related. In addition, school facilitating conditions had a significant effect on both ICT use and TEDDICS. Notably, an interaction effect between school facilitating conditions and attitudes towards ICT existed—that is, better school facilitating conditions increased the effects of attitudes on ICT use and TEDDICS. These results show the importance of school facilitating conditions in teachers’ practices. A lack of school facilitating conditions may result in less ICT use in teaching, even for teachers who have positive attitudes towards ICT. Hence, promoting facilitating conditions along with positive attitudes in ICT use can be a viable strategy for implementing digitalisation in schoolsPID2020-114177RB-I0

The importance of attitudes toward technology for pre-service teachers' technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge : comparing structural equation modeling approaches

A large body of literature suggests that attitudes toward technology and its educational use are important determinants of technology acceptance and integration in classrooms. At the same time, teachers' Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) facilitates the meaningful use of technology for educational purposes. Overall, attitudes toward technology and TPACK play a critical role for technology integration and have been in the focus of many empirical studies. Albeit the attention that has been paid to these two concepts, their relation has not been fully understood. The present study contributes to the advancement of this understanding by examining the relations between three core technology attitudes (i.e., general attitudes towards ICT, attitudes towards ICT in education, and ease of use) and TPACK self-efficacy beliefs, based on a sample of N = 688 Flemish pre-service teachers in 18 teacher-training institutions. Using a variety of structural equation modeling approaches, we describe the TPACK-attitudes relations from multiple perspectives and present a substantive-methodological synergism. The analyses revealed that the attitudes toward technology and TPACK self-beliefs were positively related; yet, differences across the attitudes and TPACK dimensions existed, pointing to the delineation of general and educational perspectives on the use of ICE. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

"Learning Science Is About Facts and Language Learning Is About Being Discursive"-An Empirical Investigation of Students' Disciplinary Beliefs in the Context of Argumentation

Argumentation is considered crucial in numerous disciplines in schools and universities because it constitutes an important proficiency in peoples' daily and professional lives. However, it is unclear whether argumentation is understood and practiced in comparable ways across disciplines. This study consequently examined empirically how students perceive argumentation in science and (first) language lessons. Specifically, we investigated students' beliefs about the relevance of discourse and the role of facts. Data from 3,258 high school students from 85 German secondary schools were analyzed with multigroup multilevel structural equation modeling in order to disentangle whether or not differences in argumentation across disciplines exist and the extent to which variation in students' beliefs can be explained by gender and school track. Results showed that students perceived the role of facts as highly relevant for science lessons, whereas discursive characteristics were considered significantly less important. In turn, discourse played a central role in language lessons, which was believed to require less knowledge of facts. These differences were independent of students' gender. In contrast, school track predicted the differences in beliefs significantly. Our findings lend evidence on the existence of disciplinary school cultures in argumentation that may be the result of differences in teachers' school-track-specific classroom practice and education. Implications in terms of a teacher's role in establishing norms for scientific argumentation as well as the impact of students' beliefs on their learning outcomes are discussed

The Relation Between Executive Functions and Math Intelligence in Preschool Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Executive functions (EFs) are key skills underlying other cognitive skills that are relevant to learning and everyday life. Although a plethora of evidence suggests a positive relation between the three EF subdimensions inhibition, shifting, and updating, and math skills for schoolchildren and adults, the findings on the magnitude of and possible variations in this relation are inconclusive for preschool children and several narrow math skills (i.e., math intelligence). Therefore, the present meta-analysis aimed to (a) synthesize the relation between EFs and math intelligence (an aggregate of math skills) in preschool children; (b) examine which study, sample, and measurement characteristics moderate this relation; and (c) test the joint effects of EFs on math intelligence. Utilizing data extracted from 47 studies (363 effect sizes, 30,481 participants) from 2000 to 2021, we found that, overall, EFs are significantly related to math intelligence (r = .34, 95% CI [.31, .37]), as are inhibition (r = .30, 95% CI [.25, .35]), shifting (r = .32, 95% CI [.25, .38]), and updating (r = .36, 95% CI [.31, .40]). Key measurement characteristics of EFs, but neither children’s age nor gender, moderated this relation. These findings suggest a positive link between EFs and math intelligence in preschool children and emphasize the importance of measurement characteristics. We further examined the joint relations between EFs and math intelligence via meta-analytic structural equation modeling. Evaluating different models and representations of EFs, we did not find support for the expectation that the three EF subdimensions are differentially related to math intelligence

Value-Added Scores Show Limited Stability over Time in Primary School

Value-added (VA) models are used for accountability purposes and quantify the value a teacher or a school adds to their students’ achievement. If VA scores lack stability over time and vary across outcome domains (e.g., mathematics and language learning), their use for high-stakes decision making is in question and could have detrimental real-life implications: teachers could lose their jobs, or a school might receive less funding. However, school-level stability over time and variation across domains have rarely been studied together. In the present study, we examined the stability of VA scores over time for mathematics and language learning, drawing on representative, large-scale, and longitudinal data from two cohorts of standardized achievement tests in Luxembourg (N = 7,016 students in 151 schools). We found that only 34-38% of the schools showed stable VA scores over time with moderate rank correlations of VA scores from 2017 to 2019 of r = .34 for mathematics and r = .37 for language learning. Although they showed insufficient stability over time for high- stakes decision making, school VA scores could be employed to identify teaching or school practices that are genuinely effective—especially in heterogeneous student populations.

Why we need systematic reviews and meta-analyses in the testing and assessment literature

Multivariate analysis of psychological dat

[validation Of The Brazilian Version Of Mini-test Casi-s].

To determine CASI-S accuracy in the diagnosis of dementia. The Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument - Short Form (CASI-S) was applied in 43 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and 74 normal controls. AD diagnosis was based on DSM-IV, NINCDS-ADRDA, and CAMDEX. CASI-S includes: registration, temporal orientation, verbal fluency (4-legged animals in 30s), and recall (3 words). Its maximum score is 33 points. A copy of 2 pentagons was added. ROC curve showed an accuracy of 0.87, with standard error of 0.032, and 95% confidence intervall between 0.795 and 0.925. The cut-off score for cognitive deficit was 23, with sensitivity of 76.7%, specificity 86.5%, positive likelihood ratio (LR) 5.68, and negative LR 0.27. The cut-off score for subjects 70 years or older was 20, with sensitivity of 71.4% and specificity 97.1%. CASI-S is a practical test, with high specificity, particularly in individuals above 70 years of age. The adding of the drawing test did not improve its accuracy.63416-2