January #7

Daily School Recess Improves Classroom Behavior
School children who receive more recess behave better and are likely to learn more, according to a large study of third-graders conducted by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
The study, published in Pediatrics, suggests that a daily break of 15 minutes or more in the school day may play a role in improving learning, social development, and health in elementary school children. The study’s principal investigator is Romina M. Barros, M.D., assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at Einstein.
Dr. Barros looked at data on approximately 11,000 third-graders enrolled in the national Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. The children, ages 8 to 9, were divided into two categories: those with no or minimal recess (less than 15 minutes a day) and those with more than 15 minutes a day. There were an equal number of boys and girls. The children’s classroom behavior was assessed by their teachers using a questionnaire.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, free, unstructured play is essential for keeping children healthy, and for helping them reach important social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones. Unstructured play also helps kids manage stress and become resilient.
However, some studies indicate that children are getting less and less unstructured playtime, a trend exacerbated by the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. “Many schools responded to No Child Left Behind by reducing the time for recess, the creative arts, and physical education in an effort to focus on reading and mathematics,” says Dr. Barros.
A 2005 survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics showed that the 83 percent to 88 percent of children in public elementary schools have recess of some sort. But the number of recess sessions per day and the duration of the recess periods have been steadily declining. Since the 1970s, children have lost about 12 hours per week in free time, including a 25 percent decrease in play and a 50 percent decrease in unstructured outdoor activities, according to another study.
The present study shows that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are especially affected by this trend. “This is a serious concern,” says Dr. Barros. “We know that many disadvantaged children are not free to roam their neighborhoods, even their own yards, unless they are with an adult. Recess may be the only opportunity for these kids to practice their social skills with other children.”_“When we restructure our education system, we have to think about the important role of recess in childhood development," adds Dr. Barros. "Even if schools don't have the space, they could give students 15 minutes of indoor activity. All that they need is some unstructured time."
Dr. Barros’ coauthors include Ellen J. Silver, Ph.D., associate professor of pediatrics, and Ruth E.K. Stein, M.D., professor of pediatrics.
The paper, “School Recess and Group Classroom Behavior,” was published in the February 1 issue of Pediatrics. http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/123/2/431

New tactics to tackle bystander's role in bullying

A new psychodynamic approach to bullying in schools has been successfully trialled by UCL (University College London) and US researchers. CAPSLE (Creating a Peaceful School Learning Environment) is a groundbreaking method focused more on the bystander, including the teacher, than on the bully or the victim. The study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, shows that an easily implemented school-wide intervention focussing on empathy and power dynamics can reduce children's experiences of aggression in school and improve classroom behaviour.
Professor Peter Fonagy, UCL Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, and lead author of the paper, says: "Bullying has an extensive impact on children's mental health including disruptive and aggressive behaviour, school dropout, substance abuse, depressed mood, anxiety, and social withdrawal. It also undermines educational achievement and disrupts children's abilities to develop social relationships.
"While school anti-bullying programmes are widely used, there have been few controlled trials of their effectiveness. CAPSLE is a psychodynamic approach that addresses the co-created relationship between bully, victim, and bystanders, assuming that all members of the school community, including teachers, play a role in bullying. It aims to improve the capacity of all community members to mentalize, that is, to interpret one's own and others' behaviour in terms of mental states (beliefs, wishes, feelings), assuming that greater awareness of other people's feelings will counteract the temptation to bully others. It also teaches people to manage power struggles and issues, both of which are known to damage mentalizing."
The randomized study, working with 1,345 third to fifth graders (8-11 year olds) in nine US elementary schools, assessed the efficacy of a three-year programme. In total, about 4,000 children were exposed to the study protocol. CAPSLE schools were compared with schools receiving no intervention and those using only School Psychiatric Consultation (SPC) where children with the most significant behavioural problems were assessed and referred for counselling.
Rather than simply targeting aggressive children, the CAPSLE programme worked to develop mentalizing skills in students and staff across the wider school community, beginning with bystanders perceiving and accepting their own (unthinking) role in maintaining the bully-victim relationship through abdicating responsibility and making an implicit decision not to think about what the bully/victim is experiencing. The emphasis was on the need to understand rather than react to others and thus avoid the problems created by a regression into the victim, victimizer and bully. Poster campaigns, stickers and badges were used to create a climate where feelings were labelled and distress was acknowledged as legitimate, with the ultimate aim of changing the way the entire school social system viewed bullying.
In the first year of the study, teachers received a day of group training and students received nine sessions of self-defence. This training in martial arts with role-playing was designed to help children understand how they responded to victimization and how that victimization affected their capacity to think clearly and creatively. During the study, teachers were discouraged from making disciplinary referrals (such as sending someone to the principal's office) unless absolutely necessary, and classes were asked to take 15 minutes at the end of the school day to reflect on the day's activities. All classes would reflect on bully-victim-bystander relationships according to a structured format depicted in posters placed in all classrooms. Children would assess the extent to which they had succeeded in being reflective and compassionate. They would then make a classroom decision on whether or not a class banner should be posted outside the room to say that the classroom had had a good mentalizing day. The study found that children were much tougher on themselves than teachers would have been under similar circumstances
Over the course of the study, reports of aggression, victimization, bystanding behaviour and mentalizing were gathered twice yearly from classroom questionnaires completed by the children. Behavioural observations on a randomly chosen subgroup of children were made at regular intervals by observers who looked for 'off-task' and disruptive behaviour. The programme was found to generate more positive bystanding behaviours, greater empathy for victims, and less favourable attitudes towards aggression in CAPSLE schools. In these schools, fewer children were nominated by their peers as aggressive, victimized, or engaging in aggressive bystanding compared with the control schools. This was confirmed by behavioural observation of less disruptive and off-task classroom behaviour in CAPSLE schools.
CAPSLE made no attempt to focus on helping disturbed children individually or picking them out for treatment. It did not set explicit rules against bullying, nor did it advocate any special treatment for bullying children. Nevertheless, over time the study found that bullies came to be disempowered, initially complaining that the programme was boring and should be stopped until gradually the social system tended to recruit them into more helpful roles. For example, a fifth grade bully who was "humping" the school trophy case to display his sexual prowess to much younger children became a helper of kindergarteners who were upset and helped them with tasks like tying shoelaces.
Over the course of the study, bullying increased across all the schools being monitored (no intervention, SPC and CAPSLE schools), but the percentages of children victimized were substantially larger in the first two types of schools from start to end. At the start of the study, 13 per cent of CAPSLE children were victimised compared to 19 per cent at the end. The increase among SPC children was from 15 to 25 per cent and from 14 to 26 per cent in the schools receiving no interventions. This school district had numerous socioeconomic problems over the course of the study, making the CAPSLE effects on bullying more remarkable.

New Measures of English Language Proficiency and Their Relationship to Performance on Large-Scale Content Assessments - New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont

Using assessment results for 5th and 8th grade English language learner students in three states, the report finds that the English language domains of reading and writing (as measured by a proficiency assessment) are significant predictors of performance on reading, writing, and mathematics assessments and that the domains of reading and writing (literacy skills) are more closely associated with performance than are the English language domains of speaking and listening (oral skills).

In response to a request from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont to explore how English language proficiency measures may be related to performance outcomes on content assessments, this report uses the results of two new large-scale assessments—the Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State for English Language Learners (ACCESS for ELLs) English proficiency assessment and the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP)—to address the following research question:

How does performance in four language domains on an English language proficiency assessment predict English language learner students’ performance on a state content assessment after accounting for student and school characteristics?

After controlling for student and school characteristics, English language proficiency scores (as measured by ACCESS) were significant predictors of content assessment outcomes (as measured by the NECAP).

The models also showed that after accounting for other covariates, ACCESS measures of English literacy were significantly stronger predictors of NECAP outcomes than were ACCESS measures of oral proficiency. Specifically, this report finds that: NECAP reading scores in both 5th and 8th grades were significantly and positively predicted by ACCESS reading, writing, and speaking scores after controlling for other ACCESS scores and student and school characteristics. Among the ACCESS domain scores the strongest predictor of NECAP reading outcomes was ACCESS reading scores, followed by ACCESS writing and speaking scores.

ACCESS reading and writing scores were significant predictors of NECAP reading, writing, and mathematics scores in 5th and 8th grades. ACCESS speaking and listening scores were significant predictors of NECAP scores for only four outcomes: 5th and 8th grade reading (speaking), 8th grade writing (speaking and listening), and 5th grade mathematics (listening).

In sum, ACCESS measures of English literacy skills (reading and writing scores) were significant predictors of NECAP reading and writing outcomes in 5th and 8th grades. Notably, ACCESS reading and writing scores were also positive and significant predictors of NECAP mathematics scores. In addition, except for 8th grade writing, ACCESS reading and writing scores were significantly stronger predictors of NECAP outcomes than were ACCESS listening and speaking scores.


Complete report
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/northeast/pdf/REL_2009066.pdf


Online Learning Takes Off in K-12 Schools: More Students Taking Classes Online, With Further Growth Expected
The Sloan Consortium reports significant growth in online learning among the nation's elementary and secondary school students. It is estimated that more than 1 million students are now taking classes online - a 47 percent increase from the Sloan Consortium's original K-12 study done two years earlier. "K-12 Online Learning: A 2008 Follow-up of the Survey of U.S. School District Administrators" finds the vast majority of American school districts are providing some form of online learning and even more plan to do so within the next three years. The complete survey is available at http://www.sloanconsortium.org .
"Survey results indicate that online learning is meeting a wide range of student needs from remedial to accelerated instruction," said Anthony G. Picciano, professor, School of Education, Hunter College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York. "In particular, it provides the ability to offer coursework that is otherwise unavailable at a child's school, which we find to be especially significant in rural districts."
Four out of five school districts use more than one provider of online classes, including postsecondary institutions, virtual schools within a district's home state, independent vendors, and education service agencies. Among the barriers and issues perceived as most significant for school districts are concerns about course quality and costs related to course development. These concerns are similar to those seen in the original study.
"We are seeing online learning grow in relevance and acceptance throughout education," said Frank Mayadas, program director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and president, Sloan Consortium. "Two out of three school districts expected further growth in their enrollments for online course while 61 percent expect growth in their enrollments for blended courses."

Shoulder injuries in US high school athletes occur more often in boys
finds shoulder injuries are three times more likely to occur during competition
(COLUMBUS, Ohio)—Although shoulder injuries accounted for just 8 percent of all injuries sustained by high school athletes, shoulder injuries were relatively common in predominately male sports such as baseball (18 percent of all injuries), wrestling (18 percent) and football (12 percent). Moreover, boys experienced higher shoulder injury rates than girls, particularly in soccer and baseball/softball.
Player-to-player contact was associated with nearly 60 percent of high school athletes' shoulder injuries from 2005 through 2007, according to a study published in the online issue of the Journal of Athletic Training and conducted by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital. This is the first study to examine shoulder injuries across sports in a nationally representative sample of U.S. high school athletes.
"Shoulder injuries were far more likely to occur in football and wrestling than in any other sport," explained the study's author Ellen Yard, MPH, research associate in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. "Shoulder injuries were also three times more likely to occur in competition compared to practice."
The most common shoulder injuries included sprains and strains (37 percent), dislocations and separations (24 percent), contusions (12 percent) and fractures (7 percent). Surgery was required for 6 percent of shoulder injuries. Dislocations and separations accounted for more than half of all shoulder surgeries.
"Wrestling shoulder injuries were most likely to require surgery, with almost 1 in 10 requiring such procedures," said study co-author Dawn Comstock, PhD, principal investigator in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's and a faculty member of The Ohio State University College of Medicine. "Even more importantly, in all sports, almost 1 in 4 athletes missed at least three weeks of their season following a shoulder injury. This underscores the importance of preventing shoulder injuries before they occur."
Sports studied included football, boys' and girls' soccer, volleyball, boys' and girls' basketball, wrestling, and baseball and softball. Data for the study were collected from the 2005-2007 National High School Sports Injury Surveillance Study (High School RIO™) and were funded in part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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