bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A revised Computer Attitude Scale for Secondary Students
Authors: Smalley Nina , Graff Martin , Saunders Danny 
Published: January 2023

AbstractWith the introduction of information and communications technology (ICT) into the school curriculum, students are now expected to use ICT efficiently within their lessons, regardless of subject, with teachers responsible for this integration. It has therefore become necessary to monitor how students perceive ICT and whether the increased usage within the classroom is leading to the development of positive attitudes. Yet computer technology is developing and changing constantly. These developments have led to the need to modify existing computer attitude scales in order to take account of new developments and to enable teachers and educationalists to assess the value of ICT inclusion within the school timetable as well as the affects of specific computer related projects and initiatives. The Jones & Clarke (1994) Computer Attitude Scale for Secondary Students (CASS) provided the basis by which a tripartite frame of attitudes towards computers could be assessed, these being affective, behavioural and cognitive attitude components. The aim of this study was to develop a psychometrically sound instrument suitable for use with today’s level of computer technology, building upon the work of Jones and Clarke. In this study, 147 12-year-old students participated in the development of a new attitude scale. This instrument was found to be psychometrically sound yielding Cronbach’s alpha for each attitude subscale of .87 (affective), .64 (behavioural) .72 (cognitive) and .91 (total). Test–retest reliability scores were also satisfactory (r = .83, p < .001). Finally a test of criterion validity was deemed to be satisfactory with differences in attitude scores noted for two out of three attitude components and total attitude scores between groups yielding differential scores on levels of computer engagement.
The impact of acculturation on immigrant children’s self-perceptions, feelings of loneliness and social status
Authors: Leondari Angeliki 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThe aim of the present study was to investigate how the psychological acculturation process influences relations with peers, feelings of loneliness and self-perceptions (perceived social competence and global self-worth) in immigrant children. The sample consisted of 92 primary school children, aged 9 to 12 years old.Results revealed that immigrant children did not differ from their host peers in relation to global self-worth, perceived social competence and loneliness. However, there were clear-cut gender differences in relation to loneliness within each group. Girls in the host group reported greater loneliness than boys and, conversely, immigrant boys reported greater loneliness as compared to immigrant girls. In relation to peer acceptance, the results show that peer interactions were influenced by the immigrant status of the newcomers and this effect seemed more potent for boys than for girls, but the pattern was consistent regardless of sex. The results are discussed in terms of their importance in generating and implementing special measures which could help the hosts, within the school context, to accept immigrants, and on the other hand, help immigrant children to get along in the receiving country.
Ethical maturity and organisational health: Some implications for educational psychology services
Authors: Bracher David , Hingley Peter 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThis paper explores the relationship between the development of organisational ethical maturity (OEM) and the process of becoming a “learning organisation”, for any organisation such as an educational psychology service or a local education authority. Organisations and agencies do not spring up as fully developed entities; rather they can be seen to gradually evolve in a dynamic way. This article attempts to trace this evolution through a consideration of the concept of the learning organisation and the development of a model of OEM. In addition, it explores the professional implications of the various stages of ethical development, and finally suggests mechanisms by which an organisation might move effectively towards transformation and a more developed ethical stance. To aid this process the authors have created an “agency awareness checklist”, which focuses upon four facets of agency function – commitment, direction, monitoring and professional training and support – and some ideas for checking to see if the organisation is open to learning. The authors believe that it is crucial to raise the profile of the issue of agency maturity/organisational health within the context of educational psychology services. If an agency or profession cannot examine, regulate and enhance its own ethical maturity/health, can it be entrusted to manage the psychological wellbeing of its clients?
Evolution of the Portugese special education system. A deaf child’s life in a regular school – is it possible to have hope?
Authors: Freire Sofia , Cesar Margarida 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThis paper traces the development and change of the special education system in Portugal within the wider context of the ‘Education for All’ movement and inclusion as an internationally recognised policy. In order to understand and to consider the strengths and challenges in current policy, the writers provide the case study of a day in the life of one 10-year-old deaf child. Tensions and difficulties are uncovered as the school concerned adapts to new demands. It is concluded that inclusive education is a process – a goal that each school strives towards with different rhythms and through different patterns.
Child protection and the distribution of ambiguity
Authors: Lee Nick 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThis paper identifies a tendency in child protection research to focus on the beliefs and assumptions of policy-makers and practitioners. Through the example of children’s speaking rights, it then demonstrates two limitations to this approach: an inadequacy in the face of ambivalence and an inability to recognise institutional rather than personal imperatives. These limitations are problematic because research helps to ensure the legitimacy of child protection policy and practice. Means to overcome these limitations are then explored through the example of children’s video-recorded testimony in criminal courts.
Multiple lenses to peer collaboration: Explorations on children’s thinking within a situative perspective
Authors: Kumpulainen K. , van der Aalsvoort G. M. , Kronqvist Eeva-Liisa 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThis paper describes a study on peer collaboration with students from Kindergarten and Grade 4. Peer collaboration was defined as a co-ordinated activity during which participants collectively process and solve problems towards a joint outcome. Small groups of students were videotaped whilst working jointly on the same task in order to negotiate shared meanings that challenged the subjective understandings of the participants, and sometimes went beyond what they already knew individually. The main questions addressed were: how to approach and understand peer collaboration as situated practice?, and what are the strengths and challenges for investigating peer collaboration via three inter-related analysis methods? The empirical data for the paper was derived from three linked case studies conducted in a Dutch pre-school context, in Finnish kindergarten/pre-school context and in a Finnish elementary school. Case Study 1 and 2 contained peer collaboration during building a joint Lego construction pictured on a plastic card. Case 3 was conducted in an elementary school context and its data draws on one student pair around 12 years old. The data were analysed from three perspectives: sociocultural, relational and developmental. The findings are presented both in quantitative and qualitative ways. The approach presented is discussed as content and method triangulation.
Learning to read children’s emotional experience
Authors: Cullen Kairen , Shaldon Chris 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThis study investigated the effect of a positive relationship between adult and child within the learning to read process in school. Seven children, identified as having difficulties with reading, were interviewed. Two months earlier they had taken part in a two-week reading project that had involved daily reading for 15 minutes with an interested adult, who was not their teacher or classroom assistant. A social constructionist perspective informed the research. The emphasis was on reading as a ‘social act’ rather than merely a cognitive process.The two main areas of interest for the researchers were to find out how the children had experienced the specific intervention and to see what discourses the children used in their construction of reading.The participants’ language displayed complex discourses. Emotional factors connected with learning to read were strongly evident as were the individual learning approaches of the children. Reading was constructed as a powerful and desirable commodity by the children. All children drew on discourses of educational attainment and avoidance of failure and humiliation. A strongly positive response to the adult interaction was registered. The possible implications of these findings for the school in question and for further research areas are considered.
Spoken language in the early years: The cognitive and linguistic development of three- to five-year-old children from socio-economically deprived backgrounds
Authors: Locke Ann , Ginsborg Jane 
Published: January 2023

AbstractEvidence from the USA (Hart & Risley, 1995; Robertson, 1998) and the UK (Tunmer & Hoover, 1992; Burt, Holm & Dodd, 1999) suggests that socio-economically disadvantaged children are more likely than children of higher socio-economic status to have poor language skills and thus to be at risk of subsequent academic failure. The present study represents the baseline and first follow-up stages (funded by British Telecom) of a proposed longitudinal investigation of socioeconomically disadvantaged children entering nursery at the age of three until the age of seven, when they will have taken their Key Stage 1 SATs. Its purpose was to compare children’s spoken language in relation to their cognitive abilities, at the age of three and again at the age of five.Two-hundred-and-forty children were recruited from four nurseries in areas of socioeconomic deprivation. During their first term, two standardised batteries were administered: CELF-PUK, a measure of spoken language skills, and BAS II (Early Years), a measure of cognitive abilities. The two batteries were re-administered two years later. At baseline, 54 per cent of the children were found to be language-delayed. At follow-up this proportion had decreased very slightly to 48 per cent; however, the prevalence of severe language delay had increased almost threefold, from nine per cent to 26 per cent. Mean scores on the language measures at baseline were significantly depressed in comparison with those on the cognitive measures; the gap widened at follow-up since language scores remained stable while cognitive scores improved. Girls’ receptive language was better than boys’ at baseline and follow-up. A comparison of the progress made by the children scoring highest and lowest on the language measures at baseline showed that while the least language-competent girls improved, the least language-competent boys failed to do so, and the children who were most language-competent at baseline actually deteriorated.The children’s language delays were clearly not attributable to poor cognitive abilities. Rather, they were more likely to be the result of limited exposure to spoken language and opportunities for language use, perhaps initially at home, but also at nursery. We argue that the premature focus in the foundation years on literacy at the expense of oracy has a deleterious effect on the spoken language, and therefore the subsequent academic progress, of children who are far from ready to begin reading and writing.
The relationship between reading skill and descriptive picture narratives in late-primary age children with a history of language impairment
Authors: Botting Nicola 
Published: January 2023

Assessing the language skills of older children is an increasing concern for educational psychologists and speech and language therapists. It is now known that groups with language difficulties also often experience severe literacy difficulties but the relationship between oral language and literacy is not well understood in older children. In this study, the picture description narratives from 121 children with a history of SLI were analysed in relation to standardised language tests, reading accuracy and comprehension at 11 years of age. Four narrative subscales were examined: the use of complex syntax, the use of evaluative devices, morphological errors and semantic errors.In general narratives were short and limited in scope. Partial correlations with NVIQ controlled showed that both error scores were related to reading skill. Even in this clinical language sample a small group of ‘poor text comprehenders’ could be identified who showed normal reading accuracy but poor text comprehension (n = 11, 10 per cent) as well as a majority of generally poor readers (n = 79) who showed reading accuracy and comprehension scores outside the normal range, and a significant minority of normal readers with SLI (n = 21) with both reading scores within 1SDof the normative mean. There was no support for an increased proportion of children with a ‘dyslexic’ profile: that is poor decoding in the context of good text comprehension. A significant interaction of narrative profile was found across the reading groups (group x narrative subscale). These literacy and narrative profiles have implications for educational progress and the assessment of written and oral language in difficult-to-test populations.
Prosocial behaviour in preschool: The state of play
Authors: Bateman Amanda , Church Amelia 
Published: January 2023

Research has found that childhood antisocial behaviour, otherwise termed as conduct disorder, is currently the most widespread psychiatric disorder in childhood (Scott et al., 2001) indicating that although prior research addressing early antisocial behaviour has contributed greatly to the understanding of a wide range of issues, more research remains to be done (Berger, 2007).This study proposes to address the need for further knowledge concerning anti-social and prosocial behaviour through approaching these social phenomena from a different perspective by applying a positive rather than negative psychological focus. A discussion of prosocial group organization, children’s social competencies, and varying levels of emotional regulation and coping strategies will be presented.This review is important as problems can arise when children are stigmatized as antisocial within an educational context at an early age, as these negative stereotypes become widely known and reinforced amongst peer groups which then encourage further social negativity towards the stigmatized child (Major & O’Brien, 2005).
Word-reading development, the double-deficit hypothesis, and the diagnosis of dyslexia
Authors: van den Bos Kees P. 
Published: January 2023

In this study, it was hypothesised that with age, word-readingspeedgets better explained by reading-related word-holistic or lexicalvariables than by word-analyticorsub lexicalvariables. At an operational level these conceptual groups of variables were measured by continuous-naming tasks, and tasks which require phonemic manipulations, respectively.The tasks were administered to randomly sampled readers at cross-sectional age levels of 8, 10, 12 and 14 years of age. After data reduction, and at each age level, the word-reading variable was regressed on phonemic performance and alphanumeric naming (numbers and letters). As predicted, with age, alphanumeric naming speed increasingly contributed unique variance to reading speed, whereas unique phonemic contributions declined.The second part of the study applied Wolf and Bowers’ (1999) double deficit hypothesis. For each of the variables word-reading, alphanumeric naming, and phonemic performance, and at each age level, four normative proficiency levels (level 1 = poor; 2 = below average; 3 = above average; 4 = high) were distinguished, and combinations of naming and phonemic performance levels were defined as double, single, or no-deficit categories. At various age and reading proficiency levels, reading scores were compared as a function of deficit categories. A double cognitive deficit (DD) was highly predictive for (very) poor reading performance. It is proposed to consider DD readers as ‘classic dyslexics’. Discussion about the remaining profiles, theoretical and practical issues, and implications for remedial support and policy is provided.
Supporting action research by partners: Evaluating outcomes for vulnerable young people in negative post-school destinations
Authors: Crichton Ron , Hellier Cyril 
Published: January 2023

AbstractThis paper describes a partnership initiative involving educational psychologists, Careers Scotland, Scottish Enterprise Glasgow and a range of training providers. Its aim was to re-engage recent school leavers, with a wide range of needs, all of whom were not in education, employment or training. The application of psychological roles undertaken in the post-school sector, including consultation, evaluation and action research, is highlighted. Intervention and evaluation design for individualised training programmes for 34 young people were shaped by support from Post-School Psychological Services Strategic Officers. Pre-post assessment was undertaken using both standardised and qualitative measures, including questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and focus groups, supported by attendance and progression figures. Encouraging results suggest that the use of differentiated training programmes can successfully help to re-engage disaffected young people and provide continuity and progression to further training opportunities. The study highlights the opportunities presented by collaborative partnerships between educational psychologists and others working in the post-school sector, leading to improved outcomes for vulnerable young people.
Does fostering inductive reasoning promote children’s language acquisition?
Authors: Marx Edeltrud 
Published: January 2023

AbstractIn current developmental psychological research, it is assumed that from the very onset, processes of rule detection play a central role in supporting children’s language acquisition. In the present study a training methodology was used in order to investigate whether fostering the ability to detect rules (i.e. inductive reasoning) also enhances young children’s language competence. The results of two experiments show that inductive reasoning training considerably improved inductive reasoning as well as children’s language competence, but exclusively when rule detection or comparison of attributes is involved: in syntax, derivational morphology, and semantics. More than six months after training, the effects had become even more pronounced. As an important null effect, the use of irregular grammatical forms did not benefit at all.
Using positive relationships to engage the disengaged: An educational psychologist-initiated project involving professional sports input to a Pupil Referral Unit
Authors: Cullen Kairen , Monroe Joyce 
Published: January 2023

Increasingly large numbers of students who experience emotional, social and behavioural difficulties are subject to exclusion from mainstream schools and consequently receive their education in pupil referral units (PRUs). Common perceptions of PRUs are that they are places where high levels of conflict and relatively few constructive relationships occur. In the regular educational psychologist input to an inner city secondary PRU, ideas from a range of psychological models and theories including humanist psychology, personal construct psychology, solution-focused brief therapy and systemic theory were used to highlight some exceptions to these social difficulties. More constructive social interaction and reduced levels of conflict were observed when students engaged in sports activities together and, therefore, the professional coaching input of a local premiership football club’s (XFC’s) ‘Sport in the Community’ programme (SiC) was negotiated and an initial eight-week evaluation project constructed.This paper considers the importance of relationships within the rationale, planning, implementation and evaluation of the project which developed. One of the central aims of this project was to utilise and support the development of more positive relationships between the pupils, the PRU staff and the professional sports coaches in order to engage the pupils more constructively in their educational experience and to support their social and emotional development and their learning in general. The consistently positive feedback from the students, PRU staff and coaches, which emphasised the importance of the relational aspects of the project is considered in relation to further possible interventions and research undertaken by applied psychologists working in education.
Computerised assessment of an analogical reasoning test: Effects of external memory strategies and their positive outcomes in young children and adolescents with intellectual disability
Authors: Bruttin Caroline Denaes 
Published: January 2023

Analogical reasoning involves the comparison of elements as well as the memorisation of relations. People with moderate intellectual disability (MID) have a shorter memory span compared to typically developing children. Usually, they show lower performances in analogical reasoning tests because of their memory limitations. We investigated if external memories could enable students with MID to succeed in analogies as well as typically developing children of the same mental age.We created a computerised analogical reasoning test using a touch screen. Our test is composed of 2×2 analogical matrices, all composed of familiar pictures and relations. This test is administered in two versions: The classic version, similar to traditional tests, requires an individual to memorise all the relations involved in order to discover the solution, whereas the construction version requires an individual to construct the answer part by part by using external memories, which potentially increase success by unloading the memory. Our results showed that people with MID reached results close to children of the same mental age in the classic version, and equal scores in the construction version.We also noticed the beneficial effects of the touch screen computer, which enhanced the motivation of all our participants. They were able to maintain their attention twice or three times longer than their usual attention span. Moreover, the touch screen computer enabled the MID participants to overcome their motor skill difficulties, which usually hampered them from manipulating the computer efficiently.