Instructional Support Research Articles

Parent Perceptions of Remote Instruction for Students with Extensive Support Needs

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools shifted to nontraditional education overnight, disrupting learning for millions of children in the United States. Despite the broad impact of these shifts in schooling, its effects have not been uniform. How would the specialized instructional supports known to be effective in meeting the needs of students with extensive support needs (ESN) be provided remotely? We interviewed eight mothers of students with ESN to learn how nontraditional education impacted the educational experiences of students with ESN. Our findings included the overall perception that nontraditional education was highly unsuccessful and could not replace in-person learning for participants’ children. Findings also highlighted challenges participants experienced when working to support their children’s at-home learning, as well as the unexpected benefits participants reported from remote service delivery that may be considered as future recommendations of instructional practices for students with ESN.

Challenges Encountered by Special Educators: Inputs for the Improvement of the Individualized Education Program

Education believes everyone has the potential to contribute toward positive results for learners with disability in which the individualized education program has become a cornerstone for its quality services. This study supports the 1975 adoption of the Educa- tion for All Handicapped Children Act (EHCA). Thus, this study aimed to determine the problems and challenges encountered by educators toward IEP development and will be valuable in crafting intervention procedures that could help teachers improve their individual IEPs. The study was conducted in 10 schools offering special education in Sarangani, Philippines. The study utilized purposive sampling with 40 special educa- tion teachers as the respondents of the study. The findings revealed that the teachers have the right attitude towards IEP. The teachers recognized they have difficulty with the IEP process though they know its importance and its impact on learners’ development. From the interview, it was found that teachers have sentiments on the improvement of IEP. They testified that they need instructional support and adequate training and highlighted that parent mentoring is of great priority. The study concludes that despite the challenges, teachers have the right attitude toward IEP development, and they work towards the development of all learners with disability.

Performance of the Severely Challenged High School Students Using Modified Curriculum and Vocational Life-Skills Curriculum

This study was focused on the most effective means of educating severely challenged students. The study compares the effectiveness of the Modified Curriculum or a Vocational Life-Skills Curriculum in helping the student attain independence and success after educational or training services. This is conducted in Central Maryland, USA, High School classrooms. This endeavor helps guide parents and other stakeholders, educators, related service providers, and policymakers in determining the most effective way to educate or train students with severe cognitive and physical limitations. This study is important because it addresses the different curricula that may be used for a successful and meaningful classroom experience for severely challenged students. This study helps teachers to implement a curriculum that best serves this population. The study shows that Modified Curriculum and Vocational Life Skills Training are effective for students with Severely Challenged Students if implemented with ample time, resources, planning, and collaboration between Special Educators, Instructional Supports, Other Health Providers, and Parents/Guardians. There’s no significant difference in the performance of the respondents before and after using the Modified Curriculum and Vocational Life Skills Training curriculum.

Who is on the right track? Behavior-based prediction of diagnostic success in a collaborative diagnostic reasoning simulation

BackgroundMaking accurate diagnoses in teams requires complex collaborative diagnostic reasoning skills, which require extensive training. In this study, we investigated broad content-independent behavioral indicators of diagnostic accuracy and checked whether and how quickly diagnostic accuracy could be predicted from these behavioral indicators when they were displayed in a collaborative diagnostic reasoning simulation.MethodsA total of 73 medical students and 25 physicians were asked to diagnose patient cases in a medical training simulation with the help of an agent-based radiologist. Log files were automatically coded for collaborative diagnostic activities (CDAs; i.e., evidence generation, sharing and eliciting of evidence and hypotheses, drawing conclusions). These codes were transformed into bigrams that contained information about the time spent on and transitions between CDAs. Support vector machines with linear kernels, random forests, and gradient boosting machines were trained to classify whether a diagnostician could provide the correct diagnosis on the basis of the CDAs.ResultsAll algorithms performed well in predicting diagnostic accuracy in the training and testing phases. Yet, the random forest was selected as the final model because of its better performance (kappa = .40) in the testing phase. The model predicted diagnostic success with higher precision than it predicted diagnostic failure (sensitivity = .90; specificity = .46). A reliable prediction of diagnostic success was possible after about two thirds of the median time spent on the diagnostic task. Most important for the prediction of diagnostic accuracy was the time spent on certain individual activities, such as evidence generation (typical for accurate diagnoses), and collaborative activities, such as sharing and eliciting evidence (typical for inaccurate diagnoses).ConclusionsThis study advances the understanding of differences in the collaborative diagnostic reasoning processes of successful and unsuccessful diagnosticians. Taking time to generate evidence at the beginning of the diagnostic task can help build an initial adequate representation of the diagnostic case that prestructures subsequent collaborative activities and is crucial for making accurate diagnoses. This information could be used to provide adaptive process-based feedback on whether learners are on the right diagnostic track. Moreover, early instructional support in a diagnostic training task might help diagnosticians improve such individual diagnostic activities and prepare for effective collaboration. In addition, the ability to identify successful diagnosticians even before task completion might help adjust task difficulty to learners in real time.

Integrating reflection into a mobile-assisted reading program for learning English as a second language in China

The application of mobile technology in language education is gaining increasing momentum for its potential benefits, and scholars cast attention to issues such as learner motivation, learning effects and learner behaviors in the mobile learning process. Reflection is an essential part in learning as it can record learner behaviors, cultivate self-awareness of knowledge construction, facilitate cognitive growth, and promote academic achievement. Despite of the wide approval of reflection, not much study has been done concerning the application of reflection in mobile language learning process. Therefore, this study aims to investigate students’ perception of a mobile-assisted reading program facilitated with reflective activities as well as their preferences for reflection modes adopted. The participants were 60 students from two classes in a Chinese college. Students read passages on mobile applications and completed a reflection in one mode every two weeks. Four modes (paper journal reflection, e-journal reflection, audio reflection, and collaborative reflection) were adopted in the study. The study lasted approximately nine weeks. At the end of the program, all students were required to complete an anonymous questionnaire concerning their learning perception. In addition, ten students were selected randomly to attend a semi-structured interview. A pretest and a posttest were conducted to observe students’ language gains. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis was conducted with the data obtained. Results showed students generally approved of the effect of this mobile-assisted reading and their reading proficiency improved significantly after the program. In addition, most students favored reflective practices as a good way to stimulate interest, deepen understanding and promote reflective and summarizing abilities, but they didn’t consider it a good method to monitor the learning process in the mobile-assisted reading program. As for the preference for reflection mode, most students favored traditional paper reflection and audio reflection, while collaborative reflection and e-journal reflection received the least support. The findings provided implications for educators and app designers. For educators, based on the understanding of students’ age, learning experience, and possible preferences, they may create a good reflective environment with technical and instructional support, and then provide two or three popular modes for students to reflect on whatever they read. For app developers, some preferable reflection modes facilitated with stimulative measures may be offered to cater to more learners to conduct reflective activities.

Design Thinking to Envision More Sustainable Technology-Enhanced Teaching for Effective Knowledge Transfer

The present study aims to examine profiles of design thinkers in a teacher education programme during technology-enhanced teaching/learning in face-to-face and distance modes. Additionally, it investigates how the design thinking (DT) profiles are related to students’ interpersonal and evaluative skills, as well as how DT profiles predict the level of use of technology. A total of 307 undergraduate students participated in this study. Hierarchical and k-means cluster analysis were adopted to identify the DT profiles, whereas multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was run to study how the DT profiles were related to respective students’ levels of interpersonal and evaluative skills. Subsequently, the individual profiles of all components of DT were examined for group differences using cross-tabulations. Multinomial logistic regressions were run to examine relationships among DT profiles, interpersonal and evaluative skill levels and use of technology. Based on these analyses, three major findings were obtained. These are as follows: (1) Three distinctive DT profiles were revealed underlying a new extensively validated DT mindset. Low importance was given to team learning and knowledge transfer, which points to the lack of behavioural uncertainty; (2) DT profiles differed significantly in their metacognitive perspectives of interaction- and individual-centred tasks, as well as evaluative skills of monitoring, critical thinking and reflection; (3) Interaction-oriented design tasks involving target use of varied technologies were seen to further enhance socialization, facilitate dialogue and reflection, create an immersive experience and aid the understanding and internalization of tacit knowledge. These findings represent a step toward closing critical gaps in the theory and practice of DT and serve as a springboard for instructors and researchers to develop customized metacognitive instructional support for students in technology-enhanced environments for effective knowledge transfer.

Reciprocal associations among teacher–child interactions, teachers' work engagement, and children's social competence

This study aimed at examining reciprocal associations among teacher–child interactions, teachers' work engagement, and children's social competence across grade 1. The participants were 51 Finnish teachers and 815 children. The quality of teacher–child interactions (emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support) was assessed with the Classroom Assessment Scoring System. In addition, teachers reported their work engagement and rated children's social competence (prosocial and antisocial behaviors). The results of the multilevel modeling indicated that high-quality instructional support was associated with more prosocial and less antisocial behavior. Prosocial behavior was associated with higher-quality instructional support. Work engagement was associated with less antisocial behavior, and prosocial behavior with higher work engagement. Finally, work engagement was associated with higher-quality teacher–child interactions. The results suggest that teachers can enhance children's social competence with high-quality instructional support. Moreover, children's prosocial behavior can be reflected in teacher–child interactions and in teachers' work engagement.

Can positive school climate ameliorate racial-ethnic disparities in pre-kindergarten quality? Evidence from a large urban school district

We investigated whether school climate, specifically effective school leadership, strong family ties, and trusting relationships, moderates the well-documented disparities in pre-kindergarten quality for Black and Latine students relative to their peers. In a sample of 615 public schools in a large, urban school district serving a minoritized student population (the average school in the sample served 66% Black and Latine students), we first explored patterns of disparities and found that Black and Latine children, on average, experience lower-quality pre-kindergarten in terms of classroom organization, emotional support, and instructional support. Using structural equation modeling, we found that a multi-dimensional index of school climate moderated this relationship with pre-kindergarten quality in terms of classroom organization and emotional support, but not instructional support. These findings suggest a potential role for school climate in mitigating existing inequities in the quality of pre-kindergarten.

An Investment in Knowledge: Personal Finance Education for Medical Students.

The financial burden of pursuing a medical education continues to grow, with the average medical student now owing over $240,000 in total student loan debt by the time they graduate. This burden peaks at a time when trainees are making some of the most consequential decisions of their careers. Additionally, many students are simultaneously making important financial decisions related to personal aspirations, all before a drastic change in earning potential once they begin practicing as attending physicians. Medical trainees' financial stress is linked to specialty choice, mental quality of life, and physician burnout, with additional implications of such stress for patient health and safety.1- 3 Despite these issues, there are few examples of medical schools providing direct personal finance education to their students. Given the lack of personal finance education opportunities for medical students, the authors designed and implemented a medical student-specific personal finance curriculum at their home institution in conjunction with the Association of American Medical Colleges' (AAMC) Financial Information, Resources, Services, and Tools program. The curriculum, which is primarily delivered through interactive lectures, covers topics ranging from the basics of saving and investment to clinicians' potential future roles as administrators and innovators. The authors (1) present details regarding the creation of their personal finance education program; (2) invite fellow medical trainees and their respective institutions to start their own personal finance education programs or add similar curriculum to their health sciences coursework; and (3) call for recommendations by the American Medical Association (AMA) and AAMC in support of formal personal finance instruction for medical students on a national level.

On culture teaching practice in senior high school English Class from the perspective of intercultural Third Space

While recent research on the cultivation of EFL learners’ cultural awareness in senior high school has highlighted the pedagogical coping strategies based on culture teaching phenomena, theory-driven culture teaching practice has been under-explored. Informed by the theory of intercultural Third Space, this paper reports how to guide senior high school students to construct intercultural Third Space, so as to enhance their cultural awareness and intercultural critical thinking competence from the three-dimensional perspective of attitude, cognition, and behaviour, through a teaching case in the four stages of attitude cultivation, knowledge construction, simulated communication, and critical reflection. The study indicates that the concept of intercultural Third Space can theoretically make up for the deficiency of culture teaching in Chinese senior high school English class and practically provide teaching design support for classroom instruction.

Lead teacher, assistant teacher, and peer racial/ethnic match and child outcomes for Black children enrolled in enhanced high-quality early care and education programs

Teacher-child racial match has been shown to benefit young Black children, but less is known about the degree to which the match is with the lead teacher or the assistant, and if the preschool racial context moderates this association. This study utilized existing data collected during the 2014–15 through 2018–19 school years in 20 high-quality preschools that enrolled children from households/families with low-income. Analyses of data from 2553 preschool-age Black children enrolled in 418 classrooms revealed that most Black children (82%) were enrolled in preschools with a majority (>=50%) of Black peers, and children in Black Majority preschools were more likely to experience teacher-child racial match with lead and assistant teachers. Racial match with lead and/or assistant teachers were associated with teacher demographic and beliefs differences but not differences in classroom instructional support or child outcomes. Black Majority preschool enrollment was also associated with more problem-behaviors but not other outcomes. However, within Black Majority schools, behavior concerns were reduced when the assistant teacher was a racial match and child initiative was higher when both the teachers were a match. In sum, the effect of teacher-child racial match for Black children should be considered jointly with co-occurring ecological contexts that typify the proximal effects of systemic racism like the preschool racial composition.

What Happened to the K–12 Education Labor Market During COVID? The Acute Need for Better Data Systems

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic upended the U.S. education system in ways that dramatically affected the jobs of K–12 employees. However, there remains considerable uncertainty about the nature and degree of staffing challenges during the pandemic. We draw on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and State Education Agencies (SEA) to describe patterns in K–12 education employment and to highlight the limitations of available data. Data from the BLS suggest overall employment in the K–12 labor market declined by 9 percent at the onset of the pandemic and remained well below pre-pandemic levels more than two years later. SEA data suggest that teachers did not leave the profession en masse as many predicted, with turnover decreasing in the summer of 2020 and then increasing modestly in 2021 back to pre-pandemic levels. We explore possible explanations for these patterns including weak hiring through the summer of 2020 and high attrition among K–12 instructional support and noninstructional staff. State vacancy data also suggest that schools faced substantial challenges filling open positions during the 2021–22 academic year. Our analyses illustrate the imperative to build nationally representative, detailed, and timely data systems on the K–12 education labor market to better inform policy.

Evaluating the impact of scenario-based online simulations on cognitive load, self-efficacy, and skill transfer in nursing education

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the imperative for efficacious online instructional designs that could function as viable alternatives to conventional, hands-on clinical training for nursing students. This study, conducted at a university in South Texas, employed an online innovation project to simulate clinical experiences. We posited that customized online learning simulations could mitigate cognitive load and augment virtual learners' self-efficacy, thereby influencing associative information processing. Our analyses centered on participants' learning experiences, cognitive load, and the ramifications on their self-efficacy and motivation in a virtual setting. Data indicated that the skills acquired were applicable in real-world clinical settings, and participants reported high levels of instructional support and low frustration levels.

Designing a Needs-Oriented Psychological Intervention for Chinese Women Undergoing an Abortion

Accessing good quality abortion care is a fundamental human right and contributes to achieving Sustainable Development Goals. However, well-designed abortion care that meets women's needs is limited. This study aims to systematically develop an intervention to promote the psychological well-being of Chinese women undergoing an abortion. A five-step iterative approach informed by intervention mapping was undertaken to determine the intervention design. Step 1 used in-depth interviews with 14 Chinese women undergoing an abortion to assess real-life stressors and support needs. We identified eight stressors and found women's support needs varied with the time trajectory of the abortion. Step 2 used a focus group discussion with care providers to select modifiable stressors that impact negative psychological outcomes. In Step 3 and Step 4, we determined and integrated the exact strategies to eliminate or mitigate possible modifiable stressors by incorporating information from in-depth interviews and the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping. The integrated strategies were instructional support, informational support, and timely communication. In Step 5, we composed the detailed intervention design according to the best available evidence and, to confirm content validity, consulted 10 women who had undergone abortion in the previous 2-6 weeks. The intervention was titled STress-And-coping suppoRT (START), which included four interacting components: (1) a face-to-face consultation at the first appointment; (2) a printed booklet with information on abortion, self-care, and managing emotions and intimate relationships; (3) a WeChat-based online public profile page offering the same information as the booklet; (4) a telephone hotline. This study paves the way for a new approach to addressing the psychological needs of women experiencing abortion in China. The rigorous process provides an example of developing tailored health promotion interventions.

Responsive Classroom Management Practices in the Context of Preschool Teachers’ Professional Experiences

Responsive classroom management can be achieved by the harmonious combination of many variables such as teacher and child characteristics. One of these variables is the professional experience of teachers. Professional experience affects teachers' practices, expectations and attitudes regarding children. Accordingly, the present study aimed to identify responsive classroom management practices within the context of pre-school teachers' professional experiences. The research sample consisted of 60 preschool teachers. The teachers' knowledge about responsive classroom management practices was identified in writing with the help of a questionnaire made up of open-ended and multiple-choice questions created by the researchers. In the study, which was designed as a case study, inductive and descriptive analyses were used to analyze the data. The results of the study revealed that both experienced teachers and novice teachers performed similar practices in areas such as the emotional climate of the classroom, classroom rules and instructional support. In addition, it was found that there were differences in the approaches of the novice teachers and experienced teachers regarding the noisy classroom as well as in the way they defined and intervened problematic behaviors.

Mobile Learning to Support Self-Regulated Learning

This paper discusses the possibilities of using and designing mobile technology for learning purposes coupled with learning analytics to support self-regulated learning (SRL). Being able to self-regulate one's own learning is important for academic success but is also challenging. Research has shown that without instructional support, students are often not able to effectively regulate their own learning. This is problematic for effective self-study and stands in the way of academic success. Providing instructional support for both metacognitive processes such as planning, monitoring, and reflection and cognitive processes such as learning strategies can help students to learn in a self-regulated way more optimally. Mobile learning provides opportunities to provide ‘just in time' support for both cognitive and metacognitive processes. To provide insights into how mobile learning can support SRL, this theoretical review discusses selected studies that have used mobile learning to support SRL in different domains.

Level of Support of Content-Focused Instruction in Enhancing Learners' Oral English Proficiency

Level of Support of Content-Focused Instruction in Enhancing Learners' Oral English Proficiency

How to support learning with multimedia instruction: Implementation intentions help even when load is high.

There is ample evidence that multimedia learning is challenging, and learners often underutilize appropriate cognitive processes. Previous research has applied prompts to promote the use of helpful cognitive processing. However, prompts still require learners to regulate their learning, which may interfere with learning, especially in situations where cognitive demands are already high. As an alternative, implementation intentions (i.e. if-then plans) are expected to help regulate behaviour automatically due to their specific wording, thereby offloading demands. Accordingly, this study aimed at investigating whether implementation intentions compared with prompts improve learning performance, especially under high cognitive load. Students (N=120) learned either in a control condition without instructional support, with prompts, or with implementation intentions. Within each condition, half of the participants studied the multimedia instruction under conditions of either high or low cognitive load, which was experimentally manipulated by instructing them to perform one of two secondary tasks. In line with our hypotheses, the results showed that under low cognitive load, both prompts and implementation intentions led to better learning than the control condition. By contrast, under high cognitive load, only implementation intentions promoted learning. Thus, implementation intentions are an efficient means to promote learning even under challenging circumstances.

A Virtual Tutoring Program to Increase Students’ Text Reading Fluency

Text reading fluency is an important reading goal for all students. Students with a known reading disability often need systematic and evidence-based instructional supports to reach grade-level benchmarks in fluency. A recent focus on high-impact tutoring practices has given attention to the virtual or remote implementation of programs. This article provides recommendations for educators interested in setting up and implementing fluency instruction virtually to improve elementary or middle school students’ text reading fluency. Key instructional elements and other considerations for virtual implementation are discussed.

Combining real and virtual activities about electrostatic interactions in primary school

ABSTRACT The role of virtual simulations in the evolution of primary school students' mental models about electrostatics is investigated by analysing the answers of two groups of 9–10 years old pupils inside instructional sequences that combine two hands-on activities using balloons and jackets with the same activities using PhET simulations: one group followed a sequence where the real experiments were conducted before the virtual simulations, the other group followed a sequence where the virtual simulations where proposed before the real experiments. Students’ answers were categorized into a descriptive dimension (accordance with the phenomena) and into an explanatory dimension (level of adequacy with the microscopic model based on elementary charges). Our results show that, although virtual simulations improve the level of adequacy of students' answers to the target model, this improvement is not transferred to new phenomena, so that the capability of relating the developed model to the real world is the same in both sequences. Moreover, about 40% of pupils remained at their starting non-explanatory level in both teaching sequences. We conclude that simulations per se do not help students in evaluating and refining their models, indicating the need for teachers’ support in modelling-based instruction involving not visible physical entities.