Search results for "Developmental and Educational Psychology"
showing 10 items of 1853 documents
A new approach for estimating a nonlinear growth component in multilevel modeling
2011
This study presents a new approach to estimation of a nonlinear growth curve component with fixed and random effects in multilevel modeling. This approach can be used to estimate change in longitudinal data, such as day-of-the-week fluctuation. The motivation of the new approach is to avoid spurious estimates in a random coefficient regression model due to the synchronized periodical effect (e.g., day-of-the-week fluctuation) appearing both in independent and dependent variables. First, the new approach is introduced. Second, a Monte Carlo simulation study is carried out to examine the functioning of the proposed new approach in the case of small sample sizes. Third, the use of the approac…
Depressive symptoms during adolescence: Do learning difficulties matter?
2011
To examine whether learning difficulties play a role in depressive symptoms, 658 Finnish adolescents were asked to complete scales for depression three times during the transition to post-comprehensive education. They also reported on their learning difficulties and feelings of inadequacy as a student. The results showed that learning difficulties prospectively predicted depressive symptoms. Moreover, the impact of learning difficulties was mediated via inadequacy as a student: learning difficulties predicted feelings of inadequacy as a student which, in turn, contributed to greater increases in depressive symptoms. Finally, gender moderated the association between learning difficulties an…
Wastewater treatment: New insight provided by interactive multiobjective optimization
2011
In this paper, we describe a new interactive tool developed for wastewater treatment plant design. The tool is aimed at supporting the designer in designing new wastewater treatment plants as well as optimizing the performance of already available plants. The idea is to utilize interactive multiobjective optimization which enables the designer to consider the design with respect to several conflicting evaluation criteria simultaneously. This is more important than ever because the requirements for wastewater treatment plants are getting tighter and tighter from both environmental and economical reasons. By combining a process simulator to simulate wastewater treatment and an interactive mul…
Comparing the cost-efficiency of CoAP and HTTP in Web of Things applications
2014
Abstract Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) has been introduced as a simpler alternative to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for connecting constrained smart objects to the Web. The adoption of the protocol depends on its relative advantage, and the cost–benefit associated with the use of the protocol is a significant factor affecting a protocol adoption decision. This paper aims at deepening the understanding of the cost–benefits of CoAP and identifies the application scenarios where its use is likely to be economically justifiable. The paper analyzes the costs of using CoAP and HTTP in the Web of Things (WoT) applications, by identifying the components of the total cost of owne…
Role of Acquisition Intervals in Private and Public Cloud Storage Costs
2014
The volume of worldwide digital content has increased nine-fold within the last five years, and this immense growth is predicted to continue in the foreseeable future to reach 8 ZB by 2015. Traditionally, organizations proactively have built and managed their private storage facilities to cope with the growing demand for storage capacity. Recently, many organizations have instead welcomed the alternative of outsourcing their storage needs to the providers of public cloud storage services due to the proliferation of public cloud infrastructure offerings. The comparative cost-efficiency of these two alternatives depends on a number of factors, such as the prices of the public and private stor…
Assessing the Effectiveness of Two Theoretically Motivated Computer-Assisted Reading Interventions in the United Kingdom: GG Rime and GG Phoneme
2013
We report an empirical comparison of the effectiveness of two theoretically motivated computer-assisted reading interventions (CARI) based on the Finnish GraphoGame CARI: English GraphoGame Rime (GG Rime) and English GraphoGame Phoneme (GG Phoneme). Participants were 6–7-year-old students who had been identified by their teachers as being relatively poor at reading. The students were divided into three groups. Two of the groups played one of the games as a supplement to normal classroom literacy instruction for five sessions per week for a period of 12 weeks. The third group formed an untreated control. Both games led to gains in reading, spelling, and phonological skills in comparison with…
Literacy instruction in first grade: classroom‐level associations between reading skills and literacy instruction activities
2022
Background Adapting instruction to individual students' needs is known to be effective, but there is a lack of evidence whether students' reading skills are associated with literacy instruction activities at classroom-level. Both the content of the literacy instruction and teachers' instructional support through instructional management are considered. Methods The data were collected in the context of Finland where first graders' reading skills show great variation at school entry but rapid progress. Students (n = 616) were individually tested on their reading skills, and literacy lessons in 35 classrooms were video recorded in the autumn of first grade. Multilevel path analyses were conduc…
The role of temperament in children's affective and behavioral responses in achievement situations
2013
Abstract Although students' affects and behaviors in achievement situations have been shown to be influenced by their previous learning experiences, less is known about how they relate to students' dispositional characteristics, such as temperament. This study examined to what extent children's temperament is related to their affective and behavioral responses in achievement situations. Teachers rated first-graders' ( n = 153) temperamental characteristics in the Fall semester. Children's active task avoidance, anxiety, and helplessness were rated in test situations in the Fall and Spring semesters. The results showed that the more easily distracted the children were, the more task avoidan…
Early Oral Language Comprehension, Task Orientation, and Foundational Reading Skills as Predictors of Grade 3 Reading Comprehension
2016
The present five-year longitudinal study from preschool to grade 3 examined the developmental associations among oral language comprehension, task orientation, reading precursors, and reading fluency, as well as their role in predicting grade 3 reading comprehension. Ninety Finnish-speaking students participated in the study. The students’ oral language comprehension (vocabulary knowledge, listening comprehension, and inference making) and task orientation were assessed in preschool, kindergarten, and grade 3. Reading precursors (letter knowledge and phonological awareness) were assessed at the first two timepoints and reading fluency at the third timepoint. Structural equation modeling sho…
Teachers’ Changing Attitudes and Preferences around Inclusive Education
2020
Inclusive education as an alternative to traditional separate special education has gained recognition since the approval of the Salamanca Statement in 1994. The success of inclusion is considered to be highly dependent on the teachers’ positions on inclusion. In this study Finnish comprehensive school teachers’ opinions were investigated in order to evaluate the prospects of inclusion in Finland, and also to study the variables associated with these attitudes. A total of 2,276 teachers and principals participated in the email survey. The final sample contained 1,041classroom teachers, 755 subject teachers and 445 special education teachers. The results confirmed the existence of a large va…