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Social-Class Discrimination Contributes to Poorer Health
Discrimination felt by teenagers based on their social class background can contribute to physiological changes associated with poorer health, according to a new study published online in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Lead author Thomas Fuller-Rowell, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, says that while the link between poverty and poor health has long been known, this is one of the first studies to consider the impact of class discrimination.
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Knowledge of Fractions and Long Division Predicts Long-Term Math Success
From factory workers to Wall Street bankers, a reasonable proficiency in math is a crucial requirement for most well-paying jobs in a modern economy. Yet, over the past 30 years, mathematics achievement of U.S. high school students has remained stagnant — and significantly behind many other countries, including China, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands and Canada. A research team led by Carnegie Mellon University’s Robert Siegler has identified a major source of the gap — U. S. students’ inadequate knowledge of fractions and division. Although fractions and division are taught in elementary school, even many college students have poor knowledge of them.
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NITOP January 2013: There Is Still Time to Register!
Registration is still open as of December 5, 2012, for the 35th Annual National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, January 3–6, 2013, at the TradeWinds Island Grand Resort in St. Pete Beach, Florida. For the full program, other details about the conference, and to register online, visit www.nitop.org.
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New Opportunities Using Social Media in Teaching and Research
The goal of our poster was to encourage instructors to venture into the world of social media in both their teaching and research activities. Mentioning the use of social media in the classroom raises the specter of “friending” students, and we want to make sure that instructors know about the many other (more appropriate) opportunities. Why should we do this at all? Using social media provides the advantages of meeting students on familiar ground (not stuffy, artificial e-class discussion boards), preparing them for the workplace (most jobs and job searches now involve social media), and allowing us to model good reputation management skills, information competency, and critical thinking.
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How Students and Teachers Relate
How a teacher relates to his or her students has tremendous influence on a student’s learning experience. So Matthew G. Mandelbaum of Fordham University and PsySoEd Dynamics, LLC asked childhood and early-childhood educators about the approaches they use in their classrooms to solve problems and maintain motivation. He asked whether they would develop a new curriculum in an adventurous or a structured style, if they typically seek to develop deep relationships with students (relational approach), and if they pursued professional development opportunities (mastery). In general, he found that teachers who were adventurous were also more relational.
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Stereotype Threat, Self-Worth, and God’s Love
People who experience stereotype threat may depend on outside factors such as god’s love for confidence and self-esteem. These findings were presented by Claribel Candelario Martinez at the 24th APS Annual Convention in Chicago. Previous research shows that people exposed to stereotype threat — that is, “situations placing them at risk for confirming negative in-group stereotypes” — are more likely “to underperform on challenging tasks.” Women, for example, may feel threatened by (and underperform on) difficult math problems due to the stereotype that women lack the ability to excel in math.