Education Commons^™

Physical Activity And Academic Achievement: An Analysis Of Potential Student- And School-Level Moderators, Peter J. Boedeker, Hannah G. Calvert

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Many children do not engage in sufficient physical activity, and schools provide a unique venue for children to reach their recommended 60 daily minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Prior research examining effects of MVPA on academic achievement is inconclusive, and few studies have investigated potential moderators of this relationship. This study examined whether student-level characteristics (gender, race/ethnicity, free/reduced-price lunch status) and school-level characteristics (proportion of students qualifying for free/reduced-price lunch, physical activity environment and opportunities) moderate the relationship between MVPA and academic achievement.

Methods: In a large, diverse metropolitan public school district in Georgia, 4,936 students in Grade …

Study Protocol For A Cluster-Randomized Trial Of A Bundle Of Implementation Support Strategies To Improve The Fidelity Of Implementation Of Schoolwide Positive Behavioral Interventions And Supports In Rural Schools, Lindsey Turner, Hannah G. Calvert, Christopher M. Fleming, Teri Lewis, Carl Siebert, Nate Anderson, Tate Castleton, Ashley Havlivak, Michaela Mcquilkin

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Improving the implementation of evidence-based interventions is important for population-level impacts. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is effective for improving school climate and students’ behavioral outcomes, but rural schools often lag behind urban and suburban schools in implementing such initiatives.

Methods/Design: This paper describes a Type 3 hybrid implementation-effectiveness trial of Rural School Support Strategies (RS3), a bundle of implementation support strategies selected to improve implementation outcomes in rural schools. In this two-arm parallel group trial, 40 rural public schools are randomized to receive: 1) a series of trainings about PBIS; or 2) an enhanced condition with training …

The Longitudinal Association Between Objectively-Measured School-Day Physical Activity And Academic Achievement In Us Elementary School Students, Paul N. Elish, Cassandra S. Bryan, Peter J. Boedeker, Hannah G. Calvert, Christi M. Kay, Adria M. Meyer, Julie A. Gazmararian

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: It is recommended that school-aged children accrue 30 minutes of daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in school. Current literature is inconclusive about the long-term associations between school-based physical activity and academic achievement. In this study, we use a large sample and longitudinal design to rigorously evaluate whether school-day MVPA is associated with academic achievement.

Methods: In a diverse suburban public school district, 4936 Grade 4 students were recruited in 40 elementary schools. Students wore accelerometers to measure school-day MVPA for 15 days across three semesters. Academic performance data was collected across Grade 3 fall to Grade 5 spring, including …

Tree-Based Methods: A Tool For Modeling Nonlinear Complex Relationships And Generating New Insights From Data, Ya Mo, Brian Habing, Nell Sedransk

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Our paper introduces tree-based methods, specifically classification and regression trees (CRT), to study student achievement. CRT allows data analysis to be driven by the data’s internal structure. Thus, CRT can model complex nonlinear relationships and supplement traditional hypothesis-testing approaches to provide a fuller picture of the topic being studied. Using Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten 2011 data as a case study, our research investigated predictors from students’ demographic backgrounds to ascertain their relationships to students’ academic performance and achievement gains in reading and math. In our study, CRT displays complex patterns between predictors and outcomes; more specifically, the patterns illuminated by …

Efficient Assessment Of Students’ Proportional Reasoning, Michele Carney, Katie Paulding, Joe Champion

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Teachers need ways to efficiently assess students’ cognitive understanding. One promising approach involves easily adapted and administered item types that yield quantitative scores that can be interpreted in terms of whether or not students likely possess key understandings. This study illustrates an approach to analyzing response process validity evidence from item types for assessing two important aspects of proportional reasoning. Data include results from an interview protocol used with 33 middle school students to compare their responses to prototypical item types to their conceptions of composed unit and multiplicative comparison. The findings provide validity evidence in support of the score …

Supporting Aesthetic Experience Of Science In Everyday Life, Leslie Atkins Elliott

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Researchers have argued that a central goal of science education is to transform students' out-of-school experiences, so that students have aesthetic experiences of the world that would not otherwise be available to them. The goal of this paper is to articulate a set of design principles that support this goal. In doing so, I will first position this as a problem of transfer, and describe a perspective on transfer in which an idea or experience is not so much abstracted from its original context, but one in which the learning context incorporates out-of-class contexts, and vice versa. After characterising a …

Recruitment Strategy Development For First Generation, Underrepresented, And Low-Income Masters Students, Briceland Mclaughlin, Julianne A. Wenner

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recruitment and academic success at the Master of Science (MS) degree level is an often-overlooked line of inquiry. The Stellar Engineering Students Graduate Program Scholarship (SEnS GPS), a National Science Foundation S-STEM funded program at Boise State University, is beginning to bridge this gap in our knowledge of masters-level students. Boise State is a medium-sized, metropolitan, rural serving institution in the mountain west with a large population of typically underserved student groups.

SEnS GPS is investigating the experiences of computer science and engineering MS students from pre-decision and recruitment to graduation. This project is working to determine if best practices …

Mechanisms Of Influence On Youth Substance Use For A Social-Emotional And Character Development Program: A Theory-Based Approach, Stefanie Holloway, Brian R. Flay, Carl Siebert

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: The Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI) provides a comprehensive framework for understanding adolescent substance use. Objectives: We examined mechanisms by which a TTI-guided social-emotional and character development program, Positive Action (PA), influences adolescent substance use. Study data come from the PA-Chicago, longitudinal matched-pairs cluster-randomized control trial. A diverse, dynamic cohort of approximately 1,200 students from 14 low-performing schools were assessed at eight points of time, between grades 3-8, across a six-year period. Students completed scales related to substance use, self-control, deviant peer affiliation, and school attachment, adapted from the Risk Behavior Survey, Social-Emotional and Character Development …