academic-achievement

Study: Early-childhood attention skills help predict long-term academic success better than IQ, socioemotional skills, or socioeconomic status

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kids hands—–

Which ear­ly child char­ac­ter­is­tics pre­dict long-term aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment and edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment? Research has focused on the role of ear­ly aca­d­e­m­ic skills, learn­ing enhanc­ing behav­iors, and socioe­mo­tion­al com­pe­ten­cies as pre­cur­sors of aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess. Iden­ti­fy­ing the rel­a­tive con­tri­bu­tion of each to children’s long-term aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment is impor­tant as it can inform the skills on which ear­ly edu­ca­tion pro­grams should focus. [Read more…] about Study: Ear­ly-child­hood atten­tion skills help pre­dict long-term aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess bet­ter than IQ, socioe­mo­tion­al skills, or socioe­co­nom­ic status

Study: Neonatal MRI scans of preterm children can help predict cognitive and academic problems, and guide early interventions

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Localized brain regions associated with early mathematics

Pre­dict­ing future cog­ni­tion in preterm chil­dren with MRI (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press blog):

“In the wake of the devel­op­ment of advanced neona­tal inten­sive med­ical care, more and more chil­dren born preterm man­age to beat the pre­vi­ous­ly tough odds…While this is one of the suc­cess sto­ries of mod­ern med­i­cine, long-term fol­low-up of pre­ma­ture-born pedi­atric cohorts show that…Many chil­dren will expe­ri­ence cog­ni­tive prob­lems that will [Read more…] about Study: Neona­tal MRI scans of preterm chil­dren can help pre­dict cog­ni­tive and aca­d­e­m­ic prob­lems, and guide ear­ly interventions

To improve academic outcomes, children with ADHD need both medication and non-medication treatments

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children_school_attention.

Aca­d­e­m­ic prob­lems are extreme­ly com­mon in chil­dren with ADHD, and often the issue that leads to refer­ral for an ADHD evaluation.

Aca­d­e­m­ic out­comes can be mea­sured in 2 dif­fer­ent ways — aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment and aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance — and both are com­pro­mised in chil­dren with ADHD. Aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment refers to the infor­ma­tion and skills that chil­dren acquire and is typ­i­cal­ly mea­sured by stan­dard­ized tests. Aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance focus­es on direct mea­sures of suc­cess at school such as grades, grade reten­tion, high school grad­u­a­tion, and col­lege enrollment.

An impor­tant ques­tion then, for mil­lions of kids diag­nosed with ADHD and for their par­ents and edu­ca­tors, is whether long-term aca­d­e­m­ic func­tion­ing can improve with appro­pri­ate treat­ment. [Read more…] about To improve aca­d­e­m­ic out­comes, chil­dren with ADHD need both med­ica­tion and non-med­ica­tion treatments

Study: Dyslexia not related to intelligence. Implications for discrepancy model?

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NIH-fund­ed study finds dyslex­ia not tied to IQ (NIH press release):

At left, brain areas active in typ­i­cal­ly devel­op­ing read­ers engaged in a rhyming task. Shown at right is the brain area acti­vat­ed in poor read­ers involved in the same task.

- “Regard­less of high or low over­all scores on an IQ test, chil­dren with dyslex­ia show sim­i­lar pat­terns of brain activ­i­ty, accord­ing to researchers sup­port­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health. The results call into ques­tion the dis­crep­an­cy mod­el — the prac­tice of clas­si­fy­ing a child as dyslex­ic on the basis of a lag between read­ing abil­i­ty and over­all IQ scores.”

- “In many school sys­tems, the dis­crep­an­cy mod­el is the cri­te­ri­on for [Read more…] about Study: Dyslex­ia not relat­ed to intel­li­gence. Impli­ca­tions for dis­crep­an­cy model?

Does ADHD medication treatment in childhood increase adult employment?

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Although ADHD used to be con­sid­ered a dis­or­der of child­hood, fol­low-up stud­ies indi­cate that between 30% and 60% of chil­dren with ADHD con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence symp­toms and impair­ment in adult­hood. And, even when ADHD symp­toms decline over time, many indi­vid­u­als con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant impair­ment in impor­tant areas of functioning.

For exam­ple, chil­dren with ADHD have [Read more…] about Does ADHD med­ica­tion treat­ment in child­hood increase adult employment?

Should Social-Emotional Learning Be Part of Academic Curriculum?

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The Secret to Success
New research says social-emo­tion­al learn­ing helps stu­dents in every way.
— by Daniel Goleman

Schools are begin­ning to offer an increas­ing num­ber of cours­es in social and emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, teach­ing stu­dents how to bet­ter under­stand their own emo­tions and the emo­tions of others.

It sounds warm and fuzzy, but it’s a trend backed up by hard data. Today, new stud­ies reveal that teach­ing kids to be emo­tion­al­ly and social­ly com­pe­tent boosts their aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment. More pre­cise­ly, when schools offer stu­dents pro­grams in social and emo­tion­al learn­ing, their achieve­ment scores gain around 11 per­cent­age points.

That’s what I heard at a forum held last Decem­ber by the Col­lab­o­ra­tive for Aca­d­e­m­ic, Social, and Emo­tion­al Learn­ing (CASEL). (Dis­clo­sure: I’m a co-founder of CASEL.) Roger Weiss­berg, the orga­ni­za­tion’s direc­tor, gave a pre­view of a mas­sive study run by researchers at Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, which ana­lyzed eval­u­a­tions of more than 233,000 stu­dents across the country.

Social-emo­tion­al learn­ing, they dis­cov­ered, helps stu­dents [Read more…] about Should Social-Emo­tion­al Learn­ing Be Part of Aca­d­e­m­ic Curriculum?