Teachers' Acculturation Attitudes and their Classroom Management: an empirical study among fifth-grade primary school teachers in Switzerland

This article investigates the influence of attitudes towards acculturation of 180 primary school teachers on their classroom management. The results indicate that teachers with integrative attitudes towards immigrant students' acculturation have a high propensity to punish students for disruptive behaviour, but they also demonstrate high levels of diagnostic expertise in social areas. Teachers with assimilative attitudes are also likely to punish students for misbehaviour, but tend to have a deficiency in the ability to diagnose social tensions among students. Teachers with assimilative attitudes who report high levels of disruptive behaviour in their classroom have the strongest tendency to punish and the lowest level of diagnostic expertise in social areas.

Cognitively engaging chronic physical activity, but not aerobic exercise, affects executive functions in primary school children: A group-randomized controlled trial

Although the positive effects of different kinds of physical activity (PA) on cognitive functioning have already been demonstrated in a variety of studies, the role of cognitive engagement in promoting children’s executive functions is still unclear. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the effects of two qualitatively different chronic PA interventions on executive functions in primary school children. 181 children aged between 10 and 12 years were assigned to either a 6-week physical education program with a high level of physical exertion and high cognitive engagement (team games), a physical education program with high physical exertion but low cognitive engagement (aerobic exercise), or to a physical education program with both low physical exertion and low cognitive engagement (control condition). Executive functions (updating, inhibition, shifting) and aerobic fitness (multistage 20-meter shuttle run test) were measured before and after the respective condition. Results revealed that both interventions (team games and aerobic exercise) have a positive impact on children’s aerobic fitness (4-5 % increase in estimated VO2max). Importantly, an improvement in shifting performance was found only in the team games and not in the aerobic exercise or control condition. Thus, the inclusion of cognitive engagement in PA seems to be the most promising type of chronic intervention to enhance executive functions in children, providing further evidence for the importance of the qualitative aspects of PA.

Hidden school dropout among immigrant students: a cross-sectional study

Actual school dropout among immigrant youth has been addressed in a number of studies, but research on hidden school dropout among immigrant students is rare. Thus, the objective of this paper is to analyze hidden school dropout among primary school students with an immigrant background. The analyses were performed using survey data of 1186 immigrant students in Swiss primary schools. Our results show that immigrant students’ academic achievement, their attitudes towards school-related values, and the quality of their relationships with classmates and teachers were significant predictors of their disengagement during classes. Moreover, our findings strongly suggest that those predictors that are important for actual school dropout are crucial for hidden school dropout as well. We conclude that low-achieving immigrant youth who do not value school and who have poor relationships with teachers and peers are especially at risk of hidden and, eventually, of actual school dropout.

Influence of physical activity and acute exercise on cognitive performance and saliva testosterone in preadolescent school children

We investigated whether the chronic physical activity participation had an impact on the acute effects of a short bout of 12 min of intensive physical activity on cognitive performance and testosterone concentration in primary school students (n = 42, mean age = 9.69, SD = .44; experimental group (EG), n = 27; control group (CG), n = 15). Furthermore, we looked for associations between testosterone concentration and cognitive performance. After the intervention, participants of the EG showed better cognitive performances as compared to the CG. We further observed a significant group (EG, CG) test (pre, post) activity level (high, low) interaction. Post hoc pairwise comparisons revealed that after acute physical activity the testosterone concentration was diminished only in habitually low active children. The results indicate that intensive physical activity only attenuates the reactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis in habitually low active preadolescents, but had a beneficial effect on cognitive performance for all participants independent of their physical activity level and testosterone.