Swiss Adolescents' Career Aspirations: Influence of Context, Age, and Career Adaptability

This study investigated the content, realism, stability, and coherence of the career aspirations of 262 students in seventh grade in Switzerland (ages 13-15 years). The content analysis revealed that 82% of the participants named at least one realistic career aspiration, and aspirations showed clear resemblance to existing opportunities in the environment. Quantitative analyses confirmed the hypotheses that realism and stability of aspirations over a 10-month period could better be predicted by individual degree of career adaptability as measured by planfulness and exploration than by chronological age when grade level was controlled for. Coherence of aspirations was not related to age or adaptability. Students attending basic scholastic requirements school tracks reported more adaptability but not more realistic, stable, or coherent aspirations compared to students in advanced requirements tracks.

Using Accuracy of Self-Estimated Interest-Type as a Sign of Career Choice Readiness in Career Assessment of Secondary Students

A frequent applied method in career assessment to elicit clients’ self-concepts is asking them to predict their interest assessment results. Accuracy in estimating one’s interesttype is commonly taken as a sign of more self-awareness and career choice readiness. The study evaluated the empirical relation of accuracy of self-estimation to career choice readiness within a sample of 350 Swiss secondary students in seventh grade. Overall, accuracy showed only weak relations to career choice readiness. However, accurately estimating one’s first interest-type in a three-letter RIASEC interests-code emerged as a sign of more vocational identity and total career choice readiness. Accuracy also correlated positively with interest profile consistency, differentiation, and congruence to career aspirations. Implications of the results for career counseling and assessment practice are presented.

Increasing the career choice readiness of young adolescents: an evaluation study

A career workshop that applies models of the Cognitive Information Processing Approach (Sampson, Reardon, Peterson, & Lenz, 2004) and incorporates critical ingredients (Brown and Ryan Krane, 2000) to promote the career choice readiness of young adolescents was developed and evaluated with 334 Swiss students in seventh grade applying a Solomon four group design with a three-month follow-up. Participants significantly increased their performance in terms of career decidedness, career planning, career exploration, and vocational identity. Implications for evaluation research and counselling practice are presented.

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.

Prognostic implications of the seventh edition of the international union against cancer classification for patients with gastric cancer: the Western experience of patients treated in a single-center European institution

PURPOSE Validity of the seventh edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer/International Union Against Cancer (AJCC/UICC) staging systems for gastric cancer has been evaluated in several studies, mostly in Asian patient populations. Only few data are available on the prognostic implications of the new classification system on a Western population. Therefore, we investigated its prognostic ability based on a German patient cohort. PATIENTS AND METHODS Data from a single-center cohort of 1,767 consecutive patients surgically treated for gastric cancer were classified according to the seventh edition and were compared using the previous TNM/UICC classification. Kaplan-Meier analyses were performed for all TNM stages and UICC stages in a comparative manner. Additional survival receiver operating characteristic analyses and bootstrap-based goodness-of-fit comparisons via Bayesian information criterion (BIC) were performed to assess and compare prognostic performance of the competing classification systems. RESULTS We identified the UICC pT/pN stages according to the seventh edition of the AJCC/UICC guidelines as well as resection status, age, Lauren histotype, lymph-node ratio, and tumor grade as independent prognostic factors in gastric cancer, which is consistent with data from previous Asian studies. Overall survival rates according to the new edition were significantly different for each individual's pT, pN, and UICC stage. However, BIC analysis revealed that, owing to higher complexity, the new staging system might not significantly alter predictability for overall survival compared with the old system within the analyzed cohort from a statistical point of view. CONCLUSION The seventh edition of the AJCC/UICC classification was found to be valid with distinctive prognosis for each stage. However, the AJCC/UICC classification has become more complex without improving predictability for overall survival in a Western population. Therefore, simplification with better predictability of overall survival of patients with gastric cancer should be considered when revising the seventh edition.

How minimal grade goals and self-control capacity interact in predicting test grades

The present research examined the prediction of school students' grades in an upcoming math test via their minimal grade goals (i.e., the minimum grade in an upcoming test one would be satisfied with). Due to its significance for initiating and maintaining goal-directed behavior, self-control capacity was expected to moderate the relation between students' minimal grade goals and their actual grades. Self-control capacity was defined as the dispositional capacity to override or alter one's dominant response tendencies. Prior to a scheduled math test, 172 vocational track students indicated their minimal grade goal for the test and completed a measure of self-control capacity. The test grade was assessed at a second time of measurement. As expected, minimal grade goals more strongly predicted the actual test grades the higher the students' self-control capacity. Implications can be seen in terms of optimizing the prediction and advancement of academic performance.

Multi-grade teaching practices in Austrian and Finnish primary schools

This article describes the teaching strategies used in multi-grade classes in five small rural primary schools in Austria and Finland on the basis of the content analysis of transcribed teacher interviews. Two main types of strategies were identified: practices that (1) aim to reduce or (2) capitalize on students’ heterogeneity. The results illustrate how differently multi-grade teaching can be realized and how it can effectively support individual student learning. The findings are discussed with regard to teacher education with the intention of increasing the awareness of the professional skills required in high-quality teaching practices in multi-grade teaching.

Multigrade teaching in primary education as a promising pedagogy for teacher education in Austria and Finland

This chapter focuses on teaching practices used in multigrade classes and the importance of them being incorporated in teacher education as promising pedagogies for future use. Multigrade classes - defined as classes in which two or more grades are taught together - are common worldwide. Hence, there is a need for teacher candidates to become familiar with how to teach in split grade classrooms. However, research on multigrade teaching as well as its development in teacher education studies has been neglected, even though multigrade teachers need special skills to organize instruction in their heterogeneous classrooms. We argue that in successful multigrade teaching practices, the heterogeneity of students is taken into account and cultivated. Based on content analysis of teacher interviews conducted in Austrian and Finnish primary schools, we recommend teaching practices such as spiral curricula, working plans, and peer learning as promising teacher education pedagogies for future multigrade class teaching. We also suggest that the professional skills required in high-quality teaching practices in multigrade teaching should be further studied by researchers and educators.