bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
An Accident of Geography? Assessing the Gerrymandering of School Attendance Zones
Authors: Richards Meredith P. , Stroub Kori J.
Published: November 2021

Context

Despite the recent emphasis on public school choice, more than four-fifths of public school students still attend the traditional school to which they are assigned (NCES CCD, 2013), making attendance zone boundaries critical and fercely contested determinants of educational opportunity. Historical and anecdotal evidence suggests that attendance zone boundaries are not “accidents of geography,” but have been “gerrymandered” into irregular shapes in ways that alter patterns of student attendance. However, no empirical evidence has directly examined the issue of attendance zone gerrymandering.

Purpose of Study

Drawing on the literature on electoral gerrymandering, we outline a framework for conceptualizing and measuring educational gerrymandering. Using geospatial techniques, we then provide initial empirical evidence on the gerrymandering of school attendance zones and the variation in gerrymandering across geographic and demographic contexts.

Research Design

We analyze the boundaries of a large national sample of 23,945 school attendance zones obtained from the School Attendance Boundary Information System (SABINS). For each attendance zone, we compute complementary measures assessing two dimensions of gerrymandering: (1) dispersion, or the elongation of the area of a boundary; and (2) indentation, or the irregularity of the perimeter of a boundary.

Results

Overall, we find that attendance zones are highly gerrymandered—nearly as much as legislative districts—and are becoming more gerrymandered over time. Findings underscore the racial and, to a lesser extent, socioeconomic character of gerrymandering, which is particularly acute in Whiter and more affluent schools and in areas experiencing rapid racial change.

Conclusions

The gerrymandering of school attendance zones has significant implications for students and schools. Gerrymandering alters patterns of attendance and, thereby, student access to educational opportunity and resources, by “zoning out” certain students living closer to schools while “zoning in” others living farther away. Gerrymandered boundaries also hold the potential to significantly alter the racial and ethnic composition of schools and may serve as a mechanism of segregation. In addition, gerrymandered attendance zones are inherently inefficient and may impose additional transportation costs on students and districts. We conclude with implications for state and federal policy.
Challenges in Identifying High-Leverage Practices
Authors: Cohen Julie
Published: November 2021

Background

The current accountability climate prioritizes identifying features of “effective teaching.” One approach has to been to outline a set of “high-leverage practices,” defined as teaching moves that are research-based, have the potential to improve student achievement, and support students in learning central academic concepts. But which practices qualify as “high leverage,” and based on what criteria? This article raises several issues involved in identifying “high-leverage” teaching practices based on their relationships with different types of student outcome measures.

Purpose

The study addresses the following research questions: What practices are associated with student achievement gains on high- and low-stakes assessments? How do teachers use these teaching practices in their classrooms?

Population

Participants in this study were 103 fourth grade teachers from a single district who volunteered to have their classroom instruction recorded as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project.

Research Design

The research involved analysis of multiple data sources: video records of practice, qualitative observation notes, quantitative measures of math teaching, and student outcomes on two math assessments, one high stakes comprised entirely of multiple-choice questions and the other low stakes and focused on open-ended problem solving.

Data Analysis

A standardized observation tool designed to code language arts instruction, PLATO, was modified for reliable scoring of math teaching. More than 300 math lessons were scored using four PLATO scales. Logistic regressions were used to look at relationships between PLATO scores and teacher value-added measures computed from high- and low-stakes student assessments. A stratified, purposive sample of lessons was analyzed qualitatively.

Findings/Results

Scores on two practices, modeling and procedural strategy instruction, predicted value-added based on the high-stakes state test, but had no relationship with value-added on the low-stakes test. Qualitative analyses demonstrate instruction was explicitly oriented toward success on the state test. Teachers taught test-taking strategies and modeled how to eliminate “silly” answers listed in multiple-choice format. Two other practices, orchestrating classroom discourse and conceptual strategy instruction, had no relationship with value-added on either test. Scores on these two scales were positively skewed, with very few instances of high-scoring instruction.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Discussion focuses on potential limitations of labeling teaching practices as “high leverage” based on their relationship with high-stakes standardized assessments and the importance of sampling teachers with a full range of enactment of high-leverage practices.
Brilliant, Bored, or Badly Behaved? Media Coverage of the Charter School Debate in the United States
Authors: Rooks Daisy , MuÑOz Carolina Bank
Published: November 2021

Background

In recent years, charter schools have received a great deal of media attention, appearing in documentary films, newspaper articles, magazine profiles, television news programs, and even sitcoms and feature films. The media is not alone in its interest in charter schools; researchers in the public and for-profit arenas have also focused their attention on charter schools in recent years.

Questions

This paper employs qualitative content analysis to answer the following questions: What information have journalists contributed to the charter school debate in the United States? And how might this information have shaped or influenced the debate?

Research Design

To answer these questions, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of print media coverage of the early years of the charter school debate. We analyzed 145 articles about public charter schools and public alternative schools that appeared in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times between 1994 and 2006. We developed two types of coding categories: descriptive and interpretive. The descriptive coding categories captured the following information about each article in our dataset: the publisher, the type of school described and the student population. The interpretive coding categories captured reporters’ descriptions of the students, teachers, resources, and institutional cultures of charter and alternative schools.

Findings

Our analysis uncovered several interesting themes. First, we found that print media depictions of charter and alternative school teachers tended to be more positive than media depictions of teachers in traditional public schools. This was especially true of print media coverage of charter schools that serve low-income students and/or students of color. Our analysis also cast doubt on a core assumption of the charter school debate; that charter schools’ approach to educating their students differs significantly from that of traditional public schools and public alternative schools. In their articles about charter schools that serve middle-income students, reporters described institutional cultures and pedagogical strategies identical to those found in alternative schools with similar student populations. When reporting on alternative schools that serve low-income students and/or students of color, reporters described pedagogical strategies that mirrored those found in charter schools with similar student populations.

Recommendations

Further research is needed to determine whether charter and alternative schools are educating their low- and middle-income students differently. If future research confirms this, we warn that charter and alternative schools could be preparing their low-income students and/or students of color inadequately for higher education and work in professional environments.
Classroom, School, and District Impacts on Diverse Student Literacy Achievement
Authors: Wilcox Kristen Campbell , Lawson Hal A. , Angelis Janet
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Prior research has investigated the literacy achievement gap with particular focus on ethnically and linguistically diverse students’ performance. This study extends that research by examining the relationships among classroom instructional practices, school priorities, and district policies in higher performing schools.

Purpose/Research Question

The purpose of the study was to identify differences between schools with typical literacy performance among diverse students and schools where diverse students exceeded predicted performance. Primary research questions were: What qualities of literacy instruction are characteristic of elementary schools with higher literacy achievement among ethnically and linguistically diverse students? Compared to schools with average literacy achievement among diverse students, what are the proximal and distal factors that describe and explain significantly different diverse student literacy achievement outcomes?

Setting

Fifteen elementary schools in New York State provided the sample. All serve ethnically and/or linguistically diverse students. Ten of these schools were classified as higher performing based on three years of state assessment data for diverse students; five were classified as average performing based on the same assessments.

Research Design

This study was a comparative multiple case study using mixed methods.

Data Collection/Analysis

Two researchers visited each school for two days interviewing 12–15 teachers and administrators using a semistructured interview protocol. They also collected documents (e.g., district goals, curriculum, lesson plans), and constructed interpretive memos. All interviews and memos were coded using HyperResearch software and documents were used to triangulate findings. Axial coding and matrices were used to identify salient proximal and distal contrasts between cases.

Findings

Practices between the two sets of schools differed at three levels: classrooms, schools, and district office. Differences included the extent and effectiveness of differentiated and technology-enriched literacy instruction and how coherently school and district policies and practices supported and sustained effective classroom practices. Higher performing schools showed evidence of the use of at least 90-minute balanced literacy blocks that embedded support (e.g., ESL and Special Education). Also in these schools, teachers reported relevant professional development and supports for collaborative work and instructional coaching.

Conclusions

Factors and forces in the classrooms, schools, and district offices, and especially in their relations help to account for differences in the two sets of schools. These forces and factors are malleable and actionable, i.e., ones that school and district leaders can do something about in their quest to improve the literacy achievement levels of diverse students.
Thoughts on Creativity and Art Education
Authors: Hubard Olga M.
Published: November 2021

Excerpts from a conversation on creativity with Olga Hubard, conducted prior to a symposium on the same topic at Teachers College, are interwoven with artworks by Hubard's students and professional artists.
Dialogic and Direct Instruction: Two Distinct Models of Mathematics Instruction and the Debate(s) Surrounding Them
Authors: Munter Charles , Stein Mary Kay , Smith Margaret S.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Which ideas should be included in the K–12 curriculum, how they are learned, and how they should be taught have been debated for decades in multiple subjects. In this article, we offer mathematics as a case in point of how new standards-related policies may offer an opportunity for reassessment and clarification of such debates.

Purpose/Objective

Our goal was to specify instructional models associated with terms such as “reform” and “traditional”—which, in this article, we refer to as “dialogic” and “direct”—in terms of perspectives on what it means to know mathematics, how students learn mathematics, and how mathematics should be taught.

Research Design

In the spirit of “adversarial collaboration,” we hosted a series of semi-structured discussions among nationally recognized experts who hold opposing points of view on mathematics teaching and/or learning. During those discussions, the recent consensus regarding what students should learn—as represented by the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM)—was taken as a common goal, and additional areas of agreement and disagreement were identified and discussed. The goal was not to reach consensus but to invite representatives of different perspectives to clarify and come to agreement on how they disagree.

Findings/Results

We present two instructional models that were specified and refined over the course of those discussions and describe nine key areas that distinguish the two models: (a) the importance and role of talk; (b) the importance and role of group work; (c) the sequencing of mathematical topics; (d) the nature and ordering of mathematical instructional tasks; (e) the nature, timing, source, and purpose of feedback; (f) the emphasis on creativity (i.e., authoring one's own learning; mathematizing subject matter from reality); (g) the purpose of diagnosing student thinking; (h) the introduction and role of definitions; and (i) the nature and role of representations. Additionally, we elaborate a more nuanced description of the ongoing debate, as it pertains to particular sources of difference in perspective.

Conclusions/Recommendations

With this article, we hope to advance ongoing debates in two ways: (a) discrediting false assumptions and oversimplified conceptions of the “other side's” arguments (which can obscure both the real differences and real similarities between different models of instruction), and (b) framing the debates in a manner that allows for more thoughtful empirical investigation oriented to understanding learning in the discipline.
Technology and the New Professionalization of Teaching
Authors: Shaffer David Williamson , Nash Padraig , Ruis A. R.
Published: November 2021

Background

By 2009, 99% of U.S. classrooms had access to computers, with an average ratio of 1.7 students per computer, and 40% of teachers report using computers often in their classrooms. However, while K–12 schools are investing more heavily in digital technologies, only a small fraction of this investment is going to instructional software (7%) and digital content (5%). Education policy leaders have called for increased investment in and use of digital learning technologies in K–12 education, which has significant professional implications for the 40% of teachers who use computers often and, perhaps more importantly, for the 60% who do not.

Objective

This article explores for a broad audience the changing landscape of education in the digital age, the changing roles of teachers in a technology-rich education system, and the skills, knowledge, values, and ways of thinking that teachers will need to have to support students’ social, emotional, and intellectual development in a digital learning environment.

Research Design

This analytic essay reviews and synthesizes research on learning in a digital environment, providing theoretical framework for understanding the changing landscape of learning in technology-rich environments and the consequent changes in teacher preparation that this may entail.

Conclusion

We explore the influence of educational technologies on teaching and teacher preparation by looking at three kinds of learning technology: digital workbooks that help students learn basic skills through routine practice; digital texts, such as ebooks, virtual museums, and learning games, that provide students with mediated experiences; and digital internships that simulate real-world practices, helping students learn how to solve problems in the ways that workers, scholars, and artists in the real world do. We examine the extent to which these technologies can assume different aspects of teachers’ traditional functions of assessment, tutoring, and explication. We argue that increased use of these and other digital learning technologies could allow teachers to provide more nuanced curricula based on their students’ individual needs. In particular, teachers will likely assume a new role, that of a coordinator who provides guidance through and facilitation of the learning process in individual students’ social, intellectual, and emotional contexts. We suggest this may require changes to teacher preparation and in-service professional development to help both new and experienced teachers succeed in an ever-changing digital learning environment, as well as new methods of evaluating teacher performance that account for more than student achievement on standardized tests. Interesting things happen along borders—transitions—not in the middle where everything is the same. —Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
Zombies, Truants, and Flash Mobs: How Youth Organizers Respond to and Shape Youth Policy
Authors: Conner Jerusha O. , Rosen Sonia M.
Published: November 2021

Youth organizing groups combine strategies from the fields of youth development and community organizing in order to mobilize young people to take collective action. Significantly, organizing work acknowledges that youth are commonly blamed for social problems that are beyond their control and repositions these youth as agents of positive social change. This approach complicates policy scholarship, which understands stakeholders as “targets” of policy initiatives. In a seminal work on public policy, Schneider and Ingram identify four quadrants in which target populations can be placed by policy formulations: advantaged (those with high power and a positive valence), contenders (those with high power and a negative valence), dependents (those with low power and a positive valence) and deviants (those with low power and a negative valence). Schneider and Ingram point out that young people are generally positioned as “dependents.” However, this chapter draws on empirical data from one youth organizing group to demonstrate how youth assert themselves as powerful stakeholders in important decision-making processes, contradicting policymakers’ construction of them as passive and weak.
A Sad Journey down History: A Conversation with Judge Nathaniel Jones about Litigating Milliken v. Bradley I (1974), 40 Years Later
Authors: Gooden Mark A. , Green Terrance L.
Published: November 2021

Nathaniel Jones was born May 12, 1926, in Youngstown, Ohio, and served as the general counsel for the NAACP from 1969–1979. During that time, he litigated the Milliken v. Bradley I case before the U.S. District Court in 1971 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter nominated Nathaniel Jones to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and at 87 years of age, he still serves as a retired senior judge for the court. Our conversation with the Honorable Judge Nathaniel Jones entails his reflections about Milliken 40 years later, origins of his involvement in the case, and suggestions for school desegregation advocates in the 21st century. To begin, we briefly describe Milliken and how the conversation with Judge Jones came about. We organized our conversation around topical areas about the case, which reflect our interview questions. Our discussion with Judge Jones occurred on March 22, 2014, in Cincinnati, Ohio. This conversation concludes with Nathaniel Jones discussing what Detroit and other urban schools districts could potentially be like if Milliken would have been upheld by the Supreme Court.
Challenging Boundaries, Changing Fate? Metropolitan Inequality and the Legacy of Milliken
Authors: Holme Jennifer Jellison , Finnigan Kara S. , Diem Sarah
Published: November 2021

Background

This article examines the contemporary implications of the Milliken v. Bradley (1974) decision for educational inequality between school districts in U.S. metropolitan areas. We focus upon four metropolitan areas that were highly segregated in the 1970s but which met different fates in court: We first examine Detroit and Philadelphia, where plaintiffs sought but ultimately failed to obtain a metropolitan-wide desegregation ruling. We then examine St. Louis, where a court imposed a metropolitan desegregation remedy. We finally include Jefferson County, where the court order resulted in a merger of city and suburban schools.

Objective

Through this comparative analysis we seek to tease out the effects of the ruling on patterns of inequity between urban and suburban school districts over time. We specifically examine how districts within these metro areas differed over time in terms of patterns of school segregation, fiscal resources, and academic performance.

Research Design

We employed qualitative case study methodology. We purposively selected three case study districts within each of the four metro areas (total of 12 school districts) based on their contextual status in 1970, i.e., whether they were in each of these three categories: urban, segregated suburban, or affluent suburban. We compared them along three dimensions: patterns of segregation, academic outcomes, and fiscal resources.

Conclusions

We found that the segregated and high poverty districts in the three metro areas where courts left districts intact (Detroit, Philadelphia, and St. Louis) have been, since Milliken, increasingly hemmed in by their boundaries: struggling with growing concentrations of need, low resources to meet those needs, and as a result falling into fiscal and academic decline. In contrast, the maintenance of district boundaries by the courts has allowed the affluent suburbs in these contexts, over time, to benefit from a number of policies and practices that allowed them to accrue and protect advantage through exclusionary zoning policies and housing discrimination. Together, these policies have promoted and protected the affluence and advantage in each of these contexts, which has in turn attracted investment and allowed these districts to maintain strong financial standing over time. Our study suggests that socially constructed political boundaries, like school district boundary lines, by carving up political geography along the lines of race and class, can take on an active role in the reproduction of inequality.
Implementing Response to Intervention: Challenges of Diversity and System Change in a High-Stakes Environment
Authors: Cavendish Wendy , Harry Beth , Menda Ana Maria , Espinosa Anabel , Mahotiere Margarette
Published: November 2021

Background

The Response to Intervention (RTI) approach involves the use of a dynamic model built around the systematic documentation of students’ response to research-based instructional interventions. Although there has been widespread implementation of RTI models for early intervention and in some cases, as a means to identify students with learning disabilities (LD), little has been published on teacher implementation of RTI in naturalistic school settings.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine the RTI implementation process in two culturally diverse, urban schools. The authors describe the process of large-scale RTI implementation through the lens of Systems Change Theory.

Research Design

This study of RTI in a naturalistic setting used grounded theory research methods to provide an in-depth description and qualitative analysis of challenges and successes experienced by RTI teams and teachers in schools required by state mandate to implement RTI. Data collection included semi-structured interviews and observations with 30 participants in two urban schools. Transcripts of interviews and field notes of direct observations were analyzed inductively through a four-tiered interpretive coding process that moved from the most concrete to more abstract levels of interpretation.

Conclusions

The present study highlights challenges related to changes in procedures for monitoring student responsiveness in an RTI system used for special education identification. The emergence of themes from observation and interview data revealed how professional development gaps, school personnel's assumptions about culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners and families, and external pressures from district and state accountability systems affected RTI implementation across two schools. Our observations revealed confusion over the components for practice in RTI as well as a lack of understanding related to the purpose of RTI to potentially improve outcomes and reduce referrals to special education for CLD youth. The issues that emerged as barriers to implementation serve to identify the systemic change factors needed to support large-scale RTI implementation.
From the Faculty Perspective: Defining, Earning, and Maintaining Legitimacy across Academia
Authors: Gonzales Leslie D. , Terosky Aimee Lapointe
Published: November 2021

Background

Research shows that the academic profession is largely held together by cultural rules and norms imparted through various socialization processes, all of which are viewed as sensible ways to orient rising professionals. In this paper, a critical perspective is assumed, as we utilized the concept legitimacy and legitimation to better understand the implications of various socialization tactics within academia.

Purpose

Specifically, the purpose of this paper was to study how faculty members, employed across different types of institutions, defined legitimacy and what it takes to be deemed legitimate in the context of the academic profession.

Research Design

A critical qualitative research design guided this study. Specifically, we collected fifty in-depth, semistructured, conceptual interviews from faculty members employed across two community colleges, two regional comprehensive universities, one liberal arts college, and one high activity research university.

Data Analysis

Our analysis of interview transcripts was largely guided by Saldaña's suggestions for affective, pattern, and elaborative coding.

Findings

We found that all faculty members, regardless of institution type, discipline, or tenure status, held ideas as to what constitutes legitimate work/legitimacy within academia. We interrogated these findings further through the lens of New Institutionalism and determined that professors spent most of their time describing professional legitimacy. Professional legitimacy seemed to be contingent on (1) research and (2) institutional type. However, faculty also described what can be understood as normative legitimacy, which is an endorsement granted when one conforms to implicit cultural rules and ideals held by any community of relevance (e.g., governmental leaders, administrators, tax payers/public). Normative legitimacy seemed to be granted to professors who presented themselves as selfless, ideal workers who could account for and maximize their productivity.

Conclusions/Recommendations

A number of specific policy and practice related recommendations are gleaned from this work. In terms of faculty preparation and socialization, it is imperative that faculty members acknowledge that both processes are steeped in relations of power, as they engender notions of who and what fits into academia. Several specific questions and small adjustments in terms of practice are noted in the paper. Also, in terms of faculty evaluation, a return to Boyer's work and newer iterations of Boyer's work by Henderson (2013) could be helpful.
The Education of the Third Class in the Republic: Plato and the Locus Classicus of Formative Justice
Authors: Mintz Avi I.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

In one of the classics of educational philosophy, a key issue is remains unsettled. In Plato's Republic, Socrates makes a case for the importance of a comprehensive education. Socrates is unclear, however, about whether the producer class is eligible for this comprehensive education.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Previous scholars have attempted to settle this question either on the side of exclusion or inclusion of the third class in the program of education in Plato's Republic. I ask whether Plato may have intentionally crafted this ambiguity.

Research Design

A philosophical analysis of Plato's Republic with reference to its historical context.

Conclusions/Recommendations

I offer an alternative interpretation of the eligibility of the third class for the program of education in The Republic. I endorse neither the position that Socrates designs the education for the guardian class alone nor, on the other hand, that Socrates’ call for class transfers logically requires the children of all classes to be educated together. Instead, I suggest that Plato's conflicting and confusing treatment of the third class's education in The Republic is a provocation for his readers—that is, there is reason to believe that Plato may have intentionally drawn readers into an inquiry about participation in common education in a just society.
They Schools: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy under Siege
Authors: Royal Camika , Gibson Simone
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) represents educators who work toward academic excellence, cultural competence, and sociopolitical awareness. Although some profess to embrace CRP, many educators neglect sociopolitical consciousness. Socio-politically unconscious and/or racially dysconscious educators cannot engage their students in sociopolitical consciousness. For a multitude of reasons, including neoliberal school reform, educators may reduce CRP to cultural celebration, trivialization, essentializing, substituting cultural for political analysis, or other compromised pedagogies.

Purpose

In this article, we argue that neoliberal school reform models employing hyperaccountability and hyperstandardization, replete with their demands on educators of conformity and silence, obfuscate teachers as thinkers, disempowering the efforts of culturally relevant educators and making high test scores the sole focus of schooling. We also argue that CRP is even more needed now, especially its focuses on cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness, given the recent highly publicized murders of Black youth (e.g., Freddie Gray, Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, and Renisha McBride).

Setting and Population

This article explores CRP in Philadelphia's public schools before and after the state takeover in 2001 and the proliferation of hyperstandardization, hyperaccountability, and neoliberal school reform. Research Design: This article is conceptual. It uses the historical narratives of Black educators to support the conceptual argument.

Conclusion

Though it is a professional gamble, it is possible to be a culturally relevant educator within the hyperstandardized, hyperaccountable neoliberal school environment. Such educators must be highly skilled masters of their craft, strategic, and subversive, adhering to all tenets of CRP and mandated curricula. This tension could affect educators’ professional standing, income, and job security. However, neglecting emancipatory pedagogies under the joint siege of hyperaccountability, hyperstandardization, and neoliberal school reform reifies the American racial, cultural, and socioeconomic caste system, and it does so through our schools. Unless educators risk subversively employing CRP, students from historically marginalized communities will continue to appear as standardized failures.
Boundary Crossing in R&D Projects in Schools: Learning through Cross-Professional Collaboration
Authors: Schenke Wouter , Van Driel Jan H. , Geijsel Femke P. , Volman Monique L. L.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

School leaders, teachers, and researchers are increasingly involved in collaborative research and development (R&D) projects in schools, which encourage crossing boundaries between the fields of school and research. It is not clear, however, what and how professionals in these projects learn through cross-professional collaboration.

Purpose

The purpose of our study is to create a better understanding of the learning of boundary crossers who are involved in cross-professional collaboration in R&D projects.

Research Design

In this multicase study, we analyzed data from interviews with school leaders, teachers, and researchers involved in 19 R&D projects in Dutch secondary schools. We interpreted boundary crossers’ learning in terms of learning mechanisms (identification, reflection, coordination, and transformation) and related these learning mechanisms to different types of cross-professional collaboration.

Findings

Three combinations of learning mechanisms were prevalent: identification and coordination, reflection and transformation, and transformation for school leaders, teachers, and researchers. Different types of collaboration appeared to evoke different learning mechanisms.

Conclusions

Boundary crossers on R&D projects learn from the other professionals’ tools and objectives and, in the case of transformation, integrate these in their own professional methods of working and aims. When transformation occurs school leaders and teachers develop a research attitude towards teaching and researchers incorporate contributing to educational improvement as an objective in their research. This is mainly the case in schooland researcher-directed types of cross-professional collaboration.
Track Placement and the Motivational Predictors of Math Course Enrollment
Authors: Reyes Marcela , Domina Thurston
Published: November 2021

Background

Virtually all high schools offer a range of courses to allow students to enroll in four years of high school mathematics. However, only two thirds of U.S. high school graduates took mathematics courses each school year.

Purpose/Research Question

This study addresses three research questions: First, how do students’ math course enrollment and motivational beliefs (i.e., self-efficacy in math, math utility, interest in math, and college expectations) differ by math track? Second, what is the relationship between students’ motivational beliefs and their decision to take four years of math? Third, to what extent does this relationship vary by math track and whether a student passes or fails a math course? Much of the relevant prior literature approaches these relations primarily from an individualistic psychological perspective, viewing motivation as a student-level attribute that similarly effects students’ decision-making process. By contrast, our analyses take a more contextual approach, focusing particular attention on the ways in which students’ math track placements shape their academic approaches and moderate the link between motivation and course-taking.

Research Design

This study uses secondary restricted-access data from the nationally representative Education Longitudinal Study (ELS: 2002). Students were surveyed and tested in mathematics during the base year (2002). In the follow-up (2004) year, data collectors requested academic transcripts for all participants along with follow-up student surveys and an additional math exam.

Findings

Our results coincide with previous motivation research that shows that students opt to take additional math courses when they are interested in math, consider themselves skillful in math, and have high college expectations. But the motivational predictors of math course enrollment vary with students’ initial math placement. For above-track students, interest in math is the strongest indicator that they will take four years of math, followed by self-efficacy in mathematics and college expectations, respectively. In contrast, for both low-track and on-track students, the strongest indicator of taking four years of math is college expectations.

Conclusions

Our study focused on students’ motivation and course enrollment, but this does not diminish the importance of tracking, curricular rigor, and teacher pedagogy. This study provides an additional way to improve inequities in math course enrollment, which is by making explicit recommendations for enhancing students’ motivation. Understanding which particular beliefs have the greatest influence on specific student groups allows educators to appropriately allocate limited resources and increase math course enrollment. This would likely be more effective than a one-size-fits-all approach.
The Internet of Toys: A Posthuman and Multimodal Analysis of Connected Play
Authors: Marsh Jackie
Published: November 2021

Background

The study reported in this article focuses on an exploration of the role and nature of play in young children's use of toys that connect physical and digital domains.

Purpose

The purpose of the article is to explore the nature of the connections that are made in play that transverses physical and virtual domains. The article draws on posthuman theory to explain some of the complexity of the play that occurs in these contexts.

Research Design

The research took place in the United Kingdom, and the overall study consisted of four distinct stages: (a) A survey of 2,000 parents of children aged 0–5 years, focusing on children's access to and use of tablet apps; (b) case studies of preschool children's use of apps in six families; (c) observations of children aged 3–5 years in a school using apps; and (d) content and multimodal analysis of apps. The focus of this article is on (b), although some of the survey data from the first stage of the study are also shared to provide context.

Data Collection and Analysis

The focus for this article is the play of a three-year-old girl, Amy. In addition to ethnographic data constructed over a 2-month period (field notes, interviews, photographs, and films), Amy's mother collected data between the researchers’ visits by making films of her daughter's use of apps. Amy also collected data herself by wearing a GoPro chestcam. The data that inform the analysis in this article are from a film created by Amy (11:05 minutes) and a video filmed by Amy's mother (5.21 minutes). Data were both inductively analyzed using multimodal (inter)action analysis and deductively analyzed using a posthumanist approach.

Findings

Amy's play connected digital and nondigital components in complex ways. An app and related physical object that typify the Internet of Toys provided opportunities for Amy's play to take place across physical and digital domains, and the inorganic objects embedded in the electronic toy and related app were an important element of this play, shaping Amy's responses at times. However, Amy's play was not always determined by the design of the electronic objects, and she demonstrated agency within play episodes. There were multiple connections made across a variety of domains/ dimensions, which added to the complexity of the play.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Young children's play increasingly connects digital and nondigital domains, and posthumanist theories can enhance understanding of how connections across these time/spaces are made.
Assessing Metacognitive Deficiencies and Effectively Instructing Metacognitive Skills
Authors: Veenman Marcel V. J.
Published: November 2021

Metacognitive skills refers to individual abilities for regulating and controlling learning behavior. Orientation, goal setting, planning, monitoring, and evaluation are manifestations of those skills. Given that metacognitive skills directly affect learning behavior, they are a strong predictor of learning performance. Students display a huge variation in metacognitive skillfulness, dependent on age and experience. In this article, metacognitive skills are considered to be an acquired program of self-instructions, that is, an orderly series of condition-action rules that contain conditional knowledge about when to apply which skill, and operational instructions for how to implement a particular skill. This notion has implications for effective metacognitive instruction in deficient students. Prior to instruction, on-line assessments of metacognitive skillfulness during actual task performance are indispensable for the identification of deficient students and for tailoring metacognitive instruction to the individual needs of students. Instruction should subsequently address what skill to perform when, why, and how (WWW&H), embedded within the context of a given task. Moreover, instruction should explicitly inform students about the benefits of applying metacognitive skills to make them exert the required effort. Finally, teachers may act as role model to students by including explicit metacognitive instruction in their lessons.
Teacher Choices: Teacher Development
Authors: Rutter Alison
Published: November 2021

This article explores the individual and institutional professional choices related to the teacher development of the 19 exemplar elementary, secondary English, and math teachers who were still teaching 10-plus years after they entered teaching, either through New Jersey's alternate route (AR) program or college-based (CB) programs in the state. By examining the history of teacher development reform movements affecting the careers of these teachers and the ways in which these exemplar teachers chose to build their careers, two case studies are drawn to demonstrate the impact of the institution as well as the individuals’ professional motivation. The cases highlight the different professional paths and choices these teachers selected. In conclusion, the article recognizes that, rather than their initial choice of pathway, teachers’ development into mature veterans was affected most by their ongoing individual choices of professionalism, which include the effects of the institutions in which they chose to work.
Making Class: Children's Perceptions of Social Class through Illustrations
Authors: Howard Adam , Swalwell Katy , Adler Karlyn
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Though there has been attention to how class differences impact children's experiences in schools and how young people perceive racial and gender differences, very little research to date has examined how young people make sense of social class differences.

Purpose

In this article, the authors examine young children's conceptualizations of differences between the rich and the poor to better understand children's process of classmaking.

Research Design

To access young children's ideas about social class, the authors examined kindergartners’, third graders’, and sixth graders’ (N = 133) drawings depicting differences between rich and poor people and their corresponding explanations of their drawings. These children attended two schools, one public serving a majority working- class population, and one private serving a majority affluent population.

Findings/Results

Children understand social class to be inclusive emotions, social distinctions, and social status. Children's drawings and explanations show that perpetuated ideology-justifying status quo of poverty and economic inequality. Children have complex sociocultural insights into how social class operates that manifest themselves through four domains: material, intersectional, emotional, and spatial.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Educators should provide more opportunities for teaching about social class, and can do so in ways that engages students in processes of classmaking that do not reinforce stereotypes and that interrupts inequality.
Rethinking School-Based Ties: Social Class and the Role of Institutional Agents in Adolescents’ College Plans
Authors: Hardie Jessica Halliday
Published: November 2021

Background

Planning for college is an increasingly common rite of passage for high school students. Institutional agents—nonkin adults who possess institutional resources—are important sources of support and guidance in this process.

Purpose

This mixed-methods study examines social class differences in the involvement of school-based institutional agents such as teachers and school counselors in helping young people plan for college and the future.

Population

Interviews were conducted with 61 middle-class, working-class, and poor young women to collect information regarding their future plans, social ties, and role of social ties in guiding their plans. In addition, the author uses survey data from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) to examine the association between social class and the role of school-based ties in adolescents’ college planning.

Research Design

Analyses of in-person interview transcripts involved inductive coding and the development of effects matrices to compare coding output by class. Quantitative models were constructed based on qualitative findings. Based on these findings, analyses of ELS data used hierarchical models to estimate the association between social class background and receiving encouragement and information regarding college from social ties.

Findings

Analyses of interview transcripts reveal that disadvantaged young women see school-based ties as their primary means for college planning, whereas middle-class young women often discount advice from these ties when other sources of advice are available. Quantitative models also show that disadvantaged youth rely on school-based ties for information in the college planning process to a greater extent than do middle-class youth. However, disadvantaged youth receive less encouragement to attend college from school and nonschool ties, even after accounting for academic performance.

Conclusions

Inequality in access to college stems in part from differences in the resources available to high school students as they plan for the future. Disadvantaged youth look to schools to help them plan; if schools marshal their resources to assist these young people, they can help address existing inequality in access to college.