bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Algebra for All: California's Eighth-Grade Algebra Initiative as Constrained Curricula
Authors: Domina Thurston , Penner Andrew M. , Penner Emily K. , Conley Annemarie
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Across the United States, secondary school curricula are intensifying as a growing proportion of students enroll in high-level academic math courses. In many districts, this intensification process occurs as early as eighth grade, where schools are effectively constraining their mathematics curricula by restricting course offerings and placing more students into Algebra I. This paper provides a quantitative single-case research study of policy-driven curricular intensification in one California school district.

Research Questions

(1a) What effect did 8th eighth grade curricular intensification have on mathematics course enrollment patterns in Towering Pines Unified schools? (2b) How did the distribution of prior achievement in Towering Pines math classrooms change as the district constrained the curriculum by universalizing 8th eighth grade Algebra? (3c) Did 8th eighth grade curricular intensification improve students’ mathematics achievement?

Setting

Towering Pines is an immigrant enclave in the inner-ring suburbs of a major metropolitan area. The district's 10 middle schools together enroll approximately 4,000 eighth graders each year. The districts’ students are ethnically diverse and largely economically disadvantaged. The study draws upon administrative data describing 8th eighth graders in the district in the 2004–20-05 through 2007–20-08 school years.

Intervention/Program/Practice

During the study period, Towering Pines dramatically intensified middle school students’ math curricula: In the 2004–20-05 school year 32% of the district's 8th eighth graders enrolled in Algebra or a higher- level mathematics course; by the 2007–20-08 school year that proportion had increased to 84%.

Research Design

We use an interrupted time-series design, comparing students’ 8th eighth grade math course enrollments, 10th grade math course enrollments, and 10th grade math test scores across the four cohorts, controlling for demographics and prior achievement.

Findings/Results

We find that students’ odds of taking higher level mathematics courses increased as this district implemented the state's Algebra mandate. However, even as the district implemented a constrained curriculum strategy, mathematics achievement growth between 6th sixth and 10th grade slowed and the achievement advantages associated with 8th eighth grade Algebra declined.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Our analyses suggest that curricular intensification increased the inclusiveness and decreased the selectivity of the mathematics tracking regime in Towering Pines middle schools. However, the findings suggest that this constrained curriculum strategy may have may have unintended negative consequences for student achievement.
Facilitating Dialogues about Racial Realities
Authors: Quaye Stephen J.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Facilitating dialogues about racial issues in higher education classroom settings continues to be a vexing problem facing postsecondary educators. In order for students to discuss race with their peers, they need skilled facilitators who are knowledgeable about racial issues and able to support students in these difficult dialogues. Yet previous research on difficult dialogues has largely focused on students’ experiences in these dialogues and the outcomes they gain from participating in them with little knowledge about the roles of facilitators of these dialogues.

Purpose

The purpose of the present study was to examine how postsecondary educators facilitate racial dialogues.

Research Design

In this study, I employed case study methodology and conducted semistructured individual interviews with 22 participants, as well as examined participants’ syllabi to see how they structured their courses.

Findings

Findings reveal the practical strategies educators used to facilitate classroom-based racial dialogues, including utilizing group discussions, using various practical resources, developing ways for learners to apply racial concepts and theories to their lives, and providing ample space for students to debrief at the conclusion of the dialogues.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Major conclusions and recommendations from this study include the importance of White educators facilitating these dialogues, educators conceiving of knowledge differently, the importance of paying attention to the institutional and classroom cultures for these dialogues, fostering collaborations between faculty and student affairs educators to enable students to grapple with racial issues in classroom and cocurricular settings, and connecting racial dialogues with other historical forms of oppression like sexism and classism.
Understanding For-Profit College and Community College Choice through Rational Choice
Authors: Iloh Constance , Tierney William G.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Scarce research has been conducted examining why students choose to attend higher priced for-profit institutions over community colleges. The authors suggest that increased national concern over proprietary higher education warrants an in-depth comparative case study of the choice factors utilized by for-profit and community college students.

Research Question

The research questions guiding this analysis are: (a) Why and how do students choose to attend for-profit colleges and community colleges? (b) What factors were important in their decision? (c) What implications do these results have for rational choice and college choice theory?

Setting

Data were collected at one community college and one for-profit college in California that had similar vocational programs.

Subjects

A total of 137 for-profit and community college students (75 for profit, 62 community college) enrolled in a vocational nursing or surgical technician associate's degree program agreed to participate.

Research Design

The authors examine student college choice factors through a case study. The findings were developed from interviews, surveys, and focus groups.

Findings

The authors found that for-profit and community college students held varying conceptions of costs and benefits as they pertained to college choice factors. Three particular dimensions were highlighted in student responses—short-term and long-term gains, risks, and uncertainty.

Conclusions

This study illuminates the nuanced factors and goals that informed student college choice decisions. Understanding these distinct college choice considerations could help researchers, practitioners, and institutional leaders develop measures for institutional effectiveness and student success.
Does Preservice Preparation Matter? Examining an Old Question in New Ways
Authors: Ronfeldt Matthew , Schwartz Nathaniel , Jacob Brian A.
Published: November 2021

Background

Over the past decade, most of the quantitative studies on teacher preparation have focused on comparisons between alternative and traditional routes. There has been relatively little quantitative research on specific features of teacher education that might cause certain pathways into teaching to be more effective than others. The vast majority of evidence on features of preservice preparation comes from qualitative case studies of single institutions that prepare teachers. Among the few large-scale cross-institution studies that exist, most provide only descriptive trends that fail to account for teacher and school characteristics that might explain apparent relationships in the data. Additionally, these studies typically look at state- or district-level data, providing little information on national trends.

Purpose

Focusing on two features of preparation commonly targeted by certification policies, this study asks: Does completing more practice teaching and methods-related coursework predict teachers’ retention and perceived instructional preparedness? Do the results vary for different kinds of teachers and schools.

Research Design

This is a secondary analysis of data from the two most recent administrations of the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), a nationally representative survey of teachers that includes information about preservice preparation, retention, and perceptions of preparedness. We link surveyed teachers to Common Core of Data on their schools and to Barron's ratings of college competitiveness.

Data Analysis

We use linear and logistic regression with state and district fixed effects, as well as comprehensive controls for school and teacher characteristics, to estimate whether completing more practice teaching and methods-related coursework predicts teachers’ self-perceived instructional preparedness and persistence in the profession.

Findings

We find that teachers who completed more methods-related coursework and practice teaching felt better prepared and were more likely to stay in teaching. These positive relationships were similar across alternative and traditional routes and tended to be greater among graduates from competitive colleges, males, and mathematics and science teachers, as well as teachers in urban, rural, and secondary schools.

Conclusions

Our study provides some of the best suggestive evidence to date that teacher education programs, and certification policies that influence them, can improve teachers’ preparedness and persistence by increasing requirements for practice teaching and methods-related coursework. Policy makers often consider reducing preparation requirements to increase the supply of academically talented and underrepresented teacher groups. Finding these groups to be at least as, and usually more, responsive to additional preparation raises some concern that reducing requirements could have negative consequences for their preparedness and retention.
The School Counselor Caseload and the High School-to-College Pipeline
Authors: Woods Chenoa S. , Domina Thurston
Published: November 2021

Background

Advising students on the transition from high school to college is a central part of school counselors’ professional responsibility. The American School Counselor Association recommends a school counselor caseload of 250 students; however, prior work yields inconclusive evidence on the relationship between school counseling and school-level counseling resources and students’ college trajectories.

Focus of Study

This study evaluates the relationship between access to school counselors and several critical indicators of student transitions between high school and college.

Research Design

The study utilizes the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to explore the relationships between the school counselor caseload and students’ progress throughout the high school-to-college pipeline. The key indicator is the counselor caseload for students at a given high school, measured as the number of 10th graders per counselor at the high school at which each student is enrolled. The outcome variables are students’ college expectations, whether students spoke with a counselor about college, taking the SAT, and college enrollment. Logistic and multinomial logistic regression analyses are applied to examine the relationships between these variables.

Findings

Students in schools with small counselor caseloads enjoy greater success at navigating the high school-to-college pipeline. Controlling for student- and school-level characteristics, students in schools where counselors are responsible for advising a large number of students are less likely to speak with a counselor about college, plan to attend college, take the SAT, and enroll in a four-year college.

Conclusions

The findings support the claim that a smaller school counselor caseload may increase students’ access to key college preparation resources and raise four-year college enrollment rates.
Understanding Key Stakeholder Belief Systems or Institutional Logics Related to Non-Tenure-Track Faculty and the Changing Professoriate
Authors: Kezar Adrianna , Maxey Daniel
Published: November 2021

Background/context

Over the past 40 years, the composition of the professoriate has changed substantially across all institutional types. Once predominantly tenure track, now nontenure-track faculty (NTTF) constitute more than 70% of the faculty. While these major changes have occurred, we know little about key stakeholders’ views (accreditors, policy makers, presidents) of these changes.

Purpose

In this article, we explore the following research question: What are the belief systems (logics) related to the changing professoriate of the key entities within the higher education organizational field?

Population/description of participants

Thirty-five individuals from key stakeholder groups were included: accreditation agencies; disciplinary societies; faculty stakeholder groups such as New Faculty Majority; unions; state or system leadership and state compacts such as National Association of System Heads; voluntary regional consortia such as those representing deans; governing boards; and individual and institutional membership associations, including the American Council on Education and American Association of Community Colleges.

Research design

In order to better understand the perspectives of key stakeholders in higher education's organizational field related to the nature of the professoriate, we conducted a modified Policy Delphi study.

Findings

The findings indicate one of the major reasons that the organizational field did not provide a shield to the decline of tenure or mobilize to combat the deteriorating conditions of nontenure-track faculty is because no new decided upon logic has been created as it relates to the professoriate. Great disagreement exists about what the future professoriate should look like and the four distinctive views are presented.

Conclusions

There is some opportunity for consensus and mobilization around two key points: (a) All groups believe the current three-tiered model (shrinking tenure track, large part time, and full-time nontenure track) is not working; and (b) there is broad consensus about a few principles for a new model such as greater job security, shared governance, greater academic freedom than most faculty currently have, and more focus on the educational function of faculty.
Everyday Constitutional Assessments and Their Relevance to Formal Assessments
Authors: Varenne Hervé
Published: November 2021

Background

In anthropology and related disciplines, the term “assessment” refers to the everyday activities of ordinary people as they figure out what to do next given what others have just done. The assessments, in turn, constitute what is happening, whether in encounters between policeman and person in the street, or classroom lesson, or joking about a teacher, or giving birth in a hospital, blogging, etc.

Findings

This review article briefly summarizes the major findings in such research and its roots in American pragmatic thought.

Conclusion

The article then suggest how to apply this form of analysis to long historical conversations about the foundations of democracy, the assessment of what building a democracy must entail, particularly as it relates to an educated citizenry, and then to the ongoing assessments of whether goals are being met and what reforms may be needed (e.g., “No Child Left Behind”) continuing with further assessments that constitute new realities that will be subjected to further assessments in the political sphere.
Toward the Relational Management of Educational Measurement Data
Authors: Chung Gregory
Published: November 2021

Background

Historically, significant advances in scientific understanding have followed advances in measurement and observation. As the resolving power of an instrument increased, so have gains in the understanding of the phenomena being observed. Modern interactive systems are potentially the new “microscopes” when they are instrumented to record fine-grained observations of what students do in an online task. Advances in the conceptualization, design, and analyses of such interaction data enable the discovery of learning patterns and can power new applications. One application, personalization, is one of 14 engineering Grand Challenges identified by the National Academy of Engineering (2008).

Purpose

This article examines three levels of data available in online systems that can be used to understand student performance. Empirical research is reviewed to examine three fundamental questions: To what extent does students’ online behavior (a) relate to their cognitive processing, and to what extent can student behavior (b) be used to model their problem solving process and (c) be used diagnostically to reveal understandings and misconceptions?

Participants

The reviewed studies involved participants from college and K12 settings.

Research Design

The reviewed studies all focused on learning processes and outcomes. Nearly all studies had high frequency process-tracing data such as concurrent think-alouds, moment-to-moment telemetry, or both. Participants interacted with an online task on an academic subject. The task typically spanned one or a few class periods, and the studies collectively examined relations among students’ online behavior, cognitive processes (via think-alouds), and external measures of learning.

Data Collection and Analysis

In the reviewed studies, students’ online behavior was captured by instrumenting the system to capture and log interaction events. The more sophisticated approaches used a telemetry design based on the presumed cognitive processing occurring in the system.

Findings

In general, measures derived from students’ online behavior can be used (a) to decide when to intervene to influence learning processes (e.g., increased help seeking) and outcomes (e.g., improved course grades) and (b) as proxy measures of cognitive processing, understanding, and misconceptions.

Conclusions

In the coming years, multiple levels of data will be fused to better understand the student, including static data such as demographics, low-frequency data such as interactions within a learning management system, and high frequency data such as moment-to-moment interactions in a digital app. As education enters the era of big data and transmedia-based learning, data of and for an individual will power new applications to realize the promise of personalized instruction.
School Engagement and Positive Youth Development: A Relational Developmental Systems Perspective
Authors: Li Yibing , Agans Jennifer P. , Chase Paul A. , Arbeit Miriam R. , Weiner Michelle B. , Lerner Richard M.
Published: November 2021

This chapter explains the links between relational developmental systems theory and the strength-based, positive youth development (PYD) perspective. The Five Cs model of PYD (involving competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring) is used to assess the role of school engagement in PYD.
Sustaining Engagement and Interest in the Classroom: Effects of the EngageALL Instructional Model
Authors: Larson Sue C.
Published: November 2021

This chapter describes an empirical study that tests the motivational and learning effects of an intervention designed to initiate and sustain interest and engagement in high school biology classrooms. Positive effects were demonstrated for conceptual understanding, vocabulary acquisition, and perceptions of the learning experiences.
Balancing Skills and Challenges: Exploring the Concept of Relational Engagement in Combined Group and One-On-One Mentoring for Adolescent Girls
Authors: Markowitz Ellen S. , Deutsch Nancy L. , Lawrence Edith C.
Published: November 2021

This study explored engagement in interpersonal relationships within the context of combined group and one-on-one mentoring. Using flow theory, we propose that “relational flow” requires an optimal balance between an individual's relational skills and the challenges inherent in relationship development. The Young Women Leaders Program (YWLP) is a relationally based after-school program for early adolescent girls that combines structured group time with one-on-one mentoring. Researchers explored relational engagement through interviews with seventh-grade participants and group observations. Results indicated that four relational processes occurred that made girls feel more comfortable: (1) giving advice and helping, (2) asking questions/reaching out, (3) sharing and opening up, and (4) spending time with/being there for them. These processes helped the adolescent girls feel closer to and more comfortable with both mentors and peers by reducing feelings of anxiety or self-consciousness, thus freeing them to experience relational flow. The group also provided a safe context for girls to stretch their relational skills and appeared to mitigate the relational challenges associated with a new one-on-one mentoring relationship. This study presents a conceptual model of relational engagement and suggests that this may be a critical component for girls in out-of-school programming.

A group of girls and their mentors are sitting in a circle talking about “boy problems.” One girl, Ann, shares that she and her friend like the same boy and she is not sure what to do. A mentor suggests that both girls could find another guy. “It's not worth the friendship,” she says. Ann chimes in with “Unless he's really cute!” Another girl, Shantel, agrees with Ann. “Sometimes it is [worth the friendship].” The mentors laugh, saying, “Not in seventh grade! It is not worth losing your friendship over a boy.” But Ann seems stuck on the boy. When asked for a suggestion of something positive her peer could do, Ann says, “Have the guy choose.” A mentor asks what would be the pros of that idea. Shantel answers, “If he picks you, you feel good about yourself.” The mentor nods and adds, “So I guess the con is if he doesn't pick you, you don't feel good.” Ann and Shantel are in agreement that both would leave their friend for the guy. A third girl shakes her head, disagreeing with her peers, saying it's not worth the friendship.
Creative “Garages” for Community and Economic Youth Development
Authors: Heath Shirley Brice
Published: November 2021

This chapter examines models of youth-based enterprises in which adolescents take leadership in organizational roles, creative design, and community building. Central to this work is the need for both public and private creative input and financing to develop and support learning environments that engage adolescents in extended projects based in science and art that are socially beneficial to local communities.
Creating Hybrid Spaces for Talk: Humor as a Resource Learners Bring to Informal Learning Contexts
Authors: Ash Doris
Published: November 2021

This chapter focuses on recognizing humor as a powerful resource for visitors from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who are new to learning contexts, such as museums and aquariums. By using humor, visitors negotiate hybrid learning spaces, as well as gain authority in informal settings.

Humor… serves a number of functions—social cohesion or rupture, the cementing of relationships… persuasion through the distraction of entertainment, and the simultaneous challenge and reinforcement of the status quo. (Moreau & Enahoro, 2012, p. 1)
The Many Facets of PISA
Authors: Berliner David C.
Published: November 2021

Trying to understand PISA is analogous to the parable of the blind men and the elephant. There are many facets of the PISA program, and thus many ways to both applaud and critique this ambitious international program of assessment that has gained enormous importance in the crafting of contemporary educational policy. One of the facets discussed in this paper is the issue of the comparability of the cognitions elicited by items across national and linguistic cultures. Valid interpretations of PISA results cannot proceed without assurance that items across nations are interpreted in the same way. A second facet examined is the association of PISA with economic outcomes for nations, still an unsettled area of importance. A third facet discussed is the search in PISA data for universally applicable instructional techniques, a possible will-o-the-wisp. A fourth facet examined is the differences in cross-national attitudes toward the PISA subjects and how those affect test scores. Given these many facets of the program, a fifth facet that is arguably the most important of all the issues associated with PISA is discussed, namely the interpretation of PISA scores.
A Randomized Controlled Trial of Professional Development for Interdisciplinary Civic Education: Impacts on Humanities Teachers and Their Students
Authors: Barr Dennis J. , Boulay Beth , Selman Robert L. , Mccormick Rachel , Lowenstein Ethan , Gamse Beth , Fine Melinda , Leonard M. Brielle
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Billions of dollars are spent annually on professional development (PD) for educators, yet few randomized controlled trials (RCT) have demonstrated the ultimate impact PD has on student learning. Further, while policymakers and others speak to the role schools should play in developing students’ civic awareness, RCTs of PD designed to foster civic learning are rare. This randomized controlled trial contributes to the knowledge base on the effectiveness of PD designed to integrate civic learning, ethical reflection, and historical thinking skills into high school humanities courses.

Focus of Study

The study examined the impact of a PD intervention in two areas: (a) teacher self-efficacy, burnout, and professional engagement and satisfaction; and (b) the academic, civic, social, and ethical competencies of 9th and 10th grade students in the teachers’ classes.

Population/Participants/Subjects

The study involved 113 teachers and 1,371 9th and 10th grade students in 60 high schools from eight metropolitan regions in the United States.

Intervention/Program/Practice

The intervention, Facing History and Ourselves, provides PD through a five-day seminar, curricular materials, and follow-up coaching and workshops to help teachers develop their capacities to implement an interdisciplinary historical case study unit using student-centered pedagogy.

Research Design

The study used a school-level, randomized, experimental design to investigate impacts of the intervention for teachers and their 9th and 10th grade students.

Findings/Results

Intervention teachers showed significantly greater self-efficacy in all eight assessed domains, more positive perceptions of professional support, satisfaction and growth, and greater personal accomplishment. Intervention students demonstrated stronger skills for analyzing evidence, agency, and cause and effect on a historical understanding performance measure; greater self-reported civic efficacy and tolerance for others with different views; and more positive perceptions of the classroom climate and the opportunities afforded for engaging with civic matters. Fidelity analysis found these causal effects despite the fact that roughly half of the intervention teachers did not fully implement the program.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Educators need evidence-based approaches for teaching complex social, civic, and political issues enabling students of diverse mindsets and backgrounds to engage constructively with one another while obtaining necessary skills and knowledge. These findings provide empirical support for a professional development approach that engages teachers in fostering academic and civic competencies critical to both participation in a democracy and success in college and career.
Self-Regulatory Climate: A Social Resource for Student Regulation and Achievement
Authors: Adams Curt M. , Forsyth Patrick B. , Dollarhide Ellen , Miskell Ryan , Ware Jordan
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Schools have differential effects on student learning and development, but research has not generated much explanatory evidence of the social-psychological pathway to better achievement outcomes. Explanatory evidence of how normative conditions enable students to thrive is particularly relevant in the urban context where attention disproportionately centers on the pathology of these environments rather than social attributes that contribute to student growth.

Research Purpose

Our purpose in this study was to determine if a self-regulatory climate works through student self-regulation to influence academic achievement. We hypothesized that (1) self-regulatory climate explains school-level differences in self-regulated learning, and (2) self-regulated learning mediates the relationship between self-regulatory climate and math achievement.

Research Design

We used ex post facto survey data from students and teachers in 80 elementary and secondary schools from a large, southwestern urban school district. A multilevel modeling building process in HLM 7.0 was used to test our hypotheses.

Results

Both hypotheses were supported. Self-regulatory climate explained significant school-level variance in self-regulated learning. Additionally, student self-regulated learning mediated the relationship between self-regulatory climate and math achievement.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that schools, like teachers, have differential effects on the motivational resources of students, with self-regulatory climate being an essential social condition for self-regulation and achievement. We believe self-regulatory climate has value for educators seeking to provide equitable learning opportunities for all students and for researchers seeking to account for achievement differences attributed to schools. In both cases, self-regulatory climate advances a construct and measure that conceptualizes and operationalizes school-level support for psychological needs.
College for All Latinos? The Role of High School Messages in Facing College Challenges
Authors: Martinez Guadalupe F. , Deil-Amen Regina
Published: November 2021

Background

Differences exist between high schools in their commitment to and efforts toward guiding and aiding students in their postsecondary pathways; however, little is known about how the curricular experiences of high school students, and the related messages they receive, shape their sense of university readiness and postenrollment persistence behaviors and decisions. Although Latino students have struggled to succeed in college, few qualitative studies elaborated their experiences as they transition into universities. This is problematic given that Latino students are not a uniform group and often originate from differing high school contexts. The messages Latino students interpret about college-going while in high school can have bearing on their subjective framings of the challenges they later face that could threaten their university persistence.

Purpose

We explore how Latino students originating from various high school types experience the university transition process and their first year at a four-year university. We focus on the extent to which Latino students of different socioeconomic status (SES) levels and curriculum placement report the presence of either “college-for-all” or gatekeeping norms at their high school to understand the influence of such norms on their university persistence. Lori Diane Hill's “college-linking” approaches also serve as a framework for the influence of high school contexts in promoting certain norms for these Latino students.

Research Design

This two-part qualitative study includes 131 Latino students attending a broad access university. Data were analyzed from essays and two sets of semistructured interviews. First, we describe how these messages shape their perspectives regarding their university aspirations. Second, we examine how their self-assessment transforms during their first year of university study and its relevance to their persistence decisions and behaviors.

Results

Findings indicate that students were differentially exposed to a college-for-all or gate-keeping ideology based on their high school SES and curriculum placement. Once at the university, students reflected on these past high school messages, reinterpreting and applying them to their first-year university experience. Generally, students exposed to college-for-all messages described feeling deceived about their readiness, whereas those exposed to gatekeeping felt inadequate and doubted their ability to persist through first-year challenges.

Conclusions

Recommendations consider the implications that college-linking and high school messages may have on persistence decisions. We reconceptualize notions of university readiness by infusing new subjective components not addressed in prior research.
Teacher Turnover in High-Poverty Schools: What We Know and Can Do
Authors: Simon Nicole , Johnson Susan Moore
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Over the past three decades, teacher turnover has increased substantially in U.S. public schools, especially in those serving large portions of low-income students of color. Teachers who choose to leave high-poverty schools serving large numbers of students of color usually transfer to schools serving wealthier, Whiter student populations. Some researchers have interpreted this trend to mean that “teachers systematically favor higher-achieving, non-minority, non-low-income students.” These ideas have influenced policy analysis concerning high-poverty schools but offered little guidance for those who would address this problem.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article presents an alternative explanation for turnover—one grounded in organizational theory and substantiated by an emerging line of research. In doing so, it reframes the debate over what fuels high rates of teacher turnover in high-poverty schools and provides advice for policy makers and practitioners, as well as recommendations for productive possibilities for future research.

Research Design

This article reviews six studies analyzing turnover as a function of school context rather than as a function of student demographics. Based on the patterns regarding what factors influence teacher departures across these studies, we pursue these predictors by summarizing what is known about them and how each supports teachers’ work.

Findings/Results

The six overarching studies reviewed here collectively suggest that teachers who leave high-poverty schools are not feeing their students. Rather, they are feeing the poor working conditions that make it difficult for them to teach and for their students to learn. The working conditions that teachers prize most—and those that best predict their satisfaction and retention—are social in nature. They include school leadership, collegial relationships, and elements of school culture.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The poor working conditions common in America's neediest schools explain away most, if not all, of the relationship between student characteristics and teacher attrition. This is important because, unlike demographic characteristics of students, working conditions can be addressed. Policy makers and practitioners have many options for improving aspects of the school environment, and, although more research can inform this work, much is already known about what matters to teachers as they are deciding whether to continue teaching in their schools.
Factors Influencing the Functioning of Data Teams
Authors: Schildkamp Kim , Poortman Cindy
Published: November 2021

Background

Data-based decision making can lead to increased student achievement; however, schools struggle with the implementation of data-based decision making. Professional development in the use of data is therefore urgently needed. However, professional development is often ineffective in terms of improving the knowledge, skills, and attitude of the receiver.

Purpose

We need a more fundamental understanding of how we can increase the effectiveness of data-use-related professional development. This study therefore focuses on the factors influencing a professional development intervention for data-based decision making: the data team procedure. Data teams are teams of teachers and school leaders who collaboratively learn how to use data, following a structured approach and guided by a facilitator from the university. Based on an extensive literature review, we developed a data use framework in which the use of data is influenced by data characteristics, school organization characteristics, and user and team characteristics.

Research Design

We conducted case studies.

Data Collection

We focused on observing in depth the factors that influence the work of the data teams and interviewing the data team members about these factors. Four data teams of six schools for upper secondary education were followed over a period of 2 years. We observed and analyzed 34 meetings and analyzed 23 interviews, combined with our field notes. Although this pilot study only permits analytical generalization of the findings, the findings provide more in-depth insight into the factors that enable and hinder interventions, focusing on supporting collaborative data use in schools.

Findings

The results show that several data characteristics (access and availability of high-quality data), school organizational characteristics (a shared goal, leadership, training and support, involvement of relevant stakeholders), and individual and team characteristics (data literacy, pedagogical content knowledge [PCK], organizational knowledge, attitude, and collaboration) influence the use of data in data teams. The results also show that these influencing factors are interrelated.

Conclusions

Schools need support in all aspects of the use of data (from formulation of a problem definition to taking action based on the data). This study can form a starting point for larger studies into the factors influencing these types of professional development interventions to ensure effective implementation and sustainability.
College for All and Community College for None: Stigma in High-Achieving High Schools
Authors: Holland Megan M.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

In recent years, college attendance has become a universal aspiration. These rising ambitions have been attributed to the “college-for-all” norm, which encourages all students to aim for college attendance; however, not all students are prepared for the college application process or college-level work.

Research Questions

This research examines how students interpret the pressure to attend college, particularly four-year schools, when not all students have the same resources needed to negotiate the college process. The study focused on the following questions: What are students’ future educational and work aspirations? Is the college-for-all culture salient for them, and if so, how do they interpret it within the specific context of their high schools? How do they reconcile the pressure to attend college with a lack of economic resources, college knowledge, and college preparation?

Research Design

Qualitative methods were used to examine how students experienced the college-for-all norm and how this affected their college application behaviors and decisions. Semistructured interviews with 89 juniors and seniors were conducted across two racially and socioeconomically diverse high schools, and a subsample of students was followed over time to see how aspirations and plans changed and evolved. School counselors and other school faculty were also interviewed. Observations were conducted at the schools over two years, and a short survey was administered to students in the sample.

Findings/Results

The findings indicate that the “college-for-all” norm was interpreted as “four-year college-for-all” in the two high schools, contributing to the development of a stigma surrounding community college attendance. Less advantaged students displayed just as high aspirations as their more advantaged peers but were forced to deal with the community college stigma to a greater degree. Students developed a number of stigma management strategies that varied by race, gender, and class.

Conclusion/Recommendations

Social structures and inequalities can be reproduced by stigmatizing processes that tend to affect those who lack power and social resources the most. These social structures influence the ways in which people manage stigma, leading to multiple strategies that can both reify and question that stigma. The community college stigma can be problematic if students avoid such schools in favor of expensive four-year colleges that they may not be academically prepared for. Understanding the pressure students feel to attend four-year schools may help school counselors and teachers present alternatives to students in more positive ways and encourage schools to focus more on adequate college preparation, along with college encouragement.
Digital Youth in Brick and Mortar Schools: Examining the Complex Interplay of Students, Technology, Education, and Change
Authors: Peck Craig , Hewitt Kimberly Kappler , Mullen Carol A. , Lashley Carl , Eldridge John , Douglas Ty-Ron M. O.
Published: November 2021

Context

The past decade has witnessed a sustained emphasis on information and communication technologies (ICT) in education, coupled with the rise of online social media and increasing pervasiveness of personal media devices.

Research Question

Our research question asked: How has this changing context affected the educational experiences of American high school students?

Setting

The exploratory, qualitative study took place at two high schools in a large metropolitan district in the southeastern United States. One high school was in a downtown area, and the other was in a suburban setting.

Research Design

The researchers used various qualitative research approaches, including interviews, on-site observations, and document analysis. Our interview participants included classroom teachers and support staff as well as students drawn from across each school's grade levels. We also shadowed 10 of the student interview participants through their entire school days.

Findings

In terms of classroom instruction, we found that ICT had affected school, teacher, and student practices in some ways, but traditional teacher-centered practices such as student completion of printed worksheets were still prevalent. However, widespread student access to personal media devices and online social media site influence had a noticeable effect on the two high schools. The researchers encountered specific “types” of students whom technology particularly influenced: “Digital Rebels,” “Cyber Wanderers,” and “eLearning Pioneers.” In addition, we discovered that computer-based remedial programs served as problematic educational lifelines for students at risk of dropping out.

Conclusions

The two study high schools presented a complex portrait. In the end, technology functioned both as an imperfect school reform effort that produced only partial instructional change and as a successful though uninvited disruptive innovation that allowed students to challenge and unsettle existing educational norms. We close by considering implications of our findings.
Transnational Children Orchestrating Competing Voices in Multimodal, Digital Autobiographies
Authors: Pandya Jessica Zacher , Pagdilao Kathleah Consul , Kim Aeloch Enok , Marquez Elizabeth
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Prior research on multimodal, digital composition has highlighted the need for educators to bring such practices into classrooms, yet little research has been done to show what kinds of products children create and what those products can tell us as researchers about how children articulate their life experiences. We draw on recent theorizations of transnationalism in relation to immigrant children's school experiences, and Bakhtinian perspectives on language and ideology, to frame our analysis of the identity work that transnational and immigrant children undertook in the multimodal, digital composition projects we analyze.

Purpose/Objective

We analyzed 18 digital videos made by transnational children aged 8–10, asking what the key features of their narratives told us about what they found important in their lives, what voices were orchestrated in the composition of those narratives, and what voices were omitted. We also asked what students’ narratives told us about who they were and wanted to be, as immigrants or children of immigrants. Finally, we asked what these features and omissions suggested about perspectives on their immigration experiences and current lives.

Research Design

These data come from an ongoing, design-based research project. Qualitative methods were employed, including: interviews with and surveys of children and teachers at various stages of the video production process; collection of children's written work; collection of children's videos; and the writing of field notes and analytic memos.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Asking children to write about themselves for teachers, peers, and parents meant asking them to orchestrate multiple voices into potentially contradiction-ridden, yet coherent stories. Our work so far suggests that, at the least, we should expect children to try out new identities, and seek new ways of orchestrating the voices in their lives into a coherent whole. We caution researchers and teachers who work with immigrant youth not to assume that immigration will necessarily be a pivotal moment, or even a central or important moment, to children. We also caution that children may not feel that their school is a safe place to talk about such issues; offering the space is all we can do. The kinds of composition we have described exceed the narrative writing and speaking and listening demands of the Common Core State Standards. Teachers should be aware of the ways multimodal, digital composition can help meet their immigrant students’ self-authoring needs and surpass the demands of the new standards. Finally, to connect with others, to become more aware of one's place(s) in an increasingly globalized world, and to orchestrate competing voices—these are the potentials for multimodal, digital composition with immigrant youth to which we continue to aspire.