bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A Multilevel Analysis of Community College Students’ Transfer to Four-Year Institutions of Varying Selectivity
Authors: Wang Xueli 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Transfer from community colleges to selective four-year institutions is an issue that assumes great importance for the democratization of postsecondary education. Yet research on what influences transfer to selective four-year institutions is surprisingly sparse. Transfer research typically lumps four-year schools receiving community college transfers into one group. This approach neglects heterogeneity in institutional selectivity and fails to study forces underlying the varied pathways to four-year institutions. Purpose This research fills the gap in the literature by exploring the following question: What student and institutional factors are associated with transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions of varying selectivity? This study is aimed at identifying beneficial experiences to support community college students’ pathway to the baccalaureate, especially at selective institutions. Research Design This study drew upon several national data sources and a nationally representative sample of all first-time postsecondary students beginning at a public two-year college in 2003–2004. Based on the study's conceptual framework that depicts the relationship between transfer and various individual and institutional factors, I analyzed the hypothesized relationships using a multilevel path model. Findings The study shows that few community college students transferred to highly selective institutions. In terms of individual factors that distinguish those who transfer to highly selective institutions from their counterparts who transfer to moderately or less selective schools, holding baccalaureate expectations and transfer intent seems to benefit those who transfer to selective institutions much more strongly than those who transfer to less selective ones. Similarly, rigorous course-taking distinguishes not only those who transfer from those who do not, but also those who transfer to highly selective institutions from their transfer counterparts headed toward moderately or less selective colleges. However, integrative experiences and first-term GPA show no significant relationship with upward transfer. As for institutional characteristics, percentage of certificates and vocational associate degrees awarded is negatively associated with transfer to highly and moderately selective institutions, while it does not particularly affect chances of transfer to less selective institutions. Furthermore, employment of part-time instructional faculty and staff does not benefit or hurt community college students’ chances of transfer, and, overall, proximity to selective institutions does not appear to be influential either. Conclusions This study's findings reinforce persistent issues associated with access and transfer to selective institutions for community college students. Both education policy and research must continue to tackle challenges and create opportunities to help broaden community college student access to four-year institutions.
Spatializing Student Learning to Reimagine the “Place” of Inclusion
Authors: Naraian Srikala 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context The goal of inclusive education is universally recognized as the fundamental restructuring of schools to engage hospitably with all forms of difference, including ability. However, inclusion, at least in practice, has come to mean the physical placement of students with disabilities in general education classrooms. The conundrum of inclusion as currently implemented is that its entanglement with place weakens the possibility of the required large-scale transformation of school spaces. Additionally, analyses of place and disability/inclusion generally assume the concept of place to represent a fixed, stable entity with determinate boundaries, making it difficult to disrupt the linkage between place and disability. Purpose/Objective This article is an attempt to explore a new conception of place that would permit educators to engage with student learning differences without associating them with fixed environments. Rather than consider place as a fixed, naturalized entity, I draw on theorists who develop the spatial dimension of human experience alongside the social and temporal. Within this theoretical perspective, school places are not merely containers within which events take place; rather, they are formed in the interaction of webs of ideas and people. The research questions for this article, therefore, were as follows: How is place constructed within the discourse of teachers? To what extent do such constructions reflect prevailing notions of special education or inclusion as a place? Research Design Data for this article drew primarily on 19 interviews I conducted with nine educators during the course of a series of ethnographically-oriented studies conducted between 2005 and 2014. Each of the studies addressed in this article was conducted in schooling sites in the U.S. where general and special education teachers were supporting students with a range of disabilities in inclusive classrooms. Teacher interview data from a nine-month professional development sequence in inclusive practices were also used for this article. The development of categories during data analysis for this article emerged from triangulating interview data with extensive field notes maintained for each site. Findings Data analysis disclosed that teachers participated in maintaining the boundaries of places through their conceptions of students as learners, even as their own professional identities were produced via the historically mediated beliefs and practices that were implicated within those places. As educators struggled to create places of inclusion, the identities of such places differed depending on the logic in which they were anchored: student connectedness or learning need. Conclusions Supported by an alternate conceptualization of learning need, I draw on the linkage between teacher identity and place to propose that a diasporic sensibility can enable different relations between the two, making inclusion a spatially fluid project involving changing networks of people and experiences.
Inclusive Reform as a Response to High-Stakes Pressure? Leading toward Inclusion in the Age of Accountability
Authors: Theoharis George , Causton Julie , Tracy-Bronson Chelsea P. 
Published: November 2021

Students identified with disabilities are increasingly being educated with the assistance of support services within heterogeneous (i.e., general education) classrooms. Yet, in this era of high-stakes accountability, students are labeled, sorted, and differentially treated according to their academic achievement as reflected on standardized tests. We engaged in a project to better understand how educators grapple with these externally imposed pressures as they work to change the organizational structure of their schools to be able to implement greater inclusion of their students served by special education. We spent four years in two elementary schools engaged in inclusive school reform (shifting from exclusionary model to an inclusive one) specifically as a response to the pressures of test-based accountability mandates. Our work was guided by the following questions. In this era of high-stakes testing accountability: • What does school-wide inclusive reform for students with disabilities involve? • What kinds of changes can result from inclusive reform? • What role does leadership play in inclusive reform? The article focuses on what inclusive reform involved, the resulting changes, and the role distributed leadership played in moving toward more inclusive service in the age of high-stakes accountability.
A Dream Deferred: A Retrospective View of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Authors: Seriki Vanessa Dodo , Brown Cory T. 
Published: November 2021

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? —Langston Hughes (1951)
Tomorrow's EdTech Today: Establishing a Learning Platform as a Collaborative Research Tool for Sound Science
Authors: Ostrow Korinn , Heffernan Neil , Williams Joseph Jay 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Large-scale randomized controlled experiments conducted in authentic learning environments are commonly high stakes, carrying extensive costs and requiring lengthy commitments for all-or-nothing results amidst many potential obstacles. Educational technologies harbor an untapped potential to provide researchers with access to extensive and diverse subject pools of students interacting with educational materials in authentic ways. These systems log extensive data on student performance that can be used to identify and leverage best practices in education and guide systemic policy change. Tomorrow's educational technologies should be built upon rigorous standards set forth by the research revolution budding today. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The present work serves as a call to the community to infuse popular learning platforms with the capacity to support collaborative research at scale. Research Design This article defines how educational technologies can be leveraged for use in collaborative research environments by highlighting the research revolution of ASSISTments ( www.ASSISTments.org ), a popular online learning platform with a focus on mathematics education. A framework described as the cycle of perpetual evolution is presented, and research exemplifying progression through this framework is discussed in support of the many benefits that stem from infusing EdTech with collaborative research. Through a recent NSF grant (SI2-SSE&SSI: 1440753), researchers from around the world can leverage ASSISTments’ content and user population by designing and implementing randomized controlled experiments within the ASSISTments TestBed ( www.ASSISTmentsTestBed.org ). Findings from these studies help to define best practices within technology-driven learning, while simultaneously allowing for augmentation of the system's content, delivery, and infrastructure. Conclusions/Recommendations Supplementing educational technologies with environments for sound, collaborative science can result in a broad range of benefits for students, researchers, platforms, and educational practice and policy. This article outlines the successful uptake of research efforts by ASSISTments in hopes of advocating a research revolution for other educational technologies.
Social Harmony and Diversity: The Affordances and Constraints of Harmony as an Educational Goal
Authors: Ho Li-Ching 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context There is a pressing need to consider how citizens should live together, especially in societies that are increasingly ethnically and politically diverse. Even though multicultural education is constructed very differently and serves very different purposes in different national contexts, relatively little attention has been paid to how education systems of countries such as China, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates give greater emphasis to the concepts of harmony and social cohesion. Purpose/Objective This study explores some of the ways in which multicultural education is defined and conceptualized in East Asian countries. This paper draws on the case study of Singapore to interrogate the concept of harmony, investigate the implications of the state incorporating this concept as an educational goal for the public education system, and examine teachers’ understandings of multicultural education. Research Design The study adhered to the qualitative case study design. The data consisted primarily of semistructured individual interviews with 24 Singapore secondary social studies teachers, as well as relevant curricular and political documents such as the national Social Studies curriculum, political speeches, and official government publications. Guided by the literature, the interviewers asked questions to surface the participants’ understandings of the definition, purposes, and practices of multicultural education. Subsequently, the interviewers used follow-up questions to probe further and elicit additional description of how the teachers arrived at these understandings. The data analysis, shaped largely by the constant comparative method, was data-driven and inductive. Conclusions/Recommendations By illustrating some of the affordances and constraints of incorporating harmony as an educational goal, this study offers multicultural education scholars and teacher educators an opportunity to better understand some of the ways in which multicultural education is conceptualized in East Asian countries with strong Confucian traditions. The findings from this study suggest that a focus on harmony as an educational goal may help facilitate a move away from programs that emphasize the development of individual students’ social and political competencies towards programs and policies designed to promote communal trust and social cohesion. Finally, this study illustrates some of the challenges teachers face when balancing the goals of building trust and harmony within society and interrogating entrenched interests, institutional inequality, and unequal power relations.
Contradictions Resolved: An Analysis of Two Theories of the Achievement Gap
Authors: Yeh Stuart S. 
Published: November 2021

Background Value-added modeling (VAM) has been used to rank teachers and assess teacher and school quality. The apparent relationship between value-added teacher rankings and gains in student performance provide a foundation for the view that the contribution of teachers to student performance is the largest factor influencing student achievement, suggesting that differences in teacher quality might explain the persistence of the gap in student achievement as students advance throughout the K–12 years. However, several studies raise questions about the reliability and validity of VAM. Purpose The purpose of this article is to reconcile the evidence that the contribution of teachers to student achievement is large with the evidence that value-added rankings are unreliable and possibly invalid. Design The method involves an analytical review of the available evidence, development of a theoretical explanation for the contradictory results, and a test of this explanation using path analysis with three longitudinal datasets involving nationally representative samples of schools and students. Conclusion The hypothesis that the contribution of teachers to student performance is the strongest factor influencing student achievement is not supported. A stronger factor is the degree to which students believe that they are proficient students. This is consistent with the view that the persistence of the achievement gap is better explained as the outcome of structural factors embedded in the conventional model of schooling that undermines the self-efficacy, engagement, effort, and achievement of students who enter kindergarten performing below the level of their more advantaged peers.
The Garcetti Effect and the Erosion of Free Speech Rights of K–12 Public Education Employees: Trends and Implications
Authors: Wasserman Lewis M. , Connolly John P. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Pickering v. Board of Education, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968, is considered the high-water mark in the constitutional protection of public employee free speech. Two significant decisions issued by that Court since Pickering have limited public employees’ expressive rights: Connick v. Myers and Garcetti v. Ceballos. Purpose/Objective The principal research questions which were the focus of this study are: is the adverse effect on free speech presumed by legal analysts following Connick and Garcetti having real effects in terms of judicial voting behavior and, if so, how has this occurred? Research Design We set up legal precedent and the judge's ideology as predictors of judicial voting behavior. The legal precedent variable delineates three intervals, namely the Pickering era [1968–1983], the Connick era [1983–2006) and the Garcetti era [2006–2014]. Two different measures of ideology are considered: party affiliation and the judge's DW-NOMINATE score. The dependent variable is the judge's individual vote in each case. Votes are categorized as pro-employer or pro-employee. Data Collection and Analysis Because our interest is specific to K–12 settings we analyze 507 judicial votes drawn from the 169 U.S. Courts of Appeals employer-employee free speech cases brought by school employees between the issuance of Pickering in 1968 and the post-Garcetti period into 2014. Since our dependent variable is dichotomous the statistical estimates are obtained via logistic regression. Conclusions/Recommendations We find that employee-plaintiffs are prevailing at lower rates at the U.S. Courts of Appeals in free speech claims against public school districts following the Garcetti decision. Since Garcetti, Courts of Appeals judges—those appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents—have voted in an increasingly pro-employer direction. We contend this results from “doctrinal signaling,” here, the progressive curtailment in the Supreme Court of public employees’ free speech rights from Connick v. Myers in 1983 to Garcetti. We suggest this “signaling” is used by Courts of Appeals judges as an interpretive tool to give meaning to apparently ambiguous decisions such as Garcetti. Finally, the impact and implications of this negative trend for K–12 employees, as well as possible solutions, are considered.
A Systematic Review of Student Self-Report Instruments that Assess Student-Teacher Relationships
Authors: Phillippo Kate L. , Conner Jerusha , Davidson Shannon , Pope Denise 
Published: November 2021

Background A large body of survey-based research asserts that the quality and strength of student-teacher relationships (STRs) predict a host of academic and nonacademic outcomes; however, advances in survey design research have led some to question existing survey instruments’ psychometric soundness. Concurrently, qualitative research on STRs has identified important developmental and sociocultural variation in the ways students define, understand, and react to relationships with their teachers. The questions raised by survey methodologists, together with the conceptual elaboration of STRs, suggest that survey instruments used to assess STRs are due for a systematic review. Purpose/Research Questions This review of survey instruments examines the strengths and shortcomings of existing measures of STRs. Specifically, we ask: How do student self-report survey instruments assess STRs? We examined the extent to which these instruments reflect current survey design principles and existing knowledge about how STRs work, particularly for adolescents. Research Design, Data Collection, and Analysis A systematic search of peer-reviewed journal articles that (a) focused on North American middle- or high-school students, (b) linked STRs to student outcomes, and (c) used a student-report measure of STRs yielded 66 studies for which we could obtain the full instrument. Instruments were analyzed using a literature-informed protocol and an iterative process that resulted in strong inter-rater agreement. We used tables and matrices to examine patterns, themes, and outliers in our coded data. Findings The 66 studies varied considerably with respect to how they operationalized STRs and how they addressed the validity of their instruments. Similar survey items were used to measure different constructs, and constructs with the same names were measured inconsistently across studies. Many instruments were limited by (a) items that included words with ambiguous meanings, (b) inconsistent identification of instruments’ focal students and teachers across instruments, and (c) the use of negatively worded items to measure STRs’ strength. Conclusions and Recommendations If STR research is to meet its promise to guide and inform teachers’ efforts to develop and sustain effective relationships with their students, the field needs to properly identify those behaviors that make a difference for different students and those that do not. The next generation of student-report STR survey instruments requires more stringent attention to construct specification and validity, as well as to item generation (specifically, language use), in order to most effectively measure and identify aspects of STRs that affect student performance and well-being.
Toward a Positive Explanation of Student Differences in Reading Growth
Authors: Adams Curt M. , Palmer Anna H. 
Published: November 2021

Background Education has much in common with professions that are using positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship to transform practice, yet the science behind peak human and group functioning has been slow to displace deficit-based framing of reform policies and improvement strategies in education. Purpose of the Study This study used self-determination theory to identify a general type of instructional environment that has positive consequences for learning outcomes. We hypothesized that a self-regulatory climate is related to school-level differences in student reading growth and that student perceptions of autonomy-supportive instruction are related to student differences in reading growth. Setting Data were collected during the 2013–2014 school year from a city school system, located in a metropolitan area of about 900,000 residents that serves approximately 42,000 students in 88 school sites. During the 2013–2014 school year, 80% of the students qualified for free or reduced-priced lunch (FRL); 26% were Black, 27% White, 30% Hispanic, 6% Native American, 9% multiracial, and 1% Asian. For this study, data come from students and teachers at all 51 elementary schools in the school system that have a 5th grade. Data Analysis Hypotheses were tested using a three-level linear growth analysis in HLM 7.0. The first step was to estimate the average reading growth for fifth-grade students using an unconditional growth model. The second step was to test a controlled-effects growth model, with FRL and racial/ethnic minority status included as student controls and FRL rate and percentage of White students enrolled in the school as school-level controls; self-regulatory climate was entered as a school-level predictor in this model. The final step was to add student-perceived autonomy-supportive instruction as a student-level explanatory variable. Findings Results showed that students in schools with self-regulatory climates achieved a higher reading growth rate than other students. Similar results were found with autonomy-supportive instruction: Students who experienced classroom instruction as autonomy-supportive had higher average reading growth than other students. Conclusions The aim of positive education is to develop a body of scientific evidence capable of explaining sources of exceptional teaching and learning. Self-regulatory climate and autonomy-supportive instruction appear to be two positive school conditions that enable students to flourish.