ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Financial Incentives to Promote Teacher Recruitment and Retention: An Analysis of the Florida Critical Teacher Shortage Program
Author: Feng, Li
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Recruitment,Teacher Persistence,Teacher Shortage,Intervention,Public School Teachers,Special Education,Mathematics Teachers,Science Teachers,Special Education Teachers,Teacher Effectiveness,Teaching Experience,Faculty Mobility,Elementary Secondary Education,Grade 3,Grade 4,Grade 5,Grade 6,Grade 7,Grade 8,Grade 10,Statistical Analysis,Achievement Tests,Standardized Tests,State Standards

Staffing problems are pervasive in certain subject areas, such as secondary math and science and special education, where the combination of training requirements and relatively high alternative wages makes it difficult to attract and retain high-quality teachers. This project evaluated the impacts of the Florida Critical Teacher Shortage Program (FCTSP) and Teacher Recruitment and Retention Fund (TRRF) on the supply of new teachers and the retention of teachers in high-need areas such as special education, math, and science. The research: (1) addressed specific research questions pertaining to three programs (loan forgiveness, tuition reimbursement, and recruitment/retention bonuses); (2) investigated the causal effects of the programs; and (3) addressed questions related to the general characteristics of the program and participating teachers. The authors' initial descriptive analysis indicated that FCTSP teachers tend to be of lower quality (as measured by value-added) than non-participants. They also tend to be less experienced and teach more challenging (lower achieving, less well-behaved) students. Analysis of mobility patterns revealed that participants are more likely to switch schools than non-participants. However, participants are also less likely to exit public school teaching. The authors concluded that, while their preliminary analysis revealed some interesting patterns, much work remains to be done and that future work will include an analysis of the effects of recruitment and retention bonuses. Tables are appended.
Intraclass Correlations for Three-Level Multi-Site Cluster-Randomized Trials of Science Achievement
Author: Westine, Carl D.
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Correlation,Randomized Controlled Trials,Science Achievement,Cluster Grouping,Statistical Analysis,Science Education,School Districts,Research Design,Computation,Hierarchical Linear Modeling,Grade 5,Grade 8,Grade 10,Grade 11,Science Tests

A cluster-randomized trial (CRT) relies on random assignment of intact clusters to treatment conditions, such as classrooms or schools (Raudenbush &amp; Bryk, 2002). One specific type of CRT, a multi-site CRT (MSCRT), is commonly employed in educational research and evaluation studies (Spybrook &amp; Raudenbush, 2009; Spybrook, 2014; Bloom, Richburg-Hayes, &amp; Black, 2007). The three-level MSCRT is a nested design with the level-three units (or sites) treated as a blocking variable, and the level-two units randomly assigned to treatment and control within each site. As in all experimental studies, evaluators must design CRTs with appropriate power to detect an expected effect. A common challenge for evaluators planning CRTs is selecting an appropriate intraclass correlation (ICC), an estimate of the percentage of total variance that exists at the group level, to accurately power the study. For studies with more than one level of nesting, multiple ICCs must be estimated. This study aims to improve the design of MSCRTs for science achievement studies by producing estimates of within-district ICCs across all districts in an entire state. The following research questions guide this investigation: (1) What is the distribution of within-district ICCs for science education; and (2) Does the number of districts in an MSCRT affect the mean within-district ICC? The results of this study are from one large, and representative (in terms of the grades in which testing occurs) state. Educational systems in other states may be structured quite differently, and further work in this area is needed to empirically estimate design parameters for planning MSCRTs. It will also be useful to explore whether significant differences exist between mean within-district ICC values in higher grades. Tables and figures are appended.
Leadership for Sustaining Pedagogical Innovations in ICT Implementation: A Case Study of a Taiwanese Vocational High School
Author: Chen, Yih-Shyuan
Date: 2013-07-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Educational Innovation,Information Technology,Case Studies,Vocational Schools,High Schools,Instructional Leadership,Questionnaires,Educational Change,Participative Decision Making,Sustainability,Teacher Participation,Technology Integration,Mixed Methods Research,Semi Structured Interviews,Secondary School Teachers,Teacher Attitudes

This paper is a case study of a vocational high school in Taiwan. The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the key determinants of a school's success in initiating and sustaining pedagogical innovations in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) implementation, with a specific focus on the effect of leadership approaches in the change process. Centring on a particular vocational high school, this study examined the way in which the entire staff succeeded in transforming a traditional school into an acknowledged ICT-capable school. Questionnaires and interviews served as the main research methods within this study. The results confirmed that, first, collaborative leadership was at the core of successfully managing changes of ICT integration. Second, the findings highlight the importance of fostering the future leaders for sustaining good practices of ICT implementation. Finally, the findings reflect upon the potential impact of the leadership approaches on teachers' engagement in the change process of ICT implementation. Currently, there is still limited research focusing on schools' sustainability of ICT implementation. The present research could serve as a reference for further research in this regard. [For the full proceedings, see ED562127.]
The History Harvest: An Experiment in Democratizing the Past through Experiential Learning
Author: Thomas, William G.
Date: 2013-07-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: History Instruction,Experiential Learning,Undergraduate Students,Data Collection,Personal Narratives,Story Telling,Archives,Information Storage,Electronic Libraries,United States History,Democracy,Preservation,Access to Information,Qualitative Research,Interviews

The History Harvest project (http://historyharvest.unl.edu) is an open, digital archive of historical artifacts gathered from communities across the United States. Each year, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of History partners with local institutions and community members within a highlighted area to collect, preserve, and share their rich, but often hidden, histories. Advanced undergraduates, working as a team and with the guidance of faculty members and graduate students, &quot;harvest,&quot; digitize, and curate the artifacts and stories they collect. The History Harvest project is rooted in the belief that our collective history is more diverse and multi-faceted than most people give credit for and that most of this history is not found in archives, historical societies, museums or libraries, but rather in the stories that ordinary people have to tell from their own experience and in the things--the objects and artifacts--that they keep and collect to tell the story of their lives. The History Harvest, then, affirms the importance of local people, local communities and everyday experience in the broader narrative of American history by providing an innovative opportunity for ordinary people to share their historical artifacts, and their stories, for inclusion in a unique digital archive of what we are calling the &quot;people's history.&quot; This new public resource is then available for educators, students and anyone else interested in engaging U.S. history from this more democratic, or grassroots, perspective. This short paper on our work-in-progress examines the experiential learning basis for The History Harvest project and its rationale for democratizing history in a digital age. [For the full proceedings, see ED562127.]
Context Aware Recommendations in the Course Enrolment Process Based on Curriculum Guidelines
Author: Ajanovski, Vangel V.
Date: 2013-07-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Integrated Learning Systems,Management Information Systems,Enrollment,Electronic Learning,Models,Online Systems,Academic Advising

This research is a part of an ongoing project for development of an integrated student information system, aiming to incorporate self-adaptivity, personalization and social navigation, both in the overall management of university processes, and throughout the course work. In this paper the focus is on the advancement of the existing course recommendation framework to a more context-aware level. The model presented in this paper aims to increase the personalization in processes happening at the beginning of the academic term and the start of the teaching. The first part of the paper presents recent development on the modernization of the process of term enrolment and the virtual academic adviser component. The evolution of the virtual adviser is discussed that allows the student to change and experiment with different study paths and specializations without affecting the overall length of the studies. In the second part of the paper, a new framework is described that is based on the model of knowledge given in referent curriculum guidelines from professional organizations. This model is then used to offer course recommendations that are more inclined to the context. [For the full proceedings, see ED562127.]
E-Portfolios@Teacher Training: An Evaluation of Technological and Motivational Factors
Author: Klampfer, Alfred
Date: 2013-07-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Electronic Learning,Electronic Publishing,Portfolios (Background Materials),Portfolio Assessment,Foreign Countries,Faculty Development,Technological Literacy,Self Determination,Motivation,Theories,Hypothesis Testing,Surveys,Statistical Analysis,Correlation,Teacher Attitudes,Teacher Behavior

In recent years e-portfolios have received a great deal of attention in the educational discourse and it is associated with individualization of the learning process, competence-oriented assessment and institutional personnel development. Since the beginning of the academic year 2008/09 students of the Catholic College of Education Linz had the opportunity to create and write their own e-portfolio in the context of the teacher training. Here the e-portfolio serves as an instrument for professional development in teaching by reflecting one's own learning process and by illustrating the way of competence development as well as an instrument for professional feedback. The objective of this research is to evaluate motivational and technological factors towards using e-portfolios among students. Furthermore e-portfolios shall be developed as a tool and a method in teacher education. Authors will address the following research questions: (1) How is the e-portfolio assessed by students (attitudes, benefits, relevance, usability, motivation, acceptance, etc.)?; (2) What factors do acceptance and motivation towards working with e-portfolios depend upon?; and (3) Does the frequency of feedback influence acceptance and motivation? Theoretical basis for the research is an adapted version of &quot;model of motivation and acceptance with technology&quot; for working with e-portfolios by students in teacher training. It will be validated and adapted through an empirical-quantitative study based on hypothetical principles. In a second step, the resulting model is undergoing a partial least square (PLS) calculation--an analysis in order to estimate and interpret interrelations and causal effects and to optimize the model of our research. [For the full proceedings, see ED562127.]
How Do We Match Instructional Effectiveness with Learning Curves?
Author: Branum-Martin, Lee
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Instructional Effectiveness,Learning Processes,Multivariate Analysis,Classroom Observation Techniques,Measurement,Cohort Analysis,Research Design,Elementary School Students,Goodness of Fit,Structural Equation Models,Factor Analysis,Longitudinal Studies

In order to examine the effectiveness of instruction, the authors confront formidable statistical problems, including multivariate structure of classroom observations, longitudinal dependence of both classroom observations and student outcomes. As the authors begin to examine instruction, classroom observations involve multiple variables for which they need valid measurement models. These classrooms, however, involve students who are not only growing, but typically switching classrooms each year. While measurement models for multiple variables are commonplace as confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and individual student growth can be modeled under switching classrooms with multilevel analysis software, connecting these two types of models is currently challenging and limited. Consequently, it becomes difficult to jointly examine two types of important substantive questions. First, the authors are interested in the nature of instruction: to what extent can they fit a measurement model which is consistent over time and what might that say about teachers and classrooms with respect to the stability of instructional quality? Second, how might instructional quality relate to student growth, given changing classrooms essentially every year? In order to answer these two substantive questions, the authors can fit a model of instructional observations, a model of student growth, and then join these two models. The authors present an empirical example involving a cohort sequential design of 13,236 students over three years (grades 1-3), nested in 974 classrooms, 762 teachers, in 146 schools. The measurement properties of the classroom observations were strong, with good fit and high validity coefficients (loadings). The instructional factors suggest an increase in quality and homogeneity across grades. Issues for future investigation include missing data, clustering due to teachers, and instructional carryover effects across years. Figures are appended.
School Organizational Contexts, Teacher Turnover, and Student Achievement: Evidence from Panel Data
Author: Kraft, Matthew A.
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Faculty Mobility,Academic Achievement,Organizational Climate,Human Capital,Elementary School Teachers,Secondary School Teachers,Productivity,National Surveys,Teacher Evaluation,Measures (Individuals),Regression (Statistics),Models,Validity

In education, there is ample evidence that some schools far outperform others at raising student achievement even when accounting for differences in the students they serve and the resources at their disposal. Differences in the human capital stock of teachers across schools cannot fully account for the differential productivity across schools. In teaching, as in any occupation where professionals perform their work in organizational contexts, productivity is influenced by both individual and organizational factors (Hackman &amp; Oldman, 1980; Kanter, 1983; Johnson, 1990). A growing body of literature attempts to identify, measure, and evaluate the potential contribution of organizational practices and contexts to overall productivity in schools. This study is among the first to address the empirical limitations of prior studies on organizational contexts by leveraging one of the largest survey administration efforts ever conducted in the United States outside of the decennial population census. While it seems intuitively obvious that an individual's performance is affected by the environment in which he or she works, policymakers have largely overlooked the central role that schools play in influencing teachers' in their push to overhaul teacher evaluation systems. To systematically improve student performance, school and district leaders need robust evidence about the strengths and weaknesses of both individual teachers and the school organization as a whole. Equipped with this data, policymakers and practitioners can take steps to address individual as well as organizational strengths and deficiencies. Tables are appended.
Towards a Versatile Tele-Education Platform for Computer Science Educators Based on the Greek School Network
Author: Paraskevas, Michael
Date: 2013-07-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Computer Science Education,Computer Science,Technology Uses in Education,Educational Technology,Questionnaires,Elementary Secondary Education,Technological Literacy,Teacher Education,Teacher Role,Access to Computers,Faculty Development,Teacher Attitudes

Now days the growing need for highly qualified computer science educators in modern educational environments is commonplace. This study examines the potential use of Greek School Network (GSN) to provide a robust and comprehensive e-training course for computer science educators in order to efficiently exploit advanced IT services and establish a modern and versatile education environment in the Greek Society. Furthermore, a preliminary questionnaire survey was performed in order to validate the adoption of GSN and also to formulate a realistic training course customized to specific and future needs of computer science educators in primary and secondary education, thus enabling them to immerse in real-world situations (i.e., school computer laboratory). Findings from this preliminary survey are also presented. [For the full proceedings, see ED562127.]
E-Learning System for Experiments Involving Construction of Practical Electronic Circuits
Author: Takemura, Atsushi
Date: 2013-07-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Electronic Learning,Electronics,Equipment,Experiments,Computer Simulation,College Students,Student Attitudes,Instructional Effectiveness,College Instruction,Foreign Countries

This paper proposes a novel e-learning system for technical experiments involving the construction of practical electronic circuits; this system would meet the various demands of individual experimenters. This mixed mode is beneficial for practical use in that an experimenter who does not have sufficient circuit components for circuit making can still learn to construct practical, large-scale circuits and evaluate their behavior using virtual measurements and a simulation technique involving circuit translation into SPICE. The proposed system is expected to be applicable to various educational media (e.g., e-Learning, mobile learning, virtual laboratories). The proposed system is constructed by combining real and virtual circuit making systems, and performs the improved circuit recognition of images including both real and virtual circuit regions. The usefulness and effectiveness of the proposed system were evaluated by analyzing circuits made by ten university students in an actual class. [For Full Proceedings, see: ED562127.]
Discovering Visual Scanning Patterns in a Computerized Cancellation Test
Author: Huang, Ho-Chuan
Date: 2013-07-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Sequential Approach,Children,Visual Stimuli,Computer Assisted Testing,Attention,Spatial Ability,Chinese

The purpose of this study was to develop an attention sequential mining mechanism for investigating the sequential patterns of children's visual scanning process in a computerized cancellation test. Participants had to locate and cancel the target amongst other non-targets in a structured form, and a random form with Chinese stimuli. Twenty-three children aged between 10-12 years were recruited and took part in this experiment. Sequential pattern analysis for stimulus cancellation revealed that the structured form has a visual guiding effect producing a maximum of 18-sequence in a horizontal scanning pattern. The sequential pattern of the random form, showed no guiding effect, was vertical and yielded only 2- to 4-sequence patterns. The results demonstrated that the organization of stimulus layouts (i.e., structured or random forms) might have implicit visual guiding effects in visual scanning. [For the full proceedings, see ED562127.]
Effects of Metacognitive Guidance on Critical Thinking Disposition
Author: Akyüz, Halil Ibrahim
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Metacognition,Critical Thinking,Electronic Learning,Pretests Posttests,Experimental Groups,Control Groups,Measures (Individuals),Comparative Analysis,Scores,Preservice Teachers,Statistical Analysis,Thinking Skills,Skill Development

The present study investigated the effect of metacognitive guidance in an online learning environment on the students' critical thinking competency. The research was carried out using experimental design with pretest-posttest control groups. The research group of the study consisted of 60 students studying at Computer and Educational Teaching Department of Educational Sciences Faculty at Ankara University during the fall semester of 2011-2012. The 51 point California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory was used to collect pretest-posttest data. In terms of total score of critical thinking tendency, the average score of the group that received critical guidance was found to be higher than the score of the control group. The metacognitive guidance offered to the students in the online learning environment has affected their critical thinking tendency in a positive way. Findings indicate that metacognitive guidance in online learning environments can be an effective tool in developing critical thinking among preservice teachers. [An abstract and extended summary are also presented in Turkish.]