ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
A Computational Model of Fraction Arithmetic
Author: Braithwaite, David W.
Date: 2017-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Arithmetic,Computation,Models,Mathematics Instruction,Teaching Methods,Hypothesis Testing,Problem Solving,Simulation,Fractions,Textbooks,Error Patterns,Mathematics Skills,Mathematical Concepts,Elementary Schools,Middle Schools

Many children fail to master fraction arithmetic even after years of instruction, a failure that hinders their learning of more advanced mathematics as well as their occupational success. To test hypotheses about why children have so many difficulties in this area, we created a computational model of fraction arithmetic learning and presented it with the problems from a widely used textbook series. The simulation generated many phenomena of children's fraction arithmetic performance through a small number of common learning mechanisms operating on a biased input set. The biases were not unique to this textbook series--they were present in two other textbook series as well--nor were the phenomena unique to a particular sample of children--they were present in another sample as well. Among other phenomena, the model predicted the high difficulty of fraction division, variable strategy use by individual children and on individual problems, relative frequencies of different types of strategy errors on different types of problems, and variable effects of denominator equality on the four arithmetic operations. The model also generated non-intuitive predictions regarding the relative difficulties of several types of problems and the potential effectiveness of a novel instructional approach. Perhaps the most general lesson of the findings is that the statistical distribution of problems that learners encounter can influence mathematics learning in powerful and non-intuitive ways. [At the time of submission, this article was in press with &quot;Psychological Review.&quot;]
Identifying Characteristics for Effective Teaching in Urban and Suburban Settings.
Author: Jones, Shawn Cecil
Date: 2017-01-00
Type: Dissertations/Theses - Doctoral Dissertations
Subjects: Teacher Effectiveness,Urban Schools,Suburban Schools,Teacher Characteristics,Personality Traits,Teacher Qualifications,Correlation,Personality Measures,Likert Scales,Extraversion Introversion,Psychological Patterns,Neurosis,School Location,Teacher Evaluation,Job Applicants,Teacher Selection,Human Capital,Validity,Hypothesis Testing,Data Analysis,Statistical Analysis

Classroom size, curriculum, and student attendance are all important factors that affect student outcomes, but these factors cannot compare to the classroom teacher's influence on student academic performance. Unfortunately, highly qualified teachers are not equally effective in different school settings. Findings associated with highly effective teachers have suggested that testing personality characteristics could be a way to identify teacher effectiveness at the time of hire. This quantitative non-experimental (descriptive and correlational) study examined the relationship of specific personality characteristics among 22 highly effective teachers (14 urban and eight suburban), measured by the 44-item Big Five Inventory (BFI). The results described both groups' personality characteristics as very high Extroversion, very high Agreeableness, very high Conscientiousness, very high Openness, and low to average Neuroticism. The results answer the following research question: What is the relationship between the personality characteristics (measured by the BFI) and the school location of highly effective teachers? The results showed that Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness have an influence on teaching effectiveness in the urban and suburban settings. In practice, the 44-item BFI can be used to evaluate specific personality characteristics in urban and suburban settings during the teacher applicants' process. The following are appended: (1) 44-Item Big Five Inventory; (2) Power Sample Calculation; (3) Informed Consent Form; (4) Scoring; (5) Sample Size; (6) Comparison Sample: Means and Standard Deviations for BFI; and (7) BFI Approval.
Lessons for Improving School Choice from Other Policy Areas. Issue Focus
Author: Balu, Rekha
Date: 2017-04-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: School Choice,Low Income,Open Enrollment,Intervention,Elementary Secondary Education,Preschool Education,Educational Vouchers,Educational Policy,Child Care,College Choice,Partnerships in Education,Housing,Decision Making,Small Schools,High Schools,Information Sources,Parents

As school choice expands in different states and districts, it appears in several different forms: (1) open enrollment policies among traditional public schools; (2) charter schools available to students regardless of their neighborhood (including online charter schools); or (3) school vouchers that families can use to enroll in other districts or private institutions. Each of these school choice systems can be complex and confusing for low-income families, especially when they are contending with challenges ranging from unstable employment and housing to limited transportation. In the search for solutions, education researchers and policymakers may have overlooked lessons about systems of choice from other policy arenas. This issue focus suggests strategies for consideration from MDRC's extensive experience designing and evaluating interventions to support low-income people's decision making in arenas outside P-12 choice systems.
Tiered Systems of Support: Lessons from MDRC Evaluations. Issue Focus
Author: Balu, Rekha
Date: 2017-04-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Student Needs,Educational Practices,Academic Support Services,Intervention,Learning Problems,Elementary School Students,Secondary School Students,Experimental Groups,Guidelines,Fidelity,Decision Making,Tutoring,Behavior Problems,Mental Health,Health Services,Discipline,Response to Intervention,Program Descriptions,Program Evaluation,Behavior Modification,Reading Programs,Academic Achievement,Content Area Reading,Content Area Writing,Language Arts,English,Dropouts,School Restructuring,Prevention,Data Analysis

Students learn or progress at their own paces. Each needs different amounts of support, at different points in a school career and at different times of the school year. Some need very little help to stay on track, while others are facing serious challenges in learning, in their behavior, or at home, and need significant interventions. It would not only be a waste of resources to give students who are on track the same intensive services as students who are struggling, it can actually be a counterproductive waste of on-track students' time. So how can schools make sure that students get the help they need--and only the help they need? Many schools are turning to tiered systems of support, usually implemented in three levels: (1) Tier 1 represents the strong foundation that all students need, the whole-school structures that undergird a good education; (2) Tier 2 interventions serve students who need moderate amounts of additional help, probably for a limited time; and (3) Tier 3, comprising the most intensive services, is designed for students experiencing the greatest difficulty. MDRC has evaluated and is currently evaluating several tiered approaches at the primary and secondary school levels. Most include some types of services or support for the whole school, and then two or three additional tiers of support for students who need additional help with behavior or academics. This Issue Focus discusses lessons learned from MDRC evaluations: (1) The tiered approach can be put into action on a large scale; (2) Without clear guidelines, it is difficult to describe fidelity or hold schools to a standard; (3) The nature of the impact findings depends in part on the experimental design; and (4) Using data to guide decisions does not necessarily get students better services or services more appropriate to their needs.
Using Evaluation Systems for Teacher Improvement: Are School Districts Ready to Meet New Federal Goals?
Author: Rosen, Rachel
Date: 2017-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Teacher Improvement,Faculty Development,School Districts,Teacher Evaluation,Federal Legislation,Secondary School Teachers,Teacher Surveys,Teacher Attitudes,Educational Legislation,Administrator Attitudes,Principals,Instructional Leadership,Educational Policy

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA--the main federal education law) was signed into law at the end of 2015, but schools and districts have until the 2017-2018 school year to begin implementing their plans to comply with it. ESSA represents a substantial shift from prior law in how it addresses teacher professional growth and evaluation, and as schools and districts prepare to implement it, it is worth understanding how they may make the best use of their existing investments in those areas. This brief, which draws on data from a large survey of secondary school teachers and principals conducted by MDRC in the spring of 2016, discusses how existing evaluation and support systems could be better used to realize the new law's vision of teacher improvement. The data from the survey suggest that if districts wish to move toward the type of continuous growth opportunities for teachers that ESSA envisions, they could do so by investing in additional training for school leaders; such training would be intended to help them use existing teacher evaluation systems to identify teachers' needs and connect them with professional development opportunities.
Helping Girls Get Back on Track: An Implementation Study of the PACE Center for Girls. Executive Summary
Author: Treskon, Louisa
Date: 2017-04-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Females,Academic Support Services,Student Personnel Services,Intervention,At Risk Students,Gender Issues,Student Needs,School Counseling,Parent Participation,Special Schools,Program Evaluation,Program Effectiveness,Relevance (Education),Daily Living Skills,Planning,Randomized Controlled Trials,Surveys,Documentation,Academic Achievement,Delinquency,Interpersonal Competence,Observation,Teacher Surveys,Student Surveys,Secondary School Students

PACE Center for Girls is a unique program that provides academic and social services to girls ages 11 to 18. Girls eligible for PACE exhibit multiple health, safety, and delinquency risk factors, such as poor academic performance, exposure to abuse or violence, truancy, risky sexual behavior, and substance abuse. PACE seeks to help them onto a better path and reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes, such as involvement with the juvenile justice system. PACE operates 19 nonresidential, year-round program centers across the state of Florida. Girls attend PACE daily during normal school hours and receive academic and extensive social services in a gender-responsive environment--that is, one tailored to the needs of girls. Most girls plan to attend PACE for approximately one year; during this time, they receive academic instruction and advising, a life skills curriculum, assessment and care planning, individual and group counseling, and service learning and work readiness opportunities. Parental engagement and transition and follow-up services are also key components of the PACE program. When girls leave PACE, they often return to other schools in their communities to complete their secondary education. This executive summary describes the PACE Center for Girls, PACE's evaluation, and key findings from MDRC's ongoing evaluation of 14 PACE centers. [For the full report, see ED574048.]
Helping Girls Get Back on Track: An Implementation Study of the PACE Center for Girls
Author: Treskon, Louisa
Date: 2017-04-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Females,Academic Support Services,Student Personnel Services,Intervention,At Risk Students,Gender Issues,Student Needs,School Counseling,Parent Participation,Special Schools,Program Evaluation,Program Effectiveness,Relevance (Education),Daily Living Skills,Planning,Randomized Controlled Trials,Surveys,Documentation,Academic Achievement,Delinquency,Interpersonal Competence,Observation,Teacher Surveys,Student Surveys,Secondary School Students

PACE Center for Girls is a unique program that provides academic and social services to girls ages 11 to 18. Girls eligible for PACE exhibit multiple health, safety, and delinquency risk factors, such as poor academic performance, exposure to abuse or violence, truancy, risky sexual behavior, and substance abuse. PACE seeks to help them onto a better path and reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes, such as involvement with the juvenile justice system. PACE operates 19 nonresidential, year-round program centers across the state of Florida. Girls attend PACE daily during normal school hours and receive academic and extensive social services in a gender-responsive environment--that is, one tailored to the needs of girls. Most girls plan to attend PACE for approximately one year; during this time, they receive academic instruction and advising, a life skills curriculum, assessment and care planning, individual and group counseling, and service learning and work readiness opportunities. Parental engagement and transition and follow-up services are also key components of the PACE program. When girls leave PACE, they often return to other schools in their communities to complete their secondary education. This report presents implementation research findings from MDRC's ongoing evaluation of 14 PACE centers. Key findings include: (1) The PACE program model, defined through both general program principles and a detailed manual, was implemented consistently across multiple locations; (2) PACE incorporated gender-responsive programming into all services through a focus on safety and relationships, an emphasis on recognizing and building on girls' individual strengths, and an awareness of the effects of trauma; (3) Girls who attend PACE tend to be low-income, and they often struggle with school and have a range of other health, safety, and delinquency risk factors; and (4) PACE differed from the traditional school environment by offering smaller classes, access to frequent individual academic advising and counseling, life skills programming, and connections to other services in the community, such as transportation or health care. Three appendices include: (1) Supplementary Tables on Sample Member Characteristics and Risk Factors; (2) CLASS-Secondary Observations; and (3) Data Collection and Analysis. [For the executive summary, see ED574047.]
The Development of Learner Employability in Scotland's Colleges: A Thematic Aspect Report by Education Scotland on Behalf of the Scottish Funding Council
Author: Education Scotland
Date: 2016-09-30
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Employment Potential,Higher Education,Educational Experience,Foreign Countries,Observation,Program Evaluation,Teacher Attitudes,Administrator Attitudes,College Faculty,Educational Policy,Outcomes of Education,Educational Strategies,Strategic Planning,Program Design,Job Placement,Work Experience,Barriers,Educational Quality,Education Work Relationship,Student Attitudes,College Students

This report is one of a suite of reports by Education Scotland commissioned by the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council (SFC) to evaluate provision in colleges for supporting learner success. Colleges should act on the recommendations contained in these reports. College inspectors will monitor action towards implementation of these recommendations as part of their normal dialogue with colleges and will wish to discuss issues arising from thematic aspect reports during regular college visits. This report is based on work carried out over a two-year period from September 2014 to June 2016. This time frame has helped take account of rapid change within the post-16 sector over that period. It has also enabled tracking of the progress and destinations of a sample of learners through their college experience and into their next stage of learning or employment. Their reflections on their college experiences have helped inform this report. In preparing this publication, inspectors and associate assessors visited a sample of five colleges, detailed in appendix 1 of this report. Each college in the sample was visited twice during year one of the fieldwork and once during year two. Inspectors and associate assessors discussed relevant issues with senior and middle managers, teaching and support staff and learners. The team carried out a small number of lesson observations and looked at relevant documentation. The views of stakeholders were obtained through analysis of documents, face-to-face interviews and telephone discussion. Reviewers also drew on the findings of other Education Scotland external review reports and aspect task findings. The methodology included a review of key literature covering employability research and policy. One of the key issues for this report is whether colleges are carrying out sufficiently good work in developing employability in learners even if they do not all have formally articulated strategies, policies or learner entitlements in place. Appended are: (1) Colleges Visited During the Report Fieldwork; and (2) Glossary of Terms.
How Good Is Our School? 4th Edition
Author: Education Scotland
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Educational Quality,Educational Indicators,Self Evaluation (Groups),Educational Improvement,Educational Attainment,Achievement Gap,Disadvantaged,Equal Education,Career Readiness,Well Being,Skill Development,Lifelong Learning,Foreign Countries,Instructional Effectiveness,School Effectiveness,Program Evaluation,Outcomes of Education,Educational Objectives,Educational Practices,Best Practices,Curriculum Design,Curriculum Development,Partnerships in Education,Educational Strategies,Family Involvement,Cooperative Planning,Educational Planning,Cooperative Learning,Inclusion,Creativity,Employment Potential,Job Skills

This new updated fourth edition of &quot;How Good is Our School?&quot; is the result of a wide-ranging consultation through which stakeholders have contributed to the development of a substantially new set of quality indicators and supporting toolkit. This publication is designed to promote effective self-evaluation as the first stage in a process of achieving self-improvement. The introduction and the quality indicators are designed to reflect the rapidly developing context within which schools now operate. This new publication is focused explicitly on making a strong contribution to a national imperative to continue to improve attainment for all, while also making a decisive shift towards closing the gap in attainment and achievement between the most disadvantaged children and their peers. This means a strengthened focus on equality, well being and skills for learning, life and work, all of which help ensure young people can secure the best possible post-school destination, and are well-equipped for a future characterised by continued lifelong learning. These are key aspects of Curriculum for Excellence and they are strong threads running throughout the new quality indicator framework. The toolkit of illustrations, exemplar features of highly-effective practice, and challenge questions are intended to be used by all types of practitioners at all levels, and with a wide variety of different roles and responsibilities. They can be adapted and used with learners, parents, and partners across the school community to support collaborative enquiry and interrogative approaches to self-evaluation so that schools are able to identify their own features of effective practice, and develop a shared understanding of what to do next. Appendices include: (1) Using the Toolkit to engage with specific self-evaluation questions; (2) A glossary of terms; (3) The six-point scale; (4) Bibliography; and (5) How does this framework reflect the European Framework for Quality Management (EFQM)?
Implementing Guided Pathways: Early Insights from the AACC Pathways Colleges. Executive Summary
Author: Jenkins, Davis
Date: 2017-04-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Community Colleges,Change Strategies,Design,Planning,Goal Orientation,Two Year College Students,Progress Monitoring,Educational Environment,Holistic Approach,Sustainability,Success,Career Development,Career Exploration,Majors (Students),Teacher Role,College Faculty,College Role,Observation,Focus Groups,Interviews

This summary is a digest of key findings from &quot;Implementing Guided Pathways: Early Insights From the AACC Pathways Colleges,&quot; a report based on Community College Research Center's (CCRC's) research on the 30 colleges involved in the American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Pathways Project. The research presented in this report focused on how the AACC Pathways colleges were designing, planning, and beginning to implement guided pathways reforms during their first year of work on the project, which started in late 2015. AACC chose these colleges to participate in the project because they had laid the groundwork for guided pathways reforms by building organizational cultures open to change. Only a handful had begun implementing guided pathways before joining the project. The expectation is that participating colleges will redesign their programs and support services for all incoming students by fall 2018 according to the guided pathways model adopted by AACC based on CCRC's research. To help accomplish this, the colleges are sending planning teams to a series of six institutes run by AACC and other national organizations, each on a different aspect of the guided pathways approach. Participating colleges are also receiving coaching from college practitioners who have experience with guided pathways reforms in their own institutions. The authors conducted telephone interviews with project leaders from all 30 colleges, and carried out in-depth two-day site visits at six of the colleges. The resulting report examines how colleges are approaching guided pathways, and it provides insight into how to go about planning and implementing such reforms. This executive summary highlights key insights on how the AACC Pathways colleges are approaching guided pathways reforms, how they are managing the substantial changes involved, and what they are learning in the process. [For the full report, &quot;Implementing Guided Pathways: Early Insights from the AACC Pathways Colleges,&quot; see ED574054.]
English Engagement Markers: A Comparison of Humanities and Science Journal Articles
Author: Sahragard, Rahman
Date: 2017-00-18
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Journal Articles,Humanities,Science Education,Comparative Analysis,Educational Research,Meta Analysis,Research Methodology,Reader Text Relationship,Story Grammar,Literary Styles,Writing Strategies,Statistical Significance,Statistical Analysis

Engagement markers (hereafter, EMs) are crucial interpersonal devices to interact with readers through texts. However, little is known about the differences of EMs use in Humanities and Science journal research articles (hereafter, RAs), as well as the changes in markers use over the passage of time. The present study provides a quantitative and contrastive analysis based on two corpora consisting of four disciplines of Humanities RAs (Psychology, Sociology, Economics and Law) and four disciplines of science RAs (Mathematics, Geology, Physics and Biology). Sixteen articles from each discipline were selected randomly from a pool of journal RAs. All sections of the articles were scrutinized for the purpose of the study. The obtained results indicate that Humanities RAs make use of more EMs than Science RAs. Also, the findings of this study suggest that directives are used more than other markers both in Humanities and Science RAs. Regarding the use of EMs in the decades of 1990s and 2000s, a significant increase in the use of EMs was observed with the passage of time, both in Humanities and Science RAs.