ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
ECHOS: Early Childhood Hands-On Science Efficacy Study
Author: Brown, Judy A.
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Early Childhood Education,Hands on Science,Science Instruction,Teaching Methods,Scientific Concepts,Concept Formation,Science Process Skills,Program Effectiveness,Preschool Children,Low Income Groups,At Risk Students,Instructional Effectiveness,Museums,Comparative Analysis,Control Groups,Experimental Groups

&quot;ECHOS: Early Childhood Hands-On Science&quot; was developed at the Miami Science Museum as a comprehensive set of science lessons sequenced to lead children toward a deeper understanding of science content and the use of science process skills. The purpose of the research is to determine whether use of the &quot;ECHOS&quot; model will increase the amount and quality of science teaching and learning in preschool programs serving low-income children. &quot;ECHOS&quot; is based on the conviction that teachers of children at risk of school failure need to be both content sources and facilitators of learning who deliberately structure the environment and provide explicit instruction on basic science concepts. Analyses at the end of the first year show preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of &quot;ECHOS&quot; on the quality of teacher's science instruction and on children's science skills. These positive preliminary results from a first year of the randomized controlled trial, and relatively high rates of teacher fidelity, indicate that &quot;ECHOS&quot; has demonstrated its potential to impact teacher practice and student outcomes. Tables are appended.
Course Placement Influences on Student Motivation
Author: Simzar, Rahila
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Student Placement,Student Motivation,Correlation,Algebra,Mathematics Instruction,Mathematics Curriculum,Grade 8,Case Studies,Enrollment Trends,Surveys,Mathematics Achievement,Goal Orientation,Academic Achievement,Expectation,Self Efficacy,Task Analysis,Values,Predictor Variables,Intervention,Middle School Students

A national initiative encourages STEM careers to prepare students to succeed in an increasingly competitive economy (National Research Council, 2011). The STEM pipeline is dependent on students' mathematics course-taking trajectories, which are determined once a student enrolls in his/her first Algebra course. Despite efforts to increase access to advanced math courses, there is a national decline in participation in these courses over the last two decades (Watt, Shapka, Morris, Durik, Keating, &amp; Eccles, 2012). During the later high school years many students opt out of math-related disciplines (Meece, 2006). Student motivation predicts choice to &quot;pursue&quot; mathematics (Martin, Anderson, Bobis, Way, &amp; Vellar, 2012), thus attending to student motivation is a necessary precursor to increasing the numbers of students choosing to pursue advanced mathematics learning. This case study uses the increasing eighth grade Algebra enrollment trends in an urban Californian school district to investigate motivational changes found between students selected into eighth grade Algebra with peers enrolled in other math courses referenced as General Mathematics. Using two waves of motivation survey data, we estimate motivational changes for eighth grade students beginning in the fall and ending in the spring. This research focuses on two questions: (1) How do achievement goals, expectancy, and task value change for eighth grade Algebra students compared with peers enrolled in General Mathematics courses? and (2) Do these motivational changes vary by mathematics achievement prior to Algebra course placement? Findings indicated that all students placed in Algebra, on average, experienced increases in maladaptive performance-avoid goals as compared with peers placed in General Mathematics. Average and low performing students placed in Algebra experienced decreases in performance-approach goals as compared with peers placed in General Mathematics. Furthermore, all students placed in Algebra experienced declines in both academic self-efficacy and task value as compared with peers placed in General Mathematics. Average and low achieving students experienced greater declines in self-efficacy and task value than high achieving peers in Algebra. Appended are: (1) Tables and figures; (2) Achievement Goal Scale Items; and (3) Expectancy Value Scale Items.
Developing Empirical Benchmarks of Teacher Knowledge Effect Sizes in Studies of Professional Development Effectiveness
Author: Phelps, Geoffrey
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Benchmarking,Knowledge Base for Teaching,Effect Size,Professional Development,Program Effectiveness,Pretests Posttests,Elementary School Teachers,Middle School Teachers,Research Design,Mathematics Education,Outcomes of Education,Questionnaires,Statistical Analysis,Randomized Controlled Trials

Growing interest in teaching quality and accountability has focused attention on the need for rigorous studies and evaluations of professional development (PD) programs. However, the study of PD has been hampered by a lack of suitable instruments. The authors present data from the Teacher Knowledge Assessment System (TKAS), which was designed to administer Learning Mathematics for Teaching (LMT) measures. TKAS is being widely adopted in the evaluation of PD programs with over 500 separate program administrations and 16,000 teachers representing every major region in the country. The purpose of the current study was to leverage the TKAS dataset to develop a set of empirical benchmarks of effect sizes for designing rigorous studies of teacher professional development programs. The research design consisted of two goals: (1) to investigate the average effect sizes of over 259 PD programs in math, paying specific attention to variation across programs and variation across outcome measures and (2) to leverage the extensive professional development questionnaire describing the enacted professional development interventions and teachers using data collected from surveys of teachers and program providers. In conclusion, the authors report that, though their findings were preliminary, they provide potentially important guidance for the design of group randomized trials using teacher knowledge as an outcome measure. Most notable about the findings is the variation of effects between and across outcomes, suggesting that researchers should consider the specific math outcome that is most relevant for their intervention. Two tables and one figure are appended.
Designing and Redesigning a Framework for Assessing Students' Understanding of Foundational Fractions Concepts
Author: Mendiburo, Maria
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Student Evaluation,Mathematics Instruction,Fractions,Intervention,Multiple Choice Tests,At Risk Students,Pilot Projects,Grade 5,Grade 6,Algebra,Elementary School Students,Mathematical Concepts,Teaching Methods,Difficulty Level,Program Descriptions,Educational Technology,Mathematics Tests,Course Content

The fact that research has shown that fractions are among the most difficult mathematical concepts for elementary school students to master (Behr, Harel, Post, &amp; Lesh, 1992; Bezuk &amp; Cramer, 1989; Moss &amp; Case, 1999) provides a compelling motivation for research and innovation focused on improving the available assessment and instructional tools related to fractions concepts. To address students' deficiencies in learning fractions prior to beginning algebra, the researchers began an IES-funded development project called Helping At-risk students Learn Fractions (HALF). The project aims to develop and pilot test a complete, technology-based fractions intervention program. To date, the authors have created 243 multiple-choice assessment items that measure multiple aspects of the content domain of fractions and have completed four rounds of pilot testing these items. In this paper, they report findings from their pilot testing that contradicted the content framework they developed at the beginning of the HALF project. Using a sample of 880 fifth- and sixth-grade students drawn from 9 public and private school sites in Tennessee, they focused on determining whether the theoretical framework developed in the learning objectives is a good fit for the item data they have collected. Tables and figures are appended.
&quot;Becoming Effective Learners&quot; Survey Development Project
Author: Farrington, Camille
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Student Surveys,Urban Schools,Public Schools,Charter Schools,Influences,Elementary School Students,Secondary School Students,Student Behavior,Academic Persistence,Student Attitudes,Learning Strategies,Interpersonal Competence,Test Construction

The educational outcomes of low-income and racial/ethnic minority students suggest that there is a fundamental disconnect between contemporary schooling and the needs of students in urban schools. Most attempts to address these problems in K-12 schools have focused on increasing students' mastery of content knowledge and skills. While the evidence from interventions and other experimental research strongly supports the importance of academic mindsets and learning strategies to students' overall school performance, there is very little research on whether noncognitive factors are situated within students or are products of particular environments, the extent to which they transfer across contexts, or how teachers might intentionally build noncognitive factors as a regular part of their classroom practice. To that end, in collaboration with national and international substantive experts and expert practitioners, the authors are conducting the &quot;Becoming Effective Learners&quot; survey development project. The centerpiece of work in this project is the creation of a reliable and validated survey instrument for students in grades 6-12 to be made available for free noncommercial use by researchers and practitioners for purposes of basic research and formative/ diagnostic assessment. Eleven neighborhood schools and 11 charter schools in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) participated in Round 1 of the pilot study. Current analysis is ongoing and will conclude by coming mid-summer to allow researchers and practitioners to better focus their efforts on the practices and interventions that promote noncognitive factors and move this interest in noncognitive factors into something truly useful for improving educational achievement and attainment. One table and one figure are appended.
The Development of a Multidimensional College Readiness Index. Research Report 2010-3
Author: Wiley, Andrew
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: College Entrance Examinations,College Readiness,Measurement,Progress Monitoring,High School Students,Scores,Grade Point Average,Student Characteristics,College Preparation,Gender Differences,Racial Differences,School Districts,Geographic Location,Benchmarking,Educational Quality,Academic Standards,Difficulty Level

This report presents a methodology for the measurement and tracking of the college readiness level of high school students who are engaged in the college admission process. The proposed index uses the three distinct hurdles of SAT scores, high school GPA and a newly developed measure of academic rigor. Appendix A contains tables and numerical statistics. Appendix B presents the following (1) Percentage of Students Who Are College Ready by Individual Components; (2) Percentage of the Population and the Sample Who Are College Ready, by SAT Scores; (3) Percentage of the Population and the Sample Who Are College Ready, by HSGPA; and (4) Percentage of the Population and the Sample Who Are College Ready, by Academic Rigor (ARI).
A Statistical Model for Misreported Binary Outcomes in Clustered RCTs of Education Interventions
Author: Schochet, Peter Z.
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Control Groups,Experimental Groups,Educational Research,Data Analysis,Outcomes of Treatment,Error Patterns,Statistical Analysis,Maximum Likelihood Statistics,Computation,Youth Programs,Disadvantaged Youth,Vocational Education,Adolescents,Young Adults,Student Surveys,Teacher Surveys,Student Records,Equations (Mathematics),Regression (Statistics),Models,Randomized Controlled Trials

In randomized control trials (RCTs) of educational interventions, there is a growing literature on impact estimation methods to adjust for missing student outcome data using such methods as multiple imputation, the construction of nonresponse weights, casewise deletion, and maximum likelihood methods (see, for example, Allison, 2002; Graham, 2009; Peugh &amp; Enders, 2004; Puma, Olsen, Bell &amp; Price, 2009; Schafer &amp; Graham, 2002). Much less attention, however, has been devoted in education RCTs to developing statistical methods to adjust for the systematic misreporting of student outcome data for those with nonmissing data. Without appropriate adjustments, misreporting could lead to biased impact estimates, which could be exacerbated if the intervention leads to treatment-control differences in misreporting rates and the composition of students with misreported data. Misreporting could also affect the variance of the estimated impacts, and hence, significance levels from statistical hypothesis tests of intervention effects. This article develops a parametric statistical framework to test and adjust for the misreporting of binary outcomes in the estimation of average treatment effects (ATEs) for school-based RCTs. The author considers a realistic scenario where it is assumed that binary outcomes on sensitive topics can be misreported for students with truly undesirable outcomes, but not for those with truly desirable outcomes. A latent index framework is employed where misreporting and binary outcome decision processes are modeled using available baseline data and normality assumptions about model error terms. This approach yields a &quot;double hurdle&quot; random effects probit model that can be estimated separately for treatments and controls. The article discusses quasi-Newton ML methods for obtaining consistent estimates of the unobserved misreporting rates, the ATEs on the considered binary outcomes, and standard errors of the estimates that are not contaminated by misreporting. The article also discusses how the approach can be applied to continuous outcomes and to nonclustered, student-level RCT designs
Empirically Examining the Performance of Approaches to Multi-Level Matching to Study the Effect of School-Level Interventions
Author: Hallberg, Kelly
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Matched Groups,Intervention,Randomized Controlled Trials,Elementary Schools,Elementary School Students,Data Analysis,Regression (Statistics),Comparative Analysis,Computation,Benchmarking,Statistical Bias

The goal of this paper is to provide guidance for applied education researchers in using multi-level data to study the effects of interventions implemented at the school level. Two primary approaches are currently employed in observational studies of the effect of school-level interventions. One approach employs intact school matching: matching schools that are implementing the treatment to schools not implementing the treatment that are similar in observable characteristics. An alternative approach disregards the clustered data structure and matches students in the treatment schools to students in any non-treated school. This approach essentially creates a synthetic comparison school for each treatment school composed of non-treated students that look like students in the treatment school regardless of what school these students attend. A primary purpose of this paper is to examine which approach performs better in practice. A related goal is to explore which of several variations of each strategy works best. With intact school matching, one can address any residual imbalance through regression adjustment or individual student matches that occur within a given school match. When matching at the student level to create synthetic groups, one can either match on student-level characteristics alone or also include school-level characteristics attributed to the individual. A secondary goal of this paper is to examine the relative performance of each of these approaches within the broader strategy of matching intact schools or individual students. Tables and figures are appended.
Differentiating Instruction: Providing the Right Kinds of Worked Examples for Individual Students
Author: Booth, Julie L.
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Individualized Instruction,Middle School Students,Grade 8,Algebra,Mathematics Instruction,Intelligent Tutoring Systems,Concept Formation,Problem Solving,Error Correction

A plethora of laboratory studies have shown that including the study of worked examples during problem-solving practice improves learning (Sweller, 1999; Sweller &amp; Cooper, 1985). While most worked-example research focuses on the use of correct examples, recent work suggests that asking children to explain a combination of correct and incorrect examples can be even more effective (e.g., Siegler &amp; Chen, 2008). The combination of correct and incorrect examples has been shown to lead to improvements in both conceptual understanding and procedural skill in Algebra compared with procedural practice alone (Booth et al., in revision). It seems clear that both types of support are necessary, but what if extra support for knowledge construction is achieved through other types of innovative classroom practice? In that case, would it still be optimal to provide a combination of correct and incorrect examples, or would providing incorrect examples alone suffice for improving student learning? In the present study, the researchers test the contribution of correct vs. incorrect examples in the context of such support for knowledge construction--guided problem-solving practice with the Cognitive Tutor, a self-paced intelligent tutor system which provides students with feedback and hints as they practice (Koedinger, Anderson, Hadley, &amp; Mark, 1997). Sixty-four eighth-grade Algebra I students (29 females, 35 males) at a mid-western middle school participated. This study was the first to test whether a combination of correct and incorrect examples is more beneficial than incorrect examples alone. The study's findings suggest that receiving incorrect examples can be beneficial regardless of whether it is paired with correct examples. This finding is especially important to note because when examples are used in classrooms and in textbooks, they are most frequently correctly solved examples. One figure is appended.
Do Highly Qualified Teachers Use More Effective Instructional Practices than Other Teachers: The Mediating Effect of Instructional Practices
Author: Park, So Jung
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Educational Legislation,Federal Legislation,Academic Achievement,Correlation,Educational Practices,Teacher Background,Teacher Characteristics,Structural Equation Models,Longitudinal Studies,Surveys,Children,Pedagogical Content Knowledge,Kindergarten,Young Children,Intervention,Mathematics Achievement,Factor Analysis,Predictor Variables

In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) called for &quot;highly qualified&quot; teachers in every classroom in order to increase student outcome and provide equitable learning opportunities to all students including poor and minority students. content and pedagogical knowledge before they come into the classrooms. However, research evidence suggests that the relationship between teachers' background characteristics and student achievement is still tenuous and mixed (Darling-Hammond and Youngs, 2002). Moreover, it is hard to interpret these mixed results because the mechanism by which teacher qualifications influence student achievement remains unknown. In spite of much research on the relationship between instructional practices and student outcome, not many of them consider instructional practices as a mediator between teacher background characteristics and student achievement. Using structural equation modeling (SEM) and the National Center for Educational Statistics's Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K), the author examined direct and indirect effects of teacher background characteristics on student achievement. Indirect effect is used to describe the teacher's effects on student achievement mediated by various instructional practices. Assuming that teachers acquire the content and pedagogical knowledge from prior educational or teaching experiences, the indirect effect can show how the &quot;knowledge&quot; of what to teach and how to teach is connected to the &quot;practices&quot; of what to teach and how to teach. With this approach, the total effects of teacher quality on student achievement would be substantially less obscure. Three tables and one figure are appended.
Can Information and Counseling Help Students from Poor Rural Areas Go to High School? Evidence from China
Author: Loyalka, Prashant
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Economically Disadvantaged,Counseling,Rural Areas,Poverty Areas,Dropouts,Outcomes of Education,High Schools,Admission Criteria,Academic Achievement,Career Planning,Grade 7,Junior High School Students,Education Work Relationship,Access to Information,Randomized Controlled Trials,Student Surveys,Teacher Surveys,Administrator Surveys

To sustain its economic growth in the coming years, China will have to increase the country's supply of skilled labor by enabling its workforce to attain to higher levels of formal education. Unfortunately, when children in poor, rural areas today grow up, they may not be able to enjoy China's future economic prosperity because of their low levels of education. Credit constraints combined with the high cost of attending school can induce students from economically disadvantaged households to prematurely leave school (Banerjee et al., 2000). Even when schooling is free, there may be high opportunity costs of going to school (Angrist and Lavy, 2009). The highly competitive nature of education systems in many developing countries can also discourage students in poor, rural areas from continuing their education (Glewwe and Kremer, 2006; Clarke et al., 2000). Misinformation about the returns to schooling is another important, but less researched, factor that may undermine the likelihood that students continue school. However, this may only be part of the problem. There may be a number of other constraints. First, even if students understand that there are high returns to high school, they may not know how to prepare for high school, i.e., entrance requirements and which types of high schools are available. Second, beyond economic returns, students may not see the links among their own interests and aptitudes, going to high school and the careers options available to them. The term &quot;career planning skills&quot; is used here to refer to the knowledge about how to attend high school (requirements, options, planning, etc.) and the awareness of the links among one's own interests and aptitudes, high school and future career options. The main purpose of this study is to measure the impact of offering information or teaching career planning skills on dropout, academic achievement, and plans to go to high school among grade 7 students in poor, rural areas in China. Results from the study suggest that information and counseling have negligible to quite small impacts on the outcomes of the average junior high school student in poor, rural areas.