How can we evaluate the effectiveness of grammar schools in England? A regression discontinuity approach

Previous research evaluating grammar school effectiveness has generally relied on snapshot or longitudinal regression models to deal with pre-existing differences between grammar school pupils and those in non-selective schools. These passive designs are based on correlations, and cannot demonstrate clear positive causal relationships between grammar school attendance and subsequent attainment. After accounting for the variables available for the analysis, pupils in different schools might still have distinct and unmeasured characteristics which threaten the validity of any conclusions drawn. Given that a randomised trial is not feasible under current conditions, this study addresses the limitations of previous research, using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) approach. This is the first use of RDD to attempt to make a robust causal inference about the effectiveness of grammar schools in one local authority in England. However, the authority, the Department for Education and the schools would not provide the individual data on pupils’ 11+ entry test scores, and the scores obtained could not be uniquely matched to Key Stage 4 outcomes. While the model presented suggests that there is an advantage to grammar school attendance, the incomplete data means that the study is more a feasibility trial of this strong design than any kind of definitive test intended to settle the debate on grammar school effectiveness. Conducting this design with national data on grammar school selection would create the most powerful evidence so far. To promote an effective and equitable education system for generations to come, those advocating the expansion of grammar schools should make the responsible decision to disclose all grammar school selection data for the purposes of research.     

How do we rate? An evaluation of online student evaluations

This paper analyses the popular RateMyProfessors (RMP) website where students evaluate instructors in higher education. A study was designed to measure (1) the awareness and utilisation of the RMP website, (2) the internal and external validity of the RMP ratings in measuring teaching effectiveness, and (3) variation in the above across disciplines. It is concluded that the category of ratings, created by the website, establishes an anti‐intellectual tone that manifests itself in comments about instructors’ personality, easiness of workload and entertainment value rather than knowledge attained.     

How do different types of schools prepare students for life at Cambridge?

Twenty students from different educational backgrounds within the UK were interviewed to investigate how well they considered their secondary school education had prepared them for the educational and social demands of an ‘elite’ university and life within its most traditional colleges. The study asked them how they perceived students from different educational backgrounds and how they thought they were perceived. Entering a traditional Cambridge college was found to be easiest for students from prestigious ‘public schools’ within the private educational sector. State school students were more likely to experience anxiety, and those who adapted successfully were likely to have strong independent learning skills and a robust sense of self-efficacy. The study suggests that students coming from state schools to Cambridge are making a more difficult academic and social transition than students from private schools, for which they are given no special support.     

Sustainable schools programmes: what influence on schools and how do we know?

This paper focuses on our experience of researching the influence of ResourceSmart Schools, a sustainable schools programme in Victoria, Australia. Drawing on ideas from programme theory and realist synthesis, we illustrate and reflect upon our approach to conceptualising, investigating and generating evidence about the programme’s impacts and influence in participating schools. This distinction is deliberate: it helps distinguish between efforts to understand the impacts that a programme has within schools (programme impact), and efforts to understand what it is about a programme that is influential in bringing about those impacts (programme influence). Drawing on evidence from our work in this project and the wider literature, we argue for a more nuanced discussion and more sophisticated investigations into the complexities of programme influence, rather than impacts only. Our conclusions suggest key areas of development for our own work, the provision of environmental and sustainability education, and their evaluation and research more broadly.     

Formal body bequest program in Nigerian medical schools: When do we start?

Human body dissection is a prerequisite for the training of health professionals and the conduct of medical research. However, most Nigerian medical schools experience difficulty obtaining an adequate and regular supply of human tissue. Presently, the major source of anatomical material comes from unclaimed bodies collected from hospital mortuaries. However, one sure way to ensure a regular supply of bodies for anatomical dissection is to establish a whole body bequest program among the departments of anatomy in Nigerian medical schools. If such a program were to be supported by an appropriate legislative act of parliament, the supply of acceptable cadavers for anatomical teaching and research would be substantially increased. The author advocates for establishing a whole body bequest program among Nigerian medical schools.     

How do instructional designers evaluate? A qualitative study of evaluation in practice

This study employed a qualitative research design to investigate how instructional designers use evaluation in everyday design practice. While past research has examined how designers spend their time, how they generally make decisions, and expert-novice differences, little attention has been paid to use of context, input, process, or product evaluation, from the perspective of practicing designers. Based on interviews of practitioners, our findings included ten themes regarding how designers use evaluation to improve their products. While these results substantiate to some degree the claim that practitioners believe clients will not pay for formal evaluations, they also suggest that practitioners use evaluation in important but less formal ways. Other conclusions regarding the role of evaluation in design are provided and future directions for training and research are discussed.     

How do apes ape?

In the wake of telling critiques of the foundations on which earlier conclusions were based, the last 15 years have witnessed a renaissance in the study of social learning in apes. As a result, we are able to review 31 experimental studies from this period in which social learning in chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans has been investigated. The principal question framed at the beginning of this era, Do apes ape? has been answered in the affirmative, at least in certain conditions. The more interesting question now is, thus, How do apes ape? Answering this question has engendered richer taxonomies of the range of social-learning processes at work and new methodologies to uncover them. Together, these studies suggest that apes ape by employing a portfolio of alternative social-learning processes in flexibly adaptive ways, in conjunction with nonsocial learning. We conclude by sketching the kind of decision tree that appears to underlie the deployment of these alternatives.     

How did I do?

A rookie police officer was out for his first ride in a cruiser with an experienced partner. A call came in telling them to     

How do teachers coordinate their work? A framing approach

Since the 1970s, schools have been characterized as loosely coupled systems, meaning that the teachers’ work is weakly coordinated at the local level. Nonetheless, few studies have focused on the local variations of coordination modes, their sources and their nature. In this article, the process of local coordination of the teachers’ work is analyzed, using a sociocognitive approach. A longitudinal study of the framing process conducted during two years in one school is presented, in order to capture the parallel evolution of the teachers’ cognitive structures and the school’s social structures. The results show that: (1) the framing process is at the heart of political games, meaning that the local definition of teaching and its conditions represent an important issue for the teachers; and that (2) the cognitive structures that emerge from the framing process appear to some extent to be decoupled from the teachers’ actual practices, contributing only partially to the local process of the teachers’ work coordination.     

How Do Instructional‐Design Practitioners Make Instructional‐Strategy Decisions?

Many theories have been proposed to help instructional designers make instructional‐strategy decisions, yet it is not clear if these theories are actually used by ID practitioners. This study used a web‐survey to examine the design strategies of 113 ID practitioners. The survey asked respondents to rate how frequently they used learning or ID theories as well as 10 other design strategies, to help make instructional‐strategy decisions. Respondents were also asked how often they used different information sources to learn about new theories, trends, and strategies, and to respond to a set of contrasting statements depicting objectivist vs. construc‐tivist assumptions. The results indicate that ID practitioners most often rely on interaction with others both as a means of making instructional‐strategy decisions and of learning about new theories, trends, and strategies. Only fifty percent of the respondents said they regularly use theories when making instructional‐strategy decisions, using other design strategies more frequently instead; and most practitioners are eclectic in their underlying philosophical assumptions. Based on these results, we discuss implications for training and ongoing support of instructional designers.     

How do teachers support their students on the autism spectrum in Australian primary schools?

This study investigated the supports and modifications made available to students on the autism spectrum in Australian schools. Teachers rated the importance of several factors in determining the grades of their students and reported on the frequency of student engagement with a range of instructional materials. Eighty‐seven teachers identified the modifications, accommodations and additional assistance provide to primary school students on the autism spectrum. Teachers also compared the frequency of class engagement and methods of evaluating outcomes for students with and without autism. A range of modifications and adjustments were implemented to support students on the spectrum. There were no significant differences in the frequency of instructional material use of students on the autism spectrum compared to their classmates. However, teachers did report differences in their methods of determining the grades of their students with and without autism. This is an important first step in understanding the experiences of teachers who are educating students on the autism spectrum in Australian schools. The findings reveal that teachers are working to support the diverse learning needs of their students on the autism spectrum. Further investigation of the factors that are driving teachers’ use of school‐based supports is warranted.     

How do national regulations for publicly subsidized private schools work in a decentralized context?

Contrary to decentralization trends, recent policy recommendations suggest stronger regulations for educational public-private partnerships to improve quality for disadvantaged populations. We conducted a comparative analysis of the implementation of recentralized regulations for contracted schools in two Colombian subnational jurisdictions with different outcomes. Our findings indicate that a high dependency between local government and contracted schools to increase enrollment and secure schools’ financial stability leads to collusion between these actors against centralized regulations. By contrast, a lower dependency favours the alignment of goals between national and local governments, which improves selection and monitoring of contracted schools. This second scenario, however, requires high local capacity and considerable public-school supply—two conditions ignored by the theoretical propositions that support recentralized regulations. Our conclusions discuss the limitations of market regulation approaches to fix problems of contracted schools, and the dilemmas of improving quality of public-private partnerships in contexts of weak governance and conflicting pressures.     

How linguistically‐informed are phonics programmes?

Successive UK government policies have strengthened the phonics element of the National Curriculum for English in England. The policies have included inviting publishers to submit completed self‐assessments of their systematic phonics programmes. The self‐assessment criteria focus on what is deemed to be ‘high‐quality provision’, as defined in the Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading chaired by Jim Rose. The programmes whose self‐assessments were judged to be accurate by small panels of independent evaluators have been subsequently listed on a central government website. The authors have acted as independent evaluators in this process and, between them, had the opportunity to inspect the content of over 100 phonics programmes. They have noted that many of these programmes (most of which did not meet the Rose criteria) contained numerous linguistic inaccuracies, particularly in relation to the English spelling system and its grapheme‐phoneme correspondences. The existence, number and range of these errors jeopardise policy implementation and National Curriculum delivery and pose risks for the quality of teaching and learning. The article suggests some reasons for these findings in related published debates and in policy documents, and that phonics programmes need to be more linguistically‐informed. The article concludes with some implications for practice.