Oral versus written assessments: a test of student performance and attitudes

Student performance in and attitudes towards oral and written assessments were compared using quantitative and qualitative methods. Two separate cohorts of students were examined. The first larger cohort of students (n = 99) was randomly divided into ‘oral’ and ‘written’ groups, and the marks that they achieved in the same biology questions were compared. Students in the second smaller cohort (n = 29) were all examined using both written and oral questions concerning both ‘scientific’ and ‘personal development’ topics. Both cohorts showed highly significant differences in the mean marks achieved, with better performance in the oral assessment. There was no evidence of particular groups of students being disadvantaged in the oral tests. These students and also an additional cohort were asked about their attitudes to the two different assessment approaches. Although they tended to be more nervous in the face of oral assessments, many students thought oral assessments were more useful than written assessments. An important theme involved the perceived authenticity or ‘professionalism’ of an oral examination. This study suggests that oral assessments may be more inclusive than written ones and that they can act as powerful tools in helping students establish a ‘professional identity’.     

Mental health and special educational needs: exploring a complex relationship

The relationship between mental health and special educational needs is both complex and misunderstood. In this article, Richard Rose, Professor of Special and Inclusive Education, Marie Howley, Senior Lecturer, Ann Fergusson, Senior Lecturer, and Johnson Jament, a PhD student, all from the Centre for Special Needs Education and Research directed by Richard Rose at the University of Northampton, discuss findings from a national research project which explored the perceptions of pupil mental health needs by staff working in residential special schools. Teachers and other professional colleagues often feel ill-prepared to address mental health difficulties experienced by their pupils. This is, at times, exacerbated by a wider confusion when atypical behaviours are attributed to a diagnosed learning difficulty rather than being recognised as symptomatic of a mental health problem. The article suggests a need for clarification of the relationship between complex special educational needs and mental health and for increases in training opportunities and the development of resources for teaching about and supporting mental health and emotional well-being.     

教师教育变革40年:历程、经验与挑战

在改革开放以来的四十年里,教师教育变革经历了师范教育体系重构、开放式办学模式探索和多元化教师教育实践样态形成三个阶段。以师范院校为主,重视师德培养和教育情怀培育,强调教育教学实践能力以及系统推进教师教育标准的建立,是四十年来教师教育变革获得成功的基本经验。明确师范院校的教师教育功能定位、改善教师就业前景和职业待遇、充实师范生学科知识的学习和持续推进信息技术对教师教育课程的改造,既是教师教育未来发展面临的挑战,也是教师教育未来发展的方向。     

Promotion of self-regulated learning in classrooms: investigating frequency, quality, and consequences for student performance

An implication of the current research on self-regulation is to implement the promotion of self-regulated learning in schools. Teachers can promote self-regulated learning either directly by teaching learning strategies or indirectly by arranging a learning environment that enables students to practise self-regulation. This study investigates teachers’ direct and indirect promotion of self-regulated learning and its relation to the development of students’ performance. Twenty German mathematics teachers with their overall 538 students (grade 9) were videotaped for a three-lesson unit on the Pythagorean Theorem. Students’ mathematics performance was tested several times before and after the observed lessons. A low-inferent coding system was applied to assess the teachers’ implicit or explicit instruction of cognitive strategies (e.g., organisation), metacognitive strategies (e.g., planning), and motivational strategies (e.g., resource management). High-inferent ratings were used to assess features of the learning environment that foster self-regulation. Results reveal that a great amount of strategy teaching takes place in an implicit way, whereas explicit strategy teaching and supportive learning environment are rare. The instruction of organisation strategies and some features of the learning environment (constructivism, transfer) relate positively to students’ performance development. In contrast to implicit strategy instruction, explicit strategy instruction was associated with a gain in performance. These results reveal a discrepancy between the usefulness of explicit strategy instruction and its rare occurrence in classrooms.     

Some factors influencing student performance in laboratory experimental work in physiology with implications for curriculum deliberations and instructional design

A class of 1st-year medical students was divided into a control group who performed a laboratory experiment for themselves, and an experimental group who were given a demonstrationdata interpretation exercise. Prior to the practical session the experimental group were given a programmed text covering the underlying theoretical principles, to use in their private study. The control group were instructed to do their private study in the usual way using only their lecture notes and textbooks. Prior knowledge and the gain resulting from practical instruction were assessed using pre- and post-tests.The conventional laboratory method was ineffective and did not facilitate conceptual understanding. The post-test performance and gain of the experimental group was significantly better than that of the control group, but this result did not appear to be dependent upon greater prior knowledge. The pretest performance of both treatment groups revealed that many students were inadequately prepared for the practical exercise. Many students did not appear to study the programmed text conscientiously, probably because they were accustomed to the traditional method of teaching and adopted a surface, reproductive approach to all learning. Furthermore, the students had difficulty linking their prior knowledge to the experiment, suggesting the need for pre-laboratory exercises designed to achieve closer integration between theory and experimentation.It is clear that in order to achieve more meaningful learning there is a need for the students to change their attitudes and approaches to learning and for active, student-centred teaching-learning experiences to be incorporated into the curriculum.     

The changing American college student: implications for educational policy and practice

New students entering higher education institutions in the United States have undergone dramatic changes during the past two decades. This paper summarizes some of the major trends observed in these surveys and discusses possible implications of the findings for educational policy and practice.Each fall since 1966 the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles has been conducting a national survey of new college freshmen. A typical survey involves 250,000 students and a nationally representative sample of 550 higher education institutions of all types. Between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s American college students became much more focussed on material goals and less concerned with altruism and social problems. These value changes were accompanied by dramatically increased student interest in business careers and a sharp decline of interest in school teaching, social work, nursing, the clergy, and other service careers. These changes are perhaps best illustrated in the contrasting trends in two values: being very well off financially, which doubled in popularity during the period of survey and developing a meaningful philosophy of life which was the top student value in the early 1970s but was endorsed by fewer than half as many students by the late 1980s.During just the past two or three years most of these trends seem to have ended or, in certain cases, shown signs of reversing direction. At the same time, there is growing evidence that students are increasingly oriented toward social activism. Protecting the environment appears to be the single greatest concern among American college students at the turn of the decade.Portions of this talk were given at the January 6, 1989 meeting of the Commission on the University of the 21st Century, Council of Higher Education, Richmond, Virginia: portions have also been adopted from an earlier article in Change magazine (Astin, A. W. Competition or Cooperation, September/October 1987).     

Perceived control and instruction in the college classroom: Some implications for student achievement

Recent research suggests that loss of control by students interferes with the quality of instruction in the college classroom. The present study examined how four types of feedback affected perceived control and student achievement in different instruction settings. College students wrote an aptitude test which provided either contingent, low noncontingent failure, high noncontingent failure, or no-performance feedback. The amount of feedback was varied by modifying the length of the test: short, medium, long. The students then observed a videotaped lecture, presented by a low or high expressive instructor, and completed a postlecture achievement test. High noncontingent failure feedback reduced students' perceived control over their performance and created an external attribution profile. For expressive instruction, achievement deteriorated in accordance with the severity of students' uncontrollability. Implications are discussed regarding loss of control and effective instruction.Parts of this work were presented at the American Psychological Association annual meeting, Los Angeles, August 1981.     

Standards-based performance assessment for the evaluation of student teachers: a consequential validity study

The instrument Samples of Teaching Performance (STP) was developed to assess student teachers' capacity to plan, deliver and evaluate a unit of instruction. The current study reports consequential validity data collected from supervisors (n?=?20) and student teachers (n?=?62) from three elementary and five secondary teacher preparation programs in Chile that participated in the field-testing of the STP. Student teachers described how this assessment had honed their sense of professionalism and promoted learning of the skills assessed. Supervisors reported enlarging the topics discussed with student teachers and making some changes to the supervisory process. These findings are complemented by an analysis of the STP scores obtained by 24 student teachers, which showed better development of instructional skills when compared to pedagogical reasoning and reflection. These results raise questions about the structure of student teaching to support the implementation of standards-based assessments that entail tasks at different levels of cognitive complexity.     

Education inputs,student performance and school finance reform in Michigan

This paper estimates the impact of the Michigan school finance reform, Proposal A, on education inputs and test scores. Using a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, I find that school districts in Michigan used the increase in educational spending generated through Proposal A to increase teacher salaries and reduce class size to a smaller extent. Then, using the foundation allowance created by Proposal A as an instrument, I estimate the causal effect of increased spending on 4th and 7th grade math scores for two test measures – a scaled score and a percent satisfactory measure – and find positive effects of increased spending on 4th grade test scores. A 60% increase in spending increases the percent satisfactory score by one standard deviation. The positive impact of expenditures on test performance seems largely due to higher teacher salaries.     

挑战与对策:发展中国家农村教育的若干问题及启示

2005年11月,联合国教科文组织在北京举办了主题为“扫盲和农村教育”的第五届全民教育高层会议,发展中国家的农村教育再一次成为国际社会关注的热点。据联合国教科文组织(UNESCO)统计, 全世界农村人口占总人口的58％,在所有发展中国     

Reining in student comments: a model for categorising and studying online student comments

A growing body of research has investigated the comments by students on websites that offer evaluations of college faculty. This corpus includes both quantitative and qualitative studies that each use a different scheme for classifying/analysing student comments, which makes the comparison of findings across studies impossible. The present study used a grounded theory method to develop a model for classifying the content of student comments on faculty rating sites that can be applied across studies. The multi‐dimensional nature of the model allows for the representation of the interconnected nature of the topics addressed by students in their comments and allows for comments to be categorised with varying degrees of specificity. Future research is needed to test the validity of the model for addressing various research questions.     

高等职业教育面临的机遇、挑战及发展对策

本文初步分析我国教育改革的进一步深入，社会经济的发展给高等职业带来的机遇，陈述了社会上超前的择业观念，就业压力、奢侈的人才消费以及普通高校的不断扩招等几个方面对高等职业教育的冲击，探讨高等职业教育的发展思路，提出相应的发展对策。     

Treatment outcome for a maltreated population: benefits, procedural decisions, and challenges

OBJECTIVE: To review the benefits, challenges, and procedural decisions to consider when implementing and managing a treatment outcome program for a maltreated population. METHOD: We reviewed the reasons to implement a treatment outcome program, decisions regarding procedures, and challenges likely to be encountered based on literature in the field and the authors' 6 years of experience in developing and maintaining an outcome program at a center specializing in the treatment of maltreated children. RESULTS: The development of an outcome programs requires careful measurement selection, early and ongoing staff-involvement, support from higher management, a well-developed data base and client tracking system, a coordinator and support staff, clinical utility, planning for fiscal impact, and flexibility to contend with challenges. CONCLUSIONS: Based on our experience, the plethora of clinically rich and administratively useful information derived from an outcome program far outweighs the challenges and costs of establishing and maintaining an outcome program.     

The world of the British hifz class student: observations,findings and implications for education and further research

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork that took place in 2004 in a boys’ hifz class which met in a north‐east London mosque. Drawing on the results of semi‐participant observations and semi‐structured interviews, the research findings are collated under five themes: the routines and rhythms of the hifz class; routes into the hifz class; the students’ perceptions of what they were doing; the ‘sacrifice’ of becoming a hafiz; and hifz class and the rest of students’ lives. Though the analysis is largely of the subjective responses of hifz class members and cannot therefore give definitive answers to research questions, the author points to some of the implications of this work and offers pointers for further research work in this field.