Strengthening Multisite Educational Interventions: An Illustration With Multilevel Modeling

This article illustrates the value and use of multilevel models to examine site-to-site outcome differences in the analysis of data from multisite evaluations. It shows how a traditional analysis approach can overlook effective interventions and miss important links between program implementation and outcomes. Practical issues regarding statistical power and intervention leakage are also discussed. Using data from an evaluation of an alternative teacher certification program, this illustration finds site-to-site outcome differences and shows how program developers can exploit these differences in an attempt to understand and strengthen an intervention.     

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Reading Recovery: a critique

This paper attempts to examine critically evaluation studies concerned with the implementation of Reading Recovery, an intensive individualised early intervention programme, by focusing on teacher, child and systemic change. Some conceptual and methodological shortcomings which have characterised many evaluations to date are discussed, together with ways in which these weaknesses could be redressed in future studies.     

Procedures for Evaluating the Impact of Complex Educational Interventions

The application of information and computer technology (ICT) to education, particularly when ICT is a component of a major school reform, raises difficult issues for program evaluation. In many cases even defining the program goal is difficult because so many different changes are often instituted at the same time: installation of a local area network, development of technical support, staff development for integrating ICT into the curriculum and for new teaching methods, and so on. To assist program developers and evaluators in gaining control of such complex interventions in education, two basic procedures are described: the history of the future and program logic mapping. The former is a goals and methods clarification scheme, built around a press release that describes at the projected end of the project what was achieved and how. The latter procedure draws on the goals defined in the history of the future, along with the project strategy, to make explicit all of the major links between project inputs and project outputs. This map then serves as a guide for planning an evaluation that would verify causal linkages as well as outcomes. For each type of node in such a diagram, appropriate evaluation techniques are defined.     

Moving Educational Psychology Into the Home: The Case of Reading

Public policy meant to improve educational outcomes has focused on within‐school factors, even though it is known that factors within the home influence these outcomes more. This article suggests that some aspects of academic work are well enough understood that researchers can offer advice as to changes that parents might make in the home, so as to improve children's academic performance. Reading is taken as a sample case, and research is reviewed with an eye toward home‐based practices to improve decoding, comprehension, and motivation.     

Scaling and Sustaining an Intervention: The Case of Reading Recovery

ABSTRACT

In every school district across the country, every year, initiatives are adopted with the goal of improving the literacy performance of young students, and, just as frequently, these initiatives fail or quickly become passing fads. In this article, Rodgers reviews literature related to scaling educational innovations and describes challenges and barriers to implementing and maintaining evidence-based reform. Using Reading Recovery as a case example, she describes features of the intervention that are thought to be linked to its longevity in terms of scalability and sustainability. She also shares lessons learned from the most recent period of its expansion with the 5-year grant to scale up Reading Recovery across the county. Implications from this article include the importance of adopting an initiative that has a well-articulated design, collecting data on the progress of the students served, and having a person in the district who acts as a redirecting agent, maintaining the design of the initiative and guarding it against tendencies to pare down the design.     

Evaluating Paraeducator-led Reading Interventions in Elementary School: A Multi-Cutoff Regression-Discontinuity Analysis

Abstract

A two-cutoff regression discontinuity design (RDD) was used to assign 321 students in grades 1 through 6 at a Title I elementary school to two types of Tier 2 reading interventions administered by paraeducators: (a) direct instruction (DI) and (b) computer-assisted instruction (CAI). Students scoring at or below a lower cutoff pretest score were assigned to the DI reading intervention. Students scoring between the lower cutoff score and an upper cutoff score on the pretest were assigned to a CAI reading intervention. Student reading ability was reassessed in January and May. Results indicated that the DI intervention was significantly more effective than the CAI interventions at the lower cutoff (p < .01). No significant treatment effect was detected at the upper cutoff, but the estimation power of the design at this cutoff was limited to medium-to-large effect size. Findings suggest that the DI intervention was superior to the CAI interventions for at-risk readers. Implications for practice, including fidelity of paraeducator implementation, are discussed.     

Modeling Latent Growth Curves With Incomplete Data Using Different Types of Structural Equation Modeling and Multilevel Software

This article offers different examples of how to fit latent growth curve (LGC) models to longitudinal data using a variety of different software programs (i.e., LISREL, Mx, Mplus, AMOS, SAS). The article shows how the same model can be fitted using both structural equation modeling and multilevel software, with nearly identical results, even in the case of models of latent growth fitted to incomplete data. The general purpose of this article is to provide a demonstration that integrates programming features from different software. The most immediate goal is to help researchers implement these LGC models as a useful way to test hypotheses of growth.     

Using Brief Experimental Analysis to Intensify Tier 3 Reading Interventions

As implementation of multi‐tiered systems of support becomes common practice across the nation, practitioners continue to need strategies for intensifying interventions and supports for the subset of students who fail to make adequate progress despite strong programs at Tiers 1 and 2. Experts recommend making several changes to the structure and format of instruction, however more information is needed about strategies that are individualized (i.e., matched to student need), not just intensified. One promising approach to matching student need to intervention is brief experimental analysis (BEA). This article will describe the theoretical and empirical support for BEA, provide a model for conducting a BEA, present an example of its use, and discuss implications for future research and practice.     

Using Multilevel Modeling in Large-Scale Planned Variation Educational Experiments: Improving Understanding of Intervention Effects

The author shows how one can combine a large-scale planned variation experimental design and multilevel analysis to address research questions that go beyond the issue of overall treatment effectiveness. In particular, the design and analysis approach presented here can address the following research questions: how an educational intervention produces its results, for whom the intervention works, and whether the intervention works well across different contexts. The author used data based on a large-scale educational field experiment to describe multilevel models that one can use to address this set of research questions. Important design and analysis considerations are highlighted, especially with regard to assessing the impact of school-level characteristics.     

Intensive Interventions in Reading for Students with Reading Disabilities: Meaningful Impacts

We use three data sources to build a rationale for why intensive interventions are necessary for students with pervasive reading disabilities: current data on the performance of students with disabilities on reading achievement measures over time, observation studies on students with reading disabilities in general and special education classrooms, and findings from intensive intervention studies for students with reading disabilities. Results of these data sources indicate that students with disabilities are not making progress in reading at the same rate as students without disabilities, reading instruction for students with reading disabilities is comprised of excessive amounts of low level tasks, and findings from intensive intervention studies suggest positive impacts for students with reading disabilities. We argue that students with reading disabilities require ongoing intensive interventions that are likely to require schools to change the contexts and practices for these students.     

Sound Reading and Reading Sounds: The Case for Phonemic Awareness

The National Reading Panel (NRP) issued a Congressional mandated report to identify key skills and methods related to the development of successful reading skills. One of the first of identified skills is phonemic awareness. This column addresses this area of reading instruction and provides suggestions for literature to be shared with young readers and listeners that support phonemic awareness. Fifteen children’s books are reviewed and recommended.     

Reading Recovery: Myth and Reality

Barrie Wade, School of Education, Birmingham University, describes the Reading Recovery programme, reviews the evidence for its effectiveness and concludes that it is 'a possible way forward'.     

经典阅读对成人的教育意义

经典阅读是成人继续学习的一条重要途径,也具有一定的优势。本文简略介绍了经的意义,分析了成人阅读经典的益处,重点从四个方面阐述了经典阅读的教育意义,每个方面的教育意义都通过分析经典里的具体事例来说明。     

Pragmatism, Ideology and Educational Change: The Case of Special Educational Needs

A major theme of recent debate and policy development in the area of special education is that of inclusion: the placement of all pupils in mainstream schools and the development of curriculum and pedagogy to meet the needs of all. Analysis of national statistical data shows some movement in this direction, but of a slow and very uneven kind. An exploration of the concepts of pragmatism to describe an important aspect of LEA decision making and of ideology to describe an important aspect of pressures for inclusion helps to explain this pattern of development. The paper concludes that both approaches require further systematic empirical data on the outcomes of different patterns of educational provision.     

Effectiveness of Four Supplemental Reading Comprehension Interventions

Abstract

This article presents evidence from a large-scale randomized controlled trial of the effects of four supplemental reading comprehension curricula (Project CRISS, ReadAbout, Read for Real, and Reading for Knowledge) on students’ understanding of informational text. Across 2 school years, the study included 10 school districts, more than 200 schools, and more than 10,000 fifth-grade students. Schools interested in implementing 1 of the 4 supplemental curricula were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatment groups or to a control group. The impact analyses in the study's first year revealed a statistically significant negative impact of Reading for Knowledge on students’ reading comprehension scores and no other significant impacts. The impact of ReadAbout was positive and significant in the study's second year among teachers with 1 year of experience using the intervention.     

新型城镇化中失地农民的教育需求及应对

在城镇化进程中,失地农民拥有的农业生产技能已失去了意义,加之部分失地农民缺乏可持续生计安排,文化素质和其他劳动技能较低,参与择业竞争的能力较差,再就业相对困难,这使得他们渐渐陷入"新贫民"困境。新型城镇化改变过去片面追求城镇规模扩大、空间的扩张,强调以人为本,重视失地农民的发展权。为此,政府加大对失地农民教育培训的扶持力度,唤醒失地农民的自我教育意识,建立失地农民内在的发展动力机制,以满足他们提高生活质量、融入城市生活以及个人创业的教育需求,从而维护其长远的可持续发展。     

Four Types of School Environment: Multilevel Self-Management and Educational Quality

How school-based management in the form of multilevel self-management is related to educational quality is a crucial issue in current educational reforms. An empirical study was conducted to explore this issue in a sample of 68 primary schools in Hong Kong. It was found that the school environment of sampled schools could be classified into 4 types: Bottom-level Self-Managing (BSM), Top-level Self-Managing (TSM), Mediocre Self-Managing (MSM), and Poor Self-Managing (PSM). The performances of the school, groups, and individual teachers among these 4 types were significantly different. Some implications were drawn for practice and policy formulation.     

成人礼仪式的文化意蕴与教育学解读

成人礼作为人类教育的形式,其存在不只限于人类历史发展的早期,在今天的人类社会依然存在,其存在的意义和价值也不只意味着为解释教育的起源提供证据,而且可以通过解读其丰富教育内涵和多种教育功能,为现代教育的开展提供重要借鉴和新的生长点.