LDA Student Award Winner, 2008 Narrowing the gap: A report on the QuickSmart mathematics intervention

This article focuses on the cognitive factors that impact on students in the middle school years experiencing learning difficulties in basic mathematics. It begins with a review of selected literature providing information about the learning difficulties in mathematics. Focus then shifts to an implementation of the QuickSmart intervention. QuickSmart is a basic academic skills intervention designed for persistently low-achieving middle-years' students. In this small-scale study, 12 middle school students experiencing learning difficulties participated in the QuickSmart mathematics program. Comparisons are made between the mathematics progress of the intervention group and eight average-achieving peers. The results indicate that on measures of response speed and accuracy QuickSmart participant students were able to narrow the gap between their performance and that of their average-achieving peers. Further, on standardized tests of more general mathematical knowledge, participant students improved significantly from pre-test to post-test. Implications are drawn regarding the importance of interventions that emphasize automaticity in basic mathematics for middle years students with learning difficulties.     

Assessment for Effective Intervention: Enrichment Science Academic Program

Israel suffers from a growing problem of socio-economic gaps between those who live in the center of the country and residents of outlying areas. As a result, there is a low level of accessibility to higher education among the peripheral population. The goal of the Sidney Warren Science Education Center for Youth at Tel-Hai College is to strengthen the potential of middle and high school students and encourage them to pursue higher education, with an emphasis on majoring in science and technology. This study investigated the implementation and evaluation of the enrichment science academic program, as an example of informal learning environment, with an emphasis on physics studies. About 500 students conducted feedback survey after participating in science activities in four domains: biology, chemistry, physics, and computer science. Results indicated high level of satisfaction among the students. No differences were found with respect to gender excluding in physics with a positive attitudes advantage among boys. In order to get a deeper understanding of this finding, about 70 additional students conducted special questionnaires, both 1 week before the physics enrichment day and at the end of that day. Questionnaires were intended to assess both their attitudes toward physics and their knowledge and conceptions of the physical concept “pressure.” We found that the activity moderately improved boys’ attitudes toward physics, but that girls displayed decreased interest in and lower self-efficacy toward physics. Research results were used to the improvement of the instructional design of the physics activity demonstrating internal evaluation process for effective intervention.     

Effective literacy instruction for adults with specific learning disabilities: implications for adult educators

Adults with learning disabilities (LD) attending adult basic education, GED programs, or community colleges are among the lowest performers on measures of literacy. For example, on multiple measures of reading comprehension, adults with LD had a mean reading score at the third grade level, whereas adults without LD read at the fifth grade level. In addition, large numbers of adults perform at the lowest skill levels on quantitative tasks. Clearly, significant instructional challenges exist for adults who struggle with literacy issues, and those challenges can be greater for adults with LD. In this article, the literature on adults with LD is reviewed, and evidenced-based instructional practices that significantly narrow the literacy achievement gap for this population are identified. Primary attention is given to instructional factors that have been shown to affect literacy outcomes for adults with LD. These factors include the use of explicit instruction, instructional technology, and intensive tutoring in skills and strategies embedded in authentic contexts.     

The elaboration theory of instruction: A model for sequencing and synthesizing instruction

This paper describes a novel instructional model for sequencing, syntheizing, and summarizing subject-matter content. The importance of such models is discussed, along with the need for a significant change in the role of subject-matter structure in instruction. A zoom-lens analogy is presented to facilitate an understanding of the elaboration model of instruction. Some basic concepts and principles upon which the model is based are described. The basic unvarying components of the elaboration model are described. And finally, some variations in the model for different kinds of goals are described. The elaboration model follows a general-to-detailed pattern of sequencing, as opposed to the hierarchically based sequences derived from Gagné-type task analyses.Many of the ideas described in this paper were developed under two projeets, one funded by Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and the other by the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego, California; however, the ideas expressed do not necessarily constitute the opinions of the funding institutions.     

数学教育跨学科卓越奖（IEME奖）：表彰和促进数学教育跨学科“合作”“领导力”及“影响力”

介绍了美国德克萨斯农工大学数学教育跨学科卓越奖的建立背景、缘由和重大意义.有别于数学教育界和数学界的其它奖项,该奖项强调了认识和重视数学教育的跨学科性和跨学科协作的重要性;并将其作为促进数学教育(作为一个跨学科领域)发展的机制.此外,也提供有关此奖项的申报资料及以往得奖者的表彰介绍,以突显该奖项的宗旨.     

The Catch Up Project: a reading intervention in Year 3 for Level 1 readers (Research Note)

The Catch Up Programme is a literacy intervention designed for children who are behind with reading at the start of Year 3 (7 to 8 year‐olds). This paper describes pilot research that informed the project in its early stages of development, and the findings should therefore be treated with caution. The reading progress of a sample of 74 Catch Up pupils from 15 schools in three local education authorities was measured. This showed a considerable increase in pupils’ reading ages across a 10 week period. A smaller experimental study was also carried out in nine Oxfordshire schools (48 pupils) to compare a Catch Up sub‐sample with a Matched Time group and a Control group. Findings showed that the Catch Up pupils made considerably more progress during the same period than both the other groups.     

Competence,persistence, and success: The positive psychology of behavioral skill instruction

Early school failure is a critical factor in the development of peer rejection and antisocial behavior in children. This paper describes three sets of instructional strategies that have been shown to promote high levels of academic competence by arranging frequent opportunities for correct skill practice: (a) teaching children at their instructional level and monitoring progress, (b) teaching children differently as their skills improve, and (c) rewarding success and setting goals. Research is reviewed showing that practicing skills to high levels of fluency leads to retention and endurance, the emergence of new forms of a skill, and creative problem solving. The motivation of children to complete academic tasks through the strategic use of reinforcement is discussed, as are the implications of these strategies for encouraging children to be persistent, self‐motivated, life‐long learners. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 19–30, 2004.     

The good, the bad and the ugly: teachers' perception of quality in fiction for adolescent readers

Recent years have seen a great development in fiction written for the adolescent market‐teenage fiction. This article seeks to explore the notion of quality in teenage fiction building on earlier research by Whitehead (1977), Hall and Coles (1999), and Benton (1995a) and using findings from interviews with teachers in secondary schools in the South West of England in 2003 and 2004, the first phase in a study into perceptions of quality in teenage fiction. Questions are raised about whether English teachers have sufficient knowledge of this genre of literature to support pleasure and progress in reading for adolescents and also whether teenage fiction should be more directly addressed in the curriculum perhaps through a school canon, which may apply educational criteria to define a body of literature that begins where the child is, but allows for clear progression in reading.     

The use of informational feedback in instruction: Implications for future research

The use of informational feedback has long been advocated and verified as being an important part of learning. Many studies have been conducted to examine which variables might affect learning from feedback. The purpose of this review is to examine these studies within various constructs and identify areas that need further investigation and clarification. Feedback is examined from early studies, which viewed the process behaviorally as reinforcement, to present research that advocates an information-processing perspective and an emphasis on error correction. A current model of feedback (Kulhavy & Stock, 1989) is presented as a context for discussion. The issues of response certainty, feedback elaboration, and error analysis are also addressed. Recommendations to future researchers are presented in light of conclusions drawn.When this article was written, she was a Visiting Research Associate at the Center for Educational Technology at Florida State University.     

我国本科教学评估政策的历史演变

师范类专业认证与本科教学工作评估、专业评估、教师资格考试、专业建设等有较大区别,但部分行动者对此还不能准确辨析。通过历史制度主义视角,分析以往制度对师范类专业认证行动者的影响,总结目前师范类专业认证运行中存在的四种认识误区,提出行动者对师范类专业认证的理解应进行从宏观到中观、从管理到治理、从输入到产出、从预设到生成的逻辑转向,以减少师范类专业认证运行中的历史惯性和路径依赖,推进师范类专业认证制度作用的发挥。     

The VCR Tutor: Effective Instruction for Device Operation

A critical issue for intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) is whether knowledgeable diagnosis and feedback offers instructional benefits compared with less knowledge-intensive instructional methods. The effectiveness of different instructional methods is examined in a device operation task: setting a VCR to record a program. Four tutoring simulations use different instructional approaches emphasizing specific types of knowledge. The possibility of acquiring this knowledge is manipulated by increasing opportunities to interact with the simulation and by explicitly providing knowledgeable diagnosis and feedback. Eighty novice adults were randomly assigned to the four tutors for training. Planned comparisons of learner achievement indicate greater learning with knowledgeable diagnosis and feedback compared to correctness feedback. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) to detect predicted linear trends shows increased instructional effectiveness across versions. Results are not simply a function of differences in training time. They support the contention that knowledgeable diagnosis and feedback can offer benefits over other instructional methods.