Engaging Primary School Students in Mathematics: Can iPads Make a Difference?

Research on the impact of the integration of technologies such as iPads on primary students’ attitudes and engagement in mathematics is limited. Further, there have been claims that teachers’ pedagogical choices can strongly influence the effectiveness of iPads for engaging students in mathematics. This paper presents an investigation of the influence of teaching and learning mathematics with iPads on students’ attitudes and engagement in mathematics. The participants in this study were students in a large urban primary school, implementing an iPad program for teaching and learning across the curriculum. Surveys with five-point Likert-type items were used to measure students’ attitudes to mathematics. Students from Years 2 to 6 completed the survey at the beginning and end of two consecutive school years. Survey results suggested that iPad use in mathematics has the potential to impact positively on students’ attitudes to mathematics. At the end of the second year of the study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers and students. The interview responses confirmed that iPads had a positive influence on students’ engagement and attitudes to mathematics, and that the pedagogical approaches utilised by teachers for embedding iPads in their mathematics lessons contributed positively to these outcomes.     

A Century of Local Education Authorities: What has been lost?

For a century local education authorities have been an integral element in the formal education system in the United Kingdom. They were created by the 1902 Education Act and are currently in what seems close to terminal decline, many of their powers having been either taken away or emasculated during the most recent twenty years. This introductory article seeks to show the rationale for their existence, something of their achievements during the intervening century and, above all, to argue that they have proved to be both a civilising and a modernising influence within a system which has often been insensitive to local needs and which has shown clear signs of becoming increasingly centralised. They, or something very like them, are needed as much today as they were a hundred years ago.     

Where Do You Draw the Line? How Our Actions Make a Difference

Carmen M. McCallum shares her story of how deeply an arbitrary boundary line affected her life in order to challenge us to recognize, change, and cross the lines that disrupt our students’ success.     

A Management Skills Course: Did It Really Make a Difference?

Our research examines whether students who completed a required M.B.A.‐level management skills course believe their management skills improved consequently. We also asked whether the skills they were taught have subsequently proved to be the skills they have needed to succeed at work. Responses from 446 M.B.A. students and graduates who took the course over the past five years reveal that significant numbers do believe that their management skills improved as a result of the course teachings. They also believe that the management skills they were taught have proven useful in their workplaces. Implications for structuring such skill courses and the need for further research into their efficacy are discussed.     

Do Criminology Classes Make a Difference? Changes in Perceptions of Punishment Over Time

Much research has centered on exploring the effect that education has on students’ attitudes, and, specifically, their thoughts regarding punitiveness toward offenders. Due to the use of cross-sectional data, the ability to adequately assess the effect that higher education has on these attitudes is largely limited. This study attempted to overcome this issue using a longitudinal research design with undergraduate students attending a university in the Northeast. The study examined if students’ level of punitiveness changes over time and which factors (e.g. taking criminology classes, class level, and political affiliation) contribute to this change. The main findings revealed that students in this study became more liberal by attending college; however, learning about crime and criminal justice made no difference to the students included in the analysis.     

A Big Menu(初一)

Jackie and Fran arc reading the menu at a restaurant. Jackie is going to have turkey. Fran decides to get roast beef. Jackie: This is a big menu.     

Suspensions Suspended: Do Changes to High School Suspension Policies Change Suspension Rates?

In recent years, the frequent use of suspensions and the racial disparities in their application, particularly for nonviolent behaviors, has created a maelstrom of public pressure for schools to adjust their suspension practices. In an era of increasing institutional accountability for schools, there is evidence that schools may be responsive to policy shifts when they are under institutional pressure to do so. Several school districts have recently revised their out-of-school suspension policies, but researchers know little about (a) if these changes in policy actually change students’ odds of suspension and (b) if so, how these changes might shift racial disproportionality in suspensions. This analysis examines the recent removal of suspensions for low-level infractions from the formal school discipline policy of a large, urban district. I use student-level data to compare the frequency and disproportionality of suspensions before and after the discipline code change. Findings suggest that although suspension rates decrease overall, multiple suspensions per student are more likely. With regard to disproportionality, black girls and white boys are more likely than expected to receive a first suspension in the post period as well. These findings highlight the importance of exploring heterogeneity in outcomes resulting from potential unintended consequences of policy change.     

Teaching Religion in Public Schools: Review of Warren A. Nord,Does God Make A Difference?

In this review of Warren Nord's Does God Make a Difference? Taking Religion Seriously in Our Schools and Universities, Walter Feinberg provides a detailed analysis of Nord's argument that the study of religion should be constitutionally mandated as a corrective to the overwhelmingly secular course of study offered in contemporary public schools and universities. Nord bases his claim on both constitutional and educational grounds. His constitutional argument is that, due to their secular bias, schools fail in their requirement to take a neutral stance toward religion; he contends that this creates a school environment hostile to religion that thus requires a legal remedy. Nord's primary educational argument is that religion courses are needed to counterbalance the secular bias dominant in public schools and universities. Feinberg delineates how Nord's constitutional argument fails and how his educational argument has serious flaws and contradictions. According to Feinberg, a stronger argument for mandating courses on religion in schools would be that because public schools exist in a religiously infused environment, it is important for students to be exposed to alternative understandings that promote reflection on and criticism of one's own beliefs, including religious beliefs. Feinberg concludes that if religion is to be taught in the public schools, it needs to be justified on civic rather than religious grounds.     

Development of Reading and Mathematics Skills in Early Adolescence: Do K-8 Public Schools Make a Difference?

Abstract

Educators and policymakers are paying increased attention to the academic outcomes of students in the middle grades (i.e., Grades 6–8). One reform proposed to improve outcomes for these students is to replace middle schools (with Grade 6–8, 7–8, or 7–9 configurations) with K-8 schools. This longitudinal study evaluated the effects of continuously attending a K-8 school, rather than transitioning from an elementary school to a middle school, on Grade 8 reading and mathematics achievement. Drawing on nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten 1998 cohort (N = 8,237), the study used propensity score stratification to control for observable selection bias. Findings indicated that K-8 schools produce small, significant effects for reading (effect size = 0.15 or approximately 6–8 months of schooling), but nonsignificant effects for mathematics. Results were robust to several alternative specifications, including accounting for nesting of children within schools and using different approaches for propensity score matching. Findings provide conditional support for K-8 schools, highlight the need for cost-effectiveness research on this topic, and raise questions about the specific mechanisms for K-8 schools’ advantages.     

A Third Grade Teacher in a Technocratic School System Asks a Dangerous Question: What is Learning?

This paper, written by a practicing school teacher, offers a background and rationale to explain how his educational constructs of learning have been challenged, influenced, and changed by exposure to constructivist educational philosophy, to frame the tensions he encounters in his practice as a result of questioning educational beliefs in a technocratic school system, and finally, to discuss the resulting consequences this process has for his teaching. In addition, the author hopes to encourage dialogue between practitioners and scholars about the ways recent constructivist conceptions of education, teaching, and learning, although theoretically appealing, can be difficult to place into practice in a technocratic school system.     

Do Children Who Experience Regret Make Better Decisions? A Developmental Study of the Behavioral Consequences of Regret

Although regret is assumed to facilitate good decision making, there is little research directly addressing this assumption. Four experiments (N = 326) examined the relation between children's ability to experience regret and the quality of their subsequent decision making. In Experiment 1 regret and adaptive decision making showed the same developmental profile, with both first appearing at about 7 years. In Experiments 2a and 2b, children aged 6–7 who experienced regret decided adaptively more often than children who did not experience regret, and this held even when controlling for age and verbal ability. Experiment 3 ruled out a memory‐based interpretation of these findings. These findings suggest that the experience of regret facilitates children's ability to learn rapidly from bad outcomes.     

Do Local Study Environments Matter? A Multilevel Analysis of the Educational Careers of First-year University Students

This article examines the effects of local study environments on the achievements in higher education of Dutch undergraduate students. The authors find that the grade averages, the numbers of courses successfully completed, and the drop-out rates of students vary only slightly in terms of the higher education institution attended. Most of the differences observed are the results of individual factors, i.e., differences in the ways in which students select their institutions and differences in the degree of success of their academic integration into the institutions they chose. The results indicate that when students enroll in higher education there is little benefit for them in selecting the "right" institution. Academic achievement is shaped mainly by individual factors.     

Insects(3) How Do Insects Grow?

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What Makes a Good School Leadership Program? A Qualitative Study of the Lookstein Center Educational Leadership Advancement Initiative (ELAI)

How do educators become successful leaders? This qualitative study set out to learn more about The Lookstein Center ELAI program as well as mentoring and leadership training in general, with the hope of offering insights to other school leadership programs. The mentor-mentee relationship was seen to develop into a collaborative partnership, with the reflective relationships becoming enriching for both the mentor and mentee. The findings also emphasize the value of mentoring for midcareer educators. In addition, the importance of the cohort experience was stressed. Finally, unique to the ELAI program, location was viewed as a very influential aspect of this leadership training program for Jewish educators.