School reforms,principal leadership,and teacher resistance: evidence from Korea

Many countries design and implement school change with a focus on the fundamental reconfiguration in the structures of schooling. In this article, we examined the relationship between principal leadership and teacher resistance to school reforms driven by external interveners. For an empirical analysis, we took advantage of extensive data derived from 967 teachers and 32 principals in Korean vocational high schools that are now experiencing school reforms launched by the government. Our results revealed the importance of human aspects of school changes and reforms, in particular, driven by the external intervener. We first showed that a principal's initiative leadership is significantly related to the reduction of teacher resistance to change, in particular on the emotional and behavioural dimensions. Not surprisingly, teachers showed a higher level of resistance when their schools participate in the government-driven reform. Finally, teacher resistance depended upon characteristics of teachers as well as principals. These findings provide some useful policy implications for facilitating successful school reform efforts. Foremost, school reformers are advised to rethink the school change model design in a way of fully capturing human aspects in the reform process.     

双语师资调查分析及对策思考

双语教学在江苏省常熟市始于世纪之交,近十年的发展为该市积累了一定数量的双语师资.对全市9所双语学校师资调查的结果表明:双语教师普遍比较年轻,接受过一定的双语教学培训.本文提出必须更新双语师资培训观念,培训必须有层次、有计划、有系统;并且必须建立一些行之有效的制度以提高师资队伍的专业化.     

Inter-method reliability of school effectiveness measures: a comparison of value-added and regression discontinuity estimates

Value-added (VA) measures are currently the predominant approach used to compare the effectiveness of schools. Recent educational effectiveness research, however, has developed alternative approaches including the regression discontinuity (RD) design, which also allows estimation of absolute school effects. Initial research suggests RD is a viable approach to measuring school effectiveness. The present study builds on this pioneering work by using RD and VA designs to estimate school effects at system and school level, comparing estimates from several measurement designs. The study uses a large English dataset (N = 148,135) spanning 342 schools, 10 local authorities, 6 consecutive school year groups (UK Years 3–9) across 3 years. RD is found to be a suitable approach for system-level absolute school effect estimates. Cross-sectional and longitudinal measures are found to lead to markedly different estimates when comparing individual schools. The results also reinforce the need to treat measures based on a single cohort with extreme caution.     

Legitimizing subjectivity: Meritorious performance and the professionalization of teacher and principal evaluation

An earlier version of this article was a paper presented at the 1988 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans     

The effect of working condition on math teacher effectiveness: value-added scores and student satisfaction in teaching

The purpose of this study is to better understand how math teachers’ effectiveness as measured by value-added scores and student satisfaction with teaching is influenced by school’s working conditions. The data for the study were derived from 2009 to 2010 Teacher Working Condition Survey and Student Perception Survey in Measures of Effective Teaching Project. Using the structural equation modeling and other related methods, several models of teacher effectiveness were estimated. The findings indicate that among the examined working condition factors, support for instruction and for student conduct management have significant effects on teachers’ value-added scores in mathematics. Moreover, the student satisfaction with teaching seems to have a mediating effect on value-added scores. The findings of the study significantly contribute to a better understanding of the effects of working environment on math teachers’ effectiveness and how improvement in working conditions can enhance math teachers’ performance.     

Biography,Identity, and Inquiry: The making of teacher,teacher educator,and researcher

This is a self-study of my professional and cultural biography and identity, a history which directed me first toward the work of urban teaching and then into teacher education and research into comparative educational issues of racial and national identity. I use this inquiry to demonstrate how biography and identity influences the lived experience of teaching and the researcher's stance. I also examine areas where preservice urban teacher education programs must improve. My personal recommendations describe experiences that would have better prepared me for urban teaching. Suggestions include expanding coursework in the historical, political, and sociocultural influences on urban education and in designing culturally responsive curricula. I also recommend restructuring field experiences to offer richer classroom-based learning opportunities for preservice teachers and extending fieldwork into urban communities. Finally, I suggest ongoing inservice teacher education in learning-community models that respond to educators' context-specific teaching concerns.     

Assessment of teacher competence using video portfolios: Reliability, construct validity, and consequential validity

The richness and complexity of video portfolios endanger both the reliability and validity of the assessment of teacher competencies. In a post-graduate teacher education program, the assessment of video portfolios was evaluated for its reliability, construct validity, and consequential validity. Although video portfolio facilitated a reliable and valid assessment of teacher competencies, procedures to improve assessment quality were also revealed and are therefore discussed: more explicit grounding of assessment results in the data, peer debriefing, prolonged engagement with the assessment data, cross-checking to find confirmatory or counter examples.     

A case-study of the predictive validity and reliability of Key Stage 2 test results,and teacher assessments,as baseline data for target-setting and value-added at Key Stage 3

This case-study investigates the predictive validity and reliability of Key Stage 2 test results, and teacher assessments, for target-setting and value-added assumptions at Key Stage 3. (In England Key Stage 2 tests are taken in the core subjects of English, Mathematics and Science at the age of 11. Key Stage 3 tests are taken in the same subjects at the age of 14. Teacher assessments are also completed for these subjects at both key stages.) The study employed the type of linear regression analysis recommended in several government reports, to correlate Key Stage 2 test results, and teacher assessments, in core subjects, with Key Stage 3 test results, and teacher assessments, in both core and non-core subjects. Following government recommendations that the use of any other form of testing - such as the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT) - was now no longer necessary to provide baseline data for value-added calculations, or to set targets, correlations were also investigated between results on the CAT, and test results and teacher assessments at Key Stage 3, for both core and non-core subjects, to see whether this recommendation was well founded. The results of the case-study suggest that Key Stage 2 data, both in the form of test results and teacher assessments, have little or no predictive validity, or reliability, for test results or teacher assessments at Key Stage 3. Indeed, the predictive validity for non-core subjects at Key Stage 3 was so low as to be negligible. However, the CAT average score correlated more highly with both teacher assessments and test results at Key Stage 3 in core subjects, although this relationship was not reflected in non-core subjects. These findings suggest that the predictive validity and reliability of Key Stage 2 data is seriously open to question as baseline data for either value-added, or target-setting procedures, at Key Stage 3. It should be pointed out, however, that these findings are provisional, since they are based on data from two intake years, but preliminary analysis of data from a further three intake years appears to indicate that the concerns identified are well founded.     

The role of feedback in teacher mentoring: how coaches,peers, and students affect teacher change

ABSTRACT

Our study contributes to understanding teacher mentoring by exploring impacts of feedback from multiple mentoring sources as teachers with varying levels of experience learned to implement student-centered instruction. Mentees in our study learned to implement a student-centered model, supported by mentoring from students and teachers experienced in the model. We employed qualitative methods to collect and analyze data from two summer schools, with 22 STEM teachers and 47 student-instructors from 15 non-selective, public high schools. Findings include: (a) teachers had positive attitudes towards feedback, (b) feedback from multiple sources changed practice, (c) effective feedback required structure, (d) experienced teachers benefited most from feedback, and (e) student feedback was most valuable. These findings provide strategies to shape future mentoring, informing teachers, administrators, professional development coaches, and teacher educators about critical factors in the use of feedback to improve teaching through mentoring.     

Studying cultural diversity using information and communication technologies in teacher education: pedagogy,power and literacy

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between new technologies, pedagogy and cultural diversity. It is clear from the project discussed in this article that studying diversity issues on-line provides scope for developing what has been called cultural literacy following Bourdieu's (1990) notion of ‘different ways of seeing’. However, there are a number of unintended effects of power that emerge in this new cultural field which need examination. These include the importance of understanding the embodied context as much as the virtual, the need to be explicit about literacy practices to challenge the dominant liberal discourse of ‘voice’ in on-line discussion, and the effects of power that emanate from teaching and learning in this field.     

Pre‐schoolers,print and storybooks: an observational study using eye movement analysis

This study used eye‐gaze analysis to determine the extent to which pre‐school children visually attended to print when looking at two storybooks, to contrast visual attention to print for a print‐salient versus a picture‐salient storybook, and to study individual differences in pre‐schoolers' visual preferences. Results indicated that pre‐school children infrequently attended to print: in a traditional picture‐salient storybook, 2.7% of their fixations focused on print and 2.5% of their time was spent looking in regions of print. The children fixated more frequently on print and spent more time looking in print regions when reading a print‐salient storybook, within which 7% of fixations focused on print and 6% of time was spent in print zones. Effect size estimates showed this difference to be consistent with a very large effect. Little variation in visual attention to print was observed across the ten children, and children's alphabet knowledge was not associated with the variance in children's visual attention to print. Educational implications are discussed.     

Key challenges of using video when investigating social practices in education: contextualization,magnification, and representation

Audio- and video-recordings are increasingly popular data sources in contemporary qualitative research, making discussions about methodological implications of such recordings timelier than ever. This article goes beyond discussing practical issues and issues of ‘camera effect’ and reactivity to identify three major challenges of using video to ‘capture’ social practices: (1) getting close enough to details without losing context, (2) encountering the most severe consequence of ‘death by data’ – namely magnifying events that may not be significant to participants, and finally, (3) representing data so that an audience can actually assess whether inferences drawn from the data are plausible. These important issues directly impact the credibility of qualitative research relying on video. The article combines existing literature with contemporary examples from educational research to critically discuss these three key challenges and some possible ways of addressing them.     

Concepts,policies and practices of teacher education: an analysis of studies on teacher education in Portugal

Education policies, and in particular those related to teacher education, are central to the construction of Europe as a knowledge society and for facing the social and economic challenges that European countries must respond to in this millennium. This article presents an analysis of studies on the evaluation of in-service teacher education conducted in Portugal since 1992. Based on the results of this analysis, the study develops a reflection on the concepts, policies and practices of in-service teacher education, contextualising it within a wider equation related to teachers’ education in Europe. The study consisted of content analyses of scientific articles, research reports, studies of evaluation and legal documents that provide the guidelines for in-service teacher education in Portugal. At the end, a final reflection and some general recommendations for teacher education are presented. There is a focus on the importance of placing in-service teacher education at the centre of educational contexts and on the problems that this causes in teachers’ work, emphasising its importance for social justice in Europe.     

Rater calibration when observational assessment occurs at large scale: Degree of calibration and characteristics of raters associated with calibration

Observational assessment is used to study program and teacher effectiveness across large numbers of classrooms, but training a workforce of raters that can assign reliable scores when observations are used in large-scale contexts can be challenging and expensive. Limited data are available to speak to the feasibility of training large numbers of raters to calibrate to an observation tool, or the characteristics of raters associated with calibration. This study reports on the success of rater calibration across 2093 raters trained by the Office of Head Start (OHS) in 2008–2009 on the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), and for a subsample of 704 raters, characteristics that predict their calibration. Findings indicate that it is possible to train large numbers of raters to calibrate to an observation tool, and rater beliefs about teachers and children predicted the degree of calibration. Implications for large-scale observational assessments are discussed.     

Reading sources and academic freedom as determinants of trends in English language teacher research in Egypt: an interview-based study

Little attention has been given to investigating the experiences of teacher researchers while undertaking their studies. In an attempt to explore what accounts for the stereotyped and imitative trends in the studies conducted by English language teachers in Egypt, the present study has explored how they select research topics and the factors influencing their research orientations and processes. The study used semi-structured interviews with 25 Egyptian teachers who were doing MA and Ph.D. studies in TESOL. It was found that they view good language teaching research as either testing the effectiveness of instructional techniques or evaluating textbooks, though most of them opt for experimental research due to its practical nature. The study also revealed that reading sources and academic freedom are the two main determinants of research trends in this context. Apart from the association found between the teacher researchers’ perceived academic freedom and the type of literature they read, the following three other factors also accounted for the relative variance in such freedom: (a) the stage undertaken in the research, (b) the number of supervisors available or assigned and (c) the research degree registered for. The article concludes with discussing the implications of these results.     

Reform,standards and teacher identity: Challenges of sustaining commitment

Teacher commitment has been found to be a critical predictor of teachers’ work performance, absenteeism, retention, burnout and turnover, as well as having an important influence on students’ motivation, achievement, attitudes towards learning and being at school (Firestone (1996). Educational Administration Quarterly, 32(2), 209–235; Graham (1996). Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, 67(1), 45–47; Louis (1998). School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 9(1), 1–27; Tsui & Cheng (1999). Educational Research and Evaluation, 5(3), 249–268). It is also a necessary ingredient to the successful implementation, adaptation or resistance reform agendas. Surprisingly, however, the relationship between teachers’ motivation, efficacy, job satisfaction and commitment, and between commitment and the quality of their work has not been the subject of extensive research. Some literature presents commitment as a feature of being and behaving as a professional (Helsby, Knight, McCulloch, Saunders, & Warburton (1997). A report to participants on the professional cultures of Teachers Research Project, Lancaster University, January). Others suggest that it fluctuates according to personal, institutional and policy contexts (Louis (1998). School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 9(1), 1–27) and identify different dimensions of commitment which interact and fluctuate (Tyree (1996). Journal of Educational Research, 89(5), 295–304). Others claim that teachers’ commitment tends to decrease progressively over the course of the teaching career (Fraser, Draper, & Taylor (1998). Evaluation and Research in Education, 12 (2), 61–71; Huberman (1993). The lives of teachers. London: Cassell). In this research, experienced teachers in England and Australia were interviewed about their understandings of commitment. The data suggest that commitment may be better understood as a nested phenomena at the centre of which is a set of core, relatively permanent values based upon personal beliefs, images of self, role and identity which are subject to challenge by change which is socio-politically constructed.     

Integrating instruction of science,reading, and writing: Goals,teacher development,and assessment

This article describes the interplay of goals, teacher development, and assessment in the context of a yearlong research and development project. The aim of the project was to integrate the teaching of science, reading, and writing processes in a conceptually based, constructivist curriculum for middle school students who read below grade level. A performance-based assessment was designed and implemented to determine the level of student awareness and control over the processes taught during a unit of instruction. Interviews with science teachers and supervisors revealed the important interaction of curricular goals, the performance assessment, and instructional practice.