美国“中学学生参与调查”及其启示

美国"中学学生参与调查"以"学生参与"为核心调查内容,用以描述、理解全美中学教育活动中的学生参与情况,并为教学变革和学校改进活动提供信息。"中学学生参与调查"启示我们,应重视从学生的角度理解学校环境和教育改革,构建过程与结果并重的学生评价体系,并且应将大规模改革与基于个别学校调研结果的学校层面变革规划结合起来。     

中招考试制度改革若干政策问题分析

中招考试制度改革涉及贯彻落实国家教育政策要求、开发人力资源、保障个人教育选择权和维护教育公平等重大问题,其核心是如何处理教育质量、效率与公平的关系。本文从教育评价学角度分析了中招考试制度改革涉及的上述政策因素,提出了以质量和效率为导向统筹考虑初中毕业考试和中招考试制度改革,建立以学业成就评价、职业性向测验和学生发展潜力评价为基础的中招考试制度,在基础教育过程中解决个人选择和教育公平问题的改革思路。     

The role of goal orientations and goal structures in explaining classroom social and affective characteristics

Examining motivational variables may prove to be particularly fruitful towards our understanding of classroom processes, student behaviors and school outcomes. The present study examined the role of personal and contextual goals (goals and goal structures) towards explaining social relationships (peer, teacher–student and home–school). 1493 fifth and sixth grade primary school students (10 to 12 years of age) from different areas of Greece formed a representative sample. Questionnaires were administered assessing students' goal orientations, goal structures and classroom relationships. The data were analyzed using latent variable modeling. Mastery goal structures had significant effects on positive school relationships such as student relations, teacher–student relations, peer inclusion, and peer conflict (the latter two reversely coded). Performance goal structures exerted negative or null effects on the same processes, demonstrating their negative propensities. In addition, the effects of mastery goal structures were partially mediated by the effects of personal mastery goals with regard to teacher–student relations with the former exerting both direct and indirect effects. On the contrary, the negative effects of performance goal structures were not buffered by the presence of high levels of personal performance goals. The findings have significant implications for educational practice in terms of the importance of classroom contexts as predictors of classroom relatedness specifically where mastery goals are concerned.     

Rural and Urban Differences in Student Achievement in Science and Mathematics: A Multilevel Analysis

Recent educational research has demonstrated rural/urban differences in achievement and success in higher education. However, in order to assess the rural school's impact on student outcomes, rural/urban comparisons must be made after accounting for student background variables. Researchers have begun to question the generalisability of the effective school model for urban, suburban, and rural schools, given substantial differences in their social and organisational environments (Hannaway & Talbert, 1993). The purpose of this research study was to examine differences in student achievement between rural and urban schools in Western Australia, after controlling for student background variables. By using multilevel modelling techniques, this study demonstrated that the location of the school had a significant effect upon student achievement, with students attending rural schools not performing as well as students from urban schools.     

National Plan for School Improvement and Students First: the predictable nature of school education policy and the problem of student achievement

This paper explores two Australian school education policy documents and the inputs they describe to boost student achievement. The paper suggests that current reform efforts in schooling like others previously configure student achievement in input–output terms confining school education policy to predictable inputs that sideline broader influences on educational output including, for instance, school funding. The national policy documents that are the subject of the case study in this paper are the National Plan for School Improvement and the current Students First. Student achievement is explored as an object of study that can be worked on by policy, including for across-the-board national ‘non-educational’ purposes. The analysis, critical in outlook, suggests that current school education policy trades on a predictable set of evidence-based inputs as correctives to declining levels of student achievement without weaving into the student learning equation the complex mix of relations that frame the educational system.     

Everyone in school: The effects of compulsory schooling age on drop‐out and completion rates

This article analyses the effect of the Berlinguer reform that was introduced in Italy in 1999 and increased compulsory schooling from eight to nine years. Hence, students had to attend school until the age of 15 instead of 14 that was required at the time and therefore to attend at least one year of upper secondary school (for pupils with a regular career). Using data from the Labour Force Surveys (1993–2010) and applying counterfactual time series and segmented regressions, we evaluate the effect of the reform on attendance and graduation rates. The results show that prolonging compulsory education encouraged a larger share of 16‐year‐olds to stay in school, especially those who were judged more at risk with less educated parents and with parents with a low occupational status. However, at age 17, part of the effect had already vanished and no effect was found on graduation rates. The compulsory schooling policy may have been more effective in adjusting the legislation to already existing student behaviour than in producing relevant changes in educational decisions.     

Two- and Three-Year Achievement Results From the Memphis Restructuring Initiative

The purpose of this study was to analyze student achievement data from the first 3 years of the Memphis Restructuring Initiative (MRI). The MRI represents one of the first efforts by an urban school district to move past traditional top-down versus bottom-up reform debates by providing systemic support for outside-in/inside-out implementation and local co-construction of externally-developed reform designs in schools. Analyses of academic achievement focus on a state-of-the-art measure of value added assessments. At the end of 3 years the reforming schools had produced generally positive gains relative to locally matched control schools. Those results varied somewhat by reform type and by level of poverty in the communities being served. Based on the research methods used and the results, implications for future research and practice in educational reform are discussed.     

Child race and gender as moderators of the association between teacher–child relationships and school adjustment

This investigation examines teacher and child perceptions of teacher–child relationships and early school adjustment among children (N = 157) in low‐income urban schools. Consistent with prior research, findings indicated that teacher–child relationships were associated with early school adjustment; however, the strength of this association varied depending on perspective (i.e., teacher vs. student) and by student characteristic. Associations between predictor and criterion variables were stronger for within‐rater perspectives than across raters. Children's race moderated the association between teacher–child relationships and early school adjustment when examining data from the same source (i.e., teacher) and across raters (i.e., teacher and student). Gender did not moderate these associations. The implications of these findings for future research focused on understanding teacher–child relationships are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Scaffolding dynamics and the emergence of problematic learning trajectories

This study aims at examining problematic learning trajectories of students with emotional behavioral disorders (EBD) by means of a longitudinal and time serial (micro genetic) study of individual instruction sessions during arithmetic lessons. Micro genetic analysis techniques were applied on the variable “responsiveness” in the scaffolding dynamics, which was chosen as an indicator variable for the quality of the instruction. In a representative EBD student–teacher pair, an iterative process of stability and change of five dynamically related scaffolding variables and one arithmetic variable was demonstrated, which indicated the existence of three phases over a period of two school years. In the short term dynamics of scaffolding, an asymmetric engagement level of teacher and student was found, which was dominated by the teacher's initiatives. Overall, the data point to a suboptimal coupling in this student–teacher pair. An applied conclusion of our study is that educational recommendations should be aimed at transforming existing, self-sustaining transactional patterns between the teacher and the student in real-time instruction sessions during arithmetic lessons.     

Government Policy and School Development

The last 10 or 15 years of this century have been a time of great challenge as well as considerable excitement for educational systems around the world. Governments everywhere have been embarking on substantial programmes of reform in an attempt to develop more effective school systems and raise levels of student learning and achievement. We see in these policy initiatives an unfortunate paradox that inhibits them from realising their aspirations. The community of educational change researchers and practitioners has finally begun to learn something about how ongoing improvement can be fostered and sustained in schools. However, government policy on education has not taken adequate account of this knowledge about school development, with the result that an enormous potential source of synergy has been lost and student learning continues to lag behind its potential. Our argument in this article is that as a consequence of this gap government efforts to improve schooling are less effective than they might be and that many school improvement efforts have to swim against the current of government regulation. Following our analysis of this central irony in educational policy, we go on to outline an approach that would be more likely to help governments achieve their educational objectives by building policy initiatives more explicitly on the knowledge base of school development.     

Student engagement and classroom variables in improving mathematics achievement

The study explored how much student engagement and classroom variables predicted student achievement in mathematics. Since students were nested within a classroom, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was employed for the analysis. The results indicated that student engagement had positive effects on student academic growth per month in math after taking into account student variables such as gender, SES, race, and interaction effects. The effects of student engagement are consistent regardless of minority and gender. Among classroom level variables such as teachers’ degree, experience, certification, authentic instruction, content coverage, and class size, there is no significant predictor of student math achievement growth. The findings suggest that student engagement should be emphasized in a school and educational policy for students’ success in a school.     

The instructional audit in urban school settings: A descriptive policy analysis of instructional delivery using signal-receptor assessment theory and information referenced testing

High levels of student absenteeism, low SES home environments, and a general lack of experienced teachers to service the school curriculum all contribute to difficulties in insuring the delivery of apriori school district defined instructional programs. The importance of urban school site educational evaluation is underscored by recent studies which show that the effectiveness of instructional delivery is an important predictor of student antisocial behavior such as drug abuse, gang activity, vandalism. This study examines some of the problems associated with instructional evaluation in urban school settings using signal-receptor assessment theory analysis and a new type of test scoring procedure called Modified Confidence Weighted-Admissible Probability Measurement (MCW-APM). With MCW-APM, school administrative personnel can simultaneously evaluate and obtain policy relevant information for instructional leadership concerning the signal (instruction as delivered), the reception (student learning as received), and the assessment instrumentation itself (sensitivity of the test). Additionally, this method of scoring permits individual student performance on school district developed CRTs to be referenced to an information based standard (informed, partially informed, uninformed, and misinformed) of mastery as a selection standard instead of a percent correct score.     

Relevance of student and contextual school variables in explaining a student’s severity of violence experienced

Teachers conceptualise and interpret violent behaviour of secondary students in different ways. They also differ in their estimates of the relevance of student and contextual school variables when explaining the severity of violence experienced by students. Research can assist here by explicating the role of different types of contextual school variables. The research question is twofold: (1) Do contextual school variables, in addition to a student’s personal, family and educational variables, explain a student’s violent behaviour? (2) If so, what is the role of student composition variables compared with variables indicating the social cohesion of the school? A hypothetical model was developed in which personal, family, educational and school variables of different types simultaneously explain the severity of violence experienced by a student. The method used to test the model empirically is secondary analysis of data collected in a Dutch national survey on school safety in secondary education (N students = 78,840; N schools = 219). Severity of violence experienced is assessed by the Mokken Scale on Severity of Violence Experienced (MSSVE). Multiple regression analyses reveal that a student who is older, a young male, born in the country of residence, feels at home in another country, does not have an intact family, is not religious, is enrolled in the highest educational track and is achieving lower marks in the school subjects of language and mathematics, experiences more severe violence than other students (explained variance 3.4%). Simultaneously, different types of contextual school variables are differently relevant. Mean severity of violence experienced by students at school indicates clearly more variance (2.3%) than the combination of student composition variables (.4%). The conclusion is that the theoretical model is empirically supported, which also underlines the validity of the MSSVE. The discussion focuses on a comprehensive multilevel approach to stimulate and check improvement of social cohesion at school.     

Do Your Homework! Investigating the Role of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Comprehensive School Reform Models Serving Diverse Student Populations

Like the African proverb, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, many educational researchers charge that it takes a comprehensive school reform to raise student achievement. With the passing of the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2002, national officials authorized the Comprehensive School Reform program to support low performing schools as they struggled to improve student achievement. As a result of this national effort, an increase in implementation of comprehensive school reforms is occurring in schools serving predominantly diverse student populations in urban areas. Therefore, this article explores the framework of comprehensive school reforms and challenges stakeholders to do their homework by investigating whether the school reform allows for the implementation of culturally responsive educational experiences for students.     

Educating Students Placed At Risk: Evaluating the Impact of Success for All in Urban Settings

Schools across the nation are implementing reform models intended to enable all children to meet state-established academic standards. One of the nation's comprehensive school reform models is Success for All (SFA). This study assessed the impact of the program on elementary school students in standardized reading scores as well as attendance and disciplinary measures when compared to control students. Program and control schools were further compared using teacher, student, and parent perception data on school climate and job satisfaction scales. Significant effects were seen on some but not all measures, but the consistent direction and magnitude of the effects showed benefits for SFA students when compared to control students. Implications for educational policy and practice are discussed.     

Potenziale schulstatistischer Individualdaten für die Bildungsforschung und Bildungspolitik – Das Beispiel Bremen

Education policy and educational practitioners have increased their demand for evidence-based knowledge. In 2003, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) decided to establish a core dataset for individual-level administrative school statistics, the ?Kerndatensatz für schulstatistische Individualdaten“, to close the gaps in education statistics and to support evidence-based policy. In the federal state of Bremen, individual-level student data has been collected since 1997/98. These data are of great value for educational planning and policy, educational reporting, as well as educational research, as the analysis of individual educational trajectories depends on the availability of individual-level longitudinal data. Using the Bremen data, this paper demonstrates that highly relevant issues regarding the education system can indeed be analyzed with individual-level student data. Examples include: the effects of age at school entry, educational trajectories and graduation certificates. The results show that demographic information and critical events during early years of education are good predictors for educational success. These findings highlight the potential for student-level data in establishing education policy.     

Effects of school quality,school citizenship policy,and student body composition on the acquisition of citizenship competences in the final year of primary education

This study examines the effects of general educational quality of schools, school citizenship policy, and ethnic homogeneity of the student body on the acquisition of citizenship competences in the final year of primary education. The theoretical framework is based on developmental, psychological, and sociological studies into effects of social context on educational outcomes and research into effective schools. The effects of school quality, school policy, and student population were analysed using 2-level (students, school) multilevel models. The results show that differences in citizenship competences between students and schools are mainly explained by factors at student level. Although the school also appeared to play a role, the school variables used in the analysis did not offer sufficient explanation for these differences. In order to further investigate the relationship between school factors and students’ citizenship, more insight is needed into characteristics of citizenship practices of schools.     

中国城乡教育一体化现代化研究

由城乡分割走向城乡教育一体化是教育现代化的时代特征,城乡教育一体化现代化是教育现代化目标模式的战略选择。要坚持城乡教育一体化现代化的基本标准,实现城乡教育发展水平、城乡学校布局和教育教学体系、终身教育、教师队伍、教育发展环境、教育技术、教育管理等方面的现代化。推进城乡教育一体化现代化建设的政策措施包括:推进教育思想和办学理念的变革;落实各级政府统筹城乡教育的责任,建立城乡一体化的教育经费保障体系;加强城乡一体化教师队伍建设;建立与城乡教育一体化现代化相适应的教育政策法制体系;建立城乡教育一体化现代化试验区;构建城乡教育一体化现代化理论体系;建立完善促进城乡教育一体化现代化的督导评估机制。     

BOOK REVIEW. Development Planning and School Improvement for Middle Managers Co-authors: Marilyn Leask and Ian Terrell,London, UK: Kogan,Page 1997.x + 246 pp. ISBN 0 7494 2038 3

The longitudinal impacts on school change and student achievement of implementing varied Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models was investigated in 12 elementary schools in diverse geographic locations. Each school was individually matched and compared to a demographically similar control school on measures of school climate, teacher satisfaction, observed classroom teaching methods, and student achievement on a battery of 4 individually administered reading tests. Data were analyzed for all CSR-control school pairs combined and separately for pairs representing 4 different CSR models (Balanced Early Literacy Initiative, Core Knowledge, Direct Instruction, and Success for All). Although results varied across location (rural versus urban) and models on different measures, overall CSR advantages were evidenced for teacher attitudes, school climate, and student achievement. Observations of teaching strategies further revealed their general conformity to the CSR models' pedagogical emphases (e.g., direct instruction, ability grouping, higher order questioning). The implications of the findings are discussed relative to processes of enacting and sustaining educational change using whole-school reform approaches.     

A multilevel analysis of Japanese middle school student and school socioeconomic status influence on mathematics achievement

The author examined the simultaneous influence of Japanese middle school student and school socioeconomic status (SES) on student math achievement with two-level multilevel analysis models by utilizing the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) Japan data sets. The theoretical framework used in this study was Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 1998). The data sets contained 4,856 students from 146 public and private middle schools. The results indicated that at the student level, different aspects of student SES (i.e., number of books, the possession of computers, paternal, and maternal educational achievements) were positively related to Japanese student math achievement. At the school level, two aspects of school SES (i.e., less populated schools and economically disadvantaged schools) were negatively related to Japanese student math achievement. None of the cross-level interactions were significant, but the random effect for the computer slope was significant. Although this study found both student and school SES effects on student achievement, the proportional reduction of prediction error explained by both student and school SES were was small, meaning the residual variances at student and school levels did not capture the majority of variance explained by math achievement. The implications of theoretical framework and educational policy are discussed.