Inferential statistics and the use of administrative data in US educational research

While the use of inferential statistics is a nearly universal practice in the social sciences, there are instances where its application is unnecessary and potentially misleading. This is true for a portion of research using administrative data in educational research in the United States. Surveying all research articles using administrative data published in Educational Researcher and American Educational Research Journal between 2011 and 2013, we find that over half use inferential techniques to help interpret results despite the use of population data. To the extent that these practices and findings are replicated and interpreted in the United States and elsewhere, this can lead to the undervaluing of potentially meaningful patterns and trends.     

Thinking in hashtags: exploring teenagers’ new literacies practices on twitter

This research investigates how three high school students in the USA developed new literacies practices through their participation in teenage Twitter. Data was collected from two sources, including archival data from participants’ Twitter over a two-year span, and semi-structured interviews. Results found that teenagers developed a number of practices that facilitated orientation to cultural conventions of teenage Twitter, helped them mobilize followers for participatory events, and led to reflective awareness of how to tell stories on Twitter. This study suggests that teenagers used the affordances of Twitter in order to craft multimodal narratives that are co-constructed, participatory, nonlinear, and emergent. Thinking in hashtags, for participants, is a kind of action that serves to develop affinities of relation (to friends, to pop culture, and to new knowledge) through mediatized ‘vital life stuff.’     

What is more important for fourth-grade primary school students for transforming their potential into achievement: the individual or the environmental box in multidimensional conceptions of giftedness?

Multidimensional models of giftedness specify individual and environmental moderators or catalysts that help transform potential into achievement. However, these models do not state whether the importance of the ‘individual boxes’ and the ‘environmental boxes’ changes during this process. The present study examines whether, during the early stages of talent development, the ‘environmental boxes’ play a more important role than the ‘individual boxes.’ To answer this question, we analyzed individual moderators and environmental moderators of achievement for fourth-grade primary-school students (N?=?976). A cluster analysis that included intelligence, achievement, and two individual moderators (motivation and learning behavior) revealed three groups of students, two of which are of particular interest, as they both displayed high intelligence and achievement but differed in their motivation and learning behavior. Questionnaire data on family environment (filled out by parents, N?=?682) and school environment (filled out by teachers, N?=?47) supported the assumption that among young students an inauspicious set of individual moderators, in this case maladaptive motivation and learning behavior, can be compensated by a sufficiently propitious set of environmental moderators, in this case parents’ and teachers’ learning support, cultural capital within the family, and teachers’ commitment to support their students’ learning.     

Social Activism in Elementary Science Education: A science,technology, and society approach to teach global warming

As part of a large‐scale instructional intervention research, this study examined elementary students’ science knowledge and awareness of social activism with regard to an increased greenhouse effect and global warming. The study involved fifth‐grade students from five elementary schools of varying demographic makeup in a large urban school district in the United States. The study was based on the analysis of students’ responses to a writing prompt addressing an increased greenhouse effect and global warming at the beginning of and at the completion of instruction over the school year. The results indicate that students with adequate science knowledge tended to express activism more frequently, and that their expression of activism increased as they gained better science knowledge after the instruction. The results highlight the importance of effective instruction of this contemporary and controversial issue with K‐12 students, so that they come to be aware of this societal problem, take action in solving the problem, and become socially responsible youth and adults.     

Potential for teacher collaboration in post-Soviet Ukraine

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to analyze the potential for collaborative relationships in schools in Ukraine. In this paper, I examine the nature of teacher collaboration in schools within a framework of postmodernism as a constructive social theory. To better grasp the deep meaning of collaborative interactions in schools, I use cultural and micropolitical perspective. Further, I turn to the discussion of the potential for collaboration in Ukrainian schools, utilizing the notion of a collective that prevailed in Soviet society and system of education. Implications for establishing collaborative school cultures in Ukraine conclude the paper.     

Communities as Necessity in Information Literacy Development: Challenging the Standards

Contemporary standards suggest that information literate activity is a solitary process. As a corrective, research and pedagogical theories related to “learning communities” and “communities of practice” have become valuable sites of inquiry for librarians. The author provides strategies for making community a topic of instruction.     

School-based prevention: effects on obesity and physical performance after 4 years

Juvenile obesity is increasing worldwide. Preventive strategies are warranted. The school-based Children's Health Interventional Trial (the CHILT Project) combines health education and physical activity for children. The effect on obesity and physical performance was studied after four years in 12 primary schools compared with five control schools. Anthropometric data were recorded. Physical performance was measured by a coordination test for children (balancing backwards, one-legged obstacle jumping, lateral jumping, sideways movements) and a 6-min run (endurance). No difference in the prevalence and incidence of overweight and obesity was found between the intervention and control schools before and after the intervention. Remission of overweight was higher in the intervention schools (23.2 vs. 19.2%), but not significant. An increase in coordination related to lateral jumping and balancing backwards was apparent in the intervention schools (30.6, s = 10.8 vs. 26.1, s = 10.8, P = 0.005; 21.8, s = 11.8 vs. 19.4, s = 11.7, P = 0.007), and the increase in endurance performance tended to be higher in intervention schools (100.8, s = 122.7 vs. 92.8, s = 126.0, P = 0.055), adjusted for age, sex, baseline test result, and body mass index at final examination. Therefore, preventive intervention in primary school offers the possibility to improve physical performance in children. The prevalence and incidence of obesity were not affected.