Assessing the Impact of School-Based Marketing Efforts: A Case Study of a Foreign Language Immersion Program in a School-Choice Environment

The marketization of K–12 education has led to an increase in school-based marketing efforts. Relatively little research, however, has examined how public schools market themselves, who is involved in marketing, and how these marketing efforts impact key stakeholders, including school administrators, teachers, students, and parents. We explore these questions in this qualitative study of school-based marketing efforts at South Boulevard,¹Because of the long and public history of desegregation litigation associated with the school and with the school district, we use real place names throughout the paper. Thus, we disclose both the school's name—South Boulevard Foreign Language Academic Immersion Magnet—and the name of the city in which the school is located—Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in order to maintain the authenticity of the case and the findings. a foreign language immersion magnet elementary school in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Analysis of data from participant observation and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders reveals that administrators, teachers, parents, and students actively participated in marketing and recruiting, and that these efforts were associated with a number of implicit and explicit costs. Introducing two concepts from the business literature—business-level strategy and brand communities—yields a number of observations and policy questions. Finally, the shifting role of parents and administrators in an increasingly market-like school-choice environment is discussed.     

Mathematics-for-Teaching: an Ongoing Investigation of the Mathematics that Teachers (Need to) Know

In this article we offer a theoretical discussion of teachers' mathematics-for-teaching, using complexity science as a framework for interpretation. We illustrate the discussion with some teachers' interactions around mathematics that arose in the context of an in-service session. We use the events from that session to illustrate four intertwining aspects of teachers' mathematics-for-teaching. We label these aspects “mathematical objects,” “curriculum structures,” “classroom collectivity,” and “subjective understanding”. Drawing on complexity science, we argue that these phenomena are nested in one another and that they obey similar dynamics, albeit on very different time scales. We conjecture (1) that a particular fluency with these four aspects is important for mathematics teaching and (2) that these aspects might serve as appropriate emphases for courses in mathematics intended for teachers.     

Understanding gaps in research networks: using “spatial reasoning” as a window into the importance of networked educational research

This paper finds its origins in a multidisciplinary research group’s efforts to assemble a review of research in order to better appreciate how “spatial reasoning” is understood and investigated across academic disciplines. We first collaborated to create a historical map of the development of spatial reasoning across key disciplines over the last century. The map informed the structure of our citation search and oriented an examination of connection across disciplines. Next, we undertook a network analysis that was based on highly cited articles in a broad range of domains. Several connection gaps—that is, apparent blockages, one-way flows, and other limitations on communications among disciplines—were identified in our network analysis, and it was apparent that these connection gaps may be frustrating efforts to understand the conceptual complexity and the educational significance of spatial reasoning. While these gaps occur between the academic disciplines that we evaluated, we selected a few examples for closer analysis. To illustrate how this lack of flow can limit development of the field of mathematics education, we selected cases where it is evident that researchers in mathematics education are not incorporating the important work of mathematicians, psychologists, and neuroscientists—and vice versa. Ultimately, we argue, a more pronounced emphasis on transdisciplinary (versus multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary) research might be timely, and perhaps even necessary, in the evolution of educational research.     

University-based child development laboratory programs: Emerging issues and challenges

University-based child development laboratory programs have a long and rich history of significant contributions to the early childhood education field, yet many are being threatened by cutbacks and/or closures. This paper identifies emerging issues and challenges facing lab schools nationwide as they attempt to build support for their programs. Recommendations for strengthening the roles lab programs play in the early childhood field are outlined based on these issues and challenges.     

In-Class Simulation of Pooling Safety Stock

In managing business process flows, safety stock can be used to protect against stockouts due to demand variability. When more than one location is involved, the concept of aggregation enables the pooling of demands and associated inventories, resulting in improved service levels without increasing the total level of safety stock. This pooling of safety stock can be done physically by consolidating inventory in one location, or by using virtual centralization, where inventories are kept at decentralized locations, but information is centralized. In teaching the concept of pooling safety stock, a simple in‐class simulation can be helpful in demonstrating why the approach works. The approach presented here involves operations for a company where total product demand is constant, but there are two products and product mix can vary. The simulation can also be implemented using an electronic spreadsheet for classes that are taught on the Internet. A quiz was given to two sections, one that experienced the simulation and one that did not. A comparison of the results from the quiz provided evidence of the effectiveness of the simulation in helping students understand the impact of pooling safety stock. In addition, a brief anonymous survey that was administered in the section that had the simulation provided further support for the effectiveness of the simulation.     

The sociology of policy change within international organisations: beyond coercive and normative perspectives – towards circuits of power

ABSTRACT

For international organisations in the global education policy field, legitimacy is based in large part on the supposed techno-rational basis of these organisations and their ability to credibly produce knowledge and policy expertise. However, as the present article demonstrates, there are clearly a range of macro–micro organisational dynamics driving the production of knowledge and the policy ideas that are advanced. By revealing the way that a particular policy emerged and was promoted within the World Bank, this article seeks to expose the way that policy innovation is produced by the iterative interplay of agentic activity and particular organisational circumstances – and how this process is used to maintain and extend the influence of international organisations and the individuals who represent them. By drawing on Stewart Clegg’s ‘circuits of power’ approach, we seek to theorise the internal dynamics of international organisations, and, in so doing, to move beyond the dominant coercive and normative perspectives.     

The double-edged sword: Critical reflections on traditional and modern technology in outdoor education

The outdoor education experience continues to be influenced by a proliferation of modern technological innovations, most of which have been accepted and even embraced by educators with little inquiry. Seldom do instructors of outdoor programmes consider the impact that modern techniques and equipment can have upon students' learning. This paper argues that in an unexamined adoption of this technology, some of the potential positive impacts for participants can be compromised, including a direct and meaningful connection to the natural world. As such, modern technology has become a possible mediating influence for participants in outdoor education programmes. The paper examines some of the pedagogical issues of modern technology as a mediator of experience as well as several elements of educating in the outdoors with traditional technology. Woven into the discussion is the question of whether modern technology encourages more people to become involved in outdoor activities or merely works toward the separation of humans from the rest of nature.     

Causes and consequences of student evaluation of instruction

Student evaluation of course quality was examined as an intervening variable in a path model with seven input variables and the following two output variables: (1) whether students would recommend the course to others, and (2) students' plans to take more courses in the discipline. Student evaluation of the lecturer was the most powerful input variable for the intervening variable course rating. Class format, defined as lecture or lecture with small groups, did not affect course ratingper se but did relate to students' attitudes toward taking more courses in the discipline. Lecturer and textbook evaluation had significant independent effects on whether the student would recommend the course to others. The major implication for university departments is that quality of instruction in introductory courses has impact on future enrollment plans.     

Federal funding and the rate and direction of inventive activity

Leveraging a new measure of patent citation trees (Corredoira and Banerjee, 2015), we demonstrate that research funded by the federal government is associated with more active and diverse technological trajectories. Our findings tie government funding to breakthrough inventions. The differences are especially evident at the upper percentiles of the distribution of long term patent influence and stem primarily from research conducted outside the federal government and sponsored by the DOD, HHS and NSF. Government funded patents are inputs into a broader range of technologies. Additional analyses indicate that federal programs invest in some technological areas that private corporations eschew, and federally funded university patents are in different technological classes than non-federally funded university patents. In this sense, the government may play an irreplaceable role in the rate and direction of inventive activity.“Generally speaking, the scientific agencies of Government are not so concerned with immediate practical objectives as are the laboratories of industry nor, on the other hand, are they as free to explore any natural phenomena without regard to possible economic applications as are the educational and private research institutions.” - Vannevar Bush, Science the Endless Frontier”, 1945.     

Multiple methodologies: using community-based participatory research and decolonizing methodologies in Kenya

In this project, we examined the development of a sustainable inclusive education system in western Kenya by combining community-based participatory research (CBPR) and decolonizing methodologies. Through three cycles of qualitative interviews with stakeholders in inclusive education, participants explained what they saw as foundational components of how to create more inclusive primary school classrooms utilizing existing school and community resources. The combination of CBPR and decolonizing methodologies, along with other project factors ultimately led to more inclusive placements for primary students with disabilities. We highlight this increase enrollment of students with disabilities in primary schools with excerpts from qualitative interviews with participants. In addition to the increase of the number of students with disabilities accessing schools for the first time, we found many methodological tensions inherent in this research. Such challenges included: researcher positionality, researcher outsider status, decolonizing approaches to language, and disseminating results in meaningful, ethical, and culturally appropriate ways.