Can high stakes national testing improve instruction: reexamining conventional wisdom

In this paper, the authors draw on recent international experience to assess the success of five propositions for how high stakes national testing can improve classroom instruction and, ultimately, raise student achievement. Findings indicate that testing can be an effective mechanism for improving instructional practice, but its success is not ensured. It has failed as often as it has succeeded, usually because those implementing the strategy failed to understand the intermediate conditions that had to be met for changes in test content, format, or use to have the desired impact on teachers' classroom practice.     

Using research to promote equity within education systems: Possibilities and barriers

This article provides an evaluative account of its authors’ involvement in three major national improvement initiatives. Set in the context of three of the countries that make up the UK, these developments were focused in particular on the promotion of educational equity. Unusually, the analysis provided compares evidence collected from an insider perspective with data generated through independent evaluations. In so doing, it considers how research and researchers can contribute to system change by using research evidence to influence policy-makers and practitioners at all levels of the system. The article argues that this requires the coming together of different perspectives in a process of social learning and knowledge creation within particular settings. This means that researchers have to overcome a number of barriers related to social, cultural and political factors. They therefore have to develop skills in creating collaborative partnerships that span boundaries between actors who have different types of professional experience. It is argued that researchers also need to mobilise support in dealing with the pressures that this involves. The article concludes with the presentation of a strategic framework that can be used to think about how school systems can be helped to make better use of research knowledge.     

Inservice Teacher Development in Mathematical Problem Solving

A humanistic perspective provided the basis for a problem-solving oriented teacher inservice program. The program was designed to provide opportunities that allowed elementary teachers to focus on personal experience as a way of achieving self-understanding and a way of reconstructing their personal meanings about problem solving and problem-solving instruction. Impact of the program was studied through interviews with the six participants and observations of their teaching. The results indicated that the program had a positive effect on the participants' beliefs about and teaching of problem solving. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Experiences of paraprofessionals in US preschool special education and general education classrooms

A substantial challenge confronting public education systems across the world is the employment and retention of high‐quality paraprofessionals (also known as teaching assistants and educational assistants). The current study expands upon previous research by employing a mixed methods design to examine the relationship between paraprofessionals' perceptions of their responsibilities and the corresponding satisfaction and issues relating to their job in the USA. Analytic induction through the generation of themes was used to analyse the qualitative data and revealed that paraprofessionals perceive or demonstrate issues relating to three primary domains: confusion of responsibilities in different contexts, relational power dynamics between paraprofessionals and teachers, and satisfaction based on both monetary compensation and recognition. In addition to the qualitative findings, researchers designed the paraprofessional perception survey, a quantitative survey measuring the concept of paraprofessional perceptions relating to their job. Results from the survey analysis revealed similar findings across domains. Additional results, practice implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

A Longitudinal Investigation of the Influence of Literacy-related Skills,Reading Self-perceptions,and Inattentive Behaviours on the Development of Literacy Learning Difficulties

Although recent research favours a bidirectional relationship between reading problems and inattentive behaviours, the risk factors that set in motion these reciprocally interacting relations remain unclear. One hundred and fifty-two new school entrants who took part in a seven-year longitudinal study of literacy development were assessed on literacy-related skills, reading self-perceptions, behaviour problems, and literacy achievement. Results revealed highly consistent and relatively robust reciprocal relationships between literacy achievement and both inattentive behaviours and reading self-perceptions, but not between inattentive behaviours and reading self-perceptions. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that early reading problems are predictive of both inattentive behaviours and poor reading self-perceptions which become established and predict further impairments in reading in a reciprocally interacting manner over time.