Quality of education and student earnings

When a university increases expenditures in an attempt to improve quality, a natural question for social policy is raised: is the improvement worth the cost? One partial measure of “worth” in this context is given by earnings of graduates: will those earnings rise by enough to pay a reasonable return on the investment in higher quality? The question is hard to answer by statistical means: universities of higher quality have better reputations which allow them to select students who are themselves of higher quality; so in trying to measure the relation between earnings and university quality, quality of the school may be confounded with quality of the students. Recently, however, several large data sets have been made available which give sufficient information on the students' own backgrounds, and on their later earning, that we can hope to disentangle the effect on earnings of the school from that of the student himself. This article summarizes the results of several such studies, including our own work. The verdict to date is that the relation between “quality”, however measured, and earnings is significant, and that expenditures to improve quality are worth the cost, even when “worth” is measured narrowly as higher earnings for graduates.     

Teachers’ appraisals of adjectives relating to mathematics tasks

Curricular implementations are unlikely to deliver the anticipated benefits for mathematics learners if written guidance to teachers is interpreted and enacted differently from the ways that policymakers and curriculum designers intend. One way in which this could happen is in relation to the mathematics tasks that teachers deploy in the classroom. Teachers and curriculum designers have developed an extensive vocabulary for describing tasks, using adjectives such as ‘rich’, ‘open’, ‘real-life’, ‘engaging’ and so on. But do teachers have a shared understanding of what these adjectives mean when they are applied to mathematics tasks? In study 1, we investigated teachers’ appraisals of adjectives used to describe mathematics tasks, finding that task appraisals vary on seven dimensions, which we termed engagement, demand, routineness, strangeness, inquiry, context and interactivity. In study 2, focusing on the five most prominent dimensions, we investigated whether teachers have a shared understanding of the meaning of adjectives when applied to mathematics tasks. We found that there was some agreement about inquiry and context, some disagreement about routineness and clear disagreement about engagement and demand. We conclude that at least some adjectives commonly used to describe tasks are interpreted very differently by different teachers. Implications for how tasks might be discussed meaningfully by teachers, teacher educators and curriculum designers are highlighted.     

Child emotional aggression and abuse: definitions and prevalence

Objective

Research on and intervention for child emotional abuse and emotional aggression toward children have been severely hampered because there have been no agreed-upon, clinically usable definitions.

Methods

We have (a) proposed and field-tested a set of criteria to operationally define child emotional abuse for clinical settings and (b) used these criteria to design a parent-report measure of parental emotional aggression and child emotional abuse that could be used in research. In this paper, we review the development and field trials of these criteria for making substantiation decisions.

Results

Agreement between master reviewers and field decisions was extremely high in a 5-site development trial (96% agreement, κ = .89) and a 41-site dissemination trial (90% agreement, κ = .73). We compare these criteria to other research criteria in the literature. We then present data collected using a self-report measure designed to parallel these criteria from an anonymous online survey of US Air Force personnel and their spouses. The final sample (N = 52,780) was weighted to be representative of the United States civilian population. The prevalence of parents’ emotionally aggressive acts was much higher than the prevalence of emotional abuse (acts plus impact), but rates of parents’ acts of emotional aggression were lower than those typically reported in the literature. Additional analyses tested for differential effects due to gender of perpetrator (i.e., mothers or fathers), age of victim, and clustering within families. These factors did not drive rates of aggression or abuse.

Conclusions

In sum, the criteria developed and proposed appear to support reliable clinical decision making regarding child emotional abuse and can be translated to research survey tools that better capture the continuum of parents’ emotional aggression and child emotional abuse than the measures that are currently available, advancing the state of the science with respect to child emotional abuse.     

Modeling the development of written language

Alternative models of the structure of individual and developmental differences of written composition and handwriting fluency were tested using confirmatory factor analysis of writing samples provided by first- and fourth-grade students. For both groups, a five-factor model provided the best fit to the data. Four of the factors represented aspects of written composition: macro-organization (use of top sentence and number and ordering of ideas), productivity (number and diversity of words used), complexity (mean length of T-unit and syntactic density), and spelling and punctuation. The fifth factor represented handwriting fluency. Handwriting fluency was correlated with written composition factors at both grades. The magnitude of developmental differences between first grade and fourth grade expressed as effect sizes varied for variables representing the five constructs: large effect sizes were found for productivity and handwriting fluency variables; moderate effect sizes were found for complexity and macro-organization variables; and minimal effect sizes were found for spelling and punctuation variables.     

Evidence for the effectiveness of visual supports in helping children with disabilities access the mainstream primary school curriculum

Removing barriers to learning for children with mild to moderate disabilities in mainstream primary classrooms calls for creative approaches that exploit the cognitive and sensory strengths of each child. Although their efficacy has not been fully explored, pictorial, symbolic and written supports are often used with the intention of helping children access the curriculum by reducing anxiety, confusion and memory limitations both at school and at home. This paper reports a qualitative study carried out in New Zealand, which designed, delivered and evaluated a coordinated home and school visual supports programme for 23 children with moderate special education needs aged between 5 years and 7 months and 11 years and 10 months. Interview and questionnaire feedback from parents, teachers and the children themselves suggests the visual supports reduced anxiety and frustration, provided structured reminders of tasks and equipment needed, and permitted greater involvement in home and classroom routines. They also suggested a positive impact on distractibility, task completion, classroom independence and perseverance. It is suggested that while the visual supports were helpful, the attention to the child's needs across contexts contributed importantly to the success of the programme. Directions for further research are outlined.     

An improvement index to quantify the evolution of performance in field events

The mean of the top 25 performances in 8 men’s and 5 women’s field events since the 1890s showed that performances increased dramatically after the Second World War II and subsequently plateaued during the late twentieth century. A performance improvement index, developed on the basis of work done, was set to 100% in 1948. The underlying rise found in all events was modelled using an exponential function with a superposition of steps and linear changes to account for the introduction of rule changes, drugs testing and the introduction of new technologies. The performance improvement index in throwing events increased to 140.9% compared with 125.8% in jumping events, and women’s performance improvement always exceeded that of men’s. Around half of all events were shown to have reached 99.9% of their predicted limit with a majority reaching it within the next 25 years. It was concluded that performance will only change in the future if an intervention takes place: this could be the emergence of a new technology, a rule change or a new athlete population.     

Analysis of the final comments provided by a knowledgeable other in lesson study

Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education - Lesson study has been implemented in schools around the world as a method of professional development for teachers. Lesson study consists of five steps,...     

Work‐based Learning and Universities in the U.K.: a review of current practice and trends

This article is concerned primarily with university‐related work‐based learning in the UK. The authors trace the development of work‐based learning from its early days to the wide variety of styles and scale currently being practised. In the wake of the Dearing Report, they review the experience of work experience and sandwich courses; the move from work experience to work‐based learning; work‐based learning for those in work; and work‐based learning through technological transfer. The authors identify key variables which appear to determine the nature of different styles of work‐based learning including the tension between the twin purposes of international competitiveness and student personal development, and the willingness of the universities to move from their traditional control of the curriculum to allow a greater variety of learning experiences. The authors focus on the emergence of learner‐managed three‐way partnerships between the learner, the university, and the employer based on real‐time, work‐based projects as a way of reconciling economic benefit with personal development as purposes for work‐based learning. The article concludes by identifying some of the key educational issues which such schemes raise and identifies possible future directions in which they might develop.