Examining relationships among elementary schools' contexts,leadership, instructional practices,and added-year outcomes: a regression discontinuity approach

This study proposes and tests a multilevel structural model of school context, composition, and school leadership on school instructional practices and outcomes in elementary schools in a western state in the United States. We focus on direct and indirect relationships implied in our proposed model using an “added year of schooling” in reading and math as our primary school-level outcomes. Added-year effects, which result from a regression discontinuity design, represent a relatively new approach for describing how school factors influence outcomes. Our results suggest that, net of context and composition factors, improvement-focused school leadership directly affected subsequent school instructional practices and, in turn, instructional practices affected added-year outcomes. We discuss the findings in terms of their theoretical and practical implications for conducting further educational effectiveness research.     

Analysis of Large-Scale Secondary Data in Higher Education Research: Potential Perils Associated with Complex Sampling Designs

Most large-scale secondary data sets used in higher education research (e.g., NPSAS or BPS) are constructed using complex survey sample designs where the population of interest is stratified on a number of dimensions and oversampled within certain of these strata. Moreover, these complex sample designs often cluster lower level units (e.g., students) within higher level units (e.g., colleges) to achieve efficiencies in the sampling process. Ignoring oversampling (unequal probability of selection) in complex survey designs presents problems when trying to make inferences—data from these designs are, in their raw form, admittedly nonrepresentative of the population to which they are designed to generalize. Ignoring the clustering of observations in these sampling designs presents a second set of problems when making inferences about variability in the population and testing hypotheses and usually leads to an increased likelihood of committing Type I errors (declaring something as an effect when in fact it is not). This article presents an extended example using complex sample survey data to demonstrate how researchers can address problems associated with oversampling and clustering of observations in these designs.     

Organizational and professional socialization: its impact on the performance of new administrators

While interest in holding administrators accountable for school effectiveness has increased over the past decade, the quality of evaluation systems and corresponding assessments of their performance has not. Few empirical studies have focused on evaluating the performance of new administrators as they carry out important functions of their role, so little is known about the process of socialization and how it may affect the beginning administrator's job performance. The purpose of this study was to propose and test a model of socialization factors that may be related to the evaluation of new elementary and secondary assistant principals' job performance. These factors were grouped into three major sets: individual demographics, professional socialization (i.e., type of administrative preparation), and organizational socialization (e.g., school context). Results of the LISREL covariance structure analysis supported the proposed theoretical model, indicating that organizational socialization directly affected administrative performance. In contrast, the effect of professional socialization on performance was mostly indirect. Moreover, independent of socialization, women in the study were rated as more effective than men. While most of the variation in performance observed was very likely due to individual differences, the findings suggest the importance of considering how an individual is socialized into the profession and the specific school when appraising performance.     

Modern pentathlon and the First World War: when athletes and soldiers met to practise martial manliness

In the nationalistic atmosphere of the early twentieth century, a nurturing medium for sports practising martial manliness abounded throughout Europe. This framework supported the invention of a new multi-disciplinary sport, aided by Baron Pierre de Coubertin himself: modern pentathlon. Though the idea of a new form of pentathlon was already born in 1894, it took 30 years, until Paris 1924, to establish modern pentathlon within the Olympic Games. This study is concerned with the reasons for that delay. It will be assessed whether the active military preparations around the First World War and the contemporary image of masculinity had a decisive influence on the early history of modern pentathlon. By including historical documents from the IOC archives in Lausanne, Switzerland, the research office for military history in Potsdam, Germany, and the LA84 Foundation in Los Angeles, USA, as well as literature on gender, military sport and Olympic history, this study offers an entirely new view on the early history of a sport that was born in an atmosphere of glorifying manliness and apparent militarism. The history of modern pentathlon thereby provides a particularly appropriate area for the analysis of connections between sport, militarism and masculinity. It was not by chance that the implementation of a combined sport, which included besides swimming and running the three military disciplines of shooting, fencing and horse riding, arose in a pre-war context. Though in 1912 the Great War had not yet begun, the awareness of an upcoming battle was rising and led to a higher attention to Coubertin's almost forgotten assumption of a new sport. In 1924 the advantages were finally admitted on two sides: the army recruited modern pentathletes as future military officers; the sports community appointed skilled officers as successful competitors. Thus the lobby for an Olympic recognition of modern pentathlon was found.     

Comparison of Traditional Instruction on Reflection and Rotation in a Nepalese High School with an ICT-Rich,Student-Centered,Investigative Approach

A teacher-centered, examination-driven instructional approach emphasizing knowledge of facts and standard methods through drill-and-practice without use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is still dominant in Nepalese high schools. In this article, we present a classroom study in which the traditional instructional approach has been replaced by an ICT-rich, student-centered, investigative approach in the context of teaching and learning basic concepts of reflection and rotation. Here, ICT refers to dynamic geometry software. Through a pretest-posttest control and experimental group research design, we compared the effects of both approaches on students’ understanding. A test was designed and used for investigating students’ alternative conceptions of reflection and rotation. The results showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group and there were indications of a lasting effect. Qualitative analysis indicated that all distinctive aspects of the experimental approach had positive effects on the students’ performance and learning experience. This study can also be considered as an evidence-based example of how one can, with limited ICT facilities, still achieve improvements in teaching and learning at a public high school in a developing country.