Variation in Effectiveness Between Private and Public Schools: The Impact of School and Family Networks*

Abstract

Building upon the assumption that cohesion between different levels of the school is essential to the schools’ effectiveness, the hypothesis is tested that a close kinship between school and parental community causes a positive effect on student outcomes in primary schools. Recent theories regarding the effects of ‘functional communities’ on academic achievement mainly focus on the characteristics of the parental community that surrounds a school. Recognizing, however, that schools differ regarding their responsiveness to the role of parents and other actors around the school, our expectation is that a definition of functional community which comprises interactions between characteristics of the parental network around the school and the governance structure of the school offers a better explanation of variation in student achievement. Based on a national sample of 90 schools for primary education in the Netherlands, our analysis shows that the differences in math achievement for public and private primary schools are mediated by characteristics at both the family and the institutional level. It also indicates that characteristics at the institutional level are conditional for the effects of parental networks around schools.

     

Developing and Implementing a Moodle-Ares Integration for Physical and Electronic Reserves at a Small Liberal Arts College

Reacting to the popularity of reserves and as part of an ongoing merger of circulation, interlibrary loan, and reserves into a fully integrated access services department, DePauw University purchased and implemented Atlas Systems’ Ares reserves software. As part of that implementation, a campus programmer designed interface integration between Moodle, the campus course management software, and Ares. Despite setbacks and complications along the way, the implementation was successful; both faculty and students have provided positive feedback, and staff members are able to process material faster and more accurately. We hope to deepen Ares's integration with both Moodle and with our integrated library system and public catalog as time goes on.     

REFLECTION IN EDUCATION: A KANTIAN EPISTEMOLOGY

A bstract .  As even its defenders admit, reflection in education suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity. In this essay, Henk Procee provides a philosophical analysis of the central concepts in this domain. In the current literature, these concepts are usually taken from the pragmatic school of John Dewey and from critical social theory associated with Jürgen Habermas. In contrast, Procee argues that Kant's philosophy incorporates ideas better suited to understanding reflection in education — particularly through his distinction between understanding ("Verstand") and judgment ("Urteilskraft"), a distinction that supports an epistemology that accepts the special nature of reflection as judgment as opposed to formal learning (which, in Kant's analysis, is part of understanding). In addition, Procee discusses some consequences for the aims and methods of reflection in education.     

Chemical air filtration in archives and libraries reconsidered

The implementation of chemical filtration in air-conditioning systems in archive and library repositories has become standard practice for heritage institutions in many countries. This practice is codified in official standards with general reference to a substantial body of scientific publications on the effects of air pollutants on paper materials. In this paper we report the application of a well-established decision analysis approach elaborating an integral cost-benefit perspective to provide decision support to four European national heritage institutions confronted with dilemmas in connection to chemical air filtration. Available scientific evidence for air pollution induced damage of paper material is reviewed and weighed against financial and environmental costs of air pollution control. Exposure of paper to both indoor and outdoor generated air pollutants at typical concentration levels observed within storage areas is expected to cause minimal to no additional yellowing and embrittlement, while the costs of chemical air filtration are significant. From a cost-benefit perspective the use of chemical air filtration in typical library and archive repositories is therefore discouraged.     

Attachment Predicts College Students’ Knowledge,Attitudes, and Skills for Working With Infants,Toddlers, and Families

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: Adults’ attitudes about attachment relationships are central to how they perceive and respond to children. However, little is known about how attachment styles are related to teachers’ attitudes toward and interactions with infants and toddlers. From a survey of 207 students taking early childhood (EC) courses at 4 U.S. universities, we report relations among students’ attachment styles and their (a) career goals, (b) attitudes about caring for and educating infants and young children, and (c) interaction skills for responding in developmentally supportive ways. Overall, attachment security was positively associated with career goals focused on working with younger children, knowledge about infant/toddler development, attitudes that acknowledge the importance of adult support in children’s development, and developmentally supportive interaction skills. Students who scored high on attachment fearfulness minimized the importance of adults in children’s lives, minimized the importance of the early years for later learning, and endorsed strict and controlling forms of child guidance. Practice or Policy: A conceptual mediation model linking a path from attachment to caregiving skill through knowledge and attitudes is articulated. We propose a person-centered pedagogy for infant/toddler professional preparation that provides opportunities for reflection on one’s own attachment and its effects on work with young children.     

How individual interest influences situational interest and how both are related to knowledge acquisition: A microanalytical investigation

The extent to which a student experiences situational interest during a learning task is dependent on at least two factors: (1) external stimuli in the learning environment that arouse interest and (2) internal dispositions, such as individual interest. The objective of the present study was to disentangle how both factors influence situational interest during task engagement. Two data sets were collected from primary school science (N = 186) and secondary school history students (N = 71). Path analysis was used to examine the influence of individual interest on seven situational interest measurements and knowledge acquisition. The results suggest that individual interest has only a significant influence on situational interest at the beginning of a task and then its influence fades. In addition, individual interest is not a significant predictor of learning. Only situational interest predicts knowledge acquisition. Implications of these findings for interest research are discussed.     

Assessment in a problem-based medical curriculum

The problem-based learning curriculum differs from a conventional curriculum with regard to the cumulation of achieved knowledge. Instead of successively ordered topics, the student must learn to solve problems which are related to several topics. It is assumed that by the end of the course the student has mastered the intended goals. Comparisons of problem-based and conventional curricula regarding academic achievement show that differences between curricula-outcomes are very small, if there are any differences at all (Schmidt et al., 1987). But summative evaluation is not enough. The student and the institute are interested also in the growth of the student during the course. For this purpose a progress test is used.The aim of this paper is to describe how a problem-based curriculum is evaluated. It accents the progress test.     

Audiotape feedback for essays in distance education

Students who were required to write three short essays for a university level course on photochemistry at the Open university of the Netherlands received either audio-cassette or written feedback on their essays. The students receiving the audio feedback described their experience as personal, enjoyable, complete and clear. Those receiving written feedback described their experience as adequate. The amount of time spent by instructors supplying the feedback differed minimally (X_audio=53 minutes per student; X_written=49 minutes) with the major difference lying in the amount of time spent in preparation. This difference, possibly attributable to novelty with audio as a mode for feedback, was not significant. The amount communicated to the students with audio feedback (per instructor) was significantly greater than the amount communicated with written feedback. There was no difference in the final grades for the two groups of students.Paul A. Kirschner received his Masters in Educational Psychology from the State University of Amsterdam. He has worked as educational technologist at the Open university of the Netherlands since 1983, primarily with the faculties of Natural Sciences and Engineering. Henk van den Brink received his Masters in Educational Psychology from the State University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He has worked at the Open university of the Netherlands since 1984 as an educational technologist, primarily with the Faculty of Economics. Marthie Meester received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the State University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She has worked since 1983 at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Open university of the Netherlands as course team chair for a number of undergraduate and graduate level chemistry courses.     

The relationship between student-generated learning issues and self-study in problem-based learning

A major assumption of problem-based learning (PBL) is that learning issues, generated by students while discussing a problem, are used as guides for self-directed learning activities. This assumption, though basic to PBL, has never been tested. At the University of Limburg, the Netherlands, two procedures have been developed that reflect the extent to which students are able to identify important learning issues given a particular problem, and whether subsequent, independent, learning corresponds with these learning issues. The focus of the present article will be on the relationship between the two. We have explored to what extent student-generated learning issues are a major factor influencing the nature of students' self-study, or whether other factors may be involved in decisions on what to study and how much time to spend on topics selected. First, the production of learning issues was studied and represented as the percentage of overlap between learning issues raised by students and pre-set faculty objectives for each problem. The second procedure consisted of the administration of a Topic Checklist (TOC) which purports to measure students' actual self-directed learning activities. The TOC consists of a list of topics specifying the intended course content. Students were asked to indicate on a five-point Likert scale how much time they had spent studying each topic and to what degree they had mastered that topic. Third, learning issues and TOC topics were compared directly in a qualitative sense. Comparisons between the procedures revealed that a low proportion of variance of TOC scores could be predicted from the percentage of faculty objectives identified for each problem and the direct match between learning issues and TOC scores. It is concluded that scrutinizing student-generated learning issues and topics covered during self-study may provide information about what content is covered by students in tutorial groups. The discrepancy between the results of the measurements suggests, however, that learning issues produced during group discussion are not the sole source on which students base self-study decisions. Several other factors may be involved, such as tutor guidance, content already covered in previous units, issues raised during sessions with resource persons, and the nature of the learning resources available. Therefore, the relationship between learning issues and content covered during self-study is not as straightforward as is suggested.