Meaningful assessment activities

Planning and organizing the young child's curriculum and classroom environment is an essential component in the early childhood education program. Every fall in the USA millions of children begin and continue to participate in formal school settings. These children are all unique and differ in cognitive and social maturity.Jeffrey I. Gelfer is Program Manager of children's services of Easter Seal Society in Sarasota, Florida. Peggy G. Perkins is an Educational Consultant in Sarasota, Florida.     

The Effect of Stakes on Accountability Test Scores and Pass Rates

Students may not fully demonstrate their knowledge and skills on accountability tests if there are no stakes attached to individual performance. In that case, assessment results may not accurately reflect student achievement, so the validity of score interpretations and uses suffers. For this study, matched samples of students taking state accountability tests under low-stakes and high-stakes conditions were used to estimate the effect of stakes on test performance and subsequent pass rates. Across five assessments, expected performance was greater under high-stakes conditions, with effect sizes ranging from 0.41 to 0.50 standard deviations and with students of lower ability tending to be slightly more affected by stakes. Depending on where cut scores were set, pass rates differed by up to 30% when comparing the low- and high-stakes conditions.     

Enriching Professional Learning Networks: A Framework for Identification,Reflection, and Intention

Many educators in the 21st century utilize social media platforms to enrich professional learning networks (PLNs). PLNs are uniquely personalized networks that can support participatory and continuous learning. Social media services can mediate professional engagements with a wide variety of people, spaces and tools that might not otherwise be available. Teachers who once might have had access to only a handful of colleagues can now employ Facebook, Twitter and other mediums to learn from peers across the globe at any time. However, educators face numerous challenges building and enhancing their PLNs for professional growth. To support educators in the development of their PLNs, we present a framework for PLN enrichment. Rooted in our research and experiences with PLNs, this flexible framework is designed to help educators reflect upon how they might continuously improve their PLN experiences and outcomes.     

A comparison of freshmen and seniors on general and specific essay tests of critical thinking

There is much interest in the impact of college on critical thinking ability. Freshmen and seniors at a mideastern university were given either a general instruction or multiple specific instructions for critically evaluating one of two articles. All critiques were in essay form. Seniors provided more appropriate criticisms to both kinds of instructions for both articles. However, the absolute level of performance of seniors reflected major deficiencies in applying critical evaluation skills. It was concluded that while college seems to be having an impact, greater emphasis is needed on more directly teaching critical thinking skills in the classroom.     

Empirical Performance of Covariates in Education Observational Studies

This article summarizes results from 12 empirical evaluations of observational methods in education contexts. We look at the performance of three common covariate-types in observational studies where the outcome is a standardized reading or math test. They are: pretest measures, local geographic matching, and rich covariate sets with a strong theory of treatment selection. Overall, the review demonstrates that although the pretest often reduces bias in observational studies, it does not always eliminate it. Its performance depends on the pretest's correlation with treatment selection and the outcome, and whether preintervention trends are present. We also find that although local comparisons are prioritized for matching, its performance depends on whether comparable no-treatment cases are available. Otherwise, local comparisons may produce badly biased results. In cases where researchers have a strong theory of selection and rich covariate sets, observational methods perform well, but additional replication studies are needed. Finally, observational methods that rely on demographic covariates without a theory of selection rarely produce unbiased treatment effects. The article concludes by offering education researchers empirically based guidance on covariate selection in observational studies.     

Risk factors for infant maltreatment: a population-based study

CONTEXT: Of the approximately 900,000 children who were determined to be victims of abuse or neglect by US child protective services in 2002, the birth-to-3 age group had the highest rate of victimization (1.6%) and children younger than 1 accounted for the largest percentage of victims (9.6%). OBJECTIVE: To identify perinatal and sociodemographic risk factors associated with maltreatment of infants up to 1 year of age. DESIGN AND SETTING: Observational cohort study. PARTICIPANTS: 189,055 children born in 1996 in Florida. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Infant maltreatment, defined as a verified report of abuse, neglect, or threatened harm that occurred between day 3 of life and 1 year. RESULTS: 1,602 children (.85%) of the 1996 birth cohort had verified instances of maltreatment by age 1. Of 15 perinatal and sociodemographic variables studied, 11 were found to be significantly related to infant maltreatment. Five factors had adjusted relative risks (RR) of two or greater: Mother smoked during pregnancy (RR 2.8); more than two siblings (RR 2.7); Medicaid beneficiary (RR 2.1); unmarried marital status (RR 2.0); low birth weight infant (RR 2.0). Infants who had four of these five risk factors had a maltreatment rate seven times higher than the population average. CONCLUSIONS: Data on nearly all risk factors found to be significantly associated with infant maltreatment are available on the birth certificate. Such information can be incorporated into a population-based risk-assessment tool that could identify subpopulations at highest risk for infant maltreatment. Because resources are limited, these groups should be given priority for enrollment in child abuse prevention programs.     

Personality as a Predictor of First‐Semester Adjustment to College: The Mediational Role of Perceived Social Support

Personality was hypothesized to predict college adjustment because of the role of perceived social support. A sample of 111 freshmen completed measures of personality, perceived social support, and college adjustment twice in their 1st semester. Perceived social support mediated the relationships between 3 personality factors (Emotional Stability, Social Boldness, and Abstractedness) and college adjustment, highlighting perceived social support as a point of intervention to improve 1st‐semester students' college adjustment.     

Dynamical Patterns in the Development of Clapping

The development of a complex rhythmical behavior—clapping—is modeled using a formal, explicit model of coupled oscillator dynamics. Even though this behavior manifests a good deal of nonstationarity and high variability within and across subjects, results indicate that these properties may be dynamically modeled quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Results suggest that clapping goes through a less stable period of relative coordination between 3 and 7 years before more stable absolute coordination is achieved. Nevertheless, in that the clapping behavior is affected in highly predictable ways by inertial loading of the limbs, the same underlying dynamic seems responsible for the coordination of both the younger and older children. Developmentally, the behavior of the coordination variable (relative phase) changes from a nonconstant magnitude in younger clappers to a constant magnitude in older clappers. These results suggest that development of proficiency in rhythmic motor skills displays developmental changes that can be understood well in dynamical terms.     

The Role of Reform Curricular Materials in an Internship: The Case of Alice and Gregory

This report describes a case study of asecondary school mathematics internship wheremost of the elements of the internship ecologywere aligned with calls by the National Councilof Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM] for reform.Much research has been done on the lack ofimpact of teacher education programs on teacherclassroom behavior. Often this results fromdissonance between the philosophy and goals ofuniversity teacher education programs and thoseof schools. The case documented here offers aninstance of alignment between the universityprogram and the school internship site. Thefindings showed that within this supportiveatmosphere the reform curricular materialsbeing used in the classroom had a strong andlargely positive influence on the character ofthe internship experience, and on the intern'slearning. The form and content of the materials– Core-Plus Mathematics Project'sContemporary Mathematics in Context –supported reform-oriented development for theintern by providing particular foci to theplanning discussions between the intern and thementor. These areas of focus were: (a) themathematics content itself, (b) conceptualunderstanding as a main goal for instruction,and (c) the use of questioning as the bestmeans of guiding students to thatunderstanding. The findings highlight theimportance of developing reform-supportiveenvironments for intern teaching placements.