Increasing Educational Attainment and Aspiration in an Underserved Community: The Perspective of Urban-Community Leaders

Latino students are significantly underrepresented in higher education. As the largest and fastest growing racial/ethnic population in the US, this is cause for national concern. Additionally, this rapid population growth is a call for community and school leaders from underserved communities to assess their service areas and focus on interventions to increase the college-going rates of youth. Maywood is a city located in Southeast Los Angeles. Like many other urban areas, Maywood’s largely Latino population is underrepresented in higher education. This research focused on interviewing Maywood’s community and school leaders (n = 24) to gain insight into their perceptions of their role and responsibility to address issues surrounding their community’s low levels of educational attainment. A key theme emerged revealing that leaders understand their community’s educational issues but do not see their role as leaders to directly address this issue to build a college-going culture. Implications for practice in strengthening community partnerships and developing a college-going culture are provided and a series of recommendations for the creation of a college-going culture are discussed.     

Working with ‘Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning’ (SEAL): associations with school ethos,pupil social experiences,attendance, and attainment

A programme of resources and activities relating to ‘Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning’ (SEAL) has been rolled out nationally to primary and secondary schools in the UK, but we know little about how variations in the implementation of this work relate to key indicators of school success. In the present study, a team of experienced school advisors used a semi‐structured observation and interview protocol to rate various aspects of the implementation of SEAL in 49 primary and secondary schools. A total of 2242 pupils in 29 of these schools completed measures of social experiences and school ethos. School‐level attainment and attendance statistics were collated for all participating schools. Analysis revealed that ratings indicative of a whole‐school universal approach to SEAL were significantly associated with school ethos, which in turn mediated associations with pupils’ social experiences, overall school attainment, and persistent absence. Thematic analysis of the advisors’ records illuminated key dimensions and exemplars of whole‐school implementation. Results highlight the role of school ethos in systematically connecting whole‐school practices relating to SEAL with key indicators of school success. Directions for further longitudinal work to elucidate specific causal mechanisms are discussed.     

Using Stakeholder Input to Guide Cultural and Contextual Adaptations for a Universal School-Based Intervention

The Urban Review - Strong student–teacher relationships foster students’ social, emotional, and academic development, particularly for students from marginalized racial/ethnic groups....     

Which Technique is most Effective for Learning Declarative Concepts—Provided Examples,Generated Examples,or Both?

Students in many courses are commonly expected to learn declarative concepts, which are abstract concepts denoted by key terms with short definitions that can be applied to a variety of scenarios as reported by Rawson et al. (Educational Psychology Review 27:483–504, 2015). Given that declarative concepts are common and foundational in many courses, an important question arises: What are the most effective techniques for learning declarative concepts? The current research competitively evaluated the effectiveness of various example-based learning techniques for learning declarative concepts, with respect to both long-term learning and efficiency during study. In experiment 1, students at a large, Midwestern university were asked to learn 10 declarative concepts in social psychology by studying provided examples (instances of concepts that are provided to students illustrate how the concept can be applied), generating examples (instances of concepts that the student generates on his or her own to practice applying the concept), or by receiving a combination of alternating provided examples and generated examples. Two days later, students completed final tests (an example classification test and a definition cued recall test). Experiment 2 replicated and extended findings from experiment 1. The extension group was a variation of the combination group, in which participants were simultaneously presented with a provided example while generating an example. In both experiments, long-term learning and study efficiency were greater following the study of provided examples relative to the other example-based learning techniques.     

Flowery math: a case for heterodiscoursia in mathematics problems solving in recognition of students’ authorial agency

In an innovative, progressive school, students were asked to solve a fairly routine mathematical problem using real money in a “real-world” scenario. Even though the school values students’ ideas, the reaction of the teacher to one student’s alternative modelling of the problem suggests that he was expecting a particular answer to be provided using routine mathematical models and thinking while not being interested in exploring the student’s unexpected alternative. We place his reasoning for doing so within broad pedagogical discourses that we think define the “allowable” responses of teachers and students in ways that inhibit meaning-making for both. These broad discourses are defined as the progressive constructivist approach, the scaffolding discursive approach, the situation modelling approach and the dialogic approach. We consider the advantages and the potential consequences each might bring to the case. We suggest that extensive consideration of pedagogical discourses in mathematics classes must be reconsidered both for how we understand students’ mathematical meaning-making and how we construct student agency in relationship to culture, whether as apprentices or authors.     

Integrating Scaffolding Strategies Into Technology-Enhanced Assessments of English Learners: Task Types and Measurement Models

This article investigates ways to improve the assessment of English learner students' English language proficiency given the current movement of creating next-generation English language proficiency assessments in the Common Core era. In particular, this article discusses the integration of scaffolding strategies, which are prevalently utilized as an instructional strategy for English learner students, into the design of technology-enhanced assessment tasks. The article includes sample tasks and student responses to illustrate the design of scaffolding assessment tasks and their potential to increase the accuracy of measuring students' English language proficiency. We also explore possible scoring and psychometric models for the scaffolding tasks in large-scale standardized assessments.