The role of schools in explaining individuals’ subject choices at age 14

Abstract

The subjects that young people study from age 14 onwards may have important consequences for their future academic and labour market outcomes. These decisions are shaped by the schools in which they find themselves. Schools also face constraints of their own. This paper explores the extent to which individuals’ decisions are affected by the school they attend and to what extent this is affected by the composition of schools in terms of academic attainment, gender, and socioeconomic background. We use multi-level variance decomposition models applied to administrative data on the subjects that young people in mainstream state-funded schools in England study between ages 14 and 16. Our results highlight the important role that constraints on schools play in subject choice decisions. We also note the particular role of attending a non-selective school within a selective schooling district.     

What makes for effective feedback: staff and student perspectives

Since the early 2010s the literature has shifted to view feedback as a process that students do where they make sense of information about work they have done, and use it to improve the quality of their subsequent work. In this view, effective feedback needs to demonstrate effects. However, it is unclear if educators and students share this understanding of feedback. This paper reports a qualitative investigation of what educators and students think the purpose of feedback is, and what they think makes feedback effective. We administered a survey on feedback that was completed by 406 staff and 4514 students from two Australian universities. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted on data from a sample of 323 staff with assessment responsibilities and 400 students. Staff and students largely thought the purpose of feedback was improvement. With respect to what makes feedback effective, staff mostly discussed feedback design matters like timing, modalities and connected tasks. In contrast, students mostly wrote that high-quality feedback comments make feedback effective – especially comments that are usable, detailed, considerate of affect and personalised to the student’s own work. This study may assist researchers, educators and academic developers in refocusing their efforts in improving feedback.     

Conditions that enable effective feedback

ABSTRACT

Despite an increasing focus on assessment feedback, educators continue to find that simply replicating an effective feedback practice from one context does not guarantee success in the next. There is a growing recognition that the contextual factors surrounding successful practices need to be considered. This article reports on a large-scale mixed methods project and proposes 12 conditions that enable successful feedback in higher education. The conditions were distilled from seven rich case studies through multiple stages of thematic analysis, case comparison and reliability checking. The conditions were also evaluated by surveying senior leaders of Australian universities. These conditions highlight the importance of carefully designing feedback processes, along with the need for addressing capacity and culture for feedback. This helps to explain why there are such variances in effective feedback across contexts, and offers insight into how it may be achieved.     

A model of student approaches to learning encompassing ways to influence and change approaches

The tems surface and deep are widely used to describe student approaches to studying and learning. Different writers have attributed different shades of meaning to the terms, as the categories have resulted from the work of a number of groups or individual researchers. There are greater divergences of opinion on the question of how students can be influenced to adopt either a surface or a deep approach. This paper attempts to synthesise some of the divergent positions into a simple model of student approaches to learning which concentrates on the ways that students may be influenced to adopt either surface or deep approaches. The model recognises the existence of predispositions to either deep or surface approaches, and the use of strategies for particular tasks. A number of contextual variables seem to influence students with a deep predisposition to adopt surface strategies. The transition between surface and deep predispositions is seen as difficult to influence, but three types of intervention are discussed.     

Professional development design considerations in climate change education: teacher enactment and student learning

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing society, and climate change educational models are emerging in response. This study investigates the implementation and enactment of a climate change professional development (PD) model for science educators and its impact on student learning. Using an intrinsic case study methodology, we focused analytic attention on how one teacher made particular pedagogical and content decisions, and the implications for student’s conceptual learning. Using anthropological theories of conceptual travel, we traced salient ideas through instructional delivery and into student reasoning. Analysis showed that students gained an increased understanding of the enhanced greenhouse effect and the implications of human activity on this enhanced effect at statistically significant levels and with moderate effect sizes. However, students demonstrated a limited, though non-significant gain on the likely effects of climate change. Student reasoning on the tangible actions to deal with these problems also remained underdeveloped, reflecting omissions in both PD and teacher enactment. We discuss implications for the emerging field of climate change education.     

自我调控学习的课堂教学设计理论

培养学生掌握自我调控学习的技能就是教给学生在未来社会生存的本领。本介绍了如何在课堂进行学科内容教学的同时进行自我调控学习策略的教学，并提出了一个在课堂教学环境下同时提高老师自我调控学习技能的新型教师专业学习模式：     

Improving the quality of primary science teaching through a pre-service course

This paper describes a study involving second and third year primary Diploma of Teaching students. It considers their discipline competence, their confidence in teaching particular topic areas and their views of the nature of science teaching in the classes in which they were placed during teaching rounds. It then describes attempts made within the science curriculum course to overcome particular problems. Specializations: Science teacher education, the practicum.     

The challenges of feedback in higher education

Abstract

Assessment feedback is one of the most important components of the learning process. However, student and educator dissatisfaction with feedback practices continues to remain a significant problem in higher education. To better understand the barriers to effective feedback, the present study explores feedback challenges identified by 3807 students and 281 educators from two Australian universities. Open-response data were analysed using an inductively derived coding framework and thematic analysis. The findings reveal three major themes relating to the challenges of feedback from the perspective of students and educators: feedback practices, contextual constraints and individual capacity. In addition to confirming the persistence of many previously reported challenges in the literature, this paper also offers insights into challenges that are particular to feedback, especially relating to the production of useful comments and the perceived hurdles of both student and educator attitudes and capabilities. The findings also highlight the constrained nature of educators’ work, particularly in relation to time. While further research is needed, we propose that feedback needs to be understood as an interaction between practices, context and individuals.