Testing the effectiveness of classroom formative assessment in Dutch primary mathematics education

Classroom formative assessment (CFA) is considered to be a fundamental part of effective teaching, as it is presumed to enhance student performance. However, there is only limited empirical evidence to support this notion. In this effect study, a quasi-experiment was conducted to compare 2 conditions. In the treatment condition, 17 teachers implemented a CFA model containing both daily and weekly goal-directed instruction, assessment, and immediate instructional feedback for students who needed additional support. In the control condition, 17 teachers implemented a modification to their usual practice. They assessed their students’ mastery of learning goals on the basis of half-yearly mathematics tests, and prepared weekly pre-teaching sessions for groups of low-achieving students. The posttests showed no significant differences in student performance between the 2 conditions after controlling for student and teacher characteristics. The degree of implementation of the CFA model, however, appeared to be positively related to the 5th-grade students’ performance.     

Distinctives of High Producers of Minority Science and Engineering Doctoral Starts

Demographic shifts in recent years have resulted in a smaller proportion of white males in the American population. Historically, we have depended on these individuals to comprise almost all of the science and engineering doctorates for our workforce. America must now develop S&E talent more fully among minority groups and women. Colleges and universities have moved ahead admirably in bringing these individuals into S&E programs and preparing them for doctoral study. Predictably, some have had greater success than others. The present study was completed under a National Science Foundation grant. It sought to identify the more successful institutions and to identify the elements of their success in an effort to effect a sharing of know-how. The National Research Council was asked to rank-order institutions according to their rates of success in sending Indian, Hispanic and black students on to graduate study in science and engineering. Site visits and interviews were made at ten of the top institutions. Using George Kuh's rubric for involving institutions, site visitors identified valuable threads among the practices for talent development among the populations under study.     

Orientational dyslexia: Notes from the field

Annals of Dyslexia -     

Reflections on International Projects in Undergraduate CS Education

Educational methods race to keep pace with the opportunities afforded by technology, and in computer science we need methods that tie together the diverse aspects of the discipline and set them in a realistic human context. Projects have the potential to address various aims and perspectives, and international projects add new dimensions to student teamwork, requiring students to handle collaboration that is remote, cross-cultural, and linguistically challenging. This paper examines some of the educational issues associated with international projects, in the discussion of two examples: PASTICS and Runestone.     

“A Chance Child”: Jill Paton Walsh and the Re-Invention of the Time Slip Story

In this study of Jill Paton Walsh’s one time-slip novel, I attempt to show how she reinvents the genre by giving as much prominence to the dislocated present as she does to the sufferings of children caught up in the horrors of the Industrial Revolution. Where previous time-slip authors had concentrated on the past, she addresses clearly unwelcome changes to landscapes and townscapes in the present time of the novel.     

Dealing with the Powers that Be

Abstract

This study drew on the life history approach, specifically life story through interview, to examine a bellwether case of an experienced teacher implementing a new senior high school subject in the area of physical and health education. Discussions with the teacher focussed on power relations at her school as they affected and were affected by the implementation process.

Two theoretical approaches were used to analyse the data. First, Ball's micro‐political conceptual frame (power, goal diversity, ideological disputation, conflict, interests, political activity, and control) was used to provide a meaningful basis for discussing her political activity. Second, in focussing specifically on power Gore's framework of four conceptions of power (‐as‐property, ‐as‐dominance, ‐as‐productive, and ‐as‐creative energy) took the analysis to a deeper level to probe how the teacher conceptualised, dealt with, and mobilised power.

These analyses revealed that in implementing the new subject she had to deal with disputed ideologies about the nature of physical education within her department and about the relative value of different subjects between her department and other faculties. She also had to contend with the pervasive ideology of mind over body as reflected in the traditional curriculum championed by the principal.

What strongly came through in this study was the teacher's strategic approach to deal with opposing forces, particularly how she negotiated avoiding direct confrontation with those who represented administrative power in her school. Besides teachers requiring substantial subject matter and content pedagogical knowledge (Shulman, L., 1987), as with Sparkes, Templin and Schempp's examination of physical education as a marginalised subject (Sparkes, A., Templin, T. & Schempp, P., 1990), this research suggests that those introducing a curriculum innovation need to understand the micro‐political forces that operate within their schools and to develop strategies that deal with those forces and to use them to advantage. Effective strategies, in this context, were associated with reducing professional isolation through developing professional networks and balancing a non‐confrontationalist approach with the need to take a stance on an ideological position. From this study, it is clearly evident that curriculum implementation is a political activity.     

The Decline in American Children's Fitness Levels

Abstract

Three anthropometric and eight physical performance measures selected by the author were related by correlational methods to the performance of 87 secondary school boys in the running hop, step, and jump. All variables showed a significant relationship with the criterion beyond the .05 level of confidence. The criterion could be employed as a measure of motor ability since three of the highest single-variable correlations with the criterion were measures that are known predictors of motor ability: the running broad jump (r = .859), 50-yd. dash (r = .815), and standing broad jump (r = .778). Three selected combinations of measures yielded multiple correlations with the criterion which were significant beyond the .01 level of confidence. A regression equation developed from the optimal set of variables that was considered to be feasible for administration in school systems consisted of two items from the Youth Fitness Test Manual: the standing broad jump and the 50-yd. dash.     

Book reviews and notes

CRISIS IN THE CLASSROOM by Charles E. Silberman. New York: Random House, 1970. vii +553 pp. $10.00.

CRISIS IN CHILD MENTAL HEALTH: CHALLENGE FOR THE 1970's, A Report of the Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. 578 pp. $10.00.

AMERICA'S OTHER CHILDREN edited by George Henderson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971. xi + 430 pp. $8.95.

PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED by Paulo Freire. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970. 186 pp. $5.95.

CHILDREN AND CIVIC AWARENESS by Charles F. Andrain. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1971, vii + 214 pp. $3.95 paperback.

MENTAL RETARDATION: ITS SOCIAL CONTEXT AND SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES by Bernard Farber. Atlanta, Georgia: Houghton‐Mifflin Co., 1968. 271 pp. $6.95.

KINSHIP AND CLASS: A MIDWESTERN STUDY by Bernard Farber, New York: Basic Book Publishers, 1971. 210 pp. $7.95.

COMMUNITY KINSHIP AND COMPETENCE, Volume 3, Research and Development Program on Preschool Disadvantaged Children, Final Report, Project No. 5‐1181, Contract No. 0E6‐10‐235, Bureau of Research, Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Urbana: Univeristy of Illinois, May 1969. 300 pp.

THE SOCIAL ORDER OF THE SLUM: ETHNICITY AND TERRITORY IN THE INNER CITY by Gerald D. Suttles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. 243 pp. $8.95.

ANY PERSON, ANY STUDY by Eric Ashby. New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Company, 1971. 106 pp. $4.95.