Demand for private supplementary tutoring: conceptual considerations, and socio-economic patterns in Hong Kong

Despite the fact that in some parts of the world private supplementary tutoring is a huge industry with far-reaching economic, social and educational implications, the topic has been neglected by educational researchers. This paper focuses on the nature and determinants of demand for private supplementary tutoring. It first draws on literature from a wide range of countries to identify some conceptual considerations, and then presents data on socio-economic patterns of demand for tutoring in Hong Kong. It highlights the complexity of the topic, and calls for further detailed research in multiple settings.     

Behavior management in cognitive early education

Even though behavior management is a very high priority of teachers of young children, systems of behavior management receive less attention than do methods of teaching academic content. Even when there are well developed sytems of behavior management, they do not necessarily reflect the same philosophy and methods of teaching that are used to teach content. The authors report on “cognitive-mediational behavior management”, a system designed to be consistent with a cognitive early education program, the Cognitive Curriculum for Young Children. In both behavior management and all their other teaching, teachers use in this program a mediational teaching style. Teachers emphasize thinking processes rather than correct answers, take a problem-solving approach to learning, help children to acquire generalizable strategies of thinking and problem-solving rather than using trial-and-error learning, are optimistic about children’s abilities to learn, and facilitate children’s acquisition of fundamental thinking modes. This system is seen as basically incompatible with a behaviorist, contingent reinforcement system. Behavior sequences are suggested for working with unacceptable behavior so as to produce both behavior change and cognitive change.     

School Choice and the Polarization of Public Schools in A Global City: A Bourdieusian GIS Approach

ABSTRACT

Over the past three decades, urban sociologists have shed light on the intensifying social inequality between the wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods in global cities; yet limited research has been done to illuminate the relationships between urban polarization and school choice (i.e., where parents choose schools for their children). This study sociospatially examines the patterns of secondary school choice in the global city of Toronto to illuminate the relationship between urban polarization and school choice. In doing so, this study combines Pierre Bourdieu’s sociospatial theory with a geographic information systems (GIS) approach. Overall, we found that popular schools and schools with specialized choice programs tend to be located in high-status neighborhoods, defined as neighborhoods with residents in the top 20% of family income, home prices, education attainment, and representation from the dominant culture. We also show that mobile students who choose popular schools or highly sought-after specialized programs tend to come from advantaged neighborhoods. Meanwhile, local students who choose a regular school in their neighborhood tend to come from low-status neighborhoods. With a new interdisciplinary approach, this study contributes to a more spatialized understanding of how social inequality and polarization account for school choice.     

The Future of Student Self-Assessment: a Review of Known Unknowns and Potential Directions

Educational Psychology Review - This paper reviews current known issues in student self-assessment (SSA) and identifies five topics that need further research: (1) SSA typologies, (2) accuracy, (3)...     

Multiple‐Choice Tests and Student Understanding: What Is the Connection?

Instructors can use both “multiple‐choice” (MC) and “constructed response” (CR) questions (such as short answer, essay, or problem‐solving questions) to evaluate student understanding of course materials and principles. This article begins by discussing the advantages and concerns of using these alternate test formats and reviews the studies conducted to test the hypothesis (or perhaps better described as the hope) that MC tests, by themselves, perform an adequate job of evaluating student understanding of course materials. Despite research from educational psychology demonstrating the potential for MC tests to measure the same levels of student mastery as CR tests, recent studies in specific educational domains find imperfect relationships between these two performance measures. We suggest that a significant confound in prior experiments has been the treatment of MC questions as homogeneous entities when in fact MC questions may test widely varying levels of student understanding. The primary contribution of the article is a modified research model for CR/MC research based on knowledge‐level analyses of MC test banks and CR question sets from basic computer language programming. The analyses are based on an operationalization of Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Goals for the domain, which is used to develop a skills‐focused taxonomy of MC questions. However, we propose that their analyses readily generalize to similar teaching domains of interest to decision sciences educators such as modeling and simulation programming.     

Disciplinary Literacies and Learning to Read for Understanding: A Conceptual Framework for Disciplinary Literacy

This article presents a framework and methodology for designing learning goals targeted at what students need to know and be able to do in order to attain high levels of literacy and achievement in three disciplinary areas—literature, science, and history. For each discipline, a team of researchers, teachers, and specialists in that discipline engaged in conceptual meta-analysis of theory and research on the reading, reasoning, and inquiry practices exhibited by disciplinary experts as contrasted with novices. Each team identified discipline-specific clusters of types of knowledge. Across teams, the clusters for each discipline were grouped into 5 higher order categories of core constructs: (a) epistemology; (b) inquiry practices/strategies of reasoning; (c) overarching concepts, themes, and frameworks; (d) forms of information representation/types of texts; and (e) discourse and language structures. The substance of the clusters gave rise to discipline-specific goals and tasks involved in reading across multiple texts, as well as reading, reasoning, and argumentation practices tailored to discipline-specific criteria for evidence-based knowledge claims. The framework of constructs and processes provides a valuable tool for researchers and classroom teachers' (re)conceptualizations of literacy and argumentation learning goals in their specific disciplines.     

Mild head injury as a source of developmental disabilities.

The hospital-reported incidence of mild head injury among children indicates a prevalence of 2% to 3% in high-school-aged adolescents (14 to 18 years). Yet, our survey of 616 high school adolescents suggests that light and mild head injury (not necessarily leading to hospital admission) is almost 10 times this level. Despite the common notion that such injury is generally benign, we found significant relationships in our sample between reported head injury and hyperactivity, stuttering, mixed handedness, and dislike of mathematics.     

Comparison of individual factors in school psychology graduate students: Why do students pursue a degree in school psychology?

The purpose of this study was to investigate what factors influenced students to enter the field of school psychology. Although numerous studies have documented the thoughts and perspectives of practitioners regarding why they have chosen to become school psychologists, attempts to recruit and retain an adequate number of school psychology practitioners and researchers have shown limited success. A national sample of 307 school psychology graduate students responded to a survey designed to measure issues related to the current state of professional practice, the influence of parental education, and professional organization recruitment. Results indicated that working with children and personal experiences within the school system were highly related to participant's decisions to become school psychologists. In addition, doctoral level and nondoctoral level students present similar reasons for entering the field. This research is discussed in terms of its implications for future research and the current shortage of school psychology practitioners and faculty. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 44: 865–872, 2007.