Book reviews

Chester E. Finn, Jr., formerly assistant secretary of education, is professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University.     

Determining Sufficient Measurement Opportunities When Using Multiple Cut Scores

Many educational testing programs report examinee performance at more than two levels of proficiency. Whether these assessments have the capacity to support these multiple inferences, though, is a topic that has not been widely discussed. This study proposes a method for evaluating the minimum number of measurement opportunities for reporting students' performance at multiple achievement levels and describes an application of the method for reading and mathematics assessments that are used by some school districts in Nebraska. Analyses were based on judgments collected from 110 teachers about characteristics of items and tasks from multiple assessments in reading and mathematics at grades 4 and 8, and in high school. Results suggested that there were generally enough items on the mathematics assessments to classify students into two or three performance levels, but rarely enough to make the four classifications that the state reported. Items on the reading assessments were generally distributed across the proficiency levels and tended to allow reporting for all four classification levels. These findings have implications for both practitioners and policymakers in how scores are interpreted.     

Headteacher critique and resistance: a challenge for policy,and for leadership/management scholars

Educational leadership/management scholars have undertaken work which documents the difficulties particular headteachers face when implementing policy. Some have suggested that headteachers mediate policy, ensuring the best possible outcomes for their schools, but there is also critique of this argument and a counter‐suggestion that heads ought to resist the imposts of conservative, marketised policies which produce and reproduce educational inequities. In this article I consider this position, and argue that if the field is to take up the question of resistance then it will need to extend its theoretical resources, interrogate and test out the limits of the proposition through empirical example, consider instances where resistance appears to occur, and move beyond a focus on individual headteachers to take seriously their collective professional organisations. In making this argument, I generate some suggestions for future research.     

Primary humanities – a perspective from Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

The word ‘humanities’ does not appear in the current Northern Ireland Curriculum (NIC). Geography and history are taught within an Area of Learning called ‘The World Around Us’ which also contains science and technology. The curriculum has a strong emphasis on an integrated, ‘connected learning’ way of teaching and learning. Religious Education is a separate subject that stands alongside, rather than within, the NIC, and the curriculum also includes a new Area of Learning – ‘Personal Development and Mutual Understanding’. The distinctive content and modes of teaching which the humanities subjects tend to encourage ought to be seen as particularly important in Northern Ireland – a part of the UK which has endured a complicated past and remains to a large extent segregated, both socially and educationally. This complicated past means that there is often wariness and reluctance on the part of teachers towards tackling controversial personal and social issues in the primary school.     

Development of the instrument of question-answer process (IQAP) and its application in examining salient characteristics between pre- and in-service teachers in senior high school chemistry class

The purpose of this study is to examine the salient characteristics of the ‘Question-Answer Process’ (QAP) in senior high school chemistry class between pre- and in-service teachers. We first developed the ‘Instrument of Question-Answer Process’ (IQAP), and then, applied it to compare salient characteristics of QAP between pre- and in-service teachers. Data collection consists of classroom observation and structured-interview. Participants are seven pre-service and seven in-service chemistry teachers. The results are: (a) Both pre-and in-service teachers ask most of the questions and students ask few questions; (b) Pre-service teachers ask more lower cognitive level questions, while in-service teachers ask more higher cognitive level questions; (c) Pre-service teachers tend to ask non-volunteer students while in-service teachers tend to ask volunteer students to respond; (d) Pre-service teachers tend to be ‘no feedback or ignore’ after students provide answers and both pre- and in-service teachers seldom guide students to reflect on answers; and (e) The frequency of authority of ‘student’ in pre-service teachers’ class is much higher than those in in-service teachers’ class, while the frequency of authority of ‘teacher and student’ is much lower than those of in-service teachers’ class.     

Bringing installation art to reconnaissance to share values and generate action

The English education system has recently seen something of a revival of enthusiasm for the use of research both to develop educational practices and to gather evidence about their effectiveness. These initiatives often present action research as a model of individual problem-solving, which, we argue, communicates a limited conception of action research. In this paper we propose an alternative to this ‘problem-solving’ conception of action research that acknowledges the complex, messy nature of action research through the use of arts installations. Specifically, we present the reconnaissance phase of a project which brought together a partnership comprising a water heritage museum, university staff, teachers and artists. A pedagogical adaptation of contemporary installation art theory and practice fostered the exploration of individual and collective understandings of water, and also established a shared approach to curriculum development and ownership of the project among all participants. We propose that this creative practice enhanced and changed the process of reconnaissance; it allowed the group to establish and share commitments to the value of water conservation and generated a wide range of options for our action research.     

The social contagion of work avoidance goals in school and its influence on student (dis)engagement

Work avoidance goals, which refer to wanting to do as little as possible in school, are detrimental to school success. Given its maladaptive nature, studies have investigated the antecedents of work avoidance, such as the role of personal characteristics and social-contextual factors. The influence of one’s classmates, however, remains under-explored. Drawing from social contagion research, we examined whether work avoidance goals spread among classmates. Questionnaires were administered to 1524 adolescent students nested within 50 classes. Two waves of data were collected one semester apart. Multilevel modeling was used to analyze the data. Results showed that a student’s work avoidance in Time 2 was predicted by his/her classmates’ work avoidance in Time 1. These results held even after controlling for one’s own Time 1 work avoidance. Moreover, work avoidance goals led to higher levels of disengagement and lower levels of engagement. The findings demonstrate that work avoidance goals are socially contagious and that they have negative consequences for students’ engagement. This study extends our theoretical understanding of work avoidance by highlighting the vital role played by one’s classmates in shaping students’ avoidance of schoolwork and the deleterious consequences that come with it.