Improvement Efforts in Rural Schools: Experiences of Nine Schools Receiving School Improvement Grants

Low-performing schools in rural settings can face challenges common to all struggling schools, such as low student motivation and maintaining a qualified teaching staff. However, aspects of rural schools’ settings, such as the distance from urban areas and the commute between the schools and the students’ and teachers’ homes, can exacerbate the challenges that rural schools face. This article focuses on the experiences of nine rural schools that were part of a study for the U.S. Department of Education on the school improvement process in a purposive sample of 35 schools receiving federal funds through the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program. In particular, it examines how respondents in the rural schools perceived that the schools’ rural setting influenced the schools’ challenges and improvement actions and presents findings on the recruitment and retention of teaching staff, an activity integral to school improvement efforts under SIG.     

Experiences,activities, and personal characteristics as predictors of engagement in STEM-focused summer programs

Out-of-school-time programs for youth that are focused on STEM content are often seen as affording opportunities to increase youth engagement, interest, and knowledge in STEM domains, yet we know relatively little about how youth actually experience such programs. In this article, we explore how experiences and activities employed in the delivery of summer STEM programs are associated with youth engagement during programming, and whether youth characteristics moderate these relationships. Data were collected from 203 youth (ages 10–16) in nine summer programs using multiple methods including video, experience sampling, and surveys. Through the use of cross-classified, multi-level models, we found that youth reported higher engagement in program activities they perceived to be more challenging and relevant, and in activities, they perceived to have more affordances for learning or developing skills. Gender moderated these relationships such that the positive relationships observed among males were muted or nonexistent for girls. We further identify that program activities are differently associated with fostering challenge, relevance, and learning. Findings have implications for out-of-school STEM programming for youth.     

Tweet,and We Shall Find: Using Digital Methods to Locate Participants in Educational Hashtags

Although researchers have discovered a great deal about who uses Twitter for educational purposes, what they post about, when they post and why they participate, there has so far been little work to explore where participants in educational Twitter contexts are located. In this paper, we establish a methodological foundation that can support the exploration of geographical issues in educational Twitter research. We surveyed 46 participants in one educational Twitter hashtag, #michED, to determine where they lived; we then compared these responses to results from three digital methods for geolocating Twitter users (human coding, machine coding and GPS coding) to explore these methods’ affordances and constraints. Human coding of Twitter profiles allowed us to analyze more participants with higher levels of accuracy but also has disadvantages compared to other digital—and traditional—methods. We discuss the additional insights obtained through geolocating #michED participants as well as considerations for using geolocation and other digital methods in educational research.     

The effects of daily homework assignments on the acquisition of basic skills by students with learning disabilities

Examined in this two-study investigation was the effectiveness of supplemental homework assignments on the acquisition of basic skills by students with diagnosed learning disabilities (LD). In Experiment 1, an adapted alternating treatments design was used to investigate the efficacy of unstructured homework assignments with 6 elementary school-aged students having basic math problems. Although the impact of the homework assignments differed across students, three factors maximized the effectiveness of the homework assignments: rate of homework completion, percentage correct on the homework assignments, and the rate of acquisition of the content being presented. Experiment 2, designed to formally test the effectiveness of homework assignments structured specifically to address these identified factors, confirmed that homework can be employed to increase the effectiveness of direct instruction sequences with students diagnosed as LD.