Reconsidering assent for randomised control trials in education: Ethical and procedural concerns

Despite ongoing disagreement about what kinds of evidence are most valuable to education, there continues to be an increasing push to make a narrow group of scientific methodologies the basis of educational policy and practice. This has created a growth in the use of randomised control trials (RCTs), which are considered an exemplary example of scientifically rigorous research design. Yet despite the increase in both the prevalence and status of RCTs, this article will argue that the ethics informing this research orientation remains underdeveloped, with the specific need for an agenda that grapples with assent in RCTs in both a philosophical and a methodological way. As a corrective to this, we engage with Biesta’s observation of a lack of explicit engagement with the values informing our decisions about the direction of education practice. We begin by examining assent in existing education research literature, focusing on some of the ways that qualitative and praxis-oriented researchers have grappled with the complexity of assent in research projects involving children and young people in schools. We then consider analogous debates concerning assent in fields such as bioethics and biomedicine, given the established nature of bioethics as a discipline. Finally, we turn our attention to developing an agenda that can work towards a consideration of assent in RCTs in education research, with the purpose of making transparent some of the ethical concerns that warrant attention in the design and conduct of RCT research studies in education.     

“In Kindy You Don’t Get Taught”: Continuity and Change as Children Start School

Over the last decade, there has been increasing awareness of the importance of engaging young children in research about their experiences and considering ways in which children’s experiences, expectations and perceptions influence both their interactions and those of others. This has resulted from recognition of young children as active citizens, with rights to be consulted about matters that affect them and from the principles underpinning the sociology of childhood, which emphasizes children’s capabilities and agency. This paper explores young Australian children’s perceptions of school and learning, as expressed through drawings and conversations about school. Data from children in preschools and the early years of school highlight children’s expectations and experiences of school, including the importance of play, friendships, children’s dispositions, and academic expectations of school and teachers. Drawing on previous research that notes the long term importance of children’s attitudes and approaches, as well as their sense of belonging and identity, at the start of school, this paper has implications for adults engaging with children as they make the transition to school.     

Reliability and concurrent validity of the DUSO affectivity assessment device

Forms M and L of The DUSO Affectivity Assessment Device were administered to 23 first-grade children. Alternate form reliability was significant at the .02 level of confidence. Forty-five first-grade children were administered Form L of The DUSO AAD and one week later the California Test of Personality. Concurrent validity correlations were significant for the total group and for subgroups differentiated by sex.     

Persisting students’ explanations of and emotional responses to academic failure

ABSTRACT

Academic failure is an important and personal event in the lives of university students, and the ways they make sense of experiences of failure matters for their persistence and future success. Academic failure contributes to attrition, yet the extent of this contribution and precipitating factors of failure are not well understood. To illuminate this world-wide problem, we analysed institutional data at a large, comprehensive Australian university and surveyed 186 undergraduate students who had failed at least one unit of study in 2016, but were still enrolled in 2017. Academic failure increased the likelihood of course attrition by 4.2 times. The students who failed and persisted attributed academic failure to a confluence of dispositional, situational, and institutional factors. There was a compounded effect of academic failure on already-vulnerable students resulting in strong negative emotions. Viewing persistence as an interaction between individuals and their sociocultural milieu opens up different avenues for research and considerations for support.     

Literacy,social justice and inclusion: a large-scale design experiment to narrow the attainment gap linked to poverty

This paper describes the development and use of a tool designed to support educators to use a broad range of professional knowledge to enable inclusive literacy teaching that delivers social justice and narrows the attainment gap associated with poverty. The tool encourages teachers to formally recognise and act on a wide range of evidence about students as learners and to design their literacy curriculum and teaching according to this evidence. The research operationalised a Capabilities approach to inclusion and a design experiment methodology, working with 48 schools, 650 teachers and 12,783 students. A paired sample T-test showed a significant improvement in standardised age scores and that the ‘tail of underachievement’ shortened for all social groups. Goodman and Kruskal's gamma showed a weakening of the relationship between poverty and attainment. This gives cause for cautious optimism that attainment gaps associated with economic disadvantage can be narrowed if educators act on a wider range of evidence in literacy teaching, and if education researchers develop and trial tools to support them.     

Digital Module 18: Automated Scoring https://ncme.elevate.commpartners.com

In this digital ITEMS module, Dr. Sue Lottridge, Amy Burkhardt, and Dr. Michelle Boyer provide an overview of automated scoring. Automated scoring is the use of computer algorithms to score unconstrained open-ended test items by mimicking human scoring. The use of automated scoring is increasing in educational assessment programs because it allows scores to be returned faster at lower cost. In the module, they discuss automated scoring from a number of perspectives. First, they discuss benefits and weaknesses of automated scoring, and what psychometricians should know about automated scoring. Next, they describe the overall process of automated scoring, moving from data collection to engine training to operational scoring. Then, they describe how automated scoring systems work, including the basic functions around score prediction as well as other flagging methods. Finally, they conclude with a discussion of the specific validity demands around automated scoring and how they align with the larger validity demands around test scores. Two data activities are provided. The first is an interactive activity that allows the user to train and evaluate a simple automated scoring engine. The second is a worked example that examines the impact of rater error on test scores. The digital module contains a link to an interactive web application as well as its R-Shiny code, diagnostic quiz questions, activities, curated resources, and a glossary.