Developing a Multi-Dimensional Early Elementary Mathematics Screener and Diagnostic Tool: The Primary Mathematics Assessment

There is a critical need to identify primary level students experiencing difficulties in mathematics to provide immediate and targeted instruction that remediates their deficits. However, most early math screening instruments focus only on the concept of number, resulting in inadequate and incomplete information for teachers to design intervention efforts. We propose a mathematics assessment that screens and provides diagnostic information in six domains that are important to building a strong foundation in mathematics. This article describes the conceptual framework and psychometric qualities of a web-based assessment tool, the Primary Math Assessment (PMA). The PMA includes a screener to identify students at risk for poor math outcomes and a diagnostic tool to provide a more in-depth profile of children’s specific strengths and weaknesses in mathematics. The PMA allows teachers and school personnel to make better instructional decisions by providing more targeted analyses.     

Learning to Solve Challenging Percentage-Change Problems: A Cross-Cultural Study From a Cognitive Load Perspective

In an experiment, secondary students from Australia and Malaysia (n = 130) were randomly assigned to one of three approaches (equation, unitary, unitary-pictorial) to learn how to solve challenging percentage-change problems. In line with the differential types of cognitive load associated with the three approaches, the unitary-approach group outperformed both the unitary group and the equation group across Australia and Malaysia. In support of cross-cultural findings, the Malaysian students outperformed the Australian students for the equation approach but not the unitary approach nor the unitary-pictorial approach. The Australian students, in contrast, learned better with the unitary-pictorial approach. This study, overall, reveals the “gap” between the Asian and Western countries in the use of problem-solving approaches across different cultural settings.     

Modelling the relationships between teacher working conditions,job satisfaction and workplace mobility

Teacher shortages are a recurring problem in publicly funded schools, in part because of poor retention. Working conditions in schools are an important predictor of teacher job satisfaction and retention, yet research has so far made limited headway in identifying the specific aspects of the working environment which matter. This research uses representative data on state secondary school teachers in England in 2013 to derive an unusually rich set of working conditions variables. Regression analysis is used to model the relationships between working conditions, teacher job satisfaction and turnover intentions. The results show strong associations with the nature of school leadership, whether teachers have received training in the specific subjects they are assigned to teach and scope for career progression within the school. These results are robust to checks for common source bias. The study identifies ways in which schools can improve retention.     

Relationship between perceived acculturation expectations and Muslim minority youth's acculturation and adaptation

Acculturation strategies have frequently been used to describe how members of ethnic minorities reconcile their heritage culture with the culture of their society of residence. Recently, studies have started to pay increased attention to the fact that the choice of acculturation strategy does not take place in a social vacuum. In the present study, we test whether the perception of assimilation expectations held by the societal majority (PSAE) as well as separation expectations held by ethnic peers (PESE) may be related to individuals’ own acculturation strategy. Furthermore, we investigate whether these perceived expectations are directly related to stress and indirectly to adaptation, mediated by acculturation strategies. All relationships were investigated using multi-group structural equation modeling with members from three Muslim minority groups: 301 German-Turks, 302 French-Maghrebis and 262 British-Pakistanis. Across the samples, PSAE was associated with higher degrees of stress. PESE was negatively related to integration, while it was positively related to separation. In addition, PESE was indirectly and negatively related with self-esteem and/or socio-cultural adaptation in all samples. The impact of societal assimilation expectation appears to be limited in this regard. In all, the present study suggests that perceived acculturation expectations may influence ethnic minorities’ acculturation strategy. The results also suggest that perceived expectations that contrast with individuals’ personal acculturation preference could result in higher levels of stress and lower levels of psychological and socio-cultural adaptation, mediated by acculturation strategies.     

International Comparisons of the Relationships among Educational Effectiveness, Evaluation and Improvement Variables: An Overview

This special issue of the Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education presents information from five countries related to the following constructs and/or literatures: teacher effectiveness research, school effectiveness research, teacher evaluation, staff development, teacher improvement, and school improvement. This overview article presents brief summaries of five major issues that are addressed throughout the issue. A conceptual framework is introduced that presents links among the aforementioned constructs/literatures. While these links are theoretically viable, their actual existence varies widely by country, with several countries lacking many of the links. Implications of these missing links are discussed, as well as strategies for more tightly joining these literatures/constructs. Original research from each of the countries is also introduced.     

A programme-wide training framework to facilitate scientific communication skills development amongst biological sciences Masters students

In this article we describe the effectiveness of a programme-wide communication skills training framework incorporated within a one-year biological sciences taught Masters course designed to enhance the competency of students in communicating scientific research principally to a scientific audience. In one class we analysed the numerical marks achieved by students (N 61) for specific communication assignments completed at the start and at the end of the course. This was complemented by questionnaires administered to students at the beginning and at the end of the course to self-assess their competency and to elicit their views on the usefulness of the training received. We considered three questions: did students’ communication skills improve during the course; did the outcomes depend on the place of previous education (UK or non-UK); and how useful did students consider the learning and teaching activities to be? We show that the training improved students’ self-reported competency in most of the communication skills considered. Coursework marks for writing literature reviews improved during the course (p < 0.001). Those marks were marginally associated (that is, approaching statistical significance after Bonferroni correction) with the place of previous education (relatively high in UK students; p = 0.005). Coursework marks for writing research proposals did not change during the course (p = 0.361) but did depend on place of previous education (relatively high for UK students (p = 0.001). Although this small study’s intriguing results merit further investigation, our initial data supports the use of a programme-wide framework of the type presented here to facilitate communications skills development amongst biological science graduate students.