Further Progress Towards a Standardised Curriculum-based Measure of Reading: Calibrating a new passage reading test against the New South Wales Basic Skills Test

Results are presented from a pilot study and a larger scale study aligning a curriculum-based passage reading test, the Wheldall Assessment of Reading Passages (WARP), with the literacy components of the New South Wales Basic Skills Test (BST). A strong relationship between the WARP and BST Literacy is demonstrated, particularly for Year Three students. Representative (approximate) norms for students in Years One to Five on the WARP are reported, based on the results from a school with a BST literacy profile that is very similar to that for the state of New South Wales as a whole.     

A Two-State Study of Family Child Care Engagement in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems: A Mixed-Methods Analysis

ABSTRACT

Research Findings. The current study is a mixed-methods investigation of family child care provider participation in voluntary Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) in 2 states. Study 1 is an analysis of matched QRIS and child care licensing administrative data extracted from both states in May, 2014. Poverty and population density variables were added to the dataset by aligning U.S. Census data and Rural Urban Commuting Area codes (RUCA) to the matched state child care data. Participation patterns differed in the 2 states relative to provider characteristics (subsidy receipt, years licensed, and location). Study 2 consists of focus groups with participating (n = 22) and non-participating (n = 19) providers. Professionalism and financial incentives emerged as significant in attracting family child care providers to QRIS. Although family child care providers identified several clear benefits to QRIS, many more challenges emerged that negatively impact their participation. Practice or Policy. As most states are employing a QRIS framework to integrate quality improvement efforts, perspectives from this sector of early care and education are often overlooked. Study findings suggest that QRIS can be more responsive and effective with family child care providers if more consideration of their unique features are considered in systems design and implementation.     

The development of a small-scale survey instrument of UK teachers to study professional use (and non-use) of and attitudes to social media

This paper documents the creation, implementation and analysis of a survey instrument designed to reveal patterns of use and attitudes towards the value of social media by UK teachers. The study was motivated to discover which teachers use social media professionally, how they use it (both personally and professionally) and attitudes to social media as a professional tool (for their students' and their own professional use). The instrument was created from verbal data from two focus group discussions regarding the use of social media in education. Attitude statements were included verbatim when practical. This instrument was placed online and practising teachers invited to complete it (n?=?216). Exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical clustering identified 9 factors from 54 attitude statements and 5 distinct teacher groups. The rich data allowed each group to be carefully defined, providing potentially invaluable information to school leaders when developing social media projects to recognize and accommodate the full range of teacher concerns and experience. The paper also addresses methodological concerns regarding instrument creation, dealing with missing data and the impact of missing data on subsequent analysis.     

Understanding how schools fail children

From time immemorial the efforts of educators to produce effective solutions to the problems plaguing instruction have been frustrated. This frustration emanates from the erroneous assumptions supporting their beliefs about schooling, learning and the essence of the questions seeking solutions. Early research efforts only compounded the problem by providing practitioners with the right answers to the wrong questions about effective schooling and learning. Gradually, the past errors of pedagogic empiricism are being corrected. We now realize that most learners, not merely the intellectual elite, can learn when instruction is properly sequenced and paced; that it is more important to examine what teachers do than to look at what they are; that schools have covert as well as overt curricula; and that many institutions besides schools teach important learnings. When scholastic and extra-scholastic instructional goals ar synchronous and harmonious, learning is optimal. When they are not, the resulting dissonance is destructive to the best efforts of schools to teach. The gap between what is known about effective instruction and current educational practices is cavernous. Proposed procedures for transforming theory into practice have largely been ignored. The transformation begins by enticing bright students into teacher preparation programmes which have been revitalized to make emerging knowledge about schooling and learning the focal point of instruction. To complete the instructional improvement cycle, schools must interface learners with carefully monitored delivery systems guaranteed to produce the desired learnings.     

Professional storytelling in clinical dental anatomy teaching

The aim of the present work was to see if storytelling in a clinical dental anatomy course would increase student satisfaction. We enhanced teaching by spontaneous storytelling in problem‐based learning, in half of the third‐year dentistry class. At the end of the course, we administered an anonymous questionnaire to the students in the class, consisting of 12 questions that students had to answer on a Likert scale of 1–5. An overall satisfaction score was obtained and we used a linear mixed model to compare differences in satisfaction between the two groups, with “group” as the fixed effect. We also conducted an exploratory factor analysis of the responses to investigate whether there were distinct constructs within the data. Overall satisfaction is high, with students “with stories” having higher satisfaction than those “without stories.” The former group consistently gives higher satisfaction scores, regardless of which question is being asked. Factor analysis provides evidence that storytelling nurtures reflective learning, while students work on their clinical anatomy problems. Anat Sci Ed 1:84–89, 2008. © 2008 American Association of Anatomists.     

The longitudinal association of childhood school engagement with adult educational and occupational achievement: findings from an Australian national study

The research investigated the association between school engagement and adult education and occupation outcomes, within the context of a 1985 Australian longitudinal national cohort study of the factors affecting children's long‐term health and well‐being. School engagement may be more modifiable than other factors related to academic success, such as academic attainment, which is influenced by family background. A School Engagement Index was constructed using questionnaire items on school enjoyment and boredom. Related school engagement items included learner self‐concept, motivation to learn, sense of belonging, participation in school or extra‐mural activities, and enjoyment of physical activity. In 2004–2006, participants (aged 26 to 30 years) reported their highest level of education achieved and current occupation. Potential covariates included age, sex, markers of socio‐economic status in childhood, personality and school‐level variables (i.e., number of students, single sex versus co‐education; government, private or independent). Logistic regression was used to estimate the odds of achieving post‐compulsory school education and achieving higher status occupations. Findings revealed that each unit of school engagement was independently associated with a 10% higher odds (OR 1.10 95% CI 1.01,1.21) of achieving a post‐compulsory school education. Maternal education, self‐concept as a learner, motivation to learn, all also significantly predicted achieving post‐compulsory school education. School engagement was found to mediate the association between the personality characteristic of agreeableness and education outcomes. Higher school engagement was also independently associated with achieving higher status occupations 20 years later (OR 1.11 95% CI 1.03, 1.20). Importantly, this was independent of a host of background factors.     

1990 editor's annual report

A variety of viewing measures were constructed to tap the ways people moved through an evening of television viewing, with particular focus on transitions between programs and channels. Based on these behaviors, five different styles of viewing were identified in a sample of adolescents. Of these, only one appeared to correspond to stereotypes of viewers as exercising little choice and just watching what was available. The viewing behaviors of the other four groups all indicate different ways of being active viewers.