The (mis)use of SATs to examine gender and achievement at Key Stage 2

ABSTRACT

This article discusses some of the issues raised in the early stages of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) study. ¹ 1 Gender and Learning: A Study of Underachievement in Junior Schools, Economic and Social Research Council R000237346. Project directors: Harry Daniels, Valerie Hey, Diana Leonard and Marjorie Smith. The first phase of the project involved an analysis of end of Key Stage 2 (children aged 10–11) Standard Assessment Test (SAT) data within a Midlands and a London local education authority (LEA(M) and LEA(L) respectively). The LEAs were identified according to the quality and accessibility of the data and their socio‐economic and socio‐cultural diversity. The analysis was used as an instrument for selecting schools in each LEA that displayed specific but con‐ sistent patterns of high, low and average achievement which were cross cut by large differences between boys' and girls' achievement in all three SAT subjects (English, maths and science). On one level, this article discusses the difficulties we encountered in identifying schools with consistent patterns of gendered achievement as well as signposting the ‘political’ significance of these difficulties for present and future edu‐ cation policies. On another level, it is a vehicle for the development of the theoretical lenses of learner identity and post‐Vygotskian analysis that have shaped our under‐ standing of gendered achievement which we use to ‘speak’ to and influence the development of the test procedures highlighted in this article.

     

The Rouge Education Project: Challenges of Implementation

Abstract

The Rouge Education Project (REP) is a school-based environmental education program that uses water monitoring, telecommunications, and student actions to improve water quality. The author carried out a program evaluation to better understand the challenges generated by such a program. She examined surveys, interviews, and focus groups to determine the level of participation, goals, objectives, value of support services, and changes in teaching and environmental awareness. The results indicated that the REP met its goals of increasing awareness and concern about the Rouge River and developing a supportive curriculum in science classrooms. This article illustrates the importance of inservice workshops and curriculum resources for successful program enactment.     

The Use of ICT in Education: a survey of schools in Europe

The Survey of Schools: ICT in education commissioned in 2011 by the European Commission took place between January 2011 and November 2012, with data collection in autumn 2011. This article presents the main findings of the Survey based on over 190,000 questionnaire answers from students, teachers and head teachers in primary, lower and upper secondary schools randomly sampled. The article details the analytical framework design and the survey methodology implemented. It then presents the main ‘state of the art’ indicators that have been built, concerning ICT infrastructure and access to it, frequency of students' ICT based activities during lessons, level of teachers' and students' confidence in their digital competences, their opinion about using ICT for teaching and learning, and the school strategies to support ICT integration in teaching and learning. The article also presents the main findings of the exploratory part of the analysis, introducing the concepts of digitally supportive school, digitally confident and supportive teacher and digitally confident and supportive student, estimating their respective proportion at EU level on average and by country and investigating whether high percentage of digitally supportive schools include high percentages of digitally confident and positive teachers and students. A few recommendations for policy making at European, national, regional/local and institutional levels conclude the article.     

Justification beliefs and multiple-documents comprehension

Building on the multidimensional framework of epistemic cognition proposed by Greene et al. (Educational Psychologist 43:142–160, 2008), this study examined beliefs about justification of knowledge claims in science among 65 Norwegian 10th graders. The first research question asked whether beliefs in personal justification, justification by authority, and justification by multiple sources differed in strength among the participants. It was found that the students most strongly believed in justification by authority, followed by justification by multiple sources and personal justification. The second research question asked whether the three types of justification beliefs differentially and uniquely predicted the comprehension of multiple conflicting documents on a science issue. In a multiple regression analysis with multiple-documents comprehension indicated by essay performance as the dependent variable, both personal justification and justification by multiple sources emerged as unique predictors when topic knowledge was controlled for. Specifically, beliefs in personal opinion as a means of justifying knowledge claims in science was negatively related to multiple-documents comprehension, whereas beliefs in justification through corroboration across multiple sources of information were positively related to multiple-documents comprehension. This study provides new evidence about relationships between epistemic beliefs and new literacy competencies needed in an information society, such as integrating across multiple conflicting sources of information; relationships that may also have practical implications.     

From Genes to Environment: Using Integrative Genomics to Build a “Systems‐Level” Understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are pervasive neurodevelopmental disorders that affect an estimated 1 in 110 individuals. Although there is a strong genetic component associated with these disorders, this review focuses on the multifactorial nature of ASD and how different genome‐wide (genomic) approaches contribute to our understanding of autism. Emphasis is placed on the need to study defined ASD phenotypes as well as to integrate large‐scale “omics” data in order to develop a “systems‐level” perspective of ASD, which in turn is necessary to allow predictions regarding responses to specific perturbations and interventions.     

Short Reports Examining the test: an evaluation of the police Standard Entrance Test in Scotland

This short report describes an evaluation of the instrument used for the selection of future police officers in Scotland – the Standard Entrance Test (SET). The study was commissioned by the Scottish Office and undertaken by the Scottish Council for Research in Education during 1995–6. The authors outline the project, report their main findings and identify groups which may have been disadvantaged. The outcome, a revised test, is currently being piloted with new entrants to the force.     

Relays and relations: tracking a policy initiative for improving teacher professionalism

This paper offers a new way of exploring some of the complexities inherent in attempts by policy makers and others to promote educational change. The focus of this study is on the current drive in education policy to alter the basis of teacher professionalism through the application of principles of lifelong learning to teachers’ professional development. Drawing upon data from two studies of the Chartered Teacher (CT) initiative in Scotland the paper examines the formation of successive transmission points as material relays of relations during the process of implementing this policy objective. It explores how three key discursive elements of a professional standard for accomplished teaching: collaborative action, critical reflection and enquiry, and teacher leadership, were progressively recontextualised during the introduction of CT status in schools. The findings indicate some of the conceptual and political struggles involved at the critical junctures where policy implementation requires the movement of a discourse from one social context to another. The paper suggests that a discursive analysis of how a centrally mandated initiative is transmitted can help to promote an understanding of the complexities of this process and increase critical awareness of the issues at stake for those involved.     

Promoting secondary school students’ evaluation of source features of multiple documents

The current research examined whether instructional activities centering on contrasting cases promoted secondary school students’ evaluations of source features present in a multiple-documents inquiry context. Two hypothetical students’ document evaluation strategy protocols were designed: One featured more sophisticated strategies commonly enacted by experts and better college students and a second featured less sophisticated strategies commonly enacted by secondary school students. A series of classroom-based activities required that students compare/contrast the two protocols to decide which were the best strategies when analyzing multiple scientific documents and why. The findings demonstrated that students who previously participated in the intervention activities included more scientific concepts from more useful documents when generating essay responses from memory, displayed better rankings of the usefulness of the set of multiple documents, and offered more principled justifications based on source feature evaluations of trustworthiness compared to students who instead received typical classroom instruction. We discuss the instructional implications of a contrasting-cases approach in facilitating secondary school students’ usage of source features within multiple-documents inquiry contexts.