Two- and Three-Year Achievement Results From the Memphis Restructuring Initiative

The purpose of this study was to analyze student achievement data from the first 3 years of the Memphis Restructuring Initiative (MRI). The MRI represents one of the first efforts by an urban school district to move past traditional top-down versus bottom-up reform debates by providing systemic support for outside-in/inside-out implementation and local co-construction of externally-developed reform designs in schools. Analyses of academic achievement focus on a state-of-the-art measure of value added assessments. At the end of 3 years the reforming schools had produced generally positive gains relative to locally matched control schools. Those results varied somewhat by reform type and by level of poverty in the communities being served. Based on the research methods used and the results, implications for future research and practice in educational reform are discussed.     

Grading as a Reform Effort: Do Standards‐Based Grades Converge With Test Scores?

Standards‐based progress reports (SBPRs) require teachers to grade students using the performance levels reported by state tests and are an increasingly popular report card format. They may help to increase teacher familiarity with state standards, encourage teachers to exclude nonacademic factors from grades, and/or improve communication with parents. The current study examines the SBPR grade–state test score correspondence observed across 2 years in 125 third and fifth grade classrooms located in one school district to examine the degree of consistency between grades and state test results. It also examines the grading practices of a subset of 37 teachers to determine whether there is an association between teacher appraisal style and convergence rates. A moderate degree of grade–test score convergence was observed using three agreement estimates (coefficient kappa, tau‐b correlations, and classroom‐level mean differences between grades and test scores). In addition, only small amounts of grade–test score convergence were observed between teachers; a much greater proportion of variance lay within classrooms and subjects. Appraisal style correlated weakly with convergence rates, but was most strongly related to assigning students to the same performance level as the test. Therefore using recommended grading practices may improve the quality of SBPR grades to some extent.     

THE 1998 DAVID WILLS LECTURE: INTEGRATING THE LEGACY OF DAVID WILLS IN AN ERA OF BEHAVIOUR SUPPORT PLANS,INCLUSION AND TARGET SETTNG

This paper examines the legacy of the pioneering work of David Wills for current thinking and practice in current educational context between the needs of vulnerable children as revealed by wills and the demands for managerial accountability imposed by government.     

Analyzing Practice for Improving Schools: The Study of Vignettes

This article suggests a method for analyzing patterns of school practice for improvement purposes. In particular it describes outcomes of a study that point to some promising possibilities, in terms of encouraging teachers to reflect on their practice, for the purpose of improvement. It argues that by discussing and analyzing vignettes, teachers can improve their practice, not only individually, but also as a team. In addition, this analysis can help schools to develop as organizations. At the end, this suggestion is supported with an example which illustrates the potential of using vignettes for improving schools, whilst, at the same time, demonstrating how the procedure might be used.     

The reflection on the blackboard: student teacher self‐evaluation

A common aim of teacher education is to encourage prospective teachers to analyze carefully their instructional performance. Yet, research on teacher cognition heretofore has concentrated primarily on experienced teachers’ planning and instructional thinking. We need more information on how student teachers think about and engage in the evaluation of their teaching performance. This study used data from initial structured interviews to elicit student teachers’ self‐evaluation concerns and examined the student teachers’ journals, a final written self‐evalution, and tapes from post‐teaching interviews to create a profile of each student teacher's responses about self‐evaluation. In this paper I analyze the student teachers’ pre‐conceptions about success, examine their processes of self‐evaluation, and explore a conception of “interactive self‐evaluation.” I offer suggestions about the conditions that may enable student teachers to enhance their analytical processes.     

Making Critical Connections Between Social Studies Teaching and Student Achievement Using NAEP Data Explorer

In this analysis of promising practice, we demonstrate how social studies methods instructors can incorporate data analysis of the 2010 United States History National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP–USH) to facilitate pedagogical aims, engage teacher candidates in critical discourse, and investigate the contexts of teaching and learning. The NAEP data explorer application is a valuable tool for examining social studies theory and practice in relation to student learning outcomes. Our assessment of teacher candidates' responses to the activity leads to the recommendation that NAEP data analysis and results encourage self-evaluation of instructional practices while simultaneously supporting critical interpretations of the NAEP exam.     

Discovering Functional Programming Through Imperative Languages

The pedagogical desirability of functional programming is effectively swamped by an overwhelmingly imperative‐language‐oriented culture. Because a meaningful subset of the functional paradigm is accessible within imperative languages, it is possible to identify a subset of Modula‐2 that characterizes the functional paradigm subset. A series of list‐processing problems and their solutions in the Modula‐2 subset provides students with ample exposure to the practice and theory of functional programming. Extension to the full functional paradigm and migration to specialized functional languages are managed, in the worst case by initial pseudo‐Modula‐2 programming involving hypothetical extensions supporting higher‐order functions and polymorphism. More powerful solutions to this problem are foreshadowed, in the form of preprocessor implementations of Modula‐2‐ and Ada‐derivative functional languages.