Models of shared leadership: Evolving structures and relationships

This article explores potential changes in the power relationships among teachers and principals under four emerging forms of structured teacher involvement in schoolwide decision making: Instructional Leadership Teams, Principals' Advisory Councils, School Improvement Teams, and Lead Teacher Committees. Each organizational model is described in terms of its purpose, its operation, the role of teachers and the principal, and its potential impact on teacher leadership and empowerment. A conceptual framework that views organizational power in terms of access to resources and the ability to obtain cooperation from other actors (Kanter, 1979) is utilized to gauge potential changes in the power of principal and teacher roles under each of these emerging models. The conceptual analysis suggests that models seeking to empower teachers and improve student learning must provide for increased interaction among teachers in curricular and instructional decision making.Presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April 1988.     

Discrete Time Survival Analysis Via Latent Variable Modeling: A Note on Lagged Depression Links to Stroke in Middle and Late Life

This article is concerned with a latent variable modeling approach to discrete time survival analysis that includes both time-invariant and time-varying covariates. The approach is illustrated with data from the Health and Retirement Study, which are utilized to study further the relationship of depression to stroke in middle and late life. Employing lag-1 depression scores as time-varying covariates, in addition to a set of relevant medical and demographic variables as time-invariant covariates collected at baseline, the article addresses a particular aspect of the prominent vascular depression hypothesis representing an important area in aging research, gerontology, geriatrics, and medicine. The results indicate considerable links of immediately prior depression levels to subsequent occurrences of stroke in middle-aged and older adults. The findings complement those reported by Raykov, Gorelick, Zajacova, and Marcoulides (2017), and are consistent with that hypothesis implying depression as a potential warning sign of an impending stroke.     

The Logic of Mass Higher Education

The distinguishing characteristic of postsecondary education in the past half century has been expansion -- the emergence of mass higher education worldwide. Now, many industrialised countries educate forty percent or more of youth in postsecondary education, and developing countries are rapidly expanding as well. Mass higher education brings with it certain inevitable changes in higher education. Among these are a diversification of academic institutions, less homogenous student populations, alterations in patterns of academic work and of the academic profession itself, an increase in managerial control of academic institutions, and, recently, a reliance on distance methods of delivering instruction. These changes are part of the logic of mass higher education, and will be increasingly apparent in the 21st century.     

School Admissions: Increasing Equity, Accountability and Transparency

This paper examines the impact of education reforms on school admissions policies and practices. It discusses the changes that are needed to improve the current system, especially in areas where the market is highly developed. It is concluded that the new legislation to be enacted by the current Labour Government should be beneficial, but that more far-reaching changes are needed for the admissions process to be equitable, transparent and accountable.     

The Efficacy of Preschool Developmental Indicators as a Screen for Early Primary School-Based Literacy Interventions

Literacy success lays the foundation for children's later educational, health, and well-being outcomes. Thus, early identification of literacy need is vital. Using data from New Zealand's national preschool health screening program for fiscal years 2010/2011–2014/2015, demographic and health variables from 255,090 children aged 4 years were related to whether they received a literacy intervention in early primary school. Overall, 20,652 (8.1%) children received an intervention. Time-to-event analysis revealed that all considered variables were significantly related to literacy intervention (all p < .01), but the full model lacked reasonable predictive power for population screening purposes (Harrell's c-statistic = .624; 95% CI [.618, .629]). Including more direct literacy measures in the national screening program is likely needed for improvement.     

The impact of student misconceptions on student persistence in a MOOC

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) provide opportunities to learn a vast range of subjects. Because MOOCs are open to anyone with computer access and rarely have prerequisite requirements, the range of student backgrounds can be far more varied than in conventional classroom-based courses. Prior studies have shown that misconceptions have a huge impact on students' learning performance; however, no study has empirically examined the relationship between misconceptions and learning persistence. This study of 12,913 MOOC-takers examines how students' misconceptions about the upcoming course material affect course completion. Using a survival analysis approach, we found that, controlling for the score in a pre-course test, students holding more misconceptions had a higher dropout rate at the start of the course, an effect that diminished over time. Other student variables were found to have a positive impact on survival that persisted throughout the entire course: U.S. location, higher age, an intention to complete, better English skills, prior familiarity with the subject, motivation to earn a certificate, and score and time spent on the previous problem set (homework). By contrast, student gender, education level, number of previous MOOCs completed, and motivation to participate in online discussion forums did not affect survival.     

Psychometric models of student conceptions in science: Reconciling qualitative studies and distractor-driven assessment instruments

We stand poised to marry the fruits of qualitative research on children's conceptions with the machinery of psychometrics. This merger allows us to build upon studies of limited groups of subjects to generalize to the larger population of learners. This is accomplished by reformulating multiple choice tests to reflect gains in understanding cognitive development. This study uses psychometric modeling to rank the appeal of a variety of children's astronomical ideas on a single uniform scale. Alternative conceptions are captured in test items with highly attractive multiple choice distractors administered twice to 1250 8th through 12th-grade students at the start and end of their introductory astronomy courses. For such items, an unusual psychometric profile is observed—instruction appears to strengthen support for alternative conceptions before this preference eventually declines. This lends support to the view that such ideas may actually be markers of progress toward scientific understanding and are not impediments to learning. This method of analysis reveals the ages at which certain conceptions are more prevalent than others, aiding developers and practitioners in matching curriculum to student grade levels. This kind of instrument, in which distractors match common student ideas, has a profoundly different psychometric profile from conventional tests and exposes the weakness evident in conventional standardized tests. Distractor-driven multiple choice tests combine the richness of qualitative research with the power of quantitative assessment, measuring conceptual change along a single uniform dimension. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 265–296, 1998.     

Anthrax in transit; practical experience and intellectual exchange

Focusing on three Anglo-American outbreaks of industrial anthrax, this essay engages the question of how local circumstances influenced the transmission of scientific knowledge in the late nineteenth century. Walpole (Massachusetts), Glasgow, and Bradford (Yorkshire) served as important nodes of transnational investigation into anthrax. Knowledge about the morphology and behavior of Bacillus anthracis changed little while in transit between these nodes, even during complex debates about the nature of bacterial morphology, disease causation, and spontaneous generation. Working independently of their more famous counterparts (Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur), Anglo-American anthrax investigators used visual representations of anthrax bacilli to persuade their peers that a specific, identifiable cause produced all forms of anthrax-malignant pustule (cutaneous anthrax), intestinal anthrax, and woolsorter's disease (pneumonic anthrax). By the late 1870s, this point of view also supported what we would today call an ecological notion of the disease's origins in the interactions of people, animals, and microorganisms in the context of global commerce.