Lesson Study with preservice teachers: Lessons from lessons

This article examines a 2-year process of integrating Lesson Study—a form of teacher-led professional development—into an introductory course on the principles of teaching for students majoring in early childhood education. The course is taught in conjunction with beginning practicum work in area schools. We describe obstacles, modifications, and outcomes as we adapted the Lesson-Study process to help preservice teachers pay closer attention to instructional strategies (such as questioning techniques, anticipating student responses, and how lesson flow affects student understanding), and become more comfortable with constructive criticism by focusing on the lesson plan rather than the teacher.     

Strategic responses to school accountability measures: It's all in the timing

The adoption of state accountability testing in the 1990s coincided with the movement of some school start dates from September into August. Using data from Wisconsin, this paper connects these phenomena, showing that some low-scoring districts advanced their school start dates to allow their students more time to prepare for exams. I use a 2001 Wisconsin state law that restricted districts to start dates after September 1st to identify the effects of this extra time on student achievement. Extra classroom days are associated with small increases in Math scores for 4th graders, but not average reading or language scores. Extra classroom time may also have increased third grade reading scores for students in the upper portion of the ability distribution.     

The severity of academic dishonesty: A comparison of faculty and student views

This study considers the severity of academic dishonesty as an important factor in dealing with academic integrity. The results indicate that although faculty generally consider specific dishonest behaviors as more severe than do students, the differences appear to lessen as students progress toward graduation.     

IMPACT OF AN INTERGENERATIONAL PROGRAM ON BLACK ADOLESCENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ELDERLY

This study examines changes in black adolescents’ perceptions of the elderly following participation in an eight‐week intergenerational project. The project matched 19 teenagers with 19 elderly subjects from a large senior citizens center. Using an experimental design, students were matched by age with a control group (n = 20). A 20‐item semantic differential scale and the Children's Perceptions of Aging and Elderly (CPAE) inventory were used to measure attitude change. Posttest results from a matched pair t‐test found significant attitude change in the experimental group: semantic differential (t = 2.8, p < .01); CPAE (t = 4.2, p < .01). Qualitative comments from the youth and elderly participants further indicate positive qualities of the partners program.     

Improving secondary students' perception of the “dreaded mathematics word problem assignment” by giving them more word problems

The purpose of the current study was to replicate and extend research on academic assignment preference by presenting high school students with control assignments containing eight 2‐digit × 2‐digit + 2‐digit × 2‐digit mathematics reading problems, experimental assignments that contained eight equivalent 2‐digit × 2‐digit + 2‐digit × 2‐digit problems, and three additional interspersed 4‐digit + 4‐digit mathematics reading problems. After spending 10 minutes and 40 seconds working on each assignment, significantly more high school students ranked the experimental assignments as being less difficult. When given a choice between the two assignments for homework, significantly more students chose a new experimental assignment. No differences were found on accuracy levels across assignments. Although the experimental assignments contained more problems, the students preferred the experimental over the control assignments. Discussion focuses on future research designed to investigate the applied implications of the interspersal technique within educational settings. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Crowding Peter to educate Paul: Lessons from a class size reduction externality

This paper examines an increase in upper elementary class sizes in California associated with the K-3 class size reduction program. I also use the variation in fourth and fifth grade class size generated by idiosyncratic first and second grade reductions required to meet program rules to identify a negative impact of larger class sizes on achievement in upper elementary grades. These quasi-experimental findings generally agree with results of prior foreign and fixed-effects studies on upper grade levels, though my estimates are larger in some cases. The findings also imply that any evaluation strategy for class size reduction that uses upper grades as implicit or explicit controls is likely flawed.     

Why do so few low- and middle-income children attend a grammar school? New evidence from the Millennium Cohort Study

Proponents argue that grammar schools enhance social mobility by allowing high-attaining pupils to attend elite schools, no matter what their social background. However, disadvantaged pupils cannot benefit from grammar schools unless they gain access to them. In this article, we use rich cohort data to investigate the strength of, and reasons for, the socio-economic gradient in grammar school entrance rates. Presenting new evidence for England and Northern Ireland, we find stark differences in grammar school attendance by family income. Although differences in prior academic attainment can partly explain these gaps, parental school preferences and private tuition also play an important role. Entrance to grammar school therefore depends on birth and wealth, as well as academic attainment.     

Connected and culturally embedded beliefs: Chinese and US teachers talk about how their students best learn mathematics

This study compares US and Chinese elementary mathematics teachers' beliefs about how students learn mathematics. Interviews with teachers in each country revealed that Chinese and US teachers have distinct ways of thinking about how mathematics should be taught and how students learn. Many Chinese teachers talked about developing students’ interest in mathematics and relating the content of mathematics lessons to real-life situations. The US teachers talked about students' learning styles and using hands-on approaches to learning mathematics. Furthermore, these beliefs may be widespread and persistent within each country because the set of ideas among teachers appear to be internally consistent. Implications for teacher change and the study of teachers' beliefs are discussed.     

Comparing Teachers’ Job Satisfaction across Countries: A Multiple‐Pairwise Measurement Invariance Approach

There is much interest in comparing latent traits, such as teacher job satisfaction, in large international surveys. However, different countries respond to questionnaires in different languages and interpret the questions through different cultural lenses, raising doubts about the psychometric equivalence of the measurements. Making valid comparisons depends on the latent traits displaying scalar measurement invariance. Unfortunately, this condition is rarely met across many countries at once. Different approaches that maximize the utility of such surveys, but remain faithful to the principles of measurement invariance testing, are therefore needed. This article illustrates one such approach, involving multiple‐pairwise comparisons. This enables us to compare teacher job satisfaction in England to 17 of the countries that participated in TALIS 2013. Teacher job satisfaction in England was as low, or lower, than all of the 17 comparable countries.