A meta-analysis on the relationship between school characteristics and student outcomes in science and maths – evidence from large-scale studies

ABSTRACT

In the present meta-analysis, we examine how secondary school characteristics – such as schools’ academic press, school climate, material resources, personnel resources, classroom climate, instructional practices, out-of-school activities, and socioeconomic status (SES) composition – provide opportunities for students to engage in science and maths, and how these matter with regard to students’ cognitive and motivational-affective outcomes. The meta-analysis includes 71 (international) articles from large-scale studies with a total of 3,960,281 students, 260,390 schools, and 285 effect sizes that were transformed to correlation coefficients. Multilevel meta-analyses were performed. Results identified a number of school variables that can be regarded as relevant for making a difference in student outcomes and at the same time be influenced by education. These refer to school variables such schools’ academic press, classroom climate, instructional practices, and out-of-school activities. Moreover, SES composition was significantly related to student outcomes. Material and personnel resources as well as school climate yielded a close to zero effect. No differences were found between cognitive and motivational-affective outcome variables or between science and maths. The results point to the most promising school characteristics for promoting students’ outcomes and emphasise schools’ potential for students’ engagement in science and maths.     

大学生媒介素养教育之教学策略设计

教学策略的制定是任何学科教学设计的重要环节,对于新的教学内容——媒介素养教育来讲,也不例外。本研究通过实证调查,分析了大学生的媒介素养现状,媒介素养教育的特殊性。从教学设计的角度分析了国外的媒介素养教学策略,结合我国的实际情况提出了对大学生进行媒介素养教育的教学策略。     

Working towards better education for children in care: longitudinal analysis of the educational outcomes of a cohort of children in care in Australia

ABSTRACT

Internationally, reviews of educational outcomes of children in care reveal consistent findings highlighting the need for considerable policy attention to be paid to their education to ensure they achieve optimal economic and psychosocial life outcomes. Important to enhancing the educational achievement of children in care are support, stability of environment, teaching resources and the recognition by all stakeholders – birth parents, foster carers, social workers and statutory authorities — that education is paramount to a child’s future well-being. This paper highlights the perspectives of carers, teachers and children on the fostering experience with particular focus on educational outcomes drawing on a prospective longitudinal study of children in long-term care. Using a multimethod, repeated measures multi-informant design, children were assessed by carers and teachers using the Achenbach Child Behaviour Checklist and its companion, the Teacher Report. The findings indicate demonstrated gains in terms of improved scores and adaptive functioning at subsequent assessments following two years of stable care. Discussion of the findings and implications for practice will focus on the need for a coordinated strategy to improve placement continuity and focused professional and organisational support with respect to the emotional and educational needs of children in care.     

The effect of image quality,repeated study,and assessment method on anatomy learning

The use of two‐dimensional (2D) images is consistently used to prepare anatomy students for handling real specimen. This study examined whether the quality of 2D images is a critical component in anatomy learning. The visual clarity and consistency of 2D anatomical images was systematically manipulated to produce low‐quality and high‐quality images of the human hand and human eye. On day 0, participants learned about each anatomical specimen from paper booklets using either low‐quality or high‐quality images, and then completed a comprehension test using either 2D images or three‐dimensional (3D) cadaveric specimens. On day 1, participants relearned each booklet, and on day 2 participants completed a final comprehension test using either 2D images or 3D cadaveric specimens. The effect of image quality on learning varied according to anatomical content, with high‐quality images having a greater effect on improving learning of hand anatomy than eye anatomy (high‐quality vs. low‐quality for hand anatomy P = 0.018; high‐quality vs. low‐quality for eye anatomy P = 0.247). Also, the benefit of high‐quality images on hand anatomy learning was restricted to performance on short‐answer (SA) questions immediately after learning (high‐quality vs. low‐quality on SA questions P = 0.018), but did not apply to performance on multiple‐choice (MC) questions (high‐quality vs. low‐quality on MC questions P = 0.109) or after participants had an additional learning opportunity (24 hours later) with anatomy content (high vs. low on SA questions P = 0.643). This study underscores the limited impact of image quality on anatomy learning, and questions whether investment in enhancing image quality of learning aids significantly promotes knowledge development. Anat Sci Educ 10: 249–261. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.     

Seeing education through the prism of PISA

International comparisons are never easy and they are not perfect. But PISA shows what is possible in education and it helps countries to see themselves in the mirror of student performance and educational possibilities in other countries. This article summarises key policy insights from PISA. It highlights how excellence and improving equity need not be conflicting policy objectives, but that they tend to be jointly achieved only when deliberate policies are in place that match resources with needs and when stratification and grade repetition are contained. The article also shows how a number of countries have been able to raise learning outcomes and moderate the impact of social background in the last decade and highlights some of the policies and practices that characterise these countries.     

A cross-linguistic comparison of phonological awareness and word recognition

Phonological awareness is one of the critical skills in the acquisition of reading in an alphabetic orthography. The development of phonological awareness was compared across Turkish and English-speaking kindergarten and first-grade children (n = 138). The Turkish-speakers were more proficient in both handling of the syllables and deleting final phonemes of words. These patterns were related to the characteristics of the respective spoken languages (such as the saliency of the syllable, familiarity of the nonword patterns, importance of onset or final phoneme deletion, importance of vowel harmony) and the development of phonological awareness was discussed as a function of the characteristics of spoken language, orthography and literacy instruction.     

Developing phonological awareness and word recognition skills: A two-year intervention with low-income,inner-city children

Low-income, inner-city children were involved in a two-year intervention delivered in the regular classroom by regular classroom teachers to develop phonological awareness and word recognition skills. For the treatment children, an 11-week phoneme awareness program in kindergarten was followed by a first grade reading program (extended to grade 2 for some children) that emphasized explicit, systematic instruction in the alphabetic code. Control children participated in the school district's regular basal reading program. Both groups participated in a phonetically-based spelling program mandated by the district. At the end of grade 1, treatment children (n = 66) significantly outperformed control children (n = 62) on measures of phonological awareness, letter name and letter sound knowledge, and three measures of word recognition, and reached marginal significance (0.056) on a fourth. They also significantly outperformed the control children on two measures of spelling. One year later, at the end of grade 2, the treatment children (n = 58) significantly outperformed the control children (n = 48) on all four measures of word recognition. For the groups as a whole, there were no differences on the one measure of spelling readministered at the end of grade 2. However, there were significant differences in spelling between the treatment (n = 16) and control children (n = 13) who remained in the bottom quartile of spellers at the end of grade 2 when partial credit was given for phonetically correct spelling, and significant differences in reading favoring these treatment children on all four measures of word recognition.     

Average vs. distributional effects: Evidence from an experiment in Rwanda

Programs and policies in education overwhelmingly focus on improving the average academic achievement for students. However, educational interventions focused on literacy improvement can impact readers at different levels of the reading score distribution differently, and the distributional differences may be more pronounced by sex. In this paper, I explore data from a field experiment in a district in Rwanda that was intended to make classroom reading pedagogy more effective and engage students, families, and communities in reading activities outside of school to improve students’ reading outcomes.I study the distributional effects of the intervention on students on two higher-order reading outcomes – Kinyarwanda fluency and Kinyarwanda text comprehension, measured for students who met a basic literacy threshold. I find that a) the set of interventions had a positive and significant, albeit modest effect on students at or above the 25th percentile of the reading distributions b) the program had positive and significant effects on reading outcomes for girls only, and these effects differed along the reading achievement distribution. This work underscores the importance of tailoring programs and policies to the needs of different types of learners.     

教育质量与质量证据：2013年美国高等院校认证标准

美国中北部区域高等教育认证委员会2013年新认证标准对教育质量的评估提出了进一步的要求,强调教育要有质量,质量要有证据,评估重点转型到对学生学习结果的评估,作为判断学生学习质量的主要证据之一。在了解和借鉴境外同行的经验中,处理学校运行常态信息与质量信息的关系,思考教育理念共识与基于文化之教育理念之间的衔接点,可以使教育工作者对教育质量在现实社会大环境中的内涵有比较合理的认识。     

“内外共融”武术教学理念的探讨

武术作为具有中国特色的民族传统体育运动,俨已成为当今学校体育的重要部分。而当今武术教学的诸多现象却表明：如何采取行之有效的措施帮助学生在获得技能、强身健体的同时感受并汲取武术内在的文化,进而形成良好的人文素养早已成为我们亟待解决的问题。基于此背景,本文提出＂内外共融＂的武术教学理念,通过对其特有功能和价值的分析及对该理念的深入阐述,以求改善武术教学现状,实现学生真正意义上的内外兼修。