Formative Assessment: A Meta‐Analysis and a Call for Research

An effect size of about .70 (or .40–.70) is often claimed for the efficacy of formative assessment, but is not supported by the existing research base. More than 300 studies that appeared to address the efficacy of formative assessment in grades K‐12 were reviewed. Many of the studies had severely flawed research designs yielding uninterpretable results. Only 13 of the studies provided sufficient information to calculate relevant effect sizes. A total of 42 independent effect sizes were available. The median observed effect size was .25. Using a random effects model, a weighted mean effect size of .20 was calculated. Moderator analyses suggested that formative assessment might be more effective in English language arts (ELA) than in mathematics or science, with estimated effect sizes of .32, .17, and .09, respectively. Two types of implementation of formative assessment, one based on professional development and the other on the use of computer‐based formative systems, appeared to be more effective than other approaches, yielding mean effect size of .30 and .28, respectively. Given the wide use and potential efficacy of good formative assessment practices, the paucity of the current research base is problematic. A call for more high‐quality studies is issued.     

New Information Technologies in Special Education

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine possible applications of new information technologies (NIT) in special education within different educational, socio‐economic and socio‐cultural contexts and, in particular, the possibilities of transference of these applications from the industrialised nations to the developing countries. The study also contains references to positive and negative results of the use of NIT in the special education of children, youth and adults.     

Silent Majority: Childhood Vaccinations and Antecedents to Communicative Action

The topic of childhood vaccinations has received much news media attention recently, prompting scholars to examine how the public has responded. In light of this news, and the deep divide that seems to exist between parents who support childhood vaccinations and those who do not, this study examines how and why individuals may involve themselves in communication about vaccinations, particularly on social media or in other online environments. Focusing on the concept of communicative action and drawing from spiral of silence and other research, a survey of mothers (N = 455) found that those who do not support childhood vaccinations are more likely to engage in communication about the issue, including information seeking, attending, forefending, permitting, forwarding, and sharing. In addition, issue importance and affective and cognitive involvement help drive communicative action regarding childhood vaccinations, which could affect public opinion or public perceptions of the issue. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Sharing teacher knowledge at scale: teacher inquiry,learning design and the representation of teachers’ practice

Sharing teachers’ professional knowledge remains challenging. Teachers’ development often remains ad hoc or local, and attempts to scale this up have proved problematic. To address this, research in areas such as ‘learning design’ has explored the use of formal representations of practice. This proposes that educational practice can be improved by documenting, sharing and building on what teachers already do. Whilst this has led to some successes, it has not resulted in the widespread transformation of practice. This paper reviews the literature about sharing teacher knowledge. The challenges of scaling up development are then considered in relation to two theories that help explain the challenges: Communities of Practice and Sociomateriality. This analysis is illustrated through case studies in Norway and the UK. These show that teachers already create and share artefacts that represent their pedagogic knowledge. However, they found formal representations, such as learning designs, difficult to work with. The paper concludes that scaling up teacher development using abstract formalisms is unlikely to succeed. Instead, teachers value stories and the materials they already create in their day-to-day practice. It is this intermediate level of representation, between direct experience and formal abstraction, that offers the most promise for sharing practice.     

Resilience in higher education students: a scoping review

ABSTRACT

The health, wellbeing and employability of university students are key considerations within higher education. In response, interest in student resilience is on the rise. Reviews of contemporary resilience literature highlight both conceptual and methodological weaknesses, issues which hamper attempts to design effective resilience interventions. To inform the design of a student resilience program, to be piloted at three Australian universities, a scoping review of resilience specific to the higher education context was undertaken. Searches of three electronic databases (PsychINFO, CINAHL and ProQuest) were conducted. Seventy-two peer-reviewed articles published between 2007 and 2017 were included in the review. While the review reaffirms the conceptual and methodological issues found in previous resilience research, it provides a useful critique of key issues in relation to university student resilience and interventions to enhance students’ resilience. Recommendations for educators and researchers are provided.     

Thinking about the future because of the past: young children's knowledge about the causes of worry and preventative decisions

Two studies investigated 3- to 6-year-olds' and adults' (N= 128) knowledge about emotions and behaviors caused by thinking about the future because of the past. Participants listened to stories featuring characters that experienced negative events, and then, many days later, felt worried or changed their behaviors upon seeing an entity associated with the prior harm. Results revealed a significant increase between 3 and 5 years in the frequency that participants explained characters' reactions as caused by anticipating the reoccurrence of a negative past event. Across age, females more often marked future events as uncertain, as well as predicted that people in ambiguous risk situations would feel worried due to past-to-future connections.     

Enacting Cultural Identities in Conversation: Managing Collaboration in Two Nonprofit Organizations

As they conduct the practical work of collaborating during meetings, nonprofit stakeholders construct, negotiate, and manage identities. In this article we use membership categorization analysis to explore how meeting participants avow and ascribe cultural identities during collaborative meetings in two nonprofit organizations. Examination of identification practices, including employing labels for ethnic categories and implicating cultural identities through category-relevant predicates—which are part of the practical work of collaborating in nonprofit organizations—can serve as an aid to understanding how stakeholders negotiate interorganizational collaboration in social interaction.     

From a Means to an End: Patenting in the 1999 Danish ‘Act on Inventions’ and its Effect on Research Practice

This paper examines the potential pitfalls for academic research associated with goal displacements in the implementation of goals and indicators of research commercialization. We ask why patenting has come to serve as the key policy indicator of innovative capacity and what consequences this has for the organization of academic research. To address these questions, the paper presents a case study from Denmark on, firstly, why and how the 1999 Danish ‘Act on Inventions’ introduced patenting as a central instrument to Danish science policy and, secondly, the effects the Act has had on Danish university organization and research practices. We trace why and how commercialization was introduced as an important objective in Danish science policy since the 1980s. The increased focus on patents is explained as an isomorphic adjustment to an international ‘science policy field,’ manifested in particular through OECD statistics, where patenting has come to serve as a key metric in international rankings. In a second step, we examine what effects the patenting requirements have had on organization and research practice at a Danish university. We show that in practice ‘number of patents’ changed from serving as an indicator of innovative capacity to being a policy goal in itself, thus in effect producing a goal displacement that is potentially damaging for both academic research and innovation capacity of the surrounding society. As a consequence of this goal displacement, active scientists now increasingly engage in patenting primarily as a means to fulfill organizational targets and to increase their ‘fundability,’ rather than to promote commercial applications of their research. In conclusion, we discuss how these unfulfilled policy ambitions have led to a retrospective redefinition of policy goals rather than an adjustment of the actual policy tools.