More Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing

This article explores the basis of negative sentiments toward and current critiques of high-stakes student testing from within the education profession. To promote some balance for current policy debates, evidence for 10 unintended, unrecognized, or unarticulated positive consequences is provided. The article concludes with an examination of the relationship between high-stakes testing and accountability systems.     

Social skills interventions across school settings: Case study reviews of students with mild disabilities

This study investigates the efficacy of a social skills training program with seven mildly handicapped students across three school settings: regular classroom, special education resource room, and recess. It was found that social skills training generated improvement on both pre-post measures and behavior ratings. Improvements were maintained 2 weeks after treatment was discontinued for seven students. All students' performance generalized from resource room to regular classroom settings; only four students' performance generalized to the recess setting.     

The influence of reading unit size on the development of Stroop interference in early word decoding

The purpose of the experiments was to determine the automatic use of large or small word reading units in young readers in the absence of word decoding strategies. Picture-word Stroop interference was examined from four types of conflicting labels: (a) words containing both highly predictable grapheme–phoneme correspondence (GPC) units and highly consistent rime units (henceforth, Hi-GPC + Hi-Rime); (b) words with highly predictable GPC units and less consistent rime units (Hi-GPC + Lo-Rime); (c) words with low predictability GPC units and highly consistent rime units (Low GPC + High Rime); (d) nonwords that contained both highly predictable GPC and highly consistent rime units. Naming time for pictures containing these labels was compared against that for pictures with random letter strings or no labels. In Experiment 1, Stroop interference was examined in first, second, and third grade children to determine whether there was developmental change in the presence of rime or GPC interference. In Experiment 2, Stroop interference was examined as a function of relative reading skill in first grade children. In Experiment 3, Stroop interference in adults was compared to the use of rime or GPC pronunciation strategies for nonword reading. In all experiments, Stroop interference in picture naming was longer for pictures with highly predictable GPC unit labels than less predictable GPC unit labels. However, in Experiment 3, even though adults showed interference from predictable GPC units in the Stroop task, they always preferred rime pronunciation for ambiguous nonwords in the nonword reading task. It is argued that the current experiments provide evidence for a flexible units model. The results of this study were presented at the Cognitive Development Society meeting, November 2001, Virginia Beach, VA, and the American Educational Research Association meeting, April 2004, San Diego, California.     

Coordinating principles and examples through analogy and self-explanation

Research on expertise suggests that a critical aspect of expert understanding is knowledge of the relations between domain principles and problem features. We investigated two instructional pathways hypothesized to facilitate students’ learning of these relations when studying worked examples. The first path is through self-explaining how worked examples instantiate domain principles and the second is through analogical comparison of worked examples. We compared both of these pathways to a third instructional path where students read worked examples and solved practice problems. Students in an introductory physics class were randomly assigned to one of three worked example conditions (reading, self-explanation, or analogy) when learning about rotational kinematics and then completed a set of problem solving and conceptual tests that measured near, intermediate, and far transfer. Students in the reading and self-explanation groups performed better than the analogy group on near transfer problems solved during the learning activities. However, this problem solving advantage was short lived as all three groups performed similarly on two intermediate transfer problems given at test. On the far transfer test, the self-explanation and analogy groups performed better than the reading group. These results are consistent with the idea that self-explanation and analogical comparison can facilitate conceptual learning without decrements to problem solving skills relative to a more traditional type of instruction in a classroom setting.     

Factors contributing to mathematical problem-solving performance: An exploratory study

This paper describes differences in mathematical problem-solving performance of third-grade gifted and fifth-grade average students observed during an eight week period. Results indicated that such factors as attitude, motivation, and belief systems were important to performance. In addition there were major differences in problem-solving behavior between the girls and boys in this study. Because these results were incidental to the original questions of the study (Buchanan, 1984), they were deemed especially significant. Four groups, one of third-grade gifted boys, one of third-grade gifted girls, one of average boys and one of fifth-grade average girls met with the experimenter twice a week for eight weeks to solve a variety of mathematical problems. In the global analysis of video tapes of all sessions and post hoc statistical analysis of selected quantifiable variables, differences in problem-solving performance were best described in terms of motivation, beliefs about mathematics, problem-solving strategies, and means of achieving satisfaction. In addition, the girls' groups were more ego-involved and social; they completed fewer problems and had longer solution times than the boys' groups. Further holistic research is needed to describe the complex interaction that occurs during mathematical problem solving in group situations. Then, appropriate intervention might be designed to assure that both boys and girls have an opportunity to perform at optimum levels.