Relationships among student motivational orientation, self-regulated learning, and classroom academic performance were examined for 173 seventh graders. Results provide empirical evidence for considering motivational and self-regulated learning components in models of academic performance. Involvement in self-regulated learning is tied closely to student efficacy beliefs.
As teachers explore alternative forms of assessment for the classroom, interest increases in all aspects of observational assessment--what to look for, how to look for it, how to document it, and how to use it. This article offers some hints from the experiences of teachers who have experimented with observational assessment.
Perspectives on the improvement of college instruction are offered. External forces that focus attention on the quality of college instruction are identified, including: the demand for good teaching by two groups of nontraditional students (low-performing students and adult students); technology, and especially new interactive technologies; the growing interest in assessment and program evaluation; the new emphasis on alterable variables in educational research; the lack of mobility for faculty members; and low morale among the teaching faculty. While the classroom lecture method is the method of choice for college teachers, one promising method for better learning of subject-matter content has been the Personalized System of Instruction, which emphasizes student involvement, high expectations, and assessment and feedback. Problems arise when colleges that are primarily teaching institutions turn to faculty publication as their route to distinction. For undergraduate education to improve, teachers will need support of their colleges, including the commitment to evaluate teaching performance in decisions to hire, promote, and tenure faculty members. It is recommended that research on teaching and learning should be done in classrooms across the nation by classroom teachers ("classroom researchers.")
The publication of research findings that are not statistically significant presents a novel probelm in interpretation of research results. The contribution of nonsignificant results depends in part on whether the statistical test was powerful enough to detect an effect of "meaningful" size. The primary responsibility rests with the authors of articles reporting nonsignificant results to demonstrate the worth of the results by discussion the power of the tests. If they do not assume this responsibility, then consumers of research should be prepared to conduct their own power analyses to aid interpretation of the research results. This ariicle demonstrates the use of power analysis for the interpretation of nonsignificant findings. The power of many common statistical tests can be determined without difficult computation using Cohen's (1977) or Stevens's (1980) tables.
In this article, Frederick Mosteller, Richard Light, and Jason Sachs explore the nature of the empirical evidence that can inform school leaders' key decisions about how to organize students within schools: Should students be placed in heterogeneous classes or tracked classes? What is the impact of cclass size on students learning? How does it vary? Since tracking (or skill grouping, as the authors prefer to call it) is widely used in U.S. Schools, the authors expected to find a wealth of evidence to support the efficacy of the practice. Surprisingly, they found only a handful of well-designed studies exploring the academic benefits of tracking, and of these, the results were equivocal. With regard to class size, the authors describe the Tennessee class size study, using it to illustrate that large, long-term, randomized controlled field trials can be carried out successfully in education. The Tennessee study demonstrates convincingly that student achievement is better supported in smaller classes in grades K-3, and that this enhanced achievement continues when the srudents move to regular-size classes in the fourth grade and beyond. The authors suggest in conclusion that education would benefit from a commitment to sustained inquiry through well-designed, randomized controlled field trials of education innovations. Such sustained inquiry could provide a source of solid evidence of which educators could base their decisions about how to organize and support student learning in classes and schools.
There is a considerable confusion in the educational literature about the nature of qualitative research. In this article I argue that a major source of the confusion arises from discussing qualitative research as if it is one approach. The discussion in the educational literature concerning qualitative research can be clarified by recognizing that qualitative research comes in many differenct varieties, which can be more clearly identified and understood by using the notion of research traditions. To apply this concept to the discussion of qualitative research, I describe briefly and compare six traditions from the disciplines of psychology, holistic ethnography, cognitive anthropology, ethnography of communication, and symbolic interactionism. I conclude that we may increase our understanding of qualitative research by focusing our dicussions at the level of traditions.
Florence Nightingale is remembered as a pioneer of nursing and a reformer of hospitals. She herself saw her mission in larger terms: to serve humanity through the prevention of needless illness and death. For much of her long life (1820-1910) she pursued this mission with a fierce determination that gave everything she did a singular coherence. Her greatest contributions were undoubtedly her efforts to reform the British military health-care system and her establishment, through the founding of training programs and the definitions of sound professional standards, of nursing as a respected profession. Much of what now seems basic in modern health case can be traced to the 19th century. Less well known, because it has been neglected by her biogrpahers, is her equally pioneering use of the new advanced techniques of statistical analysis in those battles.
What is the chance of that!? It is a question that almost all people ask--sometimes after the fact--in trying to make sense of a seemingly improbably event and, at other times, in preparation for action, as an attempt to foresee and plan for all the possibilities that lie ahead. In either case, it is mathematics in general, and probability and statistics in particular, that the public looks to for a final answer to this question. One out of one hundred, 4 to 1 odds, an expected lifetime of 75 years--these are the sorts of answers people want. When used honestly and correctly, numbers can help clarify the essence of a confusing situation by decoupling it from prejudicial assumptions or emotional conclusions. When used incorrectly--or even worse, deceitfully--they can lend a false sense of scientific objectivity to an assertion, misleading those who are not careful enough or knowledgeable enough to look into the reasoning underlying the numerical conclusions.<br><br>It is important to be able to distinguish between these two scenarios. ...
There have been many changes in educational assessment in recent years, both within the fields of mesurement and evaluation and in specific disciplines. In this article, we summarize current assessment practices in statistics education, distinguishing between assessment for different purposes and assessment at different educational levels. To provide a context for asessment of statistical learning, we first describe current learning goals for students. We then highlight recent assessment methods being used for different puposes: indicvdual student ecvaluation, large-scale group evaluation, and as a researc tool. Example of assessment used in teaching statistics in primary schools, secondary schools, and teriary schools are given. We then focus on 3 examples of effetive uses of assessment and conclude with a description of some current assessment challenges.
Presents an alternative to the research-development-diffusion model of mathematics education based on an integration of curriculum research and design embedded in educational development. Explicates the characteristics of developmental research and discusses its methodological aspects.