Preface Chapter 1 The challenge Chapter 2 The nature of the evidence: A synthesis of meta-analyses Chapter 3 The argument: Visible teaching and visible learning Chapter 4: The contributions from the student Chapter 5 The contributions from the home Chapter 6 The contributions from the school Chapter 7 The contributions from the teacher Chapter 8 The contributions from the curricula Chapter 9 The contributions from teaching approaches - I Chapter 10 The contributions from teaching approaches - II Chapter 11: Bringing it all together Appendix A: The 800 meta-analyses Appendix B: The meta-analyses by rank order References

Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement

Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

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International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Despite broad consensus about the effects of parenting practices on child development, many questions about the construct parenting style remain unanswered. Particularly pressing issues are the variability in the effects of parenting style as a function of the child's cultural background, the processes through which parenting style influences the child's development, and the operationalization of parenting style. Drawing on historical review, the authors present a model that integrates two traditions in socialization research, the study of specific parenting practices and the study of global parent characteristics. They propose that parenting style is best conceptualized as a context that moderates the influence of specific parenting practices on the child. It is argued that only by maintaining the distinction between parenting style and parenting practice can researchers address questions concerning socialization processes. During the past 25 years, research based on Baumrind's conceptualization of parenting style has produced a remarkably consistent picture of the type of parenting conducive to the successful socialization of children into the dominant culture of the United States. Authoritativeness—a constellation of parent attributes that includes emotional support, high standards, appropriate autonomy granting, and clear, bidirectional communication—has been shown to help children and adolescents develop an instrumental competence characterized by the balancing of societal and individual needs and responsibilities. Among the indicators of instrumental competence are responsible independence, cooperation with adults and peers, psychosocial maturity, and academic success (for reviews, see Baumrind, 1989,199 la). This work on authoritative ness and its beneficial effects builds on half a century of research on parenting and parenting style. Yet, despite some impressive consistencies in the socialization literature, important questions remain unanswered. As researchers have expanded beyond samples of White, predominantly middle-class families, it has become increasingly clear that the influence of authoritativeness, as well as other styles of parenting, varies depending on the social milieu in which the family is embedded. For example, Baumrind (1972) reported that authoritarian parenting, which is associated with fearful, timid behavior and behavioral compliance among EuropeanAmerican children, is associated with assertiveness among African-American girls. Furthermore, recent studies in which the effects of authoritativeness have been compared across ethnic groups have consistently shown that authoritative parenting is most strongly associated with academic achievement among

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Parenting Style as Context: An Integrative Model

The idea that parental involvement has positive influence on students' academic achievement is so intuitively appealing that society in general, and educators in particular, have considered parental involvement an important ingredient for the remedy for many problems in education. The vast proportion of the literature in this area, however, is qualitative and nonempirical. Among the empirical studies that have investigated the issue quantitatively, there appear to be considerable inconsistencies. A meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the quantitative literature about the relationship between parental involvement and students' academic achievement. The findings reveal a small to moderate, and practically meaningful, relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement. Through moderator analysis, it was revealed that parental aspiration/expectation for children's education achievement has the strongest relationship, whereas parental home supervision has the weakest relationship, with students' academic achievement. In addition, the relationship is stronger when academic achievement is represented by a global indicator (e.g., GPA) than by a subject-specific indicator (e.g., math grade). Limitations of the study are noted, and suggestions are made for future studies.

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Parental involvement and students' academic achievement: A meta-analysis.

This article analyzes the development of initiative as an exemplar of one of many learning experiences that should be studied as part of positive youth development. The capacity for initiative is essential for adults in our society and will become more important in the 21st century, yet adolescents have few opportunities to learn it. Their typical experiences during schoolwork and unstructured leisure do not reflect conditions for learning initiative. The context best suited to the development of initiative appears to be that of structured voluntary activities, such as sports, arts, and participation in organizations, in which youths experience the rare combination of intrinsic motivation in combination with deep attention. An incomplete body of outcome research suggests that such activities are associated with positive development, but the developmental processes involved are only beginning to be understood. One promising approach has recorded language use and has found that adolescents participating in effective organizations acquire a new operating language that appears to correspond to the development of initiative.

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Toward a psychology of positive youth development

The ambitious generation : America's teenagers, motivated but directionless

Using a nationally representative sample of American households, we examine the relation between parental involvement in schooling and the child's school performance. With a sample of 179 children, parents, and teachers, we investigate 3 hypotheses: (1) the higher the educational status of the mother the greater the degree of parental involvement in school activities; (2) the younger the age of the child the greater the degree of parental involvement; and (3) children of parents who are more involved in school activities do better in school than children with parents who are less involved. In an analysis of cross-sectional data, we discover support for the 3 hypotheses. The educational status of the mother is related to the degree of parental involvement in schooling, so that parents with more education are more involved. Parental involvement is related to the child's school performance. Also, parents are more involved in school activities if the child is younger. The mother's educational level and the age of the child are stronger predictors of parental involvement in schooling for boys than for girls. We do not, however, find a direct effect of maternal educational status on school performance independent of parental involvement in school activities. We discuss these findings in light of the relation between families and schools.

The family-school relation and the child's school performance.

The American educational system requires parents to manage their child's school career to maximize their child's school achievement. But parents differ in the specific strategies they select to help their children through school. These strategies are one way in which family background influences children's school achievement. We expand the extant model of how parents influence their children's school careers to encompass various pragmatic strategies devised for the crucial transition to high school. We analyze the responses of a small heterogeneous sample of mothers of eighth graders, who are beginning the transition from middle school to high school. The findings of this exploratory study indicate that parents actively manage their child's school career in ways that can have direct consequences for their child's educational achievement. The number and types of schooling strategies suggested by mothers do not vary among mothers, which indicates that there may be standard parental strategies. The implementation of strategies, however, does vary by the socioeconomic status of the mother, even when the child's academic performance is controlled. Mothers who have at least a college education know more about their child's school performance, have more contact with the teachers, and are more likely to take action to manage their child's academic achievement. We also find that mothers with a college education are more likely to choose college-preparatory courses for their child, regardless of their child's academic performance. We discuss how these findings contribute to our understanding of the process by which parents' socioeconomic status influences the child's academic achievement and educational attainment.

Mothers' Strategies for Children's School Achievement: Managing the Transition to High School.

Shadow education is a set of educational activities that occur out-side formal schooling and are designed to enhance the student's formal school career. Analyses of data from a longitudinal study of high school seniors in Japan indicate that students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to participate in shadow education and that students who participate in certain forms of shadow education are more likely to attend university. Expanding theories of allocation to incorporate shadow education may enhance the study of how students are allocated to places in formal schooling and how social advantages are transferred across generations.

Shadow Education and Allocation in Formal Schooling: Transition to University in Japan

Students' opportunities for learning subjects can be organized into sequences that span grades and schools. Such opportunity sequences are a form of stratification that links students' future opportunities for learning with their earlier opportunities. Using data from a national cohort of public school students, the authors examined national patterns in students' opportunities for learning mathematics and science from Grade 8 to Grade 10. They found that there are national sequences of opportunities for studying mathematics; that is, the level or topics of mathematics that students study in the eighth grade is closely related to what the students take in high school, independent of their academic performance. This is not the case with science; what students study in the eighth grade has minimal and inconsistent effects on the courses they take in high school.

David Stevenson

Papers

The ambitious generation : America's teenagers, motivated but directionless

The family-school relation and the child's school performance.

Mothers' Strategies for Children's School Achievement: Managing the Transition to High School.

Shadow Education and Allocation in Formal Schooling: Transition to University in Japan

Sequences of Opportunities for Learning.