In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling (2nd ed.)

There is no doubt that all levels of the South African education system consider the academic achievement of our country‘s children of the utmost importance. Each day the public is continually reminded of this through newspapers, radio, and television reports describing the adequacy or inadequacy of educational policy and practices. Certainly, reading achievement is among the most important of educational goals for this nation‘s children. Understanding that the foundation of a child‘s future reading success is often determined before leaving Grade 3 (Juel, 1988), the continual assessment of component literacy skills beginning when children enter pre-school, has become increasingly popular and prevalent in today‘s schools. The National Research Council (1998) indicated that assessment systems that can identify reading difficulties early and prevent later reading failure need to be in place. Good, Simmons, and Smith (1998, p. 46) state that assessment procedures are needed to ―(a) identify children early who are experiencing difficulty acquiring early literacy skills, (b) contribute to the effectiveness of interventions by providing ongoing feedback to teachers, parents, and learners, (c) evaluate the effectiveness of interventions for individual learners, (d) determine when learner progress is adequate and further intervention is not necessary, and (f) evaluate the overall effectiveness of early intervention efforts‖.

Dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills

Contrary to the fairly established notion in the learning sciences that un-scaffolded processes rarely lead to meaningful learning, this study reports a hidden efficacy of such processes and a method for extracting it. Compared to scaffolded, well-structured problem-solving groups, un-scaffolded, ill-structured problem-solving groups struggled with defining and solving the problems. Their discussions were chaotic and divergent, resulting in poor group performance. However, despite failing in their problem-solving efforts, these participants outperformed their counterparts in the well-structured condition on transfer measures, suggesting a latent productivity in the failure. The study's contrasting-case design provided participants in the un-scaffolded condition with an opportunity to contrast the ill-structured problems that they had solved in groups with the well-structured problems they solved individually afterwards. This contrast facilitated a spontaneous transfer, helping them perform significantly better on the individual ill-structured problem-solving tasks subsequently. Implications of productive failure for the development of adaptive expertise are discussed.

Productive failure

 The Standards, grounded in what it takes for all students to graduate collegeand career-ready, were developed in a state-led process under the leadership of governors (NGA) and state superintendents (CCSSO) from 48 states who were increasingly concerned about the ability of U.S students to compete in a global economy. The process included the participation of state departments of education, districts, teachers, community leaders, experts in a wide array of fields, and professional organizations.

The Common Core State Standards

http://jpa.sagepub.com/content/22/2/169.full.pdf

Kelli D. Cummings

Papers

Book Review: Designing and using tools for educational assessment:

Response to Intervention; Investigating the New Role of Special Educators:

In search of average growth: describing within-year oral reading fluency growth across Grades 1-8.

Web-based training for foster, adoptive, and kinship parents

Indicadores Dinámicos del Éxito en la Lectura