Showing papers in "American Educational Research Journal in 2004"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the spectrum of ideas about what good citizenship is and what good citizens do that are embodied in democratic education programs and demonstrate that the narrow and often ideologically conservative conception of citizenship embedded in many current efforts at teaching for democracy reflects not arbitrary choices but, rather, political choices with political consequences.
Abstract: Educators and policymakers increasingly pursue programs that aim to strengthen democracy through civic education, service learning, and other pedagogies. Their underlying beliefs, however, differ. This article calls attention to the spectrum of ideas about what good citizenship is and what good citizens do that are embodied in democratic education programs. It offers analyses of a 2-year study of educational programs in the United States that aimed to promote democracy. Drawing on democratic theory and on findings from their study, the authors detail three conceptions of the “good” citizen—personally responsible, participatory, and justice oriented—that underscore political implications of education for democracy. The article demonstrates that the narrow and often ideologically conservative conception of citizenship embedded in many current efforts at teaching for democracy reflects not arbitrary choices but, rather, political choices with political consequences.
1,875 citations
TL;DR: This article found that teachers who were provided with mentors from the same subject field and who participated in collective induction activities, such as planning and collaboration with other teachers, were less likely to leave the teaching occupation after their first year of teaching.
Abstract: In recent years there has been an increase in the number of programs offering support, guidance, and orientation for beginning teachers during the transition into their first teaching job. This study examines whether such programs—collectively known as induction—have a positive effect on the retention of beginning teachers. The data used in the analysis are from the nationally representative 1999–2000 Schools and Staffing Survey. The results indicate that beginning teachers who were provided with mentors from the same subject field and who participated in collective induction activities, such as planning and collaboration with other teachers, were less likely to move to other schools and less likely to leave the teaching occupation after their first year of teaching.
1,313 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that children who attended a center or school-based preschool program in the year before school entry perform better on assessments of reading and math skills upon beginning kindergarten, after controlling for a host of family background and other factors that might be associated with selection into early education programs and relatively high academic skills.
Abstract: Attendance in U.S. preschools has risen substantially in recent decades, but gaps in enrollment between children from advantaged and disadvantaged families remain. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999, we analyze the effect of participation in child care and early education on children's school readiness as measured by early reading and math skills in kindergarten and first grade. We find that children who attended a center or school-based preschool program in the year before school entry perform better on assessments of reading and math skills upon beginning kindergarten, after controlling for a host of family background and other factors that might be associated with selection into early education programs and relatively high academic skills. This advantage persists when children's skills are measured in the spring of kindergarten and first grade, and children who attended early education programs are also less likely to be retained in kindergarten. In most instances, the effects are largest for disadvantaged groups, raising the possibility that policies promoting preschool enrollment of children from disadvantaged families might help to narrow the school readiness gap.
695 citations
TL;DR: This article showed that methodological approaches intended to control for prior knowledge may be insufficient to prevent that variable from influencing learning outcomes, and that prior knowledge accounted for a large portion of the subjects' post test performance.
Abstract: Prior knowledge has a marked effect on learning outcomes. Researchers typically rely on a number of methodologies to control for that factor in learning research, including the use of fictional stimuli and domain-novice subjects. The experiments reported here demonstrate that such methodological controls may be insufficient. In Experiment 1, students read texts about fictional places and events. In Experiment 2, novice students in a cognition course were asked to read several advanced texts. In both experiments, prior knowledge accounted for a large portion of the subjects’ posttest performance. The data demonstrate that methodological approaches intended to control for prior knowledge may be insufficient to prevent that variable from influencing learning outcomes. Thus researchers are urged to include measures of prior knowledge in their analyses.
246 citations
TL;DR: A framework for teaching with the Internet is developed, exploring how the Internet shapes and is shaped by classroom practices, and how these interact with fundamental challenges of teaching to produce wide variation in Internet use.
Abstract: The Internet is widely used in K–12 schools. Yet teachers are not well prepared to teach with the Internet, and its use is limited in scope and substance. This article uses case studies of three high school science teachers to develop a framework for teaching with the Internet, exploring how the Internet shapes and is shaped by classroom practices. The framework includes five affordances of resources: (a) boundaries, (b) authority, (c) stability, (d) pedagogical context, and (e) disciplinary context. These interact with fundamental challenges of teaching to produce wide variation in Internet use. The case studies suggest that affordances vary because of activity design and characteristics of the resource. Challenges to teachers depend on how they position themselves with respect to the affordances.
245 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the emphasis on "problem solving, collaboration, and communities of learning" sanctifies science and scientists as possessing authoritative knowledge over increasing realms of human phenomena, thus narrowing the boundaries of possible action and critical thought.
Abstract: School subjects are analogous to medieval alchemy. There is a magical change as mathematics, science, and social sciences move from their disciplinary spaces into the classroom. The educational and social psychologies have little or nothing to do with understanding disciplinary practices. They are intellectual inventions for normalizing and governing the child’s conduct, relationships, and communications. The author examines this alchemy in standards-based mathematics educational policy and research for K–12 schools. He argues that (a) the emphasis on “problem solving,” collaboration, and “communities of learning” sanctify science and scientists as possessing authoritative knowledge over increasing realms of human phenomena, thus narrowing the boundaries of possible action and critical thought; and (b) while reforms stress the need for educational equity for “all children,” with “no child left behind,” the pedagogical models divide, demarcate, and exclude particular children from participation.
233 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue for both the feasibility and the importance of tools such as distribution and inference for supporting education that builds on children’s own investigations of the world.
Abstract: This design study tracks the development of student thinking about natural variation as late elementary grade students learned about distribution in the context of modeling plant growth at the population level. The data-modeling approach assisted children in coordinating their understanding of particular cases with an evolving notion of data as an aggregate of cases. Students learned to “read” shapes of distributions as signatures of prospective mechanisms of plant growth and conducted sampling investigations to represent repeated growth. These investigations, in turn, supported students’ interpretations of the effects of added light and fertilizer. The authors argue for both the feasibility and the importance of tools such as distribution and inference for supporting education that builds on children’s own investigations of the world.
223 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined whether performance-driven educational accountability policy enhances or hinders equity and found that during the 1990s, the states did not address racial and socioeconomic disparities in school resources and failed to narrow the achievement gaps among racial and socio-economic groups.
Abstract: This article examines whether performance-driven educational accountability policy enhances or hinders equity. Combining data from state policy surveys, F-33, SASS, and NAEP, the article shows that during the 1990s, the states did not address racial and socioeconomic disparities in school resources and failed to narrow the achievement gaps among racial and socioeconomic groups. The distributions of school expenditures, class size, qualified teachers, and mathematics achievement remained largely unchanged in strong accountability states. Although the accountability policy of the 1990s neither produced adverse effects nor brought about significant setbacks in equity, this article suggests that racial and socioeconomic equity were not at the center of accountability reforms and that performance-driven accountability policies alone cannot move us forward toward equity.
199 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that school violence is the result of the structural violence of oppressive social conditions that force students (especially low-income, male African American and Latino students) to feel vulnerable, angry, and resistant to the normative expectations of prison-like school environments.
Abstract: Most pragmatic responses to school violence seek to assign individual blame and to instill individual responsibility in students. The authors of this article argue that school violence is the result of the structural violence of oppressive social conditions that force students (especially low-income, male African American and Latino students) to feel vulnerable, angry, and resistant to the normative expectations of prison-like school environments. From the vantage point of the intersection of critical race theory and materialist disability studies, the authors examine the impact of social, political, economic, and institutional structures on the social construction of the “deviant” student. They raise questions regarding violent “normalizing” structures and argue for more empowering alternatives.
188 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the possibility that state educational policies, involving accountability and instructional reform, and local district and school conditions interact with teachers' personal and professional backgrounds to shape two tracks of new teachers that reinforce existing educational inequities.
Abstract: This article explores the possibility that state educational policies, involving accountability and instructional reform, and local district and school conditions interact with teachers’ personal and professional backgrounds to shape two tracks of new teachers that reinforce existing educational inequities. The present 2-year study incorporated mixed methods and a multilevel design that included state policy, local conditions, and teachers’ beliefs and practices, highlighting two cases from a larger database. The authors report how differences in district capital shape responses to state policy, influence teacher recruitment, interact with teacher characteristics, and create learning opportunities for new teachers that suggest the creation of two classes of teachers for two classes of students. While previous researchers have identified student tracking as reproducing inequities, this article examines the largely unexplored terrain of new teacher tracking: the sorting and socialization of novices.
185 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzed data from across an academic year in a ninth-grade classroom, exploring how one student developed a social identity through the same conversations in which students learned aspects of the curriculum.
Abstract: When students and teachers discuss subject matter, at least two processes generally occur: Students and teachers become socially identified as recognizable types of people, and students learn subject matter. This article contributes to recent work on how social identification and learning systematically interrelate by describing one complex way in which these two processes can partly constitute each other. The article analyzes data from across an academic year in a ninth-grade classroom, exploring how one student developed a social identity through the same conversations in which students learned aspects of the curriculum.
TL;DR: The authors investigated the impact of early literacy instruction on kindergarten children's learning, as measured by direct cognitive test scores, indirect teacher ratings of children’s achievement in language and literacy, and indirect teacher rating of children's approaches to learning.
Abstract: Using a nationally representative sample of 13,609 kindergarten children in 2,690 classrooms and 788 schools from the base year of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999, along with three-level hierarchical linear models, this study investigates the impact of early literacy instruction on kindergarten children’s learning, as measured by direct cognitive test scores, indirect teacher ratings of children’s achievement in language and literacy, and indirect teacher ratings of children’s approaches to learning. Two composite measures of phonics and integrated language arts are constructed from teachers’ reports of their instructional practices. Findings show that classroom mean outcomes were significantly higher when classroom teachers reported using both integrated language arts and phonics more often. However, children with low initial performance benefited less from integrated language arts instruction, as measured by direct measures of achievement; such differential effect...
TL;DR: In this paper, a model of teacher interventions (TIs) conducted during cooperative learning to examine how they affected students' subsequent time on-task (TOT) and problem solving was presented.
Abstract: This study tested a model of teacher interventions (TIs) conducted during cooperative learning to examine how they affected students’ subsequent time on-task (TOT) and problem solving. TIs involved groups of ninth-grade students working on an algebra problem; videotaped lessons were transcribed and analyzed. Results showed that teachers initiated most TIs and typically did so when students were off-task or showed little progress. After TIs, students’ TOT and problem solving often improved. Teacher evaluations of student actions had the largest positive effects, serving as gatekeepers for other teacher actions. Higher levels of teacher help content tended to reduce post-TI TOT, while teacher commands reduced post-TI TOT only when a group grasped the problem situation. In summary, TIs can increase TOT and problem solving, especially if teachers evaluate students’ work.
TL;DR: This article conducted an investigation of two predominantly African American elementary schools in low-income communities, one in St. Louis, Missouri (1994-1997) and the other in Atlanta, Georgia (1999-2002).
Abstract: The scholarly community has been neglectful in its study of those urban and predominantly African American schools that manifest agency in spite of persistent racial inequalities and poverty. Consequently, we are left to wonder whether anything good can come from urban African American schools, or from the communities where they are located. This article emanates from an investigation of two predominantly African American elementary schools in low-income communities—one in St. Louis, Missouri (1994–1997), and the other in Atlanta, Georgia (1999–2002)—both renowned for successfully educating their students. The author’s findings have implications for educational theory and practice and suggest the need for multifarious studies of urban and predominantly African American schools, families, and communities.
TL;DR: Interestingly, success in geometry was found to be highly associated with logical reasoning and other important mathematical thinking skills across the sampled countries.
Abstract: This study used a diagnostic testing approach to compare the mathematics achievement of eighth-grade students across a sample of 20 countries, analyzing data from the Third International Math and Science Study–Revised (TIMSS-R, 1999). Using the rule-space method, student mastery was measured on 23 specific content knowledge and processing subskills (“attributes”) underlying students’ item scores, using 23 attributes previously defined and validated. Mean mastery levels for each attribute were compared for the 20 selected countries. Clear differences among the countries were found in patterns of subskill achievement. U.S. students were strong in some content and quantitative reading skills, but weak in others, notably geometry. Interestingly, success in geometry was found to be highly associated with logical reasoning and other important mathematical thinking skills across the sampled countries.
TL;DR: In this paper, a study of the enactment and disruption of whiteness in two white secondary literacy teachers focuses on their life histories and their practice and policy in relation to students of color.
Abstract: This study of the enactment and disruption of Whiteness in two White secondary literacy teachers focuses on their life histories and their practice and policy in relation to students of color. Both teachers demonstrated some disruption of Whiteness as well as some continued enactment of Whiteness, despite their stated intentions. The findings indicate that neither an abolition of Whiteness nor a rearticulation of Whiteness includes a sufficiently complex understanding of how disruption of Whiteness is influenced by the interplay of personal identity, the need to maintain personal congruence, and the cultural constraints of Whiteness. The author suggests that the inclusion of a psychological framework will be valuable in further exploration of the disruption of Whiteness.
TL;DR: In the wake of both the end of court-ordered school desegregation and the growing popularity of accountability as a mechanism to maximize student achievement, the authors explored the association between racial segregation and the percentage of students passing high-stakes tests in Florida's schools.
Abstract: In the wake of both the end of court-ordered school desegregation and the growing popularity of accountability as a mechanism to maximize student achievement, the authors explore the association between racial segregation and the percentage of students passing high-stakes tests in Florida’s schools Results suggest that segregation matters in predicting school-level performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test after control for other known and purported predictors of standardized test performance Also, these results suggest that neither recent efforts by the state of Florida to equalize the funding of education nor current efforts involving high-stakes testing will close the Black-White achievement gap without consideration of the racial distribution of students across schools
TL;DR: In this paper, a group of Israeli high school students (n = 11) from two socially distinct schools read aloud a textbook account of a 1920 bloody encounter between Jews and Arabs.
Abstract: A group of Israeli high school students (n = 11) from two socially distinct schools read aloud a textbook account of a 1920 bloody encounter between Jews and Arabs. The study aimed at examining the relation between the textbook account and the students’ formation of historical perceptions. Prior to reading the textbook excerpts, students wrote accounts of the event from their memory (the prenarrative). After being questioned about the prenarratives, the students read the textbook excerpts aloud and explained their understanding of the event. Twelve months later, they wrote another account of the event (the postnarrative). The study found that students “culturally comprehended” the textbook, or, in other words, that the nature of the students’ recollection was strongly affected by the social memory of the group within which they lived.
TL;DR: The effects of an expanded version of SBTI incorporating more challenging transfer features for broadening schemas and helping children recognize real-life math problems as solvable are assessed.
Abstract: Mathematical problem solving is a transfer challenge requiring children to develop schemas for recognizing novel problems as belonging to familiar problem types for which they know solutions Schema-based transfer instruction (SBTI) explicitly teaches transfer features that change problems in superficial ways to make them appear novel even though they still require known solution strategies This study assessed the effects of an expanded version of SBTI incorporating more challenging transfer features for broadening schemas and helping children recognize real-life math problems as solvable Teachers were assigned randomly to 16-week control, SBTI, or expanded SBTI conditions Students completed pretests and posttests focusing on increasing transfer distances On a measure approximating real-life problem solving, the expanded SBTI group outperformed the SBTI group, which in turn outperformed the control group
TL;DR: This paper showed how elementary school educators in one U.S. metropolitan school district participated in the production of a local knowledge of the East Side and West Side space and individual, and demonstrated how educators used these codes to name race and class, as well as to obscure the codes' meanings.
Abstract: Citywide constructs such as “West Side” or “South Side” are spatial codes that result from more than the informal conversations of city residents. This article shows how elementary school educators in one U.S. metropolitan school district participated in the production of a local knowledge of the East Side and West Side space and individual. It demonstrates how educators used these codes to name race and class, as well as to obscure the codes’ meanings. The article maps the convergence of institutional technologies and local educational knowledge whereby this knowledge resisted change and buttressed the citywide East Side–West Side relations and knowledge. The disjunctures in this knowledge base are also identified, as educators attempted to produce a knowledge of a third space that they termed “Central City.”
TL;DR: The authors identified the Edcouch-Elsa High School Walkout of 1968 as a pivotal event in the educational history of Mexican American students in south Texas, using oral histories that they and their high school students produced between 1997 and 2002, through the work of the Llano Grande Center for Research and Development.
Abstract: This article identifies the Edcouch-Elsa High School Walkout of 1968 as a pivotal event in the educational history of Mexican American students in south Texas. It presents elements of the Civil Rights Movement, including the Brown decision, the rise of Mexican American political organizations, and the actions of community youth. The authors use oral histories that they and their high school students produced between 1997 and 2002, through the work of the Llano Grande Center for Research and Development, a nonprofit organization founded by the authors and their students. Through the use of secondary literature, local stories, and micro–macro integrative theory, this study describes how the Brown decision and other national events affected Edcouch-Elsa schools between 1954 and 1968.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the process and products of a cooperative inquiry project between two educational researchers, one from literacy education and one from mathematics education, in which the researchers sought to develop a shared vision of learning and literacy.
Abstract: This article describes both the process and products of a cooperative inquiry project between two educational researchers—one from literacy education and one from mathematics education. The collaboration took place in an undergraduate, inquiry-based mathematics classroom in which the researchers sought to develop a shared vision of learning and literacy. The researchers discovered that they each used a different learning model to make sense of mathematics instruction, and that both of these models obscured important aspects of learning in a Standards-based mathematics classroom. An alternative model of learning and literacy in mathematics that takes into consideration both models is presented, as well as the process through which the researchers negotiated this shared perspective.
TL;DR: For instance, the authors found that text written to persuade did, in fact, change readers' knowledge, beliefs, and interest, and preexisting differences in knowledge, belief and interest directly and indirectly influenced the degree of change.
Abstract: Persuasion is an interactive process through which a given message alters individuals’ perspectives by changing the knowledge, beliefs, or interests that underlie those perspectives. Although persuasion is seen as central to effective teaching and learning, there is still much to understand about the characteristics of learners, texts, and tasks that result in such changes. In this study, persuasion was tested as undergraduates read three compelling, popular-press texts on varied topics. Differences across and within readers were examined by means of multivariate and path analytic techniques. Texts written to persuade did, in fact, change readers’ knowledge, beliefs, and interest, and preexisting differences in knowledge, beliefs, and interest directly and indirectly influenced the degree of change. Furthermore, different texts elicited varied levels of knowledge, beliefs, and interest in individual readers.
TL;DR: In this article, an analytic framework rooted in socio-cultural theory and interactional sociolinguistic methods foregrounds the issues of whose sentiments and knowledge got taken up on the conversational floor and what specific new knowledge was conversationally constructed.
Abstract: Discourse analysis of interaction in a course on language and literacy development elucidates and exemplifies how preschool teachers constructed new knowledge that can be assumed to contribute to the improved literacy instruction observed in their classrooms. An analytic framework rooted in socio-cultural theory and interactional sociolinguistic methods foregrounds the issues of whose sentiments and knowledge got taken up on the conversational floor and what specific new knowledge was conversationally constructed. We use this framework to explicate a discussion in which the teachers and the instructor assembled a knowledge structure. The group’s emergent response to a question gained propositional content as participants jointly created and used social and informational resources. This approach allows insight into the sociolinguistic processes that contribute to effective professional development experiences.
TL;DR: The Single Sex Academy (SSA) as discussed by the authors became the largest public experiment with single-sex schooling in the country, but pressure to raise its standardized test scores diverted the school away from the exploration and implementation of the gender reform.
Abstract: This ethnographic study documents how accountability measures skewed the implementation of gender equity reform at one California public middle school serving low-income students of color. In creating single-sex classes throughout the school, the Single Sex Academy (SSA) became the largest public experiment with single-sex schooling in the country, but pressure to raise its standardized test scores diverted the school away from the exploration and implementation of the gender reform. The chronicle of SSA is particularly relevant in light of (a) a recent call to relax Title IX standards and increase the numbers of public single-sex classes and schools, and (b) the provision of monies mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 for single-sex classes and schools, along with the act’s imposition of accountability standards and testing.
TL;DR: This article analyzed the relationship between school and district characteristics and the base year of the Academic Performance Index (API), the state's main measure of school performance, focusing on variables related to the main issues in the Williams case.
Abstract: In May 2000, a class action lawsuit on behalf of California’s public school students, Williams v. State of California, was filed in state court in an effort to make the state address inequities in its public schools. The central issue of the case was students’ access to the “bare essentials” of public education: qualified teachers, current textbooks, and adequate and safe facilities. The author analyzes the relationship between school and district characteristics and the base year of the Academic Performance Index (API), the state’s main measure of school performance, focusing on variables related to the main issues in the Williams case. The findings support the plaintiffs’ arguments that the basic educational necessities targeted by the case should be the object of state policy in conjunction with accountability policies.
TL;DR: The authors used Hung's theory of epistemological appropriation in an analysis of the coop supervisor's regulatory behaviors (scaffolding, modeling, and coaching) and of the novice's corresponding regulatory behaviours (submitting, mirroring, and constructing) to explain the developments in this student's learning, actions and beliefs.
Abstract: In this study, detailed observations and interviews from a high school student’s semester-long cooperative (co-op) placement in a dental practice are used to exemplify Hung’s theoretical approach to understanding situated learning. Using Hung’s theory of epistemological appropriation in an analysis of the coop supervisor’s regulatory behaviors (scaffolding, modeling, and coaching) and of the novice’s corresponding regulatory behaviors (submitting, mirroring, and constructing) helped to explain the developments in this student’s learning, actions, and beliefs. In contrast to the progression suggested by Hung’s theory, this study reports daily examples of all types of regulatory behaviors, with scaffolding/submitting being most prominent. The discussion focuses on how Hung’s theory of regulatory behaviors informs supervisors’ improving opportunities for novices’ learning and informs novices’ engagement in epistemological appropriation in work-based learning.
TL;DR: The University of Michigan is a poignant illustration because of its long tradition of inclusion, from the early admission of women and African American students through its recent defense of affirmative action as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: During the late 19th century, universities subtly shifted their efforts from admitting poor students to conducting research on poverty. This transition occurred within a complex historical, sociological, and economic milieu of three national forces: universities’ quest for prestige; the relationship of expertise and professionalism to the middle-class ethos of universities; and Liberal Protestantism. Earlier than previously imagined, “class” became a determinant of access. The University of Michigan is a poignant illustration because of its long tradition of inclusion, from the early admission of women and African American students through its recent defense of affirmative action. Yet, while some doors creaked open for new groups of students, the number of poor undergraduates on campus waned—and remains woefully low.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place and that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, and that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Abstract: We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.