Showing papers in "Harvard Educational Review in 2004"

Relating Classroom Teaching to Student Learning: A Critical Analysis of Why Research Has Failed to Bridge the Theory-Practice Gap.

Abstract: In this article, Graham Nuthall critiques four major types of research on teaching effectiveness: studies of best teachers, correlational and experimental studies of teaching- learning relationships, design studies, and teacher action and narrative research. He gathers evidence about the kind of research that is most likely to bridge the teaching-research gap, arguing that such research must provide continuous, detailed data on the experience of individual students, in-depth analyses of the changes that take place in the students' knowledge, beliefs, and skills, and ways of identifying the real-time interactive relationships between these two different kinds of data. Based on his exploration of the literature and his research on teaching effectiveness, Nuthall proposes an explanatory theory for research on teaching that can be directly and transparently linked to classroom realities.

Drawing on Education: Using Drawings to Document Schooling and Support Change

Abstract: In this article, Walt Haney,Michael Russell, and Damian Bebell summarize a decade of work using student drawings as a way to both document and change education and schooling. After a brief summary of more than one hundred years of literature on children's drawings, the authors point out that drawings have been little recognized as a medium of educational research in recent decades. Next they explain how the work reported here has evolved, recounting how they have used student drawings as a way to document educational phenomena. They then present reliability and validity evidence to support such use on a macro level. The authors go on to relate examples at the micro level of how drawings have been used to inform and change education and learning. Finally, they argue that student drawings, though only one form of inquiry, help illustrate the fundamental point that, if educational reforms are to succeed, we must treat teachers and students not just as the objects, but also as the agents, of reform and improv...

Hiding in the Ivy: American Indian Students and Visibility in Elite Educational Settings

Abstract: In this article, Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy explores how the experiences of Tom, Debbie, and Heather, three Native American students attending Ivy League universities in the 1990s, reflect larger societal beliefs and statements about the perceived place of Native Americans in higher education and U.S. society. Brayboy posits that Native Americans are visible in these institutions in ways that contribute to their marginalization, surveillance, and oppression. In response, the three Native American students exercise strategies that make them invisible to the largely White communities in which they attend school. These strategies help to preserve the students' sense of cultural integrity, but further serve to marginalize them on campus. At times, the students in the study make themselves visible to emphasize that they are a voice in the campus community. Brayboy argues that these strategies, while possibly confusing to the layperson, make sense if viewed from the perspective of the students preserving thei...

The Assessment of Complex Performance: A Socially Situated Interpretive Act.

Abstract: Based on her study of the assessment and validation of final year projects in two academic departments — one located in a humanities faculty and the other in an engineering faculty of a South African university — Suellen Shay argues that the assessment of complex tasks is a socially situated interpretive act. Her argument centers on three questions. The first question explores the basis of assessors' "common ground" and is rooted in Bourdieu's concepts of field and habitus and his analysis of how academics develop a "feel for the game." The second question "drills down" into these differences, using dissensus (lack of consensus) as another window on the interpretive process. Shay's data suggest that assessors' interpretations are powerfully shaped in predictable and unpredictable ways by their disciplinary orientations, years of experience, and levels of involvement with students. While these differences of interpretation are often resolved collegially, a careful analysis of these occasions illuminates th...

Citizenship for All in the Literate Community: An Ethnography of Young Children with Significant Disabilities in Inclusive Early Childhood Settings

Abstract: In this study, Christopher Kliewer, Linda Fitzgerald, Jodi Meyer-Mork, Patresa Hartman, Pat English-Sand, and Donna Raschke use ethnographic methods to explore literacy development in young children considered to have significant disabilities. The study settings included nine preschool and kindergarten classrooms across five programs, all of which involved children with and without disabilities learning side-byside. Over the course of two school years, the authors observed teachers emphasizing children's narratives, and in so doing effectively fostering the citizenship of all children in the literate communities of the classrooms under study. The authors describe several themes that appeared in their data related to fostering effective literacy development in children historically segregated from rich curricular opportunities. In this effort, defining literacy as making meaning and interpreting children with disabilities as competent meaning-makers was foremost.

The Educational Science and Scientifically Based Instruction We Need: Lessons from Reading Research and Policymaking

Abstract: In this article, Michael Pressley, Nell Duke, and Erica Boling discuss the impact various scientific approaches have on early reading instruction research. The authors call for a second generation of scientifically based reading instruction that goes beyond the experimental, quasi-experimental, correlations, and qualitative designs currently informing public policy. The authors argue that the federal government's position on what constitutes "scientific research" embraces only a narrow range of potentially effective instruction. If this definition is expanded, educational policy, including for early reading instruction, can be much more successful.

"Halal-ing" the Child: Reframing Identities of Resistance in an Urban Muslim School

Abstract: In this article, Na'ilah Suad Nasir expands the literature on resistance theory by exploring the institutional response to classic "resistant" or "oppositional" student behavior. Using the case of one boy in an urban Muslim school who displays these resistant behaviors, she shows how the ideational artifacts of family and spirituality are enacted within the school context to support his growth. Nasir draws on data from extensive interviews and observations at the school site to paint a rich and complex picture of the dynamics at play when students appear to resist school. Rather than framing resistance as the property of the child, Nasir looks at how resistance can be cocreated in cultural settings and offers a potentially helpful perspective on how to construct schools in which resistant behavior does not become the norm.

Pathways to Aggression in Children and Adolescents

Abstract: In this article, Malcolm Watson, Kurt Fischer, Jasmina Burdzovic Andreas, and Kevin Smith describe and compare two approaches to assessing risk factors that lead to aggression in children. The first, the severe risks approach, focuses on how risk factors form a pathway that leads to aggressive behavior. Within this approach, an inhibited victim-aggressor pattern is hypothesized in which children who share certain characteristics — including high-conflict, low-cohesive families, high levels of harsh parental discipline, high levels of victimization by peers, and high behavioral inhibition — are at risk for developing defensive, reactive aggressive behaviors. The second, the cumulative effects approach, focuses on the accumulated effects of multiple risk factors in leading to aggressive behavior, irrespective of the particular risk factors involved. The authors assess both patterns longitudinally in a community-based sample that includes children from middle childhood to adolescence. They find strong evidence for both pathways. (pp. 404–430)

Further Comment: Freedle's Table 2: Fact or Fiction?

Abstract: In this section, Neil Dorans, from the Educational Testing Service, responds to Roy O Freedle's article, "Correcting the SAT's Ethnic and Social-Class Bias: A Method of Reestimating SAT Scores," published in the Spring 2003 issue of this journal

Names Will Never Hurt Me

Abstract: In this article, Manju Varma-Joshi, Cynthia Baker, and Connie Tanaka examine the impact of racialized name-calling on a group of twenty-six "visible minority" youth from New Brunswick, Canada. Through one-on-one interviews and focus groups, the authors compare views held by visible minority students and their parents to the views of White authority figures regarding the significance of racism and racialized namecalling at school. While White authority figures often view name-calling — even that of a racialized nature — as common adolescent behavior, the visible minority participants equate such name-calling with a serious form of harassment and violence. The authors contend that much of the disparity in these views is the result of White authority figures' perception of racialized name-calling as isolated incidents rather than part of a continual pattern of harassment encountered by visible minority students. As a result of this disparity, the authors identify three responses to racism that the youth part...

Newjack: Teaching in a Failing Middle School

Abstract: In this article, Peter Sipe compares his first year as a middle school teacher in Brooklyn, New York, to that of a rookie corrections officer at Sing Sing prison. Sipe explores what he considers to be disturbing similarities in these experiences, namely, a preoccupation with control, immersion in an adversarial social dynamic, and the prevalence of stress. Most ominously, Sipe suggests that both institutions share a legacy of failure. He posits that, just as prisons do not live up to their titles as "correctional facilities," his middle school does not produce educated children.

Further Comment: The Truth and the Truthful Sages That Spin It: A Review of Dorans

Abstract: Freedle rebuttal to Neil Dorans response to his article, "Correcting the SAT's Ethnic and Social-Class Bias"