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Showing papers in "Review of Educational Research in 1999"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the results of a meta-analysis that integrates research on undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) education since 1980 are presented. But the results in this paper are limited to SMET courses and programs.
Abstract: Recent calls for instructional innovation in undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) courses and programs highlight the need for a solid foundation of education research at the undergraduate level on which to base policy and practice. We report herein the results of a meta-analysis that integrates research on undergraduate SMET education since 1980. The meta-analysis demonstrates that various forms of small-group learning are effective in promoting greater academic achievement, more favorable attitudes toward learning, and increased persistence through SMET courses and programs. The magnitude of the effects reported in this study exceeds most findings in comparable reviews of research on educational innovations and supports more widespread implementation of small-group learning in undergraduate SMET.

1,691 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a review of prior knowledge research and its role in student performance is presented, and the authors examine the effects of the prior knowledge in relation to the method of assessment.
Abstract: The purpose of this review was to (a) overview prior knowledge research and its role in student performance, and (b) examine the effects of prior knowledge in relation to the method of assessment. We selected 183 articles, books, papers, and research reports related to prior knowledge. While prior knowledge generally had positive effects on students' performance, the effects varied by assessment method. More specifically, prior knowledge was more likely to have negative or no effects on performance when flawed assessment measures were used. However, in some studies, flawed methods yielded informative results. Thus, in educational research the implications of assessment measures must be considered when examining the effects of prior knowledge.

468 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the analytic procedures of phenomenography are very similar to those of grounded theory, and like the latter they fall foul of the "dilemma of qualitative method" in failing to reconcile the search for authentic understanding with the need for scientific rigor.
Abstract: This article reviews the nature of “phenomenographic” research and its alleged conceptual underpinnings in the phenomenological tradition. In common with other attempts to apply philosophical phenomenology to the social sciences, it relies on participants' discursive accounts of their experiences and cannot validly postulate causal mental entities such as conceptions of learning. The analytic procedures of phenomenography are very similar to those of grounded theory, and like the latter they fall foul of the “dilemma of qualitative method” in failing to reconcile the search for authentic understanding with the need for scientific rigor. It is argued that these conceptual and methodological difficulties could be resolved by a constructionist revision of phenomenographic research.

457 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a meta-analysis of 20 experiments examining incidental word learning during normal reading shows that students learn around 15% of the unknown words they encounter, although their heterogeneity is relatively small (19%).
Abstract: A meta.analysis of 20 experiments examining incidental word learning during normal reading shows that students learn around 15% of the unknown words they encounter. A test of homogeneity indicates that study outcomes diverge, although their heterogeneity is relatively small (19%). An exploratory multi-level analysis of the variability in the results suggests that several factors affect the probability of learning an unknown word while reading: pretest sensitization, students' grade level, students' level of reading ability, the sensitivity of assessment methods to partial word knowledge, and the amount of text surrounding the target words. A model that contains students' grade level and assessment methods' sensitivity to partial word knowledge predicts 66% of the systematic variance in the effect sizes. Implications for research and instruction are discussed.

356 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A review and analysis of research targeting the rift separating history written for adults and the historical texts aimed at K-12 audiences-specifically history textbooks is provided in this article, focusing on how students learn from texts and on recent trends in the study of teaching and learning history that underscore the role of authorship in historical texts.
Abstract: This article provides a review and analysis of research targeting the rift separating history written for adults and the historical texts aimed at K-12 audiences-specifically history textbooks. The role of personal agency in historical writing, both for those who write and those who read, is emphasized as an important element separating the two rhetorical genres. A body of research exploring what students learn from reading and the complex process of reasoning that goes along with interpreting their history textbooks is reviewed. In particular, it focuses on how students learn from texts and on recent trends in the study of teaching and learning history that underscore the role of authorship in historical texts. The author discusses the relative silence of authorial voices within the discourse of history textbooks, arguing that this anonymous, authoritative style of writing may be an important contributing factor to the impoverished conception of history noted in the literature of school history reform.

195 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors analyzes the educational discourse surrounding telecommunication exchanges, and argues that much of the current research is contradictory, inconclusive, and possibly misleading, and illustrates how the often overly optimistic claims about technology-based projects are problematic in light of the larger, exceedingly complex role of technology in society.
Abstract: Telecommunication exchange projects are currently marketed as curriculum supplements that conveniently satisfy three key K-12 educational reform objectives: better writing skills, enhanced multicultural awareness, and better job preparation for a rapidly expanding global economy. This paper analyzes the educational discourse surrounding telecommunication exchanges, and argues that much of the current research is contradictory, inconclusive, and possibly misleading. The paper also illustrates how the often overly optimistic claims about technology-based projects are problematic in light of the larger, exceedingly complex role of technology in society.

183 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the assimilationist perspective by defining science and science achievement in terms of the Western science tradition with little consideration of alternative views of science and ways of knowing from diverse backgrounds.
Abstract: The construct of science achievement–what K-12 students should know and be able to do in science–is central to science education reform. This paper analyzes current conceptions of science achievement in major reform documents, and considers equity implications for science achievement and assessment in the context of standards-based and systemic reform. The paper reviews documents on science content standards (NSES and Project 2061), performance standards (New Standards), and large-scale assessment frameworks (1996 NAEP and TIMSS). Although the documents emphasize equity as the key principle, they present the assimilationist perspective by defining science and science achievement in terms of the Western science tradition with little consideration of alternative views of science and ways of knowing from diverse backgrounds. Based on the conception of equity in terms of social justice, the paper proposes the cultural anthropological perspective to develop a mare inclusive and broader view of science achievem...

116 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, auteur explique ici le sens et l'utilite des bilans et autres compte-rendus, a.k.a. elements, which peuvent en ressortir.
Abstract: L'auteur explique ici le sens et l'utilite des bilans et autres compte-rendus. A qui profitent-ils ? Quels sont les elements qui peuvent en ressortir ? Comment les composer, dans quel etat d'esprit ? L'article tente de repondre a ces questions

102 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a post-disciplinary approach using social construction and cultural cartography metaphors is used to explore developmental disability in the context of special education and other human service practices, and alternative metaphors to labeling and other educational practices are suggested as new ways of drawing cultural maps.
Abstract: Developmental disability is explored using a post-disciplinary approach through social construction and cultural cartography metaphors. It is drawn on social maps as a cultural territory created by the totalizing, mystifying science of positivism. People described as "having" developmental disabilities inhabit landscapes that are pathologized and marginalized, surrounded by impermeable label borders created by processes of quantification and numbering. Although seen as necessary by some in order to obtain adequate services for their survival in schools and other institutions of modernist society, these borders do not benefit those they contain. Instead, cartographies created by special education and other human service practices become reified, commodified, and objectified, providing a rationale for continued de-humanization and oppression. Alternative metaphors to labeling and other educational practices are suggested as new ways of drawing cultural maps. Policy implications for those educational and res...

82 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that researchers need to integrate the social cognitive approach to achievement motivation with principles of cultural psychology with their focus on culture and context, and stress that qualitative methodologies, emphasizing meaning-making in context, can illuminate the deeper meanings that children and parents attach to school experiences.
Abstract: This article reviews theory and research on cross-national (Asian vs. American) differences in academic achievement, and shows that current research: (a) has made claims about achievement motivation with little regard for contemporary theory, and (b) has formed broad assumptions about the influence of culture, while paying cursory attention to the cultural contexts of learning. These difficulties cast doubt on the validity of the accumulated findings, and their practical application in the classroom. We argue that researchers need to integrate the social cognitive approach to achievement motivation-with its focus on beliefs about learning-with principles of cultural psychology-with their focus on culture and context. Further, we stress that qualitative methodologies, emphasizing meaning-making in context, can illuminate the deeper meanings that children and parents attach to school experiences. This will enable us to build grounded theory, and help us seek deeper understandings of similarities and differences within and across cultures.

81 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a review of research on multi-age classroom organization as an option for high ability students and show that teachers of multi-ages may be more likely to see their students as diverse than as similar and to provide developmentally appropriate (that is, differentiated) curricula.
Abstract: This article reviews research on multi-age classroom organization as an option for high ability students. Studies of both cognitive and affective factors in multi-age contexts have consistently shown positive, sometimes significant, effect sizes. Studies of different types of ability grouping have shown that arrangements most likely to have positive and significant results are those where the curriculum is differentiated. Teachers of multi-age classes may be more likely to see their students as diverse than as similar and to provide developmentally appropriate (that is, differentiated) curricula. Multi-age classes are discussed as an alternative to self-contained classes and pullout programs for high ability children.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors expose une reflexion epistemologique sur la notion de connaissance et de recherche, en essayant de determiner la valeur des compte-rendus of recherches, des analyses de courants d'idees et de theories deja definis.
Abstract: L'auteur expose une reflexion epistemologique sur la notion de connaissance et de recherche, en essayant de determiner la valeur des compte-rendus de recherche, des analyses de courants d'idees et de theories deja definis.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors address the question "How can we include everybody's voice equally in the framing of reviews?" and present a response to the complexities that inhere in that question.
Abstract: There is a well-founded ethical concern in the present regarding the question 'How can we include everybody's voice equally in the framing of reviews?' This paper is a response to the complexities that inhere in that question. It is not about Review of Educational Research (RER) as a specific site but about the systems of reasoning that construct the opening question about reviews and that suggest possible answers, including the response: 'What is voice?' To the extent that reviews are considered a canonizing genre for summarizing and codifying subfields of educational research, inclusion and censorship have become issues of concern in their framing and writing. The content of educational reviews is frequently taken to be symbolic of broader power relations. It is in the midst of a review's authorizing or legitimating function that debate over voice, identity, and representation, with para-texts of power, has emerged. In the latter twentieth century, voice, identity, and representation have been considered cognate terms presumed to bear some relationship to the construction of knowledge and the circulation of power. If reviews of educational research are a site on which power/knowledge forms, reforms, and plays out, then it is cogent to consider the relationships between such concepts and the production of a review as a bearer, not of Truth and Power, but of truth and power effects (Foucault, 1980). The opening question, like reviews and this response, is understood here as an invitation to further questions. In addition to the question 'What is voice?', the paper will consider further and reformulated questions that nuance and complicate the opening interrogative, 'How do we include everybody's voice equally in the framing of reviews?' It arrives in particular at a practical consideration: 'How do we know who is speaking?' The complexities that emerge from disentangling some of the assumptions that underwrite dominant inscriptions of voice, identity, and representation owe their import to the historicization that is offered below. Because it is an impossible task to trace the variations that have inhabited such an array of concepts, this paper focuses primarily on voice and latterly on intersections of voice with identity and representation. The treatment of voice will be historical and hence skeptical. Voice is a concept often pre

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper explore the relationship between research reviews and the fields of study to which they pertain and explore the lineage of these discursive practices, paying particular attention to their patterns of discontinuity over time.
Abstract: In this essay I explore the relationship between research reviews and the fields of study to which they pertain. Using the curriculum field as an example, I argue that such reviews are venues where fields of inquiry are constituted, reproduced, and over time changed. This construction occurs, I suggest, as the discursive practices or rules of reasoning embedded in the language in which these reviews are framed are transformed into curriculum policies or programs through a process that I liken to state building. Both these discursive practices and the policies which they allow constitute the regulative mechanisms of the curriculum. I use the issues of the Review of Educational Research devoted to curriculum from 1931 through 1969 to explore this topic. Undertaking a genealogical examination, I explore the lineage of these discursive practices, paying particular attention to their patterns of discontinuity over time. I use this genealogy to suggest how the curriculum field was constructed and to identify its regulative impact. In doing so, I look at how curriculum discourse works as an instrument of power. I conclude the essay by considering what this exploration tells us in general about the relationship between reviews and fields of inquiry.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper examined work which has appeared in RER since its first volume in 1931, focusing on several broad questions/issues and found that the academic community's notions of a review are constructed by who has access to the journal-i.e., who were the editors, reviewers, advisors, and readers.
Abstract: When we took over as editors of RER three years ago, we found ourselves puzzling over a very fundamental question: What is a review? Given that RER is a journal which has at its heart the purpose of reviews, this was a VERY serious question. Our acceptance of the offer to edit the journal came out of particular interests towards equity and diversity and the ways these issues are addressed (and not) by the publication process. We believed that issues of equity and diversity are integral to our question, "What is a review?" We were confident that we could learn about these issues during our term as editors. We assembled a smart group of people to be on our Consulting Editorial Board, we worked hard at developing a statement for our call for manuscripts, and we waited to find the answer. At the 1997 AERA Annual Meeting, we organized a session in which we asked scholars from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives to ponder the very question we were living with in our work with the journal and found ourselves fascinated with the richness of their replies to a question that made most people throw up their hands. Still puzzling over the question, we decided to focus our attention on a historical examination of RER to try to get a sense of the issue of access. We believed that the academic community's notions of a review is constructed by who has access to the journal-i.e., who were the editors, reviewers, advisors, and readers. This issue is one that can be explored from a number of levels: Who has access to the pages of RER as a place to publish? Who has access to the information in the reviews? What knowledge is framed as legitimate for review and how is that related to content and methods? We had a hunch that examining the evolution of reviews over the life of RER might provide a window into changes in the power dynamics of research and publication and ground the changes we were hoping to promote today in historical conditions that shaped our work in ways that we were until now unaware. We examined work which has appeared in RER since its first volume in 1931, focusing on several broad questions/issues. We were interested in the ways that both educational issues and educational research found their way into the journal over time. Who decided what topics were of interest to the readership and what approaches were used and recognized as legitimate as the field worked to build a knowledge base? We were also interested in understanding the purposes 384

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The critical gaze as discussed by the authors is defined as a calling into question of structural and structuring coercive and panoptic power dynamics, as they spin on relations to the means of economic production and agency; or as they concern the contours of socio-historical and epistemological space and voice; or nuanced combinations of these perceptions.
Abstract: preoccupation with the role of the educational enterprise and how it is implicated within the broader arena of lived social struggles and problematics. It is important to note that this is so, despite the admittedly substantive and significant junctures of divergence and even controversy, which are in no small way related to the constitution of the critical gaze. Orienting critical research agendas rage contested understandings of the analytic descriptor "critical." Among these contested perspectives, "critical" signifies: a calling into question of structural and structuring coercive and panoptic power dynamics, as they spin on relations to the means of economic production and agency; or as they concern the contours of socio-historical and epistemological space and voice; or nuanced combinations of these perceptions.3 Such critical temperaments regarding the role of the study of education carry with them the stance that the very tools- of educational inquiry are at one and the

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, Northrope Frye and Marc Bloch discuss the problem of what it means to do intellectual work, and they both start with the realization that such a seemingly simple question is not typically asked in learning about one's discipline.
Abstract: In receiving the invitations to participate in this panel, I was reminded of two books that I read when I started working on my dissertation, one written by Northrope Frye entitled, Literary Imagination, and the other by a founder of the French historical school of the Annales, Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft. I read these books as I was trying to understand the problem of inquiry that underlay the school curriculum. Northrope Frye begins his discussion by saying that he has spent all his life doing literary criticism, but he had never bothered to ask the seemingly simple question around which his work was formed, that is, "What is literature?" A similar question about Marc Bloch's book was initiated by his son who asked his father what he did.' Their books, which take divergent paths, are reflections about what it means to do intellectual work. They both begin with the realization that such a seemingly simple question is not typically asked in learning about one's discipline, but that such simple questions