Showing papers on "Academic achievement published in 1987"

Bilingualism and special education : issues in assessment and pedagogy

Abstract: Referral and assessment of minority students the origins of bias in IQ tests the construct of "learning disability" underachievement among minority children language proficiency, bilingualism and academic achievement learning difficulties in "immersion" programmes assessment of bilingual exceptional students pedagogical assumptions underlying special education from research and theory to policy and practice.

Ability Grouping and Student Achievement in Elementary Schools: A Best-Evidence Synthesis

Abstract: This article reviews research on the effects of between- and within-class ability grouping on the achievement of elementary school students. The review technique—best-evidence synthesis—combines features of meta-analytic and narrative reviews. Overall, evidence does not support assignment of students to self-contained classes according to ability (median effect size [ES] = .00), but grouping plans involving cross-grade assignment for selected subjects can increase student achievement. Research particularly supports the Joplin Plan, cross-grade ability grouping for reading only (median ES = +.45). Within-class ability grouping in mathematics is also found to be instructionally effective (median ES = +.34). Analysis of effects of alternative grouping methods suggests that ability grouping is maximally effective when done for only one or two subjects, with students remaining in heterogeneous classes most of the day; when it greatly reduces student heterogeneity in a specific skill; when group assignments are...

Transformation and School Success: The Politics and Culture of Educational Achievement

Abstract: Various explanations for low school achievement of minority students include those of cultural differences between teacher and student and low motivation of students because of cynicism regarding their chances in the labor market. These explanations are compared, critiqued, and reconsidered in terms of critical social theory, more especially resistance theory. The article considers the perceived legitimacy of the school and its teachers and the development of oppositional culture by students. Transformation of routine educational practice is necessary, and culturally responsive pedagogy is one means of transformation. CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PEDAGOGY, MINORITY STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT, RESISTANCE THEORY, OPPOSITIONAL CULTURE

Age and Rate of Acquisition of Second Language for Academic Purposes.

Abstract: The study reported in this article analyzed the length of time required for 1,548 advantaged limited English proficient (LEP) students to become proficient in English for academic purposes while receiving instruction in English in all subject areas. Variables included were age on arrival, English proficiency level upon arrival, basic literacy and math skills in the native language upon arrival, and number of years of schooling in English. Second language and content-area achievement were measured by students' performance on the Science Research Associates tests in reading, language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. The results indicated that LEP students who entered the ESL program at ages 8–11 were the fastest achievers, requiring 2–5 years to reach the 50th percentile on national norms in all the subject areas tested. LEP students who entered the program at ages 5–7 were 1–3 years behind the performance level of their LEP peers who entered the program at ages 8–11, when both groups had the same length of residence. Arrivals at ages 12–15 experienced the greatest difficulty and were projected to require as much as 6–8 years to reach grade-level norms in academic achievement when schooled all in the second language. Whereas some groups may reach proficiency in some subjects in as little as 2 years, it is projected that at least 4–8 years may be required for all ages of LEP students to reach national grade-level norms of native speakers in all subject areas of language and academic achievement, as measured on standardized tests.

The Stratification of High School Learning Opportunities.

Abstract: This paper suggests that students' opportunities to learn may be stratified both between and within schools: Schools serving a more affluent and able clientele may offer more rigorous and enriched programs of study, and students in college-preparatory curricular programs may have greater access to advanced courses within schools. This notion is tested with a longitudinal, nationally representative sample of public school students from the High School and Beyond data base. The results show few between-school effects of school composition and offerings but important within-school influences of curriculum tracking and coursetaking. In most cases, the difference in achievement between tracks exceeds the difference in achievement between students and dropouts, suggesting that cognitive skill development is affected more by where one is in school than by whether or not one is in school.

Participation in Extracurricular Activities in Secondary School: What Is Known, What Needs to Be Known?

Abstract: The paper reviews literature relating to extracurricular participation and adolescent development. Five areas are described: personal-social characteristics, academic achievement, educational aspirations and attainments, participants’ roles in activities, and environmental social context. A methodological critique and directions for future research are provided. Participation correlated with higher levels of self-esteem, improved race relations, involvement in political/social activity in young adulthood, academic ability and grades in males, educational aspirations and attainments, feelings of control over one’s life, and lower delinquency rates. However, causal relationships between participation and desirable characteristics have not been demonstrated. Students in smaller schools participate in a greater number and variety of extracurricular activities than students in larger schools. Low-ability and lower SES students are more involved in school life in smaller schools. The existing findings justify a...

Home Influence on School Learning: Direct and Indirect Effects of Parental Involvement on High School Grades

Abstract: Current concern with improving student academic progress within American education underscores the need to understand those manipulable influences that can affect academic learning. Parental involvement is considered an important influence on academic progress. Time spent on homework and in leisure TV viewing has an important effect on academic learning. Such time is potentially manipulable through parental effort. Using the massive High School and Beyond data set, the present study examines the direct effects of perceived parental involvement on grades. It also examines the indirect effect of such involvement on grades through TV time and time spent on homework. Parental involvement has an important direct, positive effect on grades. Additionally, parental involvement also leads to increased time spent on homework, which in turn has a positive effect on grades. The effect of parental involvement on grades through TV time appears negligible. In the current push for means to improve student academi...

Family background, educational resources, and educational attainment.

Abstract: Family background has been prominent in models of educational attainment. In most research, family background has been measured by socioeconomic indicators (e.g., parents' education, family income), to the exclusion of other family characteristics that also affect educational attainment. This paper argues that parents use resources to create a home environment conducive to higher attainment in education. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 are used to test several hypotheses concerning the impact of educational resources. The results support the notion that educational resources increase educational attainment.

The theory of cost-benefit analysis

Abstract: Students face four decision margins: (a) How many years to spend in school, (b) What to study, (c) How much effort to devote to learning per year and (d) Whether to disrupt or assist the learning of classmates. The thousands of studies that have applied human capital theory to the first two questions are reviewed elsewhere in this volume and the Handbook series. This chapter reviews an emerging economic literature on the effects of and determinants of student effort and cooperativeness and how putting student motivation and behavior at center of one's theoretical framework changes one's view of how schools operate and how they might be made more effective. In this new framework students have a dual role. They are both (a) investors/consumers who choose which goals (outputs) to focus on and how much effort to put into each goal and (b) workers getting instruction and guidance from their first-line supervisors, the teachers. A simple model is presented in which the behavior of students, teachers and administrators depends on the incentives facing them and the actions of the other actors in the system. The incentives, in turn, depend upon the cost and reliability of the information (signals) that is generated about the various inputs and outputs of the system. Our review of empirical research support many of the predictions of the model. Student effort, engagement and discipline vary a lot within schools, across schools and across nations and have significant effects on learning. Higher extrinsic rewards for learning are associated the taking of more rigorous courses, teachers setting higher standards and more time devoted to homework. Taking more rigorous courses and studying harder increase student achievement. Post-World War II trends in study effort and course rigor, for example, are positively correlated with achievement trends. Even though, greater rigor and higher standards improve learning, parents and students prefer easy teachers. They pressure tough teachers to lower standards and sign up for courses taught by easy graders. Curriculum-based external exit examinations (CBEEES) improve the signaling of academic achievement to colleges and the labor market and this increases extrinsic rewards for learning. Cross-section studies suggest that CBEEES result in greater focus on academics, more tutoring of lagging students, and higher levels of achievement. Minimum competency examinations (MCE) do not have significant effects on learning or dropout rates but they do appear to have positive effects on the reputation of high school graduates. As a result, students from MCE states earn significantly more than students from states without MCEs and the effect lasts at least eight years. Students who attend schools with studious well-behaved classmates learn more. Disruptive students generate negative production externalities and cooperative hard-working students create positive production externalities. Peer effects are also generated by the norms of student peer cultures that encourage disruptive students and harass nerds. In addition learning is poorly signaled to employers and colleges. Thus, market signals and the norms of student peer culture do not internalize the externalities that are pervasive in school settings and as a result students typically devote less effort to studying than the taxpayers who fund schools would wish.

Peer-Model Attributes and Children's Achievement Behaviors

Abstract: In two experiments, we investigated how attributed of peer models influenced achievement behaviors among children who had experienced difficulties learning mathematical skills in school. In Experiment 1, children (M = 10.6 years) observed either a same- or opposite-sex peer model demonstrating rapid (mastery model) or gradual (coping model) acquisition of fraction skills. Observing a coping model led to higher self-efficacy, skill, and training performance. In Experiment 2, children (M = 10.9 years) observed either one or three same-sex peer models demonstrating mastery or coping behaviors while solving fractions. Children in the single-coping model, multiple-coping-model, and multiple-mastery-model conditions demonstrated higher self-efficacy, skill, and training performance, compared with subjects who observed a single mastery model. In both studies, children who observed coping models judged themselves more similar in competence to the models than did subjects who observed mastery models.

The Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach: A Bridge to the Mainstream

Abstract: The Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) is designed for limited English proficient students who are being prepared to participate in mainstream content-area instruction. CALLA provides transitional instruction for upper elementary and secondary students at intermediate and advanced ESL levels. This approach furthers academic language development in English through content-area instruction in science, mathematics, and social studies. In CALLA, students are taught to use learning strategies derived from a cognitive model of learning to assist their comprehension and retention of both language skills and concepts in the content areas. This article first discusses the rationale for CALLA and the theoretical background on which the approach is based. This is followed by a description of the three components of CALLA: a curriculum correlated with mainstream content subjects, academic language development activities, and learning strategy instruction. Finally, a lesson plan model integrating these three components is briefly described.

What School Factors Raise Achievement in the Third World

Abstract: Within industrialized countries, much is known about the relationship between schools’ material inputs or social practices and pupils’ achievement levels Less is known about school effects in developing countries In the Third World, the secular school is often a novel institution, operating in social settings where written literacy and formal socialization are relatively recent phenomena Therefore, even schools with limited material resources appear to have a stronger impact on academic achievement, independent of pupils’ family background, than within industrialized countries This optimistic claim is undercut, however, by limitations in how pupil background characteristics have been specified within empirical models I review 60 (multivariate) studies conducted in the Third World that (a) report on the school’s aggregate influence on academic achievement versus the influence of family background and (b) assess the relative influence of alternative school inputs and organizational practices, pointing

Developmental and motivational perspectives on cooperative learning: a reconciliation

Abstract: Research on cooperative learning strategies has been done from 2 major theoretical perspectives, developmental and motivational. The developmental perspective, based on Piagetian and Vygotskian theories, holds that task-focused interaction among students enhances learning by creating cognitive conflicts and by exposing students to higher-quality thinking that is within their proximal zones of development. In contrast, motivational theories of cooperative learning emphasize that rewarding groups on the basis of the individual learning of all group members creates peer norms and sanctions favoring achievement-related efforts and active helping of peers. In the developmental view, incentives for group learning efforts are unnecessary or harmful, while in the motivationalist view they are crucial to enhanced learning outcomes. This article reviews research bearing on both the developmental and the motivational perspectives, and presents a theory reconciling these perspectives that emphasizes the role of group rewards for individual learning in motivating students to provide high-quality assistance and elaborated explanations to their group-mates.

Employment While in College, Academic Achievement and Post-College Outcomes: A Summary of Results

Abstract: This paper uses panel data that cover the 1972-79 period obtained from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 to study how male students' employment while in college influences their academic performance, persistence in school, decisions to enroll in graduate school, and postcollege labor market success Its analytic framework treats in-school employment as endogenous and determines persistence by a comparison of expected utilities

The School Achievement of Minority Children : New Perspectives

Abstract: Contents: U. Neisser, New Answers to an Old Question. J.U. Ogbu, The Consequences of the American Caste System. A.W. Boykin, The Triple Quandary and the Schooling of Afro- American Children. R. Edmonds, Characteristics of Effective Schools. A.L. Brown, A.S. Palinscar, L. Purcell, Poor Readers: Teach, Don't Label. R.A. Gougis, The Effects of Prejudice and Stress on the Academic Performance of Black-Americans. R.B. Darlington, Long-Term Effects of Preschool Programs. H.P. Ginsburg, The Myth of the Deprived Child: New Thoughts on Poor Children.

School Performance, Status Relations, and the Structure of Sentiment: Bringing the Teacher Back In. Report No. 9.

Abstract: Research has failed to support the assumption that the academic difficulties of many minority and low-SES youth are due to their "outsider" standing relative to the middle-class culture that dominates schools. This study suggests that this proposition exaggerates the cultural hegemony of educational operations. Data on children in the first grade of a large, socially heterogeneous urban public school system show that not all teachers are given to status-related biases. Rather, teachers' own social origins exercise a strong influence on how they react to the status attributes of their students. In particular, low-status and minority pupils experience their greatest difficulties in the classrooms of high-status teachers. They are evaluated by their teachers as less mature, their teachers hold lower performance expectations for them, and their teachers score exceptionally low on perceived-school-climate measures. Moreover, year-end marks and standardized-test scores of such pupils apparently are depressed by these indicators of pupil-teacher social distance and teacher disaffection. A model of pupil-teacher background congruence is proposed as an alternative to the cultural hegemony framework, and the implications of such fit for the interpersonal dynamics of the classroom are discussed.

Change as the Goal of Educational Research

Abstract: plish, and in each case we apply local knowledge to alter instructional procedures in ways that are more productive. We argue that there is nothing about the students' language or culture that should handicap their schooling; the problems some language minority students face in school must be viewed as a consequence of instructional arrangements that ensnare certain children by not capitalizing fully on their social, linguistic, and intellectual resources. We conclude by describing a research approach that builds upon what we learned from the case studies by creating community-based research sites. CLASSROOM RESEARCH, EDUCATIONAL CHANGE, BILINGUAL EDUCATION, MICROETHNOGRAPHY, VYGOTSKY, LEV S.

School Performance, Status Relations, and the Structure of Sentiment: Bringing the Teacher Back In.

Abstract: Research has failed to support the assumption that the academic difficulties of many minority and low-SES youth are due to their "outsider" standing relative to the middle-class culture that dominates schools. This study suggests that this proposition exaggerates the cultural hegemony of educational operations. Data on children in the first grade of a large, socially heterogeneous urban public school system show that not all teachers are given to status-related biases. Rather, teachers' own social origins exercise a strong influence on how they react to the status attributes of their students. In particular, low-status and minority pupils experience their greatest difficulties in the classrooms of high-status teachers. They are evaluated by their teachers as less mature, their teachers hold lower performance expectations for them, and their teachers score exceptionally low on perceived-school-climate measures. Moreover, year-end marks and standardized-test scores of such pupils apparently are depressed by these indicators of pupil-teacher social distance and teacher disaffection. A model of pupil-teacher background congruence is proposed as an alternative to the cultural hegemony framework, and the implications of such fit for the interpersonal dynamics of the classroom are discussed.

Mastery Learning Reconsidered

Abstract: Several recent reviews and meta-analyses have claimed extraordinarily positive effects of mastery learning on student achievement, and Bloom (1984a, 1984b) has hypothesized that mastery-based treatments will soon be able to produce “2-sigma” (i.e., 2 standard deviation) increases in achievement. This article examines the literature on achievement effects of practical applications of group-based mastery learning in elementary and secondary schools over periods of at least 4 weeks, using a review technique, “best-evidence synthesis,” which combines features of meta-analytic and traditional narrative reviews. The review found essentially no evidence to support the effectiveness of group-based mastery learning on standardized achievement measures. On experimenter-made measures, effects were generally positive but moderate in magnitude, with little evidence that effects maintained over time. These results are discussed in light of the coverage versus mastery dilemma posed by group-based mastery learning.

Impatience versus achievement strivings in the type A pattern: differential effects on students' health and academic achievement.

Abstract: Psychometric analyses of college students' responses to the Jenkins Activity Survey, a self-report measure of the Type A behavior pattern, revealed the presence of two relatively independent factors. Based on these analyses, two scales, labeled Achievement Strivings (AS) and Impatience and Irritability (II), were developed. In two samples of male and female college students, scores on AS but not on II were found to be significantly correlated with grade point average. Responses to a health survey, on the other hand, indicated that frequency of physical complaints was significantly correlated with II but not with AS. These results suggest that there are two relatively independent factors in the Type A pattern that have differential effects on performance and health. Future research on the personality factors related to coronary heart disease and other disorders might more profitably focus on the syndrome reflected in the II scale than on the Type A pattern.

Context Variables that Affect Measures of Teacher Efficacy

Abstract: This article presents a model describing three context variables hypothesized to affect measures of teacher efficacy. These variables include the nature of the student performance outcome (positive or negative), the ability of the students involved (high or low), and the scope of influence (single student or group of students). The results from studies investigating the influence of performance outcome and student ability variables are summarized. The present study focuses on the scope of influence variable. Data were gathered from 114 experienced elementary and secondary teachers through attitudinal and perceptual self-reports. Correlational analysis generally supported the model, but factor-analytic procedures failed to yield clearly distinct factor dimensions. Possible explanations and implications are discussed.

Comparing the effects of problem-based and conventional curricula in an international sample

Abstract: In this article, the authors review 15 studies that compare various educational outcomes of problem-based, community-oriented medical curricula with those of conventional programs. The data suggest that problem-based curricula provide a student-centered learning environment and encourage an inquisitive style of learning in their students as opposed to the rote memorization and short-term learning strategies induced by conventional medical education. In addition, community-oriented schools appear to influence the career preferences of their students. The few data available show that significantly larger proportions of graduates from these schools seek careers in primary care. Some of the studies reviewed suggest that students in conventional programs perform somewhat better on traditional measures of academic achievement than do students in problem-based curricula. However, these differences, if any, tend to be very small. Data with respect to performance on instruments measuring clinical competence are inconclusive. Finally, the authors discuss the difficulties involved in carrying out comparative research at the curriculum level.

Effects of Ability Grouping on Student Achievement

Abstract: (1987). Effects of Ability Grouping on Student Achievement. Equity & Excellence in Education: Vol. 23, No. 1-2, pp. 22-30.