11. A Multistate District-Level Cluster Randomized Trial of the Impact of Data-Driven Reform on Reading and Mathematics Achievement
Author: Carlson, D.; Borman, G. D.; Robinson, M.
Source: Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2011, 33(3): 378-398
Abstract: Analyzing mathematics and reading achievement outcomes from a district-level random assignment study fielded in over 500 schools within 59 school districts and seven states, the authors estimate the 1-year impacts of a data-driven reform initiative implemented by the Johns Hopkins Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education (CDDRE). CDDRE consultants work with districts to implement quarterly student benchmark assessments and provide district and school leaders with extensive training on interpreting and using the data to guide reform. Relative to a control condition, in which districts operated as usual without CDDRE services, the data-driven reform initiative caused statistically significant districtwide improvements in student mathematics achievement. The CDDRE intervention also had a positive effect on reading achievement, but the estimates fell short of conventional levels of statistical significance.
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12. How to Improve Teaching Practices
Author: Thoonen, E. E. J.; Sleegers, P. J. C.; Oort, F. J. (...)
Source: Educational Administration Quarterly, 2011, 47(3): 496-536
Abstract: Purpose: Although it is expected that building schoolwide capacity for teacher learning will improve teaching practices, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. This study aimed to examine the relative impact of transformational leadership practices, school organizational conditions, teacher motivational factors, and teacher learning on teaching practices. Research Design: Data were collected from a survey of 502 teachers from 32 elementary schools in the Netherlands. A structural model was tested on the within-school covariance matrix and a chi-square test taking into account nonindependence of observations. Findings: Results suggest that teachers’ engagement in professional learning activities, in particular experimenting and reflection, is a powerful predictor for teaching practices. Teachers’ sense of self-efficacy appeared to be the most important motivational factor for explaining teacher learning and teaching practices. Motivational factors also mediate the effects of school organizational conditions and leadership practices on teacher learning and teaching practices. Finally, transformational leadership practices stimulate teachers’ professional learning and motivation and improve school organizational conditions. Conclusions: For school leaders, to foster teacher learning and improve teaching practices a combination of transformational leadership behaviors is required. Further research is needed to examine the relative effects of transformational leadership dimensions on school organizational conditions, teacher motivation, and professional learning in schools. Finally, conditions for school improvement were examined at one point in time. Longitudinal studies to school improvement are required to model changes in schools’ capacities and growth and their subsequent effects on teaching practices.
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13. Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Working Conditions
Author: Ladd, H. F.
Source: Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2011, 33(2): 235-261
Abstract: This quantitative study examines the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of their working conditions and their intended and actual departures from schools. Based on rich administrative data for North Carolina combined with a 2006 statewide survey administered to all teachers in the state, the study documents that working conditions are highly predictive of teachers’ intended movement away from their schools, independent of other school characteristics such as the racial mix of students. Moreover, school leadership, broadly defined, emerges as the most salient dimension of working conditions. Although teachers’ perceptions of their working conditions are less predictive of one-year actual departure rates than of intended rates, their predictive power is still on a par with that of other school characteristics. The models are estimated separately for elementary, middle and high school teachers and generate some policy-relevant differences among the three levels.
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14. Profiling teachers’ sense of professional identity
Author: Canrinus, E. T.; Helms Lorenz, M.; Beijaard, D. (...)
Source: Educational Studies, 2011, 37(5): 593-608
Abstract: This study shows that professional identity should not be viewed as a composed variable with a uniform structure. Based on the literature and previous research, we view teachers’ job satisfaction, self-efficacy, occupational commitment and change in the level of motivation as indicators of teachers’ professional identity. Using two-step cluster analysis, three distinct professional identity profiles have empirically been identified, based on data of 1214 teachers working in secondary education in the Netherlands. These profiles differed significantly regarding the indicators of teachers’ professional identity. Teachers belonging to the found profiles did not significantly differ in their amount of experience.
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15. The teaching profession against the background of educationalisation: an exploratory study.
Author: Hooge, E. H.; Honingh, M. E.; Langelaan, B. N.
Source: European Journal of Teacher Education, 2011, 34(3): 297-315
Abstract: This article focuses on the teaching profession against the background of educationalisation in the Netherlands in the sense that Dutch schools are increasingly regarded as focal points at which to address and solve social issues. Our research project concentrated on the extent to which teachers, being key figures in the school organisation, understand their role as one that embraces a social in addition to an educational mission. It explores teachers' professional identity and their awareness, task perception and self-efficacy with respect to performing a social mission. The results show that 'addressing social issues' can be identified as a dimension of teachers' professional identity. However, teachers report low self-efficacy as regards carrying out social tasks, irrespective of their task perception and awareness. The phenomenon of educationalisation is occurring in other Western European countries and in the US. The results of this exploratory study raise questions about the feasibility of educationalising social problems.
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16. Quality education as a constitutional right: creating a grassroots movement to transform public schools
Author: Anonymous
Source: Harvard Educational Review, 2011, 81(2): 382
Abstract: With his signature boldness and vision, Moses called on youth and adults, educators and organizers, researchers and community members to "use the Preamble to the Constitution as an organizing tool with which to assemble a twenty-first-century people's insurgency, for a substantive constitutional right to a quality public school education for every child in the nation" (p. 90). In particular, though the theoretical piece by Cort on the importance of education in a democracy and Moses's historical narrative of the "African American struggle to move from property to citizenship" (p. 70) touch on relevant themes, readers could have benefited more had diese authors brought their significant organizing experience to bear on how, in today's context, we might move from disparate organizing campaigns to an interdependent movement.
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17. Auditing Chinese higher education? The perspectives of returnee scholars in an elite university
Author: Yi, L.
Source: International Journal of Educational Development, 2011, 31(5): 505-514
Abstract: Drawing upon fieldwork conducted in an elite Chinese university and English language literature of audit culture in higher education against the backdrop of Chinese higher education in transition, this paper has discovered that Chinese higher education is undergoing an auditing process. However, this Chinese audit regime is not only guarded by a quantifiable scientism, but also by ideological control of communism and a Confucian guanxixue and paternalism to form a new synthesized pattern of governance, and thus is a different form from neoliberal audit culture in the West. Lastly, the paper warns against the threat posed by the collusion of economic and administrative rationalization to academia in China.
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18. Learner-centred education in developing country contexts: From solution to problem?
Author: Schweisfurth, M.
Source: International Journal of Educational Development, 2011, 31(5): 425-432
Abstract: Learner-centred education (LCE) has been a recurrent theme in many national education policies in the global South, and has had wide donor support through aid programmes and smaller projects and localised innovations. However, the history of the implementation of LCE in different contexts is riddled with stories of failures grand and small. In coming to understand how LCE has been conceived, researched, and reported in relation to developing country contexts, a good starting point is the International Journal of Educational Development (IJED), where a wide range of articles on this theme has been published over the years. In all, 72 relevant articles were identified among the issues available on-line, comprising a weighty body of evidence concerning the nature and implementation of LCE. The vast majority are studies exploring the issues - and problems - of implementation of LCE-based programmes in particular settings. Emerging from these investigations is a variety of explanations for this perennial challenge: problems with the nature of reform and its implementation; barriers of material and human resources; interactions of divergent cultures; and the all-important questions of power and agency in the process. After a descriptive breakdown of the 72 articles, each of these implementation issues is explored in turn. The article considers the implications of this for future initiatives, research and scholarship in this area. The begged questions are: why do the same problems recur repeatedly, and how do we move beyond the normative [`]shoulds' and the practical [`]can'ts'?
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19. Teachers’ learning in a learning study
Author: Holmqvist, M.
Source: Instructional Science, 2011, 39(4): 497-511
Abstract: The point of departure in this study is the question: do teachers who develop theoretical knowledge of the variation theory change the way(s) they offer their pupils the object of learning due to the theoretical framework. The aim of the study is to describe this development, i.e. to find if and how teachers developed theoretical knowledge when planning instruction, and in what way(s) this has an impact on the pupils’ learning outcome when using contrasts in the instruction. The theoretical framework is strongly content related, and by analysing the learning object’s critical aspects the teachers are guided to focus on the content in this particular way. The question what does it take to develop knowledge about the object of learning? has to be answered by the teachers before choice of teaching method is made. The research method used is Learning Study, a fusion between lesson study and design experiment. The teachers (6) have carried out nine research lessons in three Learning Study cycles (containing three lessons each). The pupils belong to three different classes and are between 9 and 11 years old. The result shows how the teachers gradually use the variation theory when planning instruction and how the learning outcomes shown by the pupils improve. The developed theoretical insight seems to affect the teachers’ ways of seeing the object of learning, such as subtle changes of how to organize the critical features of the learning object, are discerned. In every learning study cycle contrasts are used in one lesson, and in the analysis of the effect of the contrasts, the two remaining lessons are used as control groups. The results show the impact of contrasts in the pupils’ learning outcomes. The need to complement a lesson study with a theoretical perspective on learning is that the teachers are then given the opportunity to make use of the theory when planning instruction individually, not only in a lesson study. There again, the Learning Study model seems to be a powerful model with which to develop teachers’ understanding of the theoretical framework.
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20. ‘Building Schools for the Future’: reflections on a new social architecture
Author: Mahony, P.; Hextall, I.; Richardson, M.
Source: Journal of Education Policy, 2011, 26(3): 341-360
Abstract: The Labour Government launched the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme (BSF) in February 2003 with the aim of refurbishing or rebuilding all secondary schools in England over a 15?year period, with an anticipated budget of £45 billion. In this article, we locate BSF in a wider public policy context which has already had important implications in other sectors of public provision. The local improvement finance trusts (LIFTs) initiative within the National Health Service (NHS) is of particular relevance to this discussion both because it reflects contemporary developments within New Public Management and because it also reveals new ways of extending and developing the private finance initiative (PFI) approach to public provision. We shall also consider the purposes and ‘delivery’ mechanisms of BSF and identify some of the key commentaries which have been provided by parliamentary reports and other evaluations. Although still in the early stages of its implementation, the BSF is of such significance for the future shape and form of educational provision that it is important to begin the process of considering possible directions and dimensions for a research agenda which will provide a secure empirical and analytical foundation on which to base discussion.
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