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Eric.ed.gov – The Role of Advanced High School Coursework in Increasing STEM Career Interest

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Several avenues are open to students who wish to study advanced science or mathematics in high school, which include Advanced Placement courses and teacher-designed courses unaffiliated with organized programs. We employ a retrospective cohort study of 4,691 nationally representative college students at 34 randomly selected, colleges and universities to examine the relationship between taking advanced high school courses and students’ interest in pursuing a STEM career, while controlling for prior interests and experiences. We are able to distinguish between those students choosing to take an additional year in a science or math subject from those taking Advanced Placement (AP), which is most commonly taken as a second year course, but is increasingly taken as a first year course. We find that the number of years of a… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Algebra for All: The Effect of Algebra Coursework and Classroom Peer Academic Composition on Low-Achieving Students

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Algebra is often considered as a gateway for later achievement. A recent report by the Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) underscores the importance of improving algebra learning in secondary school. Today, a growing number of states and districts require algebra for all students in ninth grade or earlier. Chicago is at the forefront of this movement. Many low-achieving students took remedial math before 1997 and the algebra-for-all policy immersed these students in academic coursework for the first time. Moreover, these low-achieving students experienced a rise in the ability levels of their classroom peers. However, this study suggests that simply requiring algebra is insufficient to improve their outcomes, even though students may benefit from having higher achieving peers in their classrooms. Overall, taking Algebra, instead of remedial math, would… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – How and Why Do Teacher Credentials Matter for Student Achievement? Working Paper 2. Revised

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Education researchers and policymakers agree that teachers differ in terms of quality and that quality matters for student achievement. Despite prodigious amounts of research, however, debate still persists about the causal relationship between specific teacher credentials and student achievement. In this paper, we use a rich administrative data set from North Carolina to explore a range of questions related to the relationship between teacher characteristics and credentials on the one hand and student achievement on the other. Though the basic questions underlying this research are not new–and, indeed, have been explored in many papers over the years within the rubric of the “education production function”–the availability of data on all teachers and students in North Carolina over a ten-year period allows us to explore them in more… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Relating Teacher Candidate Performance to Their Students’ Subject Specific Academic Achievement Using TWS Methodology

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Teacher education preparation programs are under pressure from the public to provide evidence that their programs and teacher candidates are improving student achievement. However, the connections between teacher education preparation programs, teacher candidates’ evaluation, and student achievement are often hard to disentangle from other educationally relevant effects. Teacher candidates were formally assessed by their university supervisor during their student teaching semester. Using Western Oregon University’s teacher work sample methodology, we were able to assess the achievement of the teacher candidate’s students. Results showed that students of teacher candidates’ showed 52% gains in knowledge of learning goals. Additionally, improvement in teacher candidate’s teaching ability as measured on an observation instrument was associated with higher gains by their students on the learning goals. Lastly, teacher candidates assessing their students’… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – How Non-Linearity and Grade-Level Differences Complicate the Validation of Observation Protocols

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Teacher evaluation is currently a major policy issue at all levels of the K-12 system driven in large part by current US Department of Education requirements. The main objective of this study is to explore the patterns of relationship between observational scores and value-added measures of teacher performance in math classrooms and the variation in these relationships across grade levels. While the MET analyses used a single composite score consisting of a simple average of the eight component scores of the protocol, in our work we treated each component separately since each measures a separately definable aspect of classroom practice. Specifically, across all the components, the authors pose the following questions: (1) Do the relationships between observation scores of math teachers and their value-added scores tend to… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Mediating Learning Number Bonds through a Vygotskian Lens of Scientific Concepts

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Children’s learning of early number bonds is a significant issue in South African schools because evidence shows that flexible and efficient (fluent and reasoned) knowledge of number bonds to 20 correlates with success at the end of primary schooling, yet the evidence is that many South African students are over-reliant on inefficient counting methods. This paper focuses on why and how treating early number bonds as scientific concepts may be the key to raising learners’ attainment in these. The paper argues that teacher mediation is crucial and that mediation for learning scientific concepts has to be meaningful, relational and transcendent. This theoretical position is illustrated with examples from a dynamic assessment interview with a Grade 2 learner carried out as part of the Wits Maths Connect —… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – “Informed Self-Placement” at American River College: A Case Study. National Center Report Number #07-2

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: “Informed math self-placement,” a program implemented at American River College in Sacramento, California, to determine students’ readiness for college-level math, has been in place for three years. This case study describes the development and implementation of math self-placement at American River. Math self-placement consists of a Web-based testing and information site that allows students, or potential students, to gauge their level of math proficiency prior to talking with a counselor or enrolling in classes. Math faculty members and administrators are hopeful that self-placement, as an alternative to traditional placement, will provide students with concrete knowledge and experience about math standards, since self-placement includes actual self-assessment instruments (tests), developed and approved by the college’s math faculty. American River’s experience in math self-placement is noteworthy in its potential to… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Social Skills and Problem Behaviors as Mediators of the Relationship between Behavioral Self-Regulation and Academic Achievement

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Early behavioral self-regulation is an important predictor of the skills children need to be successful in school. However, little is known about the mechanism(s) through which self-regulation affects academic achievement. The current study investigates the possibility that two aspects of children’s social func- tioning, social skills and problem behaviors, mediate the relationship between preschool self-regulation and literacy and math achievement. Additionally, we investigated whether the meditational processes differed for boys and girls. We expected that better self-regulation would help children to interact well with others (social skills) and minimize impulsive or aggressive (problem) behaviors. Positive interac- tions with others and few problem behaviors were expected to relate to gains in achievement as learning takes place within a social context. Preschool-aged children (n = 118) were tested with… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Parent Involvement, Academic Achievement and the Role of Student Attitudes and Behaviors as Mediators

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Previous research shows inconsistent relationships between parent involvement and academic achievement and often asks why such inconsistencies occur. The research proposes a theoretical model that separates parent involvement into those practices linking parents to children and those practices linking parents to other adults in the school environment. The researcher hypothesizes that parent-child (i.e. discussion and monitoring) and parent-school (i.e. educational support strategies and Parent Teacher Organization involvement) practices will differentially affect student attitudes (educational expectations), behaviors (absenteeism, homework, truancy), and achievement (math and science). Using a national survey conducted in the United States of schools and students, the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88), The research estimates a series of hierarchical models to test the direct and indirect effects of parent involvement on student attitudinal, behavioral and academic… Continue Reading

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Eric.ed.gov – Assessing the Potential of Using Value-Added Estimates of Teacher Job Performance for Making Tenure Decisions. Brief 3

eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This research brief presents selected findings from work examining the stability of value-added model estimates of teacher effectiveness and their implication for tenure policies. Findings show year-to-year correlations in teacher effects are modest, but pre-tenure estimates of teacher job performance do predict estimated post-tenure performance in both math and reading, and would therefore seem to be a reasonable metric to use as a factor in making substantive teacher selection decisions. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures, and 15 notes.) Link til kilde