Category: Achievement

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Achievement Educational Administration and Leadership Primary School Education Secondary School Education

Examining computer access for students across the U.S.

A new report from the National Center for Education Statistics examines students’ access to computers at home and in school, and students’ use of computers for classroom learning at grades 4, 8, and 12. Associations between students’ computer access and use and student performance on the 2015 NAEP mathematics and reading assessments are also examined.

NAEP is given to a representative sample of students across the country, and results are reported for groups of students with similar characteristics. As part of the 2015 NAEP assessments, students answered a survey question about their access to computers at home, and teachers answered a survey question about the availability of computers for them and their students in school. Students and teachers also answered questions about their use of computers for classroom learning and instruction.

Key findings from the report included:

  • Computer access is divided along socioeconomic lines. Smaller percentages of lower income students reported having computer access at home in comparison to middle-to-higher income students.
  • Lower- and higher-performing students differ in how often they use computers for practicing and building academic skills in the classroom. For example, compared to higher-performing fourth-grade students, larger percentages of lower-performing students had teachers who reported that they never or hardly ever used computers in class to practice and review mathematics topics or to extend their mathematics learning with enrichment activities.
  • Computer use once or twice a week increased by as much as 5 percentage points in mathematics classes and 6 percentage points in reading classes between 2013 and 2015.

The report helped the public to understand how use of computers are related to academic performance. However, the survey did not include students’ use of other digital devices, such as tablets and smartphones in 2015.

 

Source (Open Access): The Nation’s Report Card (2018.) 2015 survey questionnaires results – Students’ computer access and use. Retrieved from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/sq_computer/.
… Read the rest

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Achievement Kindergarten Primary School Education Programme Evaluation Secondary School Education

The effect of teacher coaching on teaching and learning

Matthew A. Kraft and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of the causal evidence on the effect of teacher coaching on teaching and learning. Their paper, published in the Review of Educational Research, reviewed 60 studies on teacher coaching programs conducted after 2006 that measured the impact of teacher coaching on either teaching (measured using tools such as the Classroom Assessment Scoring System or the Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation) or student academic performance (measured by standardized tests).

Their results found that

  • Sustained coaching improves both classroom teaching (ES= +0.49) and student achievement (ES=+0.18).
  • The effectiveness of a teacher coaching program seems to be determined by the number of participants. When studies were divided into programs that had fewer than 100 participants and those that had more than 100 participants, the impact on teaching was nearly double for the smaller programs than for programs with more than 100 participants.
  • For student achievement, the smaller programs showed an impact of nearly three times that of the larger programs.

The authors remarked that more knowledge was needed on whether teacher coaching was best implemented as a smaller scale targeted program tailored to local contexts or if it could scale up in a high-quality and cost-effective way.

 

Source: Kraft, M. A., Blazar, D., & Hogan, D. (2018). The effect of teacher coaching on instruction and achievement: A meta-analysis of the causal evidence. Review of Educational Research, 88(4), 547–588. … Read the rest

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Achievement Primary School Education Secondary School Education

Is the pen mightier than the mouse?

Backes and Cowan (2018) have published a working paperon the differences between computer- and paper-based tests.  In 2015, Massachusetts introduced the new PARCC assessment. School districts could choose whether to use the computer or paper versions of the test, and in 2015 and 2016, districts were divided fairly evenly between the two. The authors use this division to compare results for pupils in Grades 3–8 (Years 4–9). The analyses showed:

  • Pupils who took the online version of PARCC scored about 0.10 standard deviations lower in Mathematics and about 0.25 standard deviations lower in English than pupils taking the paper version of the test.
  • When pupils took computer tests again the following year, these differences reduced by about a third for Mathematics and by half for English.

The study also looked at whether the change to computer tests affected some pupils disproportionately, as the analyses showed:

  • There were no differences for Mathematics, but for English there was more of an effect on pupils at the bottom of the achievement distribution, pupils with English as an additional language and special education pupils.

The authors point out that these differences not only have consequences for individual pupils, but for other decisions based on the data, including teacher and school performance measures and the analysis of schoolwide programmes.

 

Source (Open Access) : Backes, B. & Cowan, J. (2018). Is the pen mightier than the keyboard? The effect of online testing on measured student achievement (Working paper 190). National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. Retrieved from: https://caldercenter.org/sites/default/files/WP%20190.pdf… Read the rest

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Achievement Kindergarten Social and Motivational Outcomes

Preschool inattention and conduct problems linked to reduced exam scores

Research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry has used data from the University of Bristol Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to investigate whether preschool hyperactivity/inattention and conduct problems are independently associated with academic outcomes at age 16.

(Washbrook, Propper& Sayal, 2013) found that:

  • Adverse effects were apparent in both boys and girls (n = 11,640).
  • For boys, hyperactivity/inattention scores were associated with reductions of 10 GCSE points, and borderline and abnormal conduct problem scores were associated with reductions of 9–10 and 12–15 points respectively.
  • For girls, early conduct problems rather than hyperactivity/inattention were important, with reductions of 9 and 12 points for borderline and abnormal scores respectively.

The authors say that there is a strong argument for the early identification of behavioural problems, and that this needs to be linked to appropriate interventions to be effective. They also suggest that teachers should be aware of the long-term implications of early behavioural difficulties, particularly for children they might regard as being at risk, and to take parental concerns about behaviour problems seriously.

 

Source (Open Access): Washbrook, E., Propper, C. & Sayal, K. (2013). Pre-school hyperactivity/attention problems and educational outcomes in adolescence: prospective longitudinal study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 203(4), 265–271. … Read the rest

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Achievement Kindergarten Primary School Education Social and Motivational Outcomes

Positive effect of process praise in early years on later achievement through growth mindsets development

Praises that affirm children’s efforts may influence their beliefs about learning. But how does the praise children hear early in life relate to their academic achievement years later? An article recently published in Developmental Psychology explored the relationship between parents’ praise of children aged 1 to 3 years old, the children’s second-grade motivational framework and their fourth-grade academic achievement among 53 children and their caregivers from Chicago.

When the children in the study were 14, 26 and 38 months old, parents’ and children’s daily activities in home were videotaped. Parent praise was then classified into process praise (emphasising children’s effort, strategies and specific actions), person praise (indicating the child had a fixed quality) and other praise (praise that was not clearly person- or process-directed, such as ‘Good’). When the children were in second and third grade, their motivational framework was assessed by asking them about their beliefs in the stability of intelligence, their orientation towards learning goals and their attributions. Math achievement, reading comprehension and reading decoding were assessed in fourth grade.

Gunderson and colleagues found that:

  • Process praise accounted for 18% of parent praise across ages, person praise accounted for 16% and other praise accounted for 66%.
  • Process praise had a positive indirect effect on fourth-grade reading comprehension and math achievement, through its positive effects on children’s incremental mindsets.
  • In addition, further analyses showed that the effect was produced through children’s beliefs about whether traits were malleable or fixed, rather than their preference for challenging versus easy tasks in service of learning goals.

The authors pointed out that these results indicate that the impacts of children’s growth mindset may already exist by second grade, and suggested that intervention studies be conducted to guide parents on how to give process praise.

 

Source :Gunderson, E. A., Sorhagen, N. S., Gripshover, S. J., Dweck, C. S., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Levine, S. C. (2018). Parent praise to toddlers predicts fourth grade academic achievement via children’s incremental mindsets. Developmental Psychology, 54(3), 397–409. … Read the rest

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Achievement Kindergarten Primary School Education Secondary School Education Social and Motivational Outcomes

What do we know about well-being?

The Department for Education’s Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre has published a new review of evidence on well-being and learning. Their starting point was that, although previous literature suggests a link, less is known about how multiple dimensions of well-being (emotional, behavioural, social, school) predict later educational outcomes. The authors conducted a review of relevant literature, as well as using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).

Key findings included:

  • Children with higher levels of emotional, behavioural, social, and school well-being, on average, have higher levels of academic achievement and are more engaged in school.
  • As children move through the school system, emotional and behavioural well-being become more important in explaining school engagement, while demographic and other characteristics become less important.
  • The relationships between emotional, behavioural, social, and school well-being and later educational outcomes are generally similar for children and adolescents, regardless of their gender and parents’ educational level.

The authors concluded that the decline in school wellbeing from childhood to adolescence was worrisome, as the findings suggested that school engagement during the early teenage years could significantly predict the later GCSE achievement.

 

Source (Open Access) :Gutman, L. M., & Vorhaus, J. (2012). The impact of pupil behaviour and wellbeing on educational outcomes (research report def-rr253). London, England: The Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre. … Read the rest