Category: Educational Administration and Leadership

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Educational Administration and Leadership Language Development Primary School Education Programme Evaluation

Taking a break to improve attention and reading

It seems intuitive that students require periodic breaks during their school day. We’ve long recognized the importance of recess, especially in the elementary grades, as it offers students a chance for physical activity and mental reset. However, our understanding of the impact of short breaks within regular lessons and how these breaks influence student learning is less clear. In a recent study published in the Trends in Neuroscience and Education Journal, Müller and colleagues delved into this subject.  They employed an intervention-control group design to examine the effects of both physical activity and mindfulness interventions on student performance.

The physical activity intervention included daily 10-minute physical activity breaks for 162 fourth grade students for two weeks, during which students were led through a 2-minute warm up activity such as stretching, four minutes of cardiovascular activities such as running in place and jumping jacks, 2 minutes of exercises such as back-to-back knee bends with a partner, and 2 minutes of cool down balance tasks, such as tree pose.  The mindfulness intervention called for 10-minute mindfulness breaks for 79 fifth grade students over the same two-week period. Students were first introduced to mindfulness during an introductory session, and subsequent mindfulness sessions included exercises such as breathing exercises, guided attention exercises, and body scans.  In both interventions, control group counterparts received ten 10-minute breaks either without instruction or while listening to a children’s podcast. The researchers conducted baseline assessments to ensure that intervention and control groups were comparable in terms of age, gender, cognitive ability, and clinical social emotional screening responses.

The study found several positive effects. The physical activity intervention showed improvements on children’s attention, as measured by attention-processing speed and attention-performance (ES = +0.08). In the mindfulness intervention, students demonstrated improved reading comprehension compared to control students (ES = +0.40, p < 0.012). In addition, researchers found moderating effects of self-esteem, meaning that high self-esteem closed the effects of the different interventions. That is, the positive effects of the physical activity intervention were primarily present in those participants with low or medium levels of self-esteem.

While these results were not from randomized interventions, they do hold promise. They suggest that with regular breaks of just 10 minutes, students can experience improved attention and reading comprehension. Moreover, these effects may be most beneficial for students with lower self-esteem.

 

Source (Open Access): Müller, C., Otto, B., Sawitzki, V., Kanagalingam, P., Scherer, J.-S., & Lindberg, S. (2021). Short breaks at school: Effects of a physical activity and a mindfulness intervention on children’s attention, reading comprehension, and self-esteem. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 25, 100160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2021.100160… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership K-12 Education Language Development

What happens in your brain when you are reading?

Understanding the intricate workings of the human brain during the learning process has the potential to inform and improve classroom pedagogy, instructional design, and curriculum development. A recent study by Woolnough and colleagues from the Vivian L. Smith Department of Neurosurgery with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston examined brain structures during reading that provide useful insights into the learning process.

In their study, the researchers conducted recordings of 36 patients’ brains to locate and identify the specific roles and brain area interactions that are involved in the act of reading. Doctors surgically placed electrodes in patients’ brains and measured neural activity while patients read three forms of sentences: regular sentences, sentences using common grammar and syntax but with nonsense words and lists of words or nonsense words.

The measurements detected two distinct brain networks that are activated when a person reads a sentence, with the two networks cooperating to combine the meanings of individual words and create more complex, deeper meaning. The first network involves the frontal lobe sending signals to the temporal lobe, progressively activating as a person builds up complex meaning as the sentence progresses. The second network moves from the temporal lobe to the frontal lobe, ensuring the sentence’s context is understood and supporting comprehension and processing as the individual reads each subsequent word.

These findings are particularly beneficial in supporting researchers’ understanding of brain functioning in conditions like dyslexia or aphasia, thus aiding in the development of effective strategies to assist individuals experiencing difficulties in language processing.

 

Source (Open Access): Woolnough, O., Donos, C., Murphy, E., Rollo, P. S., Roccaforte, Z. J., Dehaene, S., & Tandon, N. (2023). Spatiotemporally distributed frontotemporal networks for sentence reading. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(17), e2300252120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2300252120… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership Programme Evaluation Secondary School Education

Assessing the impact of a school dropout prevention program: Findings from a randomized control trial

School dropout remains a significant issue. In 2018, over 2 million youths aged 16 to 24 lacked a high school diploma and were no longer enrolled in school. Among the programs funded by the U.S. Department of Education to address this challenge is the Peer Group Connection-High School (PGC-HS), a school-based peer mentoring program designed to facilitate the delicate transition from middle school to high school for ninth-grade students. Mentors are tasked with creating a supportive environment where students engage in a curriculum of group activities tailored to address the challenges linked to this transition. This curriculum places emphasis on developing critical thinking, sound decision-making, a sense of belonging, positive relationships, and motivation.

In randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving six public high schools in North Carolina, the program was implemented over three academic years, spanning from 2016 to 2019. A total of 1351 students were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (n=680) or the control group (n=671). However, out of the 680 ninth-grade students allocated to the PGC-HS (treatment) group, only 412 met the compliance criteria by attending a minimum of 14 outreach sessions. To assess the program’s effectiveness, various academic, behavioral, and noncognitive outcomes indicative of school engagement and academic achievement were analyzed using both administrative records and self-reported data.

The results exhibit variations across the analyses, yet there is a consistent trend indicating that the program might have a favourable impact on suspension (-7%), disciplinary referrals (-5.7%), and students’ perceptions of school engagement. Further support from dosage analyses suggests that full program participation may also be linked to improvements in GPAs (+0.15 grade points), decision-making skills, and academic achievement-related peer norms. In conclusion, the researchers propose that, despite the limitations associated with the statistical assumptions of the CACE methods used, the results imply the program’s potential effectiveness, particularly for students who participate more actively, as indicated by the positive impact on several academic, behavioral, and noncognitive measures.

 

Source (Open Access): Jenner, E., Lass, K., Walsh, S., Demby, H., Leger, R., & Falk, G. (2023). Effects of cross-age peer mentoring program within a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 16(3), 473–500. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2022.2130119… Read the rest

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Achievement Educational Administration and Leadership Secondary School Education

Effects of inclusion on high school outcomes

Forty years ago, The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was enacted, stating that students with disabilities should be included in general education classrooms as much as possible, while still receiving appropriate services.

Cole and colleagues conducted a study to examine the academic outcomes of high school students placed in inclusive settings compared to similar high school students placed in less inclusive settings. They employed propensity score matching techniques to analyze data from the state of Indiana, covering nearly 24,000 students with disabilities who were in eighth grade in 2013 and followed through to their graduation in 2018.

Results showed that students with disabilities who spent at least 80% of their time in inclusive general education classrooms performed better on standardized tests in math (18.4 points higher) and reading (24.3 points higher) than similar peers who spent less time in inclusive education. In addition, the students who spent more time in inclusive settings took more rigorous courses and were thus better prepared for college or careers than those who spent less time in inclusive settings.

The authors underscore the importance of closely monitoring students to ensure that those who can benefit from placement in general education are appropriately included. They also address issues of social justice tied to these findings, emphasizing the need for equitable access to inclusive educational opportunities.

 

Source: Cole, S. M., Murphy, H. R., Frisby, M. B., & Robinson, J. (2023). The relationship between special education placement and high school outcomes. The Journal of Special Education, 57(1), 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224669221097945… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership K-12 Education Programme Evaluation

Using data to address inequalities

Using research data in practice is not an easy task; rather, it requires educators and local decision makers to delve beyond the summary data and dive into a series of analyses that show the performance and experiences of specific groups of students.

A recent report by WestEd offers local decision makers valuable insights on using disaggregated quantitative data to understand educational disparities. Because one overall effect size might not reflect the specific performance of a given subgroup, separating quantitative data for student subgroups by specific criteria (e.g., ethnicity) provides a better picture of the inequalities that inform educational decisions. For example, is a certain outcome consistent for all ethnic groups? Does it differ by socio-economic status? Is it specific to students facing challenges?

The report focuses on three measures to address disproportionality, namely, overrepresenting or underrepresenting groups of students in an educational context. Take, for example, a district with 10% immigrant students who are 30 times more likely to receive detention compared to their peers of the same age. The three measures are:

  • The Composition Index that allows gauging the proportion of specific student groups within a particular outcome. This index helps us grasp the representation of different groups in the context of the outcome.
  • The Risk Rate that measures how often a specific group experiences a particular outcome. This rate allows us to assess how certain groups fare in relation to others regarding the specific outcome in question.
  • The Relative Risk Ratio: This provides a standardized measure for comparing the risk rates among various student groups, allowing us to identify disparities in the outcome.

Understanding how to employ these measures is an important step to identifying systemic inequities in our schools.

 

Source (Open Access): Lopez, D., Nabors, A., & Jaobs, J. (2023). Using Quantitative Data to Identify and Address Inequities: An Introduction for Practitioners. WestEd. https://www.wested.org/resources/quantitative-data-to-address-inequities/… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership Maths and Science Learning Secondary School Education

Impact of peer gender-math stereotype on math performance

Gender-math stereotype refers to the belief that boys are innately better at learning math than girls. Wu and colleagues conducted two studies to investigate whether this stereotype can be transmitted among children’s peers, affecting their math ability and psychological outcomes. The first study analysed data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), a large-scale national survey. The sample included 8,029 grade 7 and grade 9 students from 208 classrooms where students were randomly assigned to each classroom.  The extent of the gender-math stereotype among a student’s peers was measured as the proportion of the student’s peer in each classroom who held this belief (range: 13.3% – 91.9%). Accounting for student, classroom, and school effects, the fixed-effect linear model revealed the following results:

  • As the proportion of peers holding the stereotype increased by 1 standard deviation (SD), the gap in math scores between girls and boys widened by 0.894 SD, with girls scoring lower.
  • Higher proportions of peers with the stereotype were associated with higher math scores for boys (ES = 0.439).
  • No significant differences were observed in gaps of Chinese and English test scores between boys and girls.
  • A higher proportion of peers holding the stereotype increased the likelihood of girls adopting this belief compared to boys.

When examining the proportion of peers holding the stereotype separately by gender, the analysis showed that same-gender peers had a smaller impact on the difference in math scores between girls and boys (ES = -0.656) compared to peers of a different gender (ES = -1.133).

The second study involved 547 Chinese university students, participants were randomly exposed to a 5-min video either a stereotype-activation condition highlighting gender gaps in math performance or a control video. Afterward, their math and verbal skills were tested. Male students’ performance was the same on both conditions. However, female students performed worse in math than their male counterparts in both groups, with a significantly greater disparity in the group exposed to the stereotype-activation condition.

While the immediate impact of a brief video on math scores in study 2 should be interpreted cautiously, as the results did not account for students’ prior math ability, the findings of study 1 underscore the continued existence of potential harm from gender-math stereotyping in children’s peer environments. The authors emphasize the need for greater attention to this matter.

 

Source (Open Access): Wu, S. J., & Cai, X. (2023). Adding up peer beliefs: Experimental and field evidence on the effect of peer influence on math performance. Psychological Science, 34(8), 851–862. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231180881… Read the rest