Category: Educational Administration and Leadership

Categories
Educational Administration and Leadership K-12 Education

Six recommendations on how to effectively use feedback to improve students’ learning

Offering valuable feedback is essential for educators to encourage student advancement and enrich learning. Effective feedback helps tackle misconceptions and narrow the distance between a student’s current level and desired goals. However, inadequately provided feedback can have adverse consequences and impede progress. Teacher feedback is critical for enhancing student accomplishments but identifying the most efficient forms of guidance remains a challenge.

The Education Endowment Foundation published a report containing six recommendations for teachers to support students’ learning through feedback. These recommendations are the result of integrating empirical research findings and the expertise of academics and practitioners. Each recommendation starts with a vignette, illustrating common challenges faced by teachers, includes case studies of feedback practice to represent current approaches, and suggests techniques and ideas that might work based on the evidence and the panel’s expertise.

The first three recommendations act as the main guiding principles: (1) establish the foundation for effective feedback through high-quality instruction and formative assessment; (2) provide well-timed feedback that emphasizes progress in learning; (3) create a plan for students to receive and apply feedback, including time and opportunities for utilization. Two recommendations suggest teachers carefully consider the delivery method, whether to provide a (4) written or (5) verbal feedback, according to purpose and time-efficiency. The last recommendation is about (6) developing a school policy that emphasizes and illustrates the principles of effective feedback.

The report can be highly valuable for teachers, offering them a guide on how to provide feedback in ways that are most likely to have a positive impact on students.

 

Source (Open Access): Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning. (2021, October 27). EEF. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/feedback… Read the rest

Categories
Educational Administration and Leadership K-12 Education

Considerations when building a school-based vision program

Pediatric vision care continues to be an unmet need in the United States, leading to disparities in access to these crucial services. Serving as an evidence-based intervention to advance health equity, school-based vision programs (SBVPs) aim to offer vision care services directly within the school setting. By forging partnerships between schools and eye care providers, SBVPs have demonstrated their ability to make a substantial impact on children’s lives, including improving academic performance and facilitating the use of eyeglasses, particularly among urban minority populations.

Despite the proven effectiveness of SBVPs, there is currently a lack of resources and comprehensive guides to assist school nurses, administrators, eye care providers, and other stakeholders in establishing and operating SBVPs. Collins and her team published an article in the Journal of School Nursing, which provided practical considerations relevant to the building or strengthening of existing SBVPs.

During the program planning phase, it is essential to prioritize needs analysis, strategic partnerships, and securing adequate funding. During program implementation, components such as personnel, consent for vision exams, vision screening, eye exams, dispensing, monitoring, and replacing eyeglasses, and how to charge for exams should be fully considered. For sustainability, stakeholders need to consider data management, tracking and quality assurance. In conclusion, this article points out that SBVPs require a strong partnership between school health staff, teachers, and vision care providers in each phase. Due to school nurses’ strong ties to school health care services and the school community, they are especially positioned to build SBVPs.

 

Source: Ambrosino, C. M., Callan, J., Wiggins, T. M. S., Repka, M. X., & Collins, M. E. (2023). Considerations in Building a School-Based Vision Program. The Journal of School Nursing, 10598405231163752. https://doi.org/10.1177/10598405231163753… Read the rest

Categories
Educational Administration and Leadership Primary School Education Programme Evaluation

Does online computer-assisted learning enhance English learning in rural areas of China?

A clustered randomized controlled trial (RCT) by Bai and colleagues evaluated the impact of an online computer-assisted learning (OCAL) intervention on academic and non-academic outcomes of grade 5 rural and migrant students in China. A random sample of 44 schools in rural areas was randomly assigned to either in a treatment group (n= 22) or a control group (n=22). Students in the treatment group attended two 40 min English online computer-assisted learning tutorials per week during the 2016 spring semester (about 3 months), while students in the control group continued their usual classes. The OCAL tutorial sessions provided only remedial materials which matched the content of the standard English curriculum studied in the class without any new material. A total of 1,342 students completed the program.

After controlling baseline test scores, students’ and schools’ characteristics, results of regression analysis indicated that:

  • Students in the treatment group outperformed those in the control group (ES = +0.48), which was a greater improvement than the impact of offline CAL studies (ES = +0.15) previously conducted in rural China.
  • The intervention enhanced students’ interest in English class but it did not affect their attitude towards their English teacher.
  • However, there was no significant effect on student math scores or self-efficacy in English.

Based on the findings, the researchers suggested that interest-oriented stimulation contributes to the success of the OCAL program by enhancing student learning through two features: (1) the online interactive function motivated peer engagement in competitive, gamified activities, and (2) OCAL provided tailor-made exercises based on each student’s mastery level which helped students feel less frustrated or bored. Additionally, there is a cost-benefit advantage of OCAL over offline CAL if the former is scaled up. Therefore, policymakers should consider the potential of OCAL program expansion.

 

Source (Open Access): Bai, Y., Tang, B., Wang, B., Mo, D., Zhang, L., Rozelle, S., Auden, E., & Mandell, B. (2023). Impact of online computer assisted learning on education: Experimental evidence from economically vulnerable areas of China. Economics of Education Review, 94, 102385. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102385… Read the rest

Categories
Achievement Educational Administration and Leadership Programme Evaluation Secondary School Education

Effects of an online summer program for credit recovery in high school

A recent randomized study evaluated the effectiveness of a summer program to recover credits in high school, comparing two delivery modes: online vs. in-class directed by a teacher.

Students who failed the Algebra I or English 9 courses from schools in Los Angeles were randomly assigned to receive the credit recovery program online or in-class. For the Algebra course, 305 students were assigned to the online delivery and 308 to the in-class program. For the English course, 564 students were assigned to the online delivery and 560 to the in-class program.

The researchers used three measures of impact: credit recovery rates at the end of the program; district PSAT math and reading tests; and a researcher-made end-of-course test to evaluate student outcomes. The results of the latter may be overestimated due to the type of measure used and are not reported in this summary.

For the Algebra course, results showed a non-significant difference between the two groups in credit recovery rates, with the online class 6 percentage points lower than the in-class program. There was also no difference between the two groups on PSAT math (ES = -0.03). For the English course, results showed a significant difference between the two groups in credit recovery rates. The online class was 15 percentage points lower than the in-class program. There was no difference between the two groups on PSAT reading (ES = +0.04).

 

Source (Open Access): Rickles, J., Clements, M., Brodziak de los Reyes, I., Lachowicz, M., Lin, S., & Heppen, J. (2023). A multisite randomized study of an online learning approach to high school credit recovery: Effects on student experiences and proximal outcomes. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 0(0), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2023.2198524… Read the rest

Categories
Educational Administration and Leadership K-12 Education

Lessons for Covid recovery from other health emergencies and natural disasters

Many studies have attempted to understand the learning loss resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic by studying the learning loss students typically experience during summer vacations. A new study, however, contends that more accurate lessons can be drawn from studies of unexpected and extended learning disruption due to other health emergencies like SARS or natural disasters.  This systematic review of the literature analyzed 15 studies, many of which were qualitative, focusing on the aftermath of crises that interrupted school learning.

Several key themes arose. The most consistent was regarding the critical need for school leadership to center student and staff mental health with both a gentle return to normalcy and also flexibility. Curricula that offer students a chance to understand the event, process their experiences, and express themselves at their own pace can be helpful. Support for teachers can entail resisting the temptation for immediate changes following the crisis in favor of reducing additional sources of potential stress. Additionally, school leaders’ specific knowledge of the community can be essential in recovering from unexpected crisis-inspired school closures, suggesting that schools should be granted discretion in managing their budgets and spending.

The authors urge that the conversation about pandemic learning loss should not crowd out these findings from the literature on previous emergency-related extended school closures.

 

Source (Open Access): Harmey, S., & Moss, G. (2023). Learning disruption or learning loss: Using evidence from unplanned closures to inform returning to school after COVID-19. Educational Review, 75(4), 637–656. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1966389… Read the rest

Categories
Educational Administration and Leadership K-12 Education

Exploring evaluation of teacher preparation practices

Teacher preparation practices refer to the approaches, activities, and processes that teacher educators employ to enhance preservice teachers’ knowledge, skill, and dispositions. While researchers and policymakers have been actively identifying the most effective teacher preparation practices, the lack of rigorous evaluations of these practices is of concern because their effectiveness in different contexts remains unclear. Therefore, a recent review systematically examined the research designs of relevant studies conducted over the past two decades.

An online database and hand search of relevant studies published in peer-reviewed journals between 2002 and 2019 yielded 166 eligible studies. In terms of internal validity, only 26.67% of the studies used a comparison group design to address maturation effects, and only 15.66% reported reasons why participants left during the study. Regarding measurement, 45.18% used a clearly defined and consistent rating scheme; 18.67% used measures developed by other researchers; 24.7% investigated the effect of teacher preparation practices on preservice teachers’ practice and/or student outcomes; and only 6.02% collected outcome measures over different time points to evaluate long-term effects. Regarding external validity, the representativeness of participants was a concern for only one study that compared participants with preservice teachers, and the specific study contexts were not clearly reported. Another concern was about the scalability of instructors because only 16 studies addressed multiple-instructor effects, and 85 studies included at least one author as the instructor.

These findings suggest a call for more rigorous impact evaluations of teacher preparation practices. Besides providing a checklist of future research designs, the author made general recommendations for future research.

 

Source: Mancenido, Z. (2023). Impact Evaluations of teacher preparation practices: Challenges and opportunities for more rigorous research. Review of Educational Research, 00346543231174413. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543231174413… Read the rest