Category: Educational Administration and Leadership

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Educational Administration and Leadership Higher Education

A comparative study of learning effects from human-made and AI-generated teaching videos

In the age of generative artificial intelligence (AI), can generative AI-made teaching videos deliver learning outcomes comparable to those of human-made videos? A recent study explored this question by comparing the effectiveness of four generative AI-made videos with four human-made videos on the same topics in a management course. The online intervention involved 447 US-based laypeople, most of whom had completed higher education. The study included two experimental conditions: in the first, 213 participants watched four teaching videos in a human-AI-human-AI sequence; in the second, 234 participants watched them in an AI-human-AI-human sequence. After each video, participants completed a survey rating their learning experience, followed by a multiple-choice exam to assess learning outcomes.

Results showed that human-made videos provided a small but statistically significant advantage in learning experience, suggesting that the participants still preferred human teachers in the videos. Regarding learning outcomes, participants in both conditions achieved a similar degree of acquired knowledge. The authors noted that as generative AI-made teaching videos become increasingly common due to their ease of production, researchers and educators should critically explore ways to use generative AI-made content to improve learning experiences, while being mindful of potential limitations and ethical considerations in production and use.

 

Source (Open Access): Netland, T., von Dzengelevski, O., Tesch, K., & Kwasnitschka, D. (2025). Comparing human-made and AI-generated teaching videos: An experimental study on learning effects. Computers & Education, 224, 105164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2024.105164… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership K-12 Education

The effects of 4-day school weeks on employee retention in Oregon schools

A working paper from The Annenberg Institute at Brown University examined the effects of the four-day school week on employee retention in Oregon, a state with widespread four-day school weeks. Increasingly popular since the pandemic, the four-day school week has been used as a strategy to improve teacher recruitment and retention and is now implemented by 2,100 schools across 850 districts. The four-day week typically has longer schooldays than the five-day school week, with either Monday or Friday off.

Researchers looked at administrative records between 2007 and 2023, during which more than 100 Oregon schools adopted the schedule. They correlated the adoption of the four-day week with employee turnover and found mixed results. The adoption of the four-day week led to an immediate increase in teacher turnover by 2%, with no significant effects on teacher retention 1-4 years post-adoption. However, five years after adoption, teacher turnover rates were 4% higher, largely due to increased retirement rates among older teachers and higher transfer rates among mid-career teachers. It is of note that teacher salaries, which are already low in the five-day school week model, are even lower in the four-day school week model. Importantly, there were no effects on the retention of non-teaching staff.

These results are important considerations for districts considering adopting a four-day week as a solution to teacher and staff turnover, especially when the goal is long-term employee retention.

Click here for previous summaries of evidence about the four-day school week from BEIB.

 

Source (Open Access): Ainsworth, Aaron J., Emily K. Penner, and Yujia Liu. (2024). Less is More: The Causal Effect of Four-Day School Weeks on Employee Turnover. (EdWorkingPaper: 24 -1035). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/qgtj-mj51… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership K-12 Education

A guide for conducting implementation research in education intervention studies

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has published a guide to help researchers plan, execute, and report findings from implementation research, contributing to the evidence base for improving student outcomes. It outlines four key areas: (1) formulating research questions, (2) developing plans for data collection and analysis, (3) detailing the intervention and its implementation, contexts, and the intervention contrast conditions, and (4) analyzing and reporting the details about the intervention and its implementation.

To support researchers in this process, the guide emphasizes starting with research questions that address intervention components, their variations in implementation, contexts, and contrast conditions. Plans for data collection should specify research goals, measures, data sources, and hypotheses. To describe an intervention comprehensively, researchers should examine both its core activities and supporting strategies, using a logic model, documentation, and expert input. They should systematically consider content, quantity, mode, and quality, ensuring fidelity to the intervention design. Findings should link intervention details to impacts, providing insights for future research and practice.

 

Source (Open Access): Hill, C. J., Scher, L., Haimson, J., & Granito, K. (2023). Conducting implementation research in impact studies of education interventions: A guide for researchers. Toolkit. NCEE 2023-005. National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.  https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/2023005/index.asp… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership Higher Education Social and Motivational Outcomes

Low academic self-efficacy may lead to AI dependency through stress

Generative AI tools are emerging in classrooms and on student laptops across the globe. Policymakers, educators, and other influencers must understand the negative consequences of becoming unhealthily dependent on AI. Using the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model, which examines how psychological factors contribute to problematic technology use, researchers studied AI dependency among 300 university students in Seoul. While they hypothesized a link between self-efficacy (students’ belief in their abilities) and AI dependency, they found no direct association. Instead, academic stress emerged as the key driver in AI dependency among students. In other words, the more academically stressed a student is, the more likely they are to become dependent on AI tools.

Notably, 84% of the students surveyed used ChatGPT for academic help, though not all showed signs of dependency. The researchers also sought to discover the negative consequences of AI dependency. Students reported that AI dependency led to increased laziness, the spread of misinformation, a lower level of creativity, and reduced critical and independent thinking. The researchers also examined the role of performance expectations: students who perceived that AI would help their performance were more likely to become dependent.

The emergency of AI tools in schools is a conundrum that generates many different opinions and policy recommendations. Rather than focusing primarily on AI restrictions and teaching AI literacy, schools may need to prioritize stress management and low-stakes practice opportunities to reduce AI dependency.

 

Source (Open Access): Zhang, S., Zhao, X., Zhou, T., & Kim, J. H. (2024). Do you have AI dependency? The roles of academic self-efficacy, academic stress, and performance expectations on problematic AI usage behavior. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 21(1), 34. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-024-00467-0… Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership Secondary School Education Social and Motivational Outcomes

The impact of vision on mental well-being among rural Chinese students

Research findings have shown that visual impairment associates with mental illness such as depression and anxiety among children, especially when refractive errors remain uncorrected. A recent study published in Scientific Reports by Pang and colleagues explored the relationship between visual impairment, academic performance, and mental health among junior high school students in rural China.

The research involved a random sample of 19,425 seventh and eighth grade students from 124 schools in rural Ningxia, northwest China.  Data on students’ visual acuity, eyeglasses usage, academic performance (via standardised math test), and mental health (using SDQ) were gathered in the last quarter of 2019. The key findings included:

  • Of the students, 37.2% had visual impairment, 56.6% of whom did not wear glasses. About 9% of the total sample were at high risk for mental health problems based on SDQ scores.
  • Visual impairment students wearing glasses were less likely to experience mental health problem compared to those with normal vision, while those without glasses were more likely to have mental health problems.
  • Visual impaired students without glasses exhibited significantly poorer mental health compared to both their peers who wore glasses and those with normal vision. However, there was no significant difference in mental health between visually impaired students with glasses and those with normal vision.
  • Among visually impaired students, high math performance students who wore glasses reported better mental health than those without eyeglasses. For low math performance students, there was no significant relationship between eyeglasses usage and mental health. In addition, eyeglasses usage positively influenced students’ aspirations for higher education, regardless of academic performance.

The study highlights the importance of providing eyeglasses to visually impaired students to improve their mental health. It suggests that interventions and policies should focus on supplying eyeglasses to enhance students’ overall well-being in low-income rural settings.

 

Source (Open Access): Pang, X., Wang, H., Qian, Y., Zhu, S., Hu, Y. A., Rozelle, S., Congdon, N., & Jiang, J. (2024). The association between visual impairment, educational outcomes, and mental health: Insights from eyeglasses usage among junior high school students in rural China. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 24244. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-72119-2… Read the rest

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Achievement Educational Administration and Leadership Primary School Education

New English Learners positively impact the learning outcomes of others

The number of English Learners (ELs) enrolled in U.S. public schools has increased dramatically over the past twenty years. New research demonstrates that having English learners in class positively affects outcomes of their classmates.

In a recent study, researchers from the RAND Corporation examined the impact of new ELs on the academic outcomes of their classmates in Delaware, a state that has seen increasing immigrant populations in recent years. Results showed significant positive effects in the short term of new ELs on the scores of their schoolmates, particularly among those who are current and former ELs.

The researchers examined school records of Delaware K-12 students between 2015 and 2019. During this time, nearly 1,500 new ELs entered Delaware public schools in grades 4-8. Subjects included 119,165 students, including over 11,000 former ELs and 10,215 current ELs. Once the authors accounted for the fact that new ELs enter schools non-randomly (that is, they are not randomly assigned to schools but select into certain schools for a variety of reasons), they found positive and statistically significant impacts for all students in reading, and on both reading and math for former and current ELs.

These findings challenge concerns about potential negative impacts of large-scale EL student entry into schools and highlight the educational benefits of diversity in a “new destination state” like Delaware.

 

Source: Doan, S., Morales, S. E., Ozek, U., & Schwartz, H. (2024). Educational spillover effects of new English learners in a new destination state. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Prepublished October, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737241282412… Read the rest