Category: Types of Evidence

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Kindergarten Language Development Programme Evaluation

Evaluation of an early language intervention

A randomised controlled trial, conducted by Silke Fricke and colleagues, looked at the effect of an oral language intervention and compared the extent to which a 30-week programme beginning in nursery and continuing for 20 weeks in Reception was more effective than delivering a 20-week programme starting in Reception.

Children from 34 nurseries in the UK were randomly allocated to a 30-week intervention (n= 132), a 20-week intervention (n=133), or an untreated waiting control group (n=129). Allocation was minimized for gender, age and verbal skills. The children in the 30-week intervention group received the Nuffield Early Language Intervention programme for 10 weeks in nursery and continued for 20 weeks in Reception. The 20-week intervention group received only the final 20 weeks of the intervention, beginning when they entered primary school. The control group received their usual schooling.

Children in both the 20- and 30-week programme intervention groups showed greater improvement in oral language skills on measures including the CELF Expressive Vocabulary and CELF Sentence Structure subtests, and the Information Score from the Renfrew Action Picture Test, compared to children in the control group (effect size for the 20-week programme = +0.21; effect size for the 30-week programme = +0.30). However, there was no evidence to suggest that either programme improved early literacy or reading comprehension skills.

 

Source: Fricke, S., Burgoyne, K., Bowyer‐Crane, C., Kyriacou, M., Zosimidou, A., Maxwell, L., … & Hulme, C. (2017). The efficacy of early language intervention in mainstream school settings: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Advance online publication.… Read the rest

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Effective Teaching Approach Primary School Education Secondary School Education

The Evidence for marking

The Education Endowment Foundation has published a new review of the evidence on written marking. Researchers from Oxford University found that there were very few robust studies – too few to conduct a formal systematic review or to make definitive recommendations. Based on the limited evidence, the review makes the following tentative suggestions:

  • Careless mistakes should be marked differently to errors resulting from misunderstanding. The latter may be best addressed by providing hints or questions which lead pupils to underlying principles; the former by simply marking the mistake as incorrect, without giving the right answer.
  • Awarding grades for every piece of work may reduce the impact of marking, particularly if pupils become preoccupied with grades at the expense of a consideration of teachers’ formative comments.
  • The use of targets to make marking as specific and actionable as possible is likely to increase pupil progress.
  • Pupils are unlikely to benefit from marking unless some time is set aside to enable pupils to consider and respond to marking.
  • Some forms of marking, including acknowledgement marking, are unlikely to enhance pupil progress. Schools should mark less in terms of the number of pieces of work marked, but mark better.

The researchers argue that there is an urgent need for more studies so that teachers have better information about the most effective marking approaches.

 

Source: Elliott, V.F., Baird, J-A., Hopfenbeck, T.N., Ingram, J, Thompson, I., Usher, N., Zantout, M., Richardson, J., Coleman, R. (2016) A marked improvement? A review of the evidence on written marking. UK: Education Endowment Foundation.… Read the rest

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Achievement Maths and Science Learning Primary School Education Secondary School Education

Homework and achievement in math and science

Fan and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to review the homework-achievement relationship in math and science given that the effect of subject matters had not been carefully examined.

Among more than two thousand studies related to homework and achievement available on digital databases between 1986 and 2015, 28 studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria were synthesized. Participants of the included studies were primary school, middle school or high school students. Key findings of those are as follows:

  • Overall, there was a small and positive relationship between homework and achievement in math and science.
  • The homework-achievement relationships were stronger in the studies operationally defined homework as “homework completion”, “homework grade”, and “homework effort” than the studies defined that as “homework frequency” and “time spent on homework”.
  • The relationship for elementary and high school students was stronger than that for middle school students.
  • The homework-achievement relationship was the strongest in studies involving US students while it was the weakest in studies involving Asian students. The authors suggested this seemingly counterintuitive result might be attributed to private tutoring that has been weakening the role of formal education in these countries.

The authors remarked that they only included studies written in English and there was an insufficient number of studies for them to consider the moderation effect of some important features, such as gender and complexity of homework assignments.

 

Source : Fan, H., Xu, J., Cai, Z., He, J., & Fan, X. (2017). Homework and students’ achievement in math and science: A 30-year meta-analysis, 1986–2015. Educational Research Review, 20, 35-54.… Read the rest

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Achievement Primary School Education Secondary School Education

Pupil may do better on tests if they can go back and check their work

Joseph Hardcastle and colleagues conducted a study to compare pupil performance on computer-based tests (CBT) and traditional paper-and-pencil tests (PPT). More than 30,000 pupils in grades 4–12 (Years 5–13) were assessed on their understanding of energy using three testing systems: a paper and pencil test; a computer-based test that allowed pupils to skip items and move freely through the test; or a CBT that did not allow pupils to return to previous questions.

Overall, the results showed that being able to skip through questions, and review and change previous answers, could benefit younger pupils. Elementary (Years 5 and 6) and middle school (Years 7–9) pupils scored lower on a CBT that did not allow them to return to previous items than on a comparable computer-based test that allowed them to skip, review, and change previous responses. Elementary pupils also scored slightly higher on a CBT that allowed them to go back to previous answers than on the PPT, but there was no significant difference for middle school pupils on those two types of tests. High school pupils (Years 10–13) showed no difference in their performance on the three types of tests.

Gender was found to have little influence on a pupil’s performance on PPT or CBT; however, pupils whose primary language was not English had lower performance on both CBTs compared with the PPT.

 

Source: Hardcastle, J., Herrmann-Abell, C.F.,& DeBoer, G. E. (2017. April 30). Comparing Student Performance on Paper-and-Pencil and Computer-Based-Tests. Paper presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. San Antonio, TX, US.… Read the rest

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Achievement Primary School Education Secondary School Education

Rethinking the use of tests

Olusola O Adesope and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to summarise the learning benefits of taking a practice test versus other forms of non-testing learning conditions, such as re-studying, practice, filler activities, or no presentation of the material.

Analysis of 272 independent effect sizes from 188 separate experiments demonstrated that the use of practice tests is associated with a moderate, statistically significant weighted mean effect size compared to re-studying (+0.51) and a much larger weighted mean effect size (+0.93) when compared to filler or no activities.

In addition, the format, number and frequency of practice tests make a difference for the learning benefits on a final test. Practice tests with a multiple-choice option have a larger weighted mean effect size (+0.70) than short-answer tests (+0.48). A single practice test prior to the final test is more effective than when pupils take several practice tests. However, the timing should be carefully considered. A gap of less than a day between the practice and final tests showed a smaller weighted effect size than when there is a gap of one to six days (+0.56 and +0.82, respectively).

 

Source: Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the Use of Tests: A Meta-Analysis of Practice Testing. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 659-701.… Read the rest

Categories
Secondary School Education Social and Motivational Outcomes

Can friendships as a teenager predict later mental health?

Research by Rachel Narr and colleagues at the University of Virginia looked at whether the quality of friendships during adolescence can predict aspects of long-term mental and emotional health.

The study looked at a sample of 169 teenagers over 10 years, from age 15 to 25. They were surveyed annually and asked about who their closest friends were along with questions about those friendships. They were also assessed on anxiety, social acceptance, self-worth and symptoms of depression.

The researchers found that teens who prioritised close friendships at age 15 had lower social anxiety, an increased sense of self-worth and fewer symptoms of depression at age 25 than their peers. However, teens who had lots of friends, rather than a few close friendships, had higher levels of anxiety as young adults.

The study also determined that there was a low relation between teens having high-quality friendships and being more sought after by their peers, suggesting that although some teens manage both popularity and close friendship well, and attract both due to similar characteristics, for the most part, these two types of social success are due to different personal attributes.

 

Source: Narr, R. K., Allen, J. P., Tan, J. S., & Loeb, E. L. (2017). Close Friendship Strength and Broader Peer Group Desirability as Differential Predictors of Adult Mental Health. Child Development. Advance online publication.… Read the rest