Category: Types of Evidence

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Maths and Science Learning Secondary School Education

How much guidance should we give our students?

How much guidance should be provided to benefit students’ learning? According to the worked example effect, providing detailed worked examples might help students transferring knowledge to long-term memory. On the other hand, the generation effect suggested that requiring students to generate items themselves, instead of to do simply reading, might lead to better memory. A recent research study carried out by Chen and colleagues, published in Learning and Instruction, attempts to find out whether students learn better with higher or lower level of guidance, when the complexity of instructional materials in trigonometry and the levels of learner expertise are considered.

Participants were 94 Year 10 and 11 students in Chengdu, China. Fifty were Year 11 students who were regarded as relative expert learners as they had previously studied the trigonometry formulae, and the other 44 Year 10 students were novice learners. Students were randomly assigned into two groups for trigonometry learning before they were tested. During the preparation stage, materials of a higher level of guidance were given to one group, while the materials for the other group asked them to generate formulae and to solve problems themselves after studying. After preparation, all students were required to finish a free-recall test of trigonometry formulae and a problem-solving test of higher complexity. Two more tests were conducted a week later to examine the longer-term effect.

The hypothesis that high guidance would be superior to low guidance for complex materials, and low guidance would be superior to high guidance for simple materials was confirmed in the delayed test for the Year 10, less knowledgeable students. For the more knowledgeable Year 11 students, the worked example effect was found to be disappeared on both immediate and delayed tests. For simple content, requiring students to generate items themselves may be superior to studying explicitly provided answers, and is particularly beneficial to longer-term retention. However, explicit instruction is necessary for teaching complex materials to novice learners.

 

Sources: Chen, O., Kalyuga, S., & Sweller, J. (2016). Relations between the worked example and generation effects on immediate and delayed tests. Learning and Instruction, 45, 20-30.… Read the rest

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Achievement Effective Teaching Approach Kindergarten Primary School Education Secondary School Education

What does the evidence say about technology use?

New educational technology programmes are being released faster than researchers can evaluate them. The National Bureau of Economic Research in the US has written a working paper, Education Technology: An Evidence-Based Review, which discusses the evidence to date on the use of technology in the classroom, with the goal of finding decision-relevant patterns.

Maya Escueta and colleagues compiled publicly available quantitative research that used either randomised controlled trials or regression discontinuity designs (where pupils qualify for inclusion in a programme based on a cut-off score at pre-test). All studies had to examine the effects of an ed-tech intervention on any education-related outcome. Therefore, the paper included not only the areas of technology access, computer-assisted learning and online courses, but also the less-often-studied technology-based behavioural interventions.

Authors found that:

  • Access to technology may or may not improve academic achievement at the K-12 level (Years 1–13), but does have a positive impact on the academic achievement of higher education students (ES=+0.14).
  • Computer-assisted learning, when equipped with personalisation features, was an effective strategy, especially in maths.
  • Behavioural intervention software, such as text-message reminders or e-messages instructing parents how to practise reading with their children, showed positive effects at all levels of education, and was also a cost-effective approach. Four main uses for behavioural intervention software emerged: encouraging parental involvement in early learning activities, communication between the school and parents, successfully transitioning into and through higher education, and creating mindset interventions. Research is recommended to determine the areas where behavioural intervention software is most impactful.
  • Online learning courses had the least amount of research to examine and showed the least promise of the four areas. However, when online courses were accompanied by in-person teaching, the effect sizes increased to scores comparable to fully in-person courses.

 

Source:  Escueta, M., Quan, V., Nickow, A. J., & Oreopoulos, P. (2017). Education Technology: An Evidence-Based Review (NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES). MA: NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH.… Read the rest

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Kindergarten Language Development Programme Evaluation

Evaluation of a parent-delivered early language enrichment programme

A study, published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, evaluates the effectiveness of a parent-delivered language programme on pre-school children’s language and emerging reading skills.

Kelly Burgoyne and colleagues conducted a randomised controlled trial with 208 pre-school children (mean age 3 years, 1 month) and their parents living in socially diverse areas of the UK. Children and parents received either an oral language programme or an active control programme targeting motor skills. Parents delivered the 20-minute sessions to their child at home every day over 30 weeks. Children were assessed at pre-test, post-test, and 6 months after post-test on measures of language and motor skills. Early literacy skills (letter-sound knowledge, phoneme awareness and regular and irregular word reading) were assessed at 6 months after post-test only, as children were non-readers at pre- and post-test.

Children who received the language programme made larger gains in language skills (effect size = +0.21) and narrative skills (effect size = +0.36) at post-test than those children who received the active control programme, and these results were maintained six months later. Improvements were also seen in letter-sound knowledge (effect size = +0.42) and regular word reading (effect size = +0.35). No evidence was found that the control programme improved motor skills.

 

Source: Burgoyne, K., Gardner, R., Whiteley, H., Snowling, M. J., & Hulme, C. (2017). Evaluation of a parent‐delivered early language enrichment programme: evidence from a randomised controlled trial. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Advance online publication.… Read the rest

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Effective Teaching Approach Kindergarten Social and Motivational Outcomes

Parental Scaffolding in Kindergarten Children’s Self-Regulated Learning Behaviours

The findings of a recent study have extended our understanding of the role of parental scaffolding in kindergarten pupils’ self-regulated learning (SRL) in the Chinese context. Zhang and Whitebread, from the University of Cambridge, conducted a study on 130 pupils and their parents from three kindergartens in Beijing to examine the relationship between children’s SRL strategic behaviours, their task performance and parental scaffolding behaviours.

The study involved two stages of test. The children were asked to complete a puzzle task and an origami task with their parents first. Three weeks later, children were assigned to accomplish the same two tasks by themselves. The difficulty of the parent-child tasks and the child-alone tasks was different for studying parents’ scaffolding behaviours and pupil’s SRL strategic behaviours respectively. The problem-solving processes were video-taped for an in-depth observational analyses.

Pupil’s task performance was predicted by the use of metacognitive strategic behaviours. Well-performed pupils used behaviours such as indicative of planning, self-monitoring and awareness of errors. They, for instances, talked to themselves “I have to put pieces of the lions together” before started working on the puzzle. Parental contingency, instead of cognitive and emotional support, independently predicted children’s SRL behaviours. Parents’ abilities to provide instructions contingent on children’s levels of understanding enable children to use SRL strategies. Neither posing yes/no questions when children had a clear understanding of the task, nor using questions to encourage performance monitoring when children understood the task poorly was considered as contingent.

This Chinese study found a higher level of motivational strategic behaviours usage among children comparing to previous research, which may be related to the Confucian teaching’s emphasis of effort. The researchers remarked that the sample may not reflect the diversity of the Chinese population.

 

Source: Zhang, H., & Whitebread, D. (2017). Linking parental scaffolding with self-regulated learning in Chinese kindergarten children. Learning and Instruction, 49, 121-130.… Read the rest

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Achievement Effective Teaching Approach Kindergarten Primary School Education Secondary School Education

A century of research on ability grouping and acceleration

Researchers Saiying Steenbergen-Hu and colleagues recently analysed the results of almost 100 years of research on the effects of ability grouping (which places pupils of similar skills and abilities in the same classes) and acceleration (where pupils are given material and assignments that are usually reserved for older year groups) on pupils’ academic achievement. After screening thousands of studies, their secondary meta-analysis, recently published in Review of Educational Research, synthesised the results of thirteen earlier meta-analyses on ability grouping and six on acceleration that met inclusion criteria for the final review.

They divided ability grouping into four types: (1) between-class ability grouping, where pupils in the same year are divided into low-, medium-, or high-level classes; (2) within-class ability grouping, where pupils within a classroom are taught in groups based on their levels; (3) cross-year subject grouping, where pupils in different year groups are combined into the same class depending on their prior achievement; and (4) grouping for pupils considered gifted.

Results showed academic benefits of within-class grouping, cross-year grouping by subject, and grouping for the gifted, but no benefit of between-class grouping. Results were consistent regardless of whether pupils were high-, medium-, or low-achievers. Analyses of acceleration groups for pupils labelled as gifted showed that these pupils performed the same as older non-gifted pupils, and that being in accelerated classes had positive effects on these pupils’ grades.

 

Source: Steenbergen-Hu, S., Makel, M. C., & Olszewski-Kubilius, P. (2016). What one hundred years of research says about the effects of ability grouping and acceleration on K–12 students’ academic achievement: Findings of two second-order meta-analyses. Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 849-899.… Read the rest

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Primary School Education Secondary School Education Social and Motivational Outcomes

What do pupils believe about learning and intelligence?

This study examined reported attitudes and beliefs about growth mindset (the belief that intelligence and academic ability are not fixed and can be increased through effort and learning) for a sample of 103,066 pupils and 5,721 teachers in grades 4–12 (Years 5–13) in Nevada’s Clark County School District in the US.

Three-quarters of pupils reported having beliefs that are consistent with a growth mindset. The average growth mindset score across all pupils was 4 on a scale of 1 to 5 (where 1 indicates agreement with all statements that suggest a fixed-ability mindset, and 5 indicates disagreement). In addition, reported beliefs were found to differ depending on pupils’ ethnicity, school year, prior achievement and whether pupils were native English speakers or not. For example, the average growth mindset score for pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL) was lower (3.5) than the average growth mindset score for non-EAL pupils (4.0). Lower-achieving pupils reported lower levels of growth mindset than their higher-achieving peers (a difference of 0.8 points).

Teachers’ average growth mindset score was 0.5 points higher than their pupils’ (4.5 compared with 4.0). For the most part, their beliefs regarding growth mindset did not vary significantly depending on the characteristics of the pupils attending their schools

 

Source: Snipes, J., & Loan, T. (2017). Growth mindset, performance avoidance, and academic behaviors in Clark County School District (REL 2017–226). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory West.… Read the rest