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Educational Administration and Leadership Primary School Education Uncategorized

How does paternalistic leadership influence teachers in Chinese Schools?

Paternalistic leadership is a leadership style commonly found in East Asia. It “combines strong discipline and authority with fatherly benevolence and moral integrity couched in a personalistic atmosphere”. An article recently published in Frontiers in Psychology examined how such leadership style influences teachers in Chinese schools when situated in the educational context. 

The study was conducted among 407 elementary school teachers from southern provinces in China. Participants completed a survey measuring teachers’ perception of their principals’ paternalistic leadership, trust in the principal, teacher commitment to students, and teachers’ job satisfaction. The result showed that:

  • Teachers’ job satisfaction was negatively affected by principals’ authoritarian behaviour but was promoted by moral leadership.
  • However, both authoritarian leadership and moral leadership had positive indirect effects on teachers’ job satisfaction through enhancement of trust in the principal.
  • Moral leadership of the principals also had a significant positive effect on teachers’ commitment to students.
  • Benevolent leadership, on the other hand, had significant effects on neither teachers’ job satisfaction nor commitment to students.

The authors concluded that it was important for principals to be a role model and to pay attention to the empowerment of teachers, by such means as providing professional autonomy to teachers and involving them in the decision-making process. 

 

Source (Open Access): Shi, X., Yu, Z., & Zheng, X. (2020). Exploring the relationship between paternalistic leadership, teacher commitment, and job satisfaction in Chinese schools. Frontiers in Psychology. Advanced Online Publication. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01481… Read the rest

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Achievement Effective Teaching Approach Kindergarten Primary School Education Secondary School Education Social and Motivational Outcomes Uncategorized

Classroom management interventions made a difference

A meta-analysis of classroom management interventions has found that they improved academic, behavioral, and social-emotional outcomes.

Published in the Review of Educational Research, the study included 54 classroom management interventions in 47 studies published between 2003 and 2013. It included some interventions that had been evaluated several times (including Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), the Good Behavior Game, and Zippy’s Friends). About three-quarters of the studies were carried out in the U.S., with the remainder in Europe and Canada.

Most interventions were focused on changing students’ behavior (85%), improving students’ social-emotional development (74%), or changing teachers’ behavior (54%). Only two interventions were specifically targeted to improving teacher–student relationships. The analysis found that:

  • There was an overall effect size of +0.22 for the interventions, with a slightly higher effect on behavior (+0.24), and less on social-emotional (+0.21) and academic (+0.17) outcomes.
  • There was no significant effect on motivational outcomes.
  • The analysis also indicated that interventions focused on social-emotional development of the students were somewhat more effective than those without that component.

 

Source: Korpershoek, H., Harms, T., de Boer, H., van Kuijk, M., & Doolaard, S. (2016). A meta-analysis of the effects of classroom management strategies and classroom management programs on students’ academic, behavioral, emotional, and motivational outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 86(3), 643–680. … Read the rest

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Effective Teaching Approach Programme Evaluation Secondary School Education Social and Motivational Outcomes Uncategorized

Say hello, wave goodbye to behavior problems

A small-scale study by Clayton Cook and colleagues, published in the Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, investigated the impact of a Positive Greetings at the Door (PGD) strategy.

Ten language arts and math classrooms (from sixth to eighth grade) in two schools in the Pacific Northwest of the United States were identified that had low levels of academic engaged time (AET) and a high rate of disruptive and off-task behavior. In total, 203 students took part. A randomized block design was used to allocate the classes to intervention and control groups.

Teachers of intervention classes were provided with training sessions and follow-up coaching on a PGD strategy (greeting the students by name, reminding students individually and collectively of behaviors for success, having a structure learning activity ready, and positively recognizing on-time behavior). Teachers in the control classes were given the same amount of time to talk with other teachers about their classroom management practice. Classwide and individual student behavior was measured using the Behavioral Observation of Students in Schools (BOSS). Over two months, results showed that:

  • Academic engaged time increased for the intervention group and stayed relatively constant for the control group (ES= +0.93).
  • The gain in academic engaged time for intervention group corresponds to an extra 12 minutes of on-task behavior per instructional hour.
  • Disruptive behavior decreased by a similar amount (ES = -0.87).

The authors caution that the small sample of teachers lessens the generalizability of the study findings, and that the study focused on classes with low baseline levels of academic engagement and classroom management practices, so a similar impact might not be seen in all classrooms.

 

Source: Cook, C. R., Fiat, A., Larson, M., Daikos, C., Slemrod, T., Holland, E. A., … Renshaw, T. (2018). Positive Greetings at the Door: Evaluation of a low-Cost, high-yield proactive classroom management strategy. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 20(3), 149–159. … Read the rest

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Educational Administration and Leadership Kindergarten Primary School Education Secondary School Education Uncategorized

How much does education improve intelligence?

A recent meta-analysis published in Psychological Science looks at how much education improves intelligence, and suggests that a year of school improves pupils’ IQ scores by between one and five points.

Ritchie and his colleagues looked at three particular types of quasi-experimental studies of educational effects on intelligence:

  1. Those estimating education-intelligence associations after controlling for earlier intelligence.
  2. Those using policy changes that result in individuals staying in schools for different lengths of time.
  3. Those using school-entry age cut-offs to compare children who are similar in age but who have different levels of schooling as a result of their specific birth dates.

Their meta-analysis comprised 142 effect sizes from 42 data sets involving over 600,000 participants.

  • All three study designs showed consistent evidence that the length of time spent in school is associated with increased intelligence test scores (an average effect of +3.4 IQ points for one additional year of education).
  • The third study design, age cut-off, had the largest effect size (+5.2 IQ points).
  • The first study design showed the lowest effect (+1.2 IQ points).
  • For policy change, the effect size was +1 IQ point.

The authors suggested that education seems to be the most consistent, robust, and durable way that has been identified for raising intelligence.

 

Source: Ritchie, S. J., & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2018.). How much does education improve intelligence? A meta-analysis, Psychological Science. Advanced online publication. doi:10.1177/0956797618774253.… Read the rest

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Maths and Science Learning Primary School Education Secondary School Education Uncategorized

Poor literacy skills hold poorer pupils back in science

A report, published by the Education Endowment Foundation and the Royal Society, has reviewed existing studies to identify interventions and teaching approaches that have a positive impact on pupil learning in science, particularly for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The researchers from the University of Oxford analysed data in the National Pupil Database in England to measure the extent of the gap in the performance between economically disadvantaged pupils and pupils from higher socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds on national science tests. This analysis confirmed that disadvantaged pupils (pupils who have been entitled to free school meals at least once in the last six years) had much lower scores and made poorer progress in science, at every stage of their school career, than pupils from higher SES backgrounds. The gap, they suggest, first becomes apparent at Key Stage 1 (ages 5–7) and only gets wider throughout primary and secondary school. The gap for science is as wide as it is in English and maths, and grows particularly strongly between the ages of 5–7 and 11–16.

The study also found that the strongest factor affecting pupils’ science scores was how well they understood written texts. According to the report, poor literacy skills affect how well a pupil is able to understand scientific vocabulary and to prepare scientific reports. This suggests that strategies to boost disadvantaged pupils’ reading comprehension could have a positive impact on their achievement in science too. The authors write: “In correlational studies of science learning, the strongest and most consistent predictor of pupils’ scientific attainment has undoubtedly been how literate they are”. They add that there is a “strong relationship” between pupils’ socioeconomic status and their literacy.

A study, which we covered in a previous edition of Best Evidence in Brief, found a similar relationship between literacy and science achievement gaps for pupils in US elementary and middle schools.

 

Source: Nunes, T., Bryant, P., Strand, S., Hillier, J., Barros, R., & Miller-Friedmann, J. (2017). Review of SES and Science Learning in Formal Educational Settings. UK: Education Endowment Foundation.… Read the rest