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

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

Learning-by-teaching is a generative learning activity in which learners explain the material in a lesson to others after studying it.  Wang and colleagues conducted an experiment with 96 college students from a university in central China to compare three versions of learning-by-teaching, all without audience interaction but with varied levels of social presence, thereby leading to different levels of extraneous processing, which causes learners to engage in cognitive processing irrelevant to the instruction purpose (e.g., distraction). Participants studied a 2-minute video on chemical synaptic transmission for 9 minutes and prepared a brief lesson of less than 5 minutes under a randomly assigned one of three conditions: (1) teach-to-camera – teach to an imaginary audience by creating a video lecture; (2) teach-to-student – teach to an audience face-to-face; (3) teach-to-group – teach to seven people physically present in the room. Audiences in the latter two conditions provided no feedback. Data collecting involved learning outcomes scores, self-reported questionnaires, pulse rate, and teaching process recordings.  Results indicated that:

• Students in the teach-to-camera condition performed better than those in the other two conditions in terms of generative processing, (more idea units, elaborations, and monitoring statements in their explanation).
• The teach-to-camera condition participants outperformed those in the teach-to-group condition in the retention test and the transfer test, and they scored better than those in the teach-to-student condition on the retention test.
• The teach-to-camera condition participants also reported significantly lower social presence and pulse rate than the two other groups, and perceived lower state anxiety, teaching difficulty, and cognitive load in teaching than those in the teach-to-group condition.

The authors suggested that the better performance in learning-by-teaching resulting from teaching to a camera may be due to the absence of an audience which led to less social presence and in turn served to reduce extraneous processing or distraction (anxiety, cognitive load in teaching, pulse rate) and to enhance generative processing.

Source: Wang, F., Cheng, M., & Mayer, R. E. (2023, May 25). Improving learning-by-teaching without audience interaction as a generative learning activity by minimizing the social presence of the audience. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000801… Read the rest

Due to the growing number of early coding education programs designed for young children, there is increasing research interest in whether acquiring computational thinking (CT) can be transferred to other key developmental outcomes. A recent study by Yang and colleagues examined the link between computational thinking to sequencing ability and self-regulation in kindergarten students.

Computational thinking was defined by researchers as the foundational concept needed to solve problems algorithmically, with solutions that can be reused in various contexts. Algorithmic thinking involves step-by-step operations that guide one towards achieving a goal. Based on the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory of cognitive abilities, the researchers hypothesized that CT would be related to both sequencing ability and self-regulation.

Sequential ability, which entails identifying a series of steps to complete a task, was assessed by Picture Sequencing Task. Self-regulation comprising working memory, mental flexibility, and inhibitory control was measured by the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task. CT was measured by the computerized version TechCheck, which focused on six domains of CT for young children, namely algorithms, modularity, control structures, representation, hardware/software, and debugging. A random sample of 101 children (boys = 49, mean age = 5.25 years) from one public kindergarten in Beijing, China, participated in the study. After controlling children’s age, gender and family SES, results of regression indicated that CT was positively linked to sequencing ability (β = +0.27) and self-regulation (β = +0.47).

Utilizing direct measures of cognitive abilities, this cross-sectional study provided preliminary evidence supporting an association between CT and other intellectual abilities in early childhood. Further research, such as longitudinal studies and investigations involving other learning outcomes, is necessary to explore the role of CT in young children’s cognitive development.

Source (Open Access): Yang, W., Gao, H., Jiang, Y., & Li, H. (2023). Beyond computing: Computational thinking is associated with sequencing ability and self-regulation among Chinese young children. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 64, 324–330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2023.04.006… Read the rest

According to international and national assessments, US secondary school students struggle with math. Together with policymakers, specialists, and a team from the University of San Diego California, the San Diego Unified School District planned a four-year intervention based on the Changing the Odds (CTO) program. Aimed to improve students’ math performance, this teacher-centered program provided help in identifying students’ math learning needs and in designing interventions addressing these needs.

In 2015, four low-performing middle schools of the San Diego Unified School District were appointed to implement the CTO program for four years, while four schools were matched for comparison on achievement and demographics. The four-year program provided materials for teaching and professional development; support for co-teaching, co-planning lessons, and assessing tests; opportunities for collaboration between schools; and a yearly Summer School. A recent NBER working paper evaluated the impact of Changing the Odds through a difference-in-difference approach. Because the testing system in California changed, math achievement was measured by the California Standard Test before the intervention, and by the Californian Smarter Balanced test during the research. Combining the two tests on a common metric, the results suggest a positive effect of the Changing the Odds program, with an average effect size of +0.11 per year, in a range that goes from around 0.00 (Year 1) until +0.14 (Year 4). Larger samples could provide more information about the efficacy of specific aspects of the program and the potential contextual moderators of the effects.

Source (Open Access): Betts, J. R., Zau, A. C., Bachofer, K. V., & Polichar, D. (2023). Changing the Odds: Student achievement after introduction of a middle school math intervention  (Working Paper No. 30870; Working Paper Series). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w30870… Read the rest