Desirable Educational Outcomes Research Articles

The effects of online enactive education on secondary school students

Enactive education is an innovative model based on embodied cognition. This quasi-experimental controlled study with pretest-posttest design investigated the effects of an online enactive school program on students’ learning, academic self-concept, and physical selfconcept. The study was conducted in three secondary schools in Salerno and Potenza, Italy, in 2021. Participants were 431 students, 52.4% girls, mean age 14.27 years (SD=1.01). The study instruments included a school questionnaire and the multidimensional self-concept scale (MSCS). The experimental group received online sessions on mind-body wellbeing, healthy eating, and movement. Controls received non-enactive online classes on the same subjects. Findings indicate that the experimental group, compared to controls, showed higher levels of all the variables considered. Overall effect sizes were high (Hedge’s g 0.69 for learning, 0.36 for academic self-concept, and 1.23 for physical self-concept). Implications include that online enactive education should be used at secondary level to promote desirable educational and psychological outcomes.

Building an archive for 'future pasts': Undergraduates document their local Covid-19 'moment' in World History

A substantial body of history teaching scholarship links student archival engagements and primary source work to various desirable educational outcomes, among them an enhanced capacity for historical thinking and imagination. A related scholarly literature considers the interface between pedagogy and public memory-making. This article enters and links these points of discussion by reflecting on a collaborative classroom project of digital archivebuilding, using the online Dublin Core-complicit platform Omeka. At the University of Johannesburg, during the first six months of 2021, first-year students in an online world history classroom produced, submitted, and categorised a body of primary sources-both textual and visual. These submissions reflected their own, ongoing experiences of Covid-19 and of lockdown policies. They used photographs and wrote in their home languages to convey the disruptions, innovations, hardships, and resiliences felt as young people within diverse lifeworlds. Aligned to photovoice methodologies, the exercise promoted a reflection of historical consciousness in two ways: first, by situating the pandemic of the present within a broad global history; and, second, by considering 'future pasts' as a politics of memory, research, and representation. The article describes the production of the archival database, 'Joburg21', and considers the pedagogical challenges and rewards of building a digital 'archive for the future'.

CSR pyramid, CSR in education development and stakeholder's satisfaction: evidence from the banking industry in Bangladesh

This study examines the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) pyramid on the satisfaction of stakeholders, with emphasis on the mediating role of CSR in education development. It also determines the manner to reconceived CSR to produce greater desirable educational outcomes. It collects data from 200 stakeholders who are involved in CSR programs in the banking industry in Bangladesh (BIB). Thus, the BIB is often engaged in CSR practices through the provision of financial assistance to individuals for the pursuit of further education and advancement. The study fills the literature gap in CSR practices of BIB, especially from ED perspective, which is one of the key practices of bank for stakeholders. Hence, it makes invaluable contributions to the scanty literature on CSR in Bangladesh, as it analyses the contributions of BIB towards ED through CSR. The findings of this study could be beneficial to CSR providers, ED practitioners and researchers.

A Review of Character Strengths Interventions in Twenty-First-Century Schools: their Importance and How they can be Fostered

A main challenge of educational organizations is how to foster students’ capacity to fulfill their potential. The present paper, based on educational, psychological, and organizational research, asserts that a discussion of character strengths and their development is highly relevant to this challenge. It provides an integrative overview of the relevance of character strengths to twenty-first-century schools and discusses different mechanisms that can help foster them. Character strengths—widely valued positive traits, theorized to be the basis for optimal functioning and well-being—may derive from inner tendencies, but are expected to have broad potential for development, depending on individuals’ experiences and environments. Furthermore, character strengths are closely related to twenty-first-century competencies – cognitive, interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies, identified by the American National Research Council as required for thriving in contemporary life and work, and thus considered to be desirable educational outcomes. The paper first delineates the connections between twenty-first-century competencies and character strengths, demonstrating the importance of promoting them in education. Then, mechanisms for fostering development of character strengths in schools are discussed, based on a review of the literature, including mechanisms that affect students (e.g., curriculum, relationships), teachers (e.g., training, supervisors), and schools (e.g., evaluation processes, resource allocation), while considering the interplay between these different levels. The concluding part of the paper outlines an integrative model of an optimal school system, expected to foster character strengths’ use and development and discuss its applications for research and practice.

Cultivating Computational Thinking Practices and Mathematical Habits of Mind in Lattice Land

ABSTRACTThere is a great deal of overlap between the set of practices collected under the term “computational thinking” and the mathematical habits of mind that are the focus of much mathematics instruction. Despite this overlap, the links between these two desirable educational outcomes are rarely made explicit, either in classrooms or in the literature. This paper presents Lattice Land, a computational learning environment and accompanying curriculum designed to support the development of mathematical habits of mind and promote computational thinking practices in high-school mathematics classrooms. Lattice Land is a mathematical microworld where learners explore geometrical concepts by manipulating polygons drawn with discrete points on a plane. Using data from an implementation in a low-income, urban public high school, we show how the design of Lattice Land provides an opportunity for learners to use computational thinking practices and develop mathematical habits of mind, including tinkering, experimentation, pattern recognition, and formalizing hypothesis in conventional mathematical notation. We present Lattice Land as a restructuration of geometry, showing how this new and novel representational approach facilitates learners in developing computational thinking and mathematical habits of mind. The paper concludes with a discussion of the interplay between computational thinking and mathematical habits of mind, and how the thoughtful design of computational learning environments can support meaningful learning at the intersection of these disciplines.

Simultaneous testing of four decades of academic self-concept models

In separate studies on academic self-concept, previous research has shown: (1) the distinctiveness of a cognitive and an affective component, (2) the domain specificity of self-concepts, (3) the reciprocal effects of self-concept and achievement, (4) the internal/external frame of reference in self-concept development, (5) the reciprocal effects of the internal/external frame of reference, (6) the big-fish-little-pond effect, and (7) the interrelatedness of self-concepts in similar domains. The present study demonstrates that all of these seven findings are replicable and may be synthesized in a single study with a sample of students in Singapore. Secondary 1 students (7th graders; N = 275) were surveyed with 24 items about their academic self-concepts in physics, English, and math in two components (cognitive and affective), and their respective achievement scores were recorded over two time points. Confirmatory factor analysis found that the cognitive and affective components of academic self-concept were separable. The students’ self-concepts in different curriculum domains were distinct, supporting the domain specificity of self-concepts. The frame of reference and reciprocal effects were both supported, but only for the cognitive component of self-concept. Positive and statistically significant correlations between physics and math suggest that these curriculum domains were interrelated. Results of self-concept studies in schools can encourage and guide the design of interventions that could enhance students’ self-concept for positive sustainable effects on desirable educational outcomes. Attempts to improve learning outcomes should emphasize an enhancement of specific components of academic self-concept in domain-specific and related curriculum domains for optimal effects.

Educational Game and Intelligent Tutoring System

Educational games and intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) both support learning by doing, although often in different ways. The current classroom experiment compared a popular commercial game for equation solving, DragonBox and a research-based ITS, Lynnette with respect to desirable educational outcomes. The 190 participating 7th and 8th grade students were randomly assigned to work with either system for 5 class periods. We measured out-of-system transfer of learning with a paper and pencil pre- and post-test of students’ equation-solving skill. We measured enjoyment and accuracy of self-assessment with a questionnaire. The students who used DragonBox solved many more problems and enjoyed the experience more, but the students who used Lynnette performed significantly better on the post-test. Our analysis of the design features of both systems suggests possible explanations and spurs ideas for how the strengths of the two systems might be combined. The study shows that intuitions about what works, educationally, can be fallible. Therefore, there is no substitute for rigorous empirical evaluation of educational technologies.

The True Story of Oral Communication Education in Alabama: A Case of Academic Discrimination?

Abstract Written communication and oral communication are inextricably linked as essential life skills and as desirable educational outcomes. However, there is a clear disconnect between what Alabama colleges expect of their graduates and what they are providing them in terms of oral communication education. The steps taken to develop the general studies curriculum for public colleges in Alabama are described. The current state of oral communication education in Alabama highlights inconsistencies between stated academic goals and the means to achieve them, and it exposes a cancer in the curriculum, “teaching” oral communication as a module in another discipline's course. Very few Alabama high school graduates have ever had an oral communication course, but they have all had four years of required English. The real debate is not whether oral communication should be included in the general studies curriculum but where to put it. Oral communication is currently an option in Area II—Humanities. The regional accrediting agency for public colleges in Alabama states that oral communication is a skill course, like English composition, that does not belong in the humanities. The recommendation is to move oral communication to Area I and rename it Communication—Written and Oral.

The True Story of Oral Communication Education in Alabama: A Case of Academic Discrimination?

Abstract Written communication and oral communication are inextricably linked as essential life skills and as desirable educational outcomes. However, there is a clear disconnect between what Alabama colleges expect of their graduates and what they are providing them in terms of oral communication education. The steps taken to develop the general studies curriculum for public colleges in Alabama are described. The current state of oral communication education in Alabama highlights inconsistencies between stated academic goals and the means to achieve them, and it exposes a cancer in the curriculum, “teaching” oral communication as a module in another discipline's course. Very few Alabama high school graduates have ever had an oral communication course, but they have all had four years of required English. The real debate is not whether oral communication should be included in the general studies curriculum but where to put it. Oral communication is currently an option in Area II—Humanities. The regional accrediting agency for public colleges in Alabama states that oral communication is a skill course, like English composition, that does not belong in the humanities. The recommendation is to move oral communication to Area I and rename it Communication—Written and Oral.

Reconceptualising elite athlete programmes: ‘undoing’ the politics of labelling in health and physical education

High-performance sport is a big business, with nations such as Australia and New Zealand dedicating hundreds of millions of dollars in the development of facilities and in creating sporting centres of excellence. Historically, high-performance sport and elite athlete programmes (EAPs) were regulated to an extra-curricular space in schools or local communities, but over the last couple of decades, schools in Australia and New Zealand have introduced EAPs into health and physical education (PE). Recent work has begun to explore the rationale for these programmes and their educational priorities, but little research has explored how the elite athlete body is being constructed within this curriculum space. In this paper, I consider two interrelated problems. The first concerns the conflicting discourses of winning in high-performance sport versus getting everyone healthy and active in health and PE. The second involves an explanation of how the elite athlete body is being constructed in these programmes. I argue the juxtaposition of the elite athlete body as disciplined, attractive and healthy to other bodies as lazy, unattractive and unhealthy renders the other bodies as pathological or resistant to disciplinary institutions of the school. In particular, I focus on the ways in which young people's bodies are conceptualised within EAPs in relation to recreation, health, PE and other curriculum spaces. Throughout this paper, I provide examples to illustrate how EAPs may perpetuate normative ways of thinking that legitimatise elitism in schools. I propose that under radical reform, EAPs may have the potential to provide educational value and opportunities to students. I conclude by offering the cultural studies curriculum model that retains sport and desirable educational outcomes for health and PE as an alternative to elite athlete or talent development models.

You use! I use! We use! Questioning the Orthodoxy of One-to-One Computing in Primary Schools

The current orthodoxy regarding computer use in schools appears to be that one-to-one (1:1) computing, wherein each child owns or has sole access to a computing device, is the most efficacious way to achieve a range of desirable educational outcomes, including individualised learning, collaborative environments, or constructivist pedagogies. This article challenges this notion, suggesting instead that 1:2 computing is an appropriate means of achieving such aims in primary school. It further suggests that 1:2 computing is preferable to 1:1 computing to achieve a balance between productivity, student engagement, social activity, and individualised learning. This article draws on data collected during the 2009 school year from four Year 7 classrooms (11- to 13-year-old students) with varied patterns of access to netbook computers. The researcher collected detailed information from two pieces of software installed in each computer and analysed the data through an Activity Theory conceptual and methodological lens. Recommendations from this research will assist school leaders in making informed decisions regarding 1:1 and 1:2 computing.

Academic self-concept and academic achievement: Relations and causal ordering

BACKGROUND. A positive self-concept is valued as a desirable outcome in many disciplines of psychology as well as an important mediator to other outcomes. AIMS. The present review examines support for the reciprocal effects model (REM) that posits academic self-concept (ASC) and achievement are mutually reinforcing, each leading to gains in the other - and its extension to other achievement domains. METHOD. We review theoretical, methodological, and empirical support for the REM. Critical features in this research are a theoretical emphasis on multidimensional perspectives that focus on specific components of self-concept and a methodological focus on a construct validity approach to evaluating the REM. RESULTS. Consistent with these distinctions, REM research and a comprehensive meta-analysis show that prior ASC has direct and indirect effects on subsequent achievement, whilst the effects of self-esteem and other non-academic components of self-concept are negligible. We then provide an overview of subsequent support for the generality of the REM for: young children, cross-cultural, health (physical activity), and non-elite (gymnastics) and elite (international swimming championships) sport. CONCLUSION. This research is important in demonstrating that increases in ASC lead to increases in subsequent academic achievement and other desirable educational outcomes. Findings confirm that not only is self-concept an important outcome variable in itself, it also plays a central role in affecting other desirable educational outcomes. Implications for educational practice are discussed.

The physical education profession and its professional responsibility … or … why ‘12 weeks paid holiday’ will never be enough

Background: This paper critically reviews the concept of ‘professional responsibility’ in physical education. The paper is rooted in the belief that the physical education profession has, by virtue of its expertise in young people and physical activity, the potential to deliver a broad range of desirable educational and health-related outcomes. Yet, if the physical education profession is just that – a profession – then its true potential lies in its ability to serve its ‘clients’; children and young people. In order to serve its clients effectively, therefore, each member of the profession has a responsibility to base its practices upon the best knowledge available at any given time. Key concepts: Physical education teachers as professionals are considered as learners – rather than as teachers. The development of this argument is traced through the work of John Dewey, Donald Schon, David Hargreaves and the recent national Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) in England. On being a profession: The nature of professions is then analysed and an holistic view of the physical education profession is suggested which places teachers at the core of a community of practice. Career-long professional development (CPD) is identified as a defining characteristic of all professions, yet it is argued that much of the CPD traditionally offered to physical education teachers is limited in both scope and challenge. Health and positive youth development: The problems resulting from ineffective and inappropriate PE-CPD are considered. Expectations on the PE profession are increasing, nationally and internationally, in two areas of public concern – health and positive youth development. It is argued, however, that the fractured nature of the wider profession means that PE teachers are poorly prepared to deliver what is expected of it in these two areas. Implications for the PE profession: The implications of a fractured profession are explored and it is argued that urgent changes are required to the ways in which teachers learn, teacher educators (from ITT to CPD) support professional learning, and researchers undertake, disseminate and are held accountable for their research. Conclusion: The extended profession needs to find ways to work together more effectively to support teachers who exist to serve the clients of this profession: children and young people. It is suggested that one way to start this process is to refocus teachers on themselves as career-long learners, and then to consider the implications for the work of the wider PE profession; including researchers.

Big-Fish-Little-Pond effect: The negative effects of academically selective schools

Academically selective schools (i.e. schools in which the average ability of students in the school is high) are intended to have positive effects on academic self-concept. A positive self-belief about one’s academic accomplishments is an important outcome and has been shown to facilitate the attainment of a wide variety of other desirable educational outcomes (Marsh & Craven, 2006). However, a growing body of theoretical and empirical research demonstrates that the effects of school-average ability on academic self-concept can be negative. Thus, attending academically selective schools tends to diminish academic self-concepts rather than to enhance them. These empirical results are consistent with the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), which predicts that equally able students have lower academic self-concepts when attending schools where the average ability levels of classmates is high, and higher academic self-concepts when attending schools where the school-average ability is low. Here we briefly summarise theoretical, empirical, and policy-related implications of the BFLPE.

The Challenge for Counsellors: Understanding and Addressing Indigenous Secondary Students' Aspirations, Self-concepts and Barriers to Achieving their Aspirations

Indigenous students are not attaining the same educational and employment outcomes as non-Indigenous students. Psychological constructs have been demonstrated by research with non-Indigenous Australians to impact upon desirable educational outcomes; however, there is a dearth of Aboriginal education research that has identified psychological constructs of salience to Indigenous students. The purpose of this study was to: (a) evaluate the self-concepts of Indigenous secondary students; (b) identify Indigenous students' aspirations; (c) elucidate Indigenous students' perceptions of barriers faced in attaining their aspirations; and (d) compare and contrast the pattern of results for Indigenous students to results for non-Indigenous students from the same schools. A total of 1686 students (517 Indigenous and 1151 non-Indigenous) from urban and rural regions from three Australian States participated. Indigenous students displayed statistically significantly lower academic (school, maths, verbal) self-concepts in comparison to non-Indigenous students. Significantly more Indigenous students in comparison to non-Indigenous students aspired to leaving school early, attending Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions and were less likely to know much about what sort of job or further education and training they could pursue after leaving school. Indigenous students also rated nine potential barriers with significantly higher scores compared to non-Indigenous students in regard to limiting or stopping them from achieving what they want to do. The results have important implications for career education and counselling interventions in educational contexts.

Taking Stock in 2004

In an article about culturally relevant approaches to teacher assessment published a few years ago, Ladson-Billings (1998) asserted that those were for of students of color because new evaluations of teacher competency that did not account for culture could actually perpetuate teaching practices that did not serve children of color and children living in poverty. Borrowing Ladson-Billings' language, this editorial suggests that these are dangerous times for teacher education. Taking stock as the new year begins, the editorial posits that three major developments are currently driving practice, policy, and research in teacher education: an intense focus on teacher quality; the emergence of tightly-regulated deregulation as a federally mandated reform agenda for teacher preparation; and the ascendance of science as the solution to educational problems. (1) Although none of these necessarily or alone makes this a dangerous time, their convergence is pushing us dangerously close to a technical view of teaching, a training model of teacher education, the isomorphic equating of learning with testing, and an educational system in which winner takes all in terms of opportunities, resources, and outcomes. INTENSE FOCUS ON TEACHER QUALITY Over the past several years, a new consensus has emerged that teacher quality is one of the most, if not the most, significant factor in students' achievement and educational improvement. In a certain sense, of course, this is good news, which simply affirms what most educators have believed for years: teachers' work is important in students' achievement and in their life chances. In another sense, however, this conclusion is problematic, even dangerous. When teacher quality is unequivocally identified as the primary factor that accounts for differences in student learning, some policy makers and citizens may infer that individual alone are responsible for the successes and failures of the educational system despite the mitigation of social and cultural contexts, support provided for teachers' ongoing development, the historical failure of the system to serve particular groups, the disparate resources devoted to education across schools and school systems, and the match or mismatch of school and community expectations and values. Influenced by the new consensus about teacher quality, some constituencies may infer that teachers teaching better is the panacea for disparities in school achievement and thus conclude that everybody else is off the hook for addressing the structural inequalities and differential power relations that permeate our nation's schools. There is another danger here as well. Although we now appear to have consensus about the importance of teacher quality, there is no parallel consensus about how to define it: how to conceptualize teacher quality in ways that account for the complexities of teaching and learning, how to identify which characteristics of teacher quality are linked with desirable educational outcomes, how to decide which educational outcomes are desirable in the first place, and how to recruit, prepare, and retain who provide rich academic learning opportunities but also prepare their students for participation in a democracy. Absent opportunities for discussion about what could or should constitute our definitions of excellent teaching and teacher quality, these are being defined primarily in terms of test scores--K-12 students' test scores as well as prospective teachers' test scores. For example, Sanders's (1998; Sanders & Horn, 1998) value-added teacher assessment model, which is widely cited as the empirical basis for the teacher quality agenda, is explicitly designed to differentiate by sorting them into quartiles according to the test scores of their pupils. The equating of teacher quality with test scores is also apparent in the new transportable teacher test being developed by the American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), which is funded by a $45 million grant from the Department of Education. …

But That’s Not Fair! An Exploratory Study of Student Perceptions of Instructor Fairness

Whereas research points to desirable educational outcomes that are enhanced by fairness in the classroom, this study addresses a fundamental question: what do professors do that students perceive as fair or unfair? Using the critical incident technique, the authors elicit specific course-related behaviors by college professors that are perceived as fair and unfair by marketing students. The authors find that the drivers of perceptions of fairness and unfairness are not simple mirror images. Procedural and interactional dimensions appear to be present, in addition to student reactions to outcomes. Some reported behaviors did seem unfair, whereas students appear to misinterpret other behaviors that likely had no malicious intent. The article assesses the current state of research related to fairness and relates this knowledge to fairness in the classroom. After describing the study and its results, the authors discuss the implications for teachers and for future research on classroom fairness.

Evaluation of a model curriculum on substance abuse at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Beginning in 1985, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine developed a model curriculum on alcohol abuse to enhance the education of medical students in issues related to the abuse of alcohol and other drugs. By 1987, preclinical courses (given in years one and two) reflected the goals of the curriculum; however, integration of the curriculum into the clinical courses (given in years three and four) was only partially successful. This paper reports on nine annual surveys of students (the classes of 1989-1992) that were conducted from 1987 to 1990 to measure the effects of the curriculum, using previously validated instruments to record the students' knowledge, attitudes, beliefs in role responsibility, and confidence in clinical skills. Significant improvements occurred in the students' attitudes, beliefs in role responsibility, and confidence in skills during their preclinical years. These positive changes were stronger, and better sustained during the clinical years, in students who participated in special programs or elective courses focusing on substance abuse; the positive changes were not always sustained in other students. The authors suggest that enhanced experiential sessions, elective programs, and greater emphasis during the clinical years on issues relating to substance abuse are necessary for maintaining the desirable educational outcomes of a substance abuse management curriculum, and that an intensive program against a backdrop of curriculum reform is a useful model.

Educational Performance Assessment: a new framework of analysis

The recent widespread introduction of devolved financial management for schools in England and Wales has increased the importance of there being an appropriate analytical framework within which the performance of individual schools can be assessed. This paper examines one such framework that can combine economic insights into the multidimensional activity of transforming resource inputs into desirable educational outcomes for a school’s given pupil intake, with an enhanced role for the school inspectorate in quality control and the assessment of each school’s economic and educational effectiveness.

Research needs in CAL

Abstract The demise of MEP, and the arrival of MeSU as its successor, naturally provoke thoughts about the directions that future research and development for IT in education should take. This paper explores current research styles, and argues that the problems of developing and disseminating CAL appropriate to the production of desirable educational outcomes in class are unlikely to be solved by current approaches. Successful innovation requires more than enthusiastic teachers, careful laboratory studies, and a collection of regional information offices. There are urgent research needs for more studies of CAL in representative classrooms, and for studies of the implications of the socio‐administrative structure of schools on the accessibility of computing resources. On a larger scale, work is needed that links CAL to major on‐going curriculum development programmes, such as new GCSE curricula.