Regional Educational Laboratory Research Articles

Report highlights enrollment patterns of students with disabilities

A new report on the outcomes of students with a disability enrolled in college may have implications for potential ways for colleges and universities to best serve students with disabilities. The report from Regional Educational Laboratories Southwest examined cohorts of Texas public high school graduates, both with and without disabilities, and evaluating their enrollment and completion outcomes. The data came from cohorts who graduated from high school in Texas between 2006 and 2010.

Mức độ đạt được kĩ năng tư duy phê phán của sinh viên Trường Đại học Sư phạm Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh

Though the students at Ho Chi Minh University of Education (HCMUE) haven’t taken any courses on critical thinking skills officially, they train thinking in studying their professional subject matters. The article is about the levels of gaining critical thinking skills by students at Ho Chi Minh University of Education through a survey based on the Dimensions of Critical Thinking Skills adapted from Paul, Binker, Jensen, and Kreklau. (1990). Critical Thinking Skills. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Thereby, we can see the different aspects of thinking.

AN APPROACH TO DEVELOP CONTENT BASED VIDEO MODULES

INTRODUCTION:Introduction: ICT the 21st century has been emphasised to a great extent and has been realised to be a core of 21st century skills (Partnership for 21st century skills [P21], 2006; North Central Regional Educational Laboratory [NCREL] & Metiri Group, 2003; International Society for Technology Education [ISTE], 2012). According to Voogt & Roblin (2010) a complete set of new competencies is required with relation to ICT and technological literacy due to the rapid development of ICT. The implementation of ICT has also been incorporated the teacher education curriculum order to enable the teachers of 21st century develop 21st generation of learners. With a boom technology and its various aspects teachers need to know and understand the usage of technology effectively within and outside a classroom. It is doubtful that any teachers without particular competence would be able to develop the same their was expressed by Gordon et al. (2009).Through literature we find that one of the most common ways of integrating ICT within a classroom is through incorporating presentations along with video, audio, animations within a classroom which has been followed from quite some time. The of can be dated back to the invention of television. Traditionally television was the only means of acquiring information by watching videos which later evolved to being recorded and stored CD's but now videos are available at the click of a button with the development of internet and search engines. Saracino (2012) stated that was taking over the world with more than 4 billion hours of viewed each month and YouTube was now the second most used search engine, right behind Google. Video is a medium that engages viewers from multiple senses - sight and sound - and can generate excitement about a subject or concept The University of North Carolina at Charlotte [UNC Charlotte] (2014). These facts demonstrate that, videos are a vital and enjoyable source of information. Stephen Haskin expressed that Haskin (2014) was becoming mainstream training and particularly eLearning. Videos education have been used from a very long time by using CD's and a television to the recent times of projecting videos with the help of technology such as computers, phones and projectors.Garza, relation to teaching culture states that video materials provide a unique opportunity to present, teach, and internalize authentic information as these materials can be edited for presentation and are also excellent venues for focusing our students' attention on specific details and for creating exercise materials based on the itself. Videos engage students who are visual, auditory and with the help of subtitle even the linguistic learners. Videos help students connect with real world applications of a or a theory. A can be either a natural recording of events or can be designed. As stated by Schwartz & Hartman (2006) a designed is a which the author of a decides on the components and features beforehand such as a scripted video. Using videos to enhance teaching has now transformed to learning with videos. Learning with videos refers to development of videos by the learners themselves. With the development of user friendly technology, easy to use software's, and the ever evolving internet producing videos by oneself has become an easy task. Making short films, short documentaries or even recording ones talk and publishing it has become easy.EdTechTeacher Inc. (2013) expressed that projects i.e videos made by students themselves in addition to being fun and motivating, projects teach students to plan, organize, write, communicate, collaborate, and analyze. A successful project has undergone a process of researching, scripting, organizing, filming, editing, and publishing. This project was developed as a based instructional material or based teaching material wherein the teacher trainees of Christ University, School of Education used this via a training module order to prepare their own teaching of performing different practical experiments. …

Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative (AMSTI)

The Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE) developed a statewide initiative to improve mathematics and science teaching and student achievement in kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12). The Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative (AMSTI) is a two-year intervention intended to better align classroom practices with national and statewide teaching standards — and ultimately to improve student achievement — by providing PD, access to materials and technology, and in-school support for teachers.AMSTI, a schoolwide intervention, was introduced in 20 schools in 2002. Each year since then, the state has rolled out the program to additional schools within its 11 regions. By 2009, about 40% of the state’s 1,518 schools were designated as AMSTI schools. Funding for the program from the state legislature was $46 million in 2009.Given the policy relevance and level of investment in AMSTI, the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast mounted a longitudinal, cluster randomized controlled trial to determine the effectiveness of AMSTI in grades 4-8, as implemented in five regions in the state. Previous evaluations of the program’s effects on students in K-12 did not use randomized controlled trials. The most recent evaluation (Miron & Maxwell 2007) reported that students in grade 5 in AMSTI schools outperformed students in non-AMSTI schools in math, science, and reading and students in grade 4 in AMSTI schools outperformed their counterparts in non-AMSTI schools in reading only. These evaluations used a study design that compared school-level test scores of AMSTI schools with non-AMSTI schools in the same district but did not establish preintervention comparability. This study’s RCT design improves on previous evaluations because it eliminates selection bias and establishes the preintervention comparability of the two groups.The effect of AMSTI on student achievement in math after one year, as measured by end-of-the-year scores on the Stanford Achievement Test Tenth Edition (SAT 10) math problem solving assessment of students in grades 4–8, was 2.06 scale score units. The difference of 0.05 standard deviation in favor of AMSTI schools is equivalent to a gain of 2 percentile points on the SAT 10 math problem solving assessment for the average control group student had the student received AMSTI. The 0.05 standard deviation is statistically significant but smaller than the effect the research team believed would be detectable by the experiment as designed. Whether this size effect is educationally important is an open question. It may be useful to convert this effect into a more policy-relevant metric — additional student progress measured in days of instruction. In these terms, the average estimated effect of AMSTI was equivalent to 28 days of additional student progress over students receiving conventional math instruction. The effect of AMSTI on student achievement in science, as measured by end-of-the-year scores on the SAT 10 science assessment, required only in grades 5 and 7, was not statistically significant after one year.AMSTI had a positive and statistically significant effect on classroom practices in math and science after one year. Based on multiple surveys in which teachers reported the number of minutes of active learning strategies used during the previous 10-day period, AMSTI math teachers averaged 49.83 more minutes, and AMSTI science teachers averaged 40.07 more minutes than control teachers. These estimated effects are equivalent to 0.47 standard deviation in math and 0.32 standard deviation in science. Although teachers in both the AMSTI and control groups reported using active learning instructional strategies, teachers in AMSTI schools reported spending more time engaged in this type of instruction.The exploratory investigation of the two-year effect of AMSTI on student achievement in science also found a statistically significant result, with a magnitude of 4.00 scale score units. This effect represents a difference of 0.13 standard deviation in favor of AMSTI schools, equivalent to a gain of 5 percentile points for the average control group student had the student received AMSTI for two years.The effect of AMSTI on teacher-reported content knowledge after one year was not statistically significant in either math or science. AMSTI did have a positive and statistically significant effect on student engagement after one year, measured on a 5-point scale ranging from “not engaged” to “fully engaged.” AMSTI teachers were more likely than control teachers to rate their students as achieving higher levels of engagement.An exploration of the differential effects of AMSTI on student achievement for subgroups of students found no statistically significant differential effects on student achievement in mathematics or science based on racial/ethnic minority status, eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch, gender, or pretest level. In reading, however, AMSTI had a statistically significant differential effect for minority and White students of 3.04 scale score points (p

Mapping the collaborative research process

Despite significant federal investments in the production of high-quality education research, the direct use of that research in policy and practice is not evident. Some education researchers are increasingly employing collaborative research models that use structures and processes to integrate practitioners into the research process in an effort to produce more relevant and useful work. This article presents and describes the logic model developed by researchers at American Institutes for Research (AIR) to guide their work on the Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest. Under this program, AIR researchers have developed eight research alliances. The alliance members, who represent districts, state education agencies, and other organizations with a vested interest in education, partner with researchers to develop three- to five-year research agendas. These agendas drive the research and technical assistance projects that the alliance members and AIR researchers do together. It contributes to the emergent literature on research-practice partnerships, providing a theory-based approach to the work that others might model, build upon, or revisit.

PROTOCOL: The effects of K‐12 school enrollment interventions in developing nations

PROTOCOL: The effects of K‐12 school enrollment interventions in developing nations

A Speech-Language Pathologist's Involvement in Literacy in a Rural School

No AccessPerspectives on School-Based IssuesArticle1 Apr 2002A Speech-Language Pathologist's Involvement in Literacy in a Rural School Mary M. Streib Mary M. Streib Fremont County School District #2Dubois, WY Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/sbi3.1.22 SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In References ASHA. (2002). Reading and writing in children and adolescents: Knowledge and skills needed by speech-language pathologists (draft for peer review). Available Online: http://professional.asha.org/, members only section. Google Scholar ASHA. (2000a). Rolesand responsibilities of speech-language pathologists with respect to reading and writing in children and adolescents (guidelines). Rockville, MD: Author. Google Scholar ASHA. (2000b). Roles and responsibilities of speech-language pathologists with respect to reading and writing in children and adolescents (technical report). Rockville, MD: Author. Google Scholar Auman, M. E. (1999). Step up to writing. Longmont, CO: Sopris West. Google Scholar Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Assessment and Evaluation Program (No date). The 6 + 1 Traits of Writing. Portland, OR Google Scholar Additional Resources FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 3Issue 1April 2002Pages: 22-24 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in issue: Apr 1, 2002 Metrics Topicsasha-topicsleader-topicsasha-article-typesasha-sigsCopyright & PermissionsCopyright © 2002 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationPDF DownloadLoading ...

A Quickie Checkup

in a Day is a tool that a learning community might use time and again to collect information that can help improve performance, the authors note. It is not the only self-assessment tool schools can use, but the flexibility it offers and its power to involve all groups make it an attractive choice. THE EXCITED fourth-grader announced, I grow up, I want to be a researcher! Cherelle had just spent a September morning observing activities in three different classrooms in her school, where she had coded and learning behaviors according to how well they matched the school's vision, mission, and goals. Cherelle and 25 other members of the Alexander Elementary School research team had met the previous afternoon to review their assignments. Less than 24 hours later, the team reported its findings to the entire faculty. The process that Alexander Elementary School uses to collect and analyze a wealth of information in a short period of time is aptly called Data in a Day. When principal Earl Wiman first heard this approach described, he recognized the potential it offered for engaging the entire school community in the reflection and self-assessment that could help maintain the necessary focus on and momentum for continuous school improvement. Wiman had reason to believe that the faculty would embrace the process. The school's commitment to serving all students has made Alexander Elementary a model for special education inclusion and Title I services. Visitors frequent the K-5 school in downtown Jackson, Tennessee, to observe its success in serving an ethnically and economically diverse group of 530 children. Over the past decade, Alexander has extended the school day to serve students at risk of failure, provided a rich variety of instructional materials as well as Internet access in all classrooms, and hired a full-time coordinator to offer parent training and technology support. The leadership at Alexander has invested in professional development through a collaboration with AEL, a federally funded regional educational laboratory. Teachers use AEL's Questioning and Understanding to Improve Learning and Thinking (QUILT), and the school community participates in the lab's Quest project, a network for continuously improving schools.1 Alexander used in a Day to conduct a quick checkup that would allow representatives of the school community to examine the congruence between these improvement efforts and what was actually going on in the school on a given day. Special Features of in a Day First developed by the Restructuring Collaborative of the Regional Educational Laboratory Network in 1995, in a Day has a number of features that distinguish it from other self-study processes and make it particularly useful to schools attempting to strengthen their capacity to act as learning communities. (For an outline of the steps in the process, see the sidebar on page 550.) Focuses on and learning. are collected through classroom observations that focus on what occurs during teaching/learning interactions. Observers record what they see during 20-minute observation periods. Collectively, these observation data provide a snapshot of and learning in a school on a given day. These snapshots show how well the school is doing in pursuit of its expressed goals. One of the four observation topics at Alexander, for example, was the use of teaching and learning strategies that reach all students. Researchers first identified what would qualify as a positive example of working toward this goal. Then they observed classrooms to capture examples of such activities as cooperative learning, the use of manipulatives, peer tutoring, the use of computers, students learning in a variety of ways (listening, looking, talking, doing, moving, and creating), active student participation and engagement, teachers giving students some choices, teachers bringing humor and fun into the classroom, and individualized assignments. …

Involving the African American Parent: Recommendations to Increase the Level of Parent Involvement within African American Families

This article focuses on increasing African American parent as a tactic to improve the school performances of African American children. The importance of parental involvement, emphasizing the areas of mandated parental involvement, achievement/behavior, and empowerment will be discussed. Factors contributing to the lack of parental as well as recommendations for increasing the levels of parental will be presented. African American children are failing at record rates. Educators have identified several variables that contribute to the problem, including rates of poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 1999), lack of adequate resources (Kozol, 1991), poor communication between home and school (Weitock, 1991), and low rates of parental (Wallis, 1995). Each of the aforementioned variables are important and impact the school success of African American children. Parents hold a critical role throughout the educational process. Because parents serve as the first teachers in a child's life, they are considered to be the primary educators of their child. Parents can also serve as decision-makers and advocates and can collaborate with school teachers in an effort to aid in the smoothness of their child's educational career. Like other ethnic groups, African American parents want their children to achieve academically. However, some of these parents may lack the knowledge and resources to assist their child with academic success. This article focuses on increasing African American parent as a tactic to improve the school performance of African American children. The importance of parental involvement, emphasizing the areas of mandated parental involvement, achievement/ behavior, and empowerment will be discussed. Factors contributing to the lack of parental follows, as well as recommendations for increasing the levels of parental will also be presented. PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT Parental has been defined in a variety of ways. Perroncel (1993) defines it as a partnership among home, school, and community members to support a child's education process. The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) defines parent as the active, ongoing participation of a child's parents) or guardians) in his or her education (NREL, 1999). NWREL recognizes that parents participate in their children's education in a variety of ways, ranging from reading to children at home and assisting in the classroom, to sitting on advisory councils at school. Similarly, Epstein (1995) summarized the ranges of family within a classification system that included school-home communications, parent within the school and the community, providing their child with home learning activities, and parents serving as decision-makers. Weitock (1991) uses the term high parental involvement and defines it as parents) who attend parent-teacher conferences, are able to be reached for conferences by phone, and attend PTA meetings and school programs. These parents are also described as those who are motivated and interested in the value of a good education, provide supervision for their children after school, and have materials such as paper, pencils, and books within the home. To parents, in their child's education may include an array of meanings. Some may feel that participating within the school setting in the capacity of a teacher's aide, a tutor, assisting with fundraising activities, and/or attending field trips is considered parent involvement. Other parents may feel that adequate parent includes providing a place for their child to study, helping with homework, setting curfews, and monitoring the quantity and quality of such activities as watching television and hanging out with friends (Finders & Lewis, 1994). As described, parents posses different skills and differing levels of comfort when it comes to school and it is important that educators take this into consideration (Decker, Gregg, & Decker, 1996). …

News from the Net: Online Resources from McREL

McREL is an acronym that stands for the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory. This Web site offers teachers a wealth of links to resources through the Internet in addition to information about McREL's own programs, which include classes and projects for teachers.

Teachers' salient beliefs about a problem-solving demonstration classroom in-service program

Each year science teachers have the opportunity to participate in a variety of in-service pro- grams, with the most traditional yearlong in-service agendas consisting of a preprogram, program, and follow-up program. One alternative to the traditional program is the inclusion of demonstration classrooms within the follow-up segment. This study specifically explored the beliefs of in-service teachers about one such program; the Problem-Solving Demonstration Classroom in-service program. To capture participants' beliefs, open-ended interviews, focus groups, and observations were conducted throughout a yearlong Problem-Solving Demonstration Classroom in-service program. The collected data were inductively ana- lyzed to identify the salient beliefs of participants. The results of this study suggest that the Problem- Solving Demonstration Classroom in-service program provided participating teachers an opportunity to address their instructional needs pertaining to problem solving, develop a view of the student in the con- text of problem solving, redefine their understanding of problem solving, reflect upon their own instruc- tional practice, and engage in a collegial and mentoring dialogue with peers. This preliminary investiga- tion suggests that the demonstration classroom program may be one variation to the traditional yearlong in-service program that is worthy of further exploration. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 141 - 158, 1999 The current menu of professional development strategies for science educators includes conventions, workshops, institutes, in-service programs, and academic coursework. In the Unit- ed States, these programs are often supported by the Department of Education's Dwight D. Eisenhower mathematics and science funds; Regional Educational Laboratories; National Sci- ence Foundation's initiatives in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology; the Nation- al Diffusion Network; and major organizations (e.g., National Science Teachers Association, Na- tional Association of Biology Teachers). The funding provided by these organizations is often substantial. In 1992, the National Science Foundation allocated approximately $50 million to stimulate curricular content and pedagogical change in science and mathematics (Suter, 1993), while the Eisenhower program spent $246 million to improve the skills of teachers and quality of instruction in science and mathematics (Crudup, 1993). In addition to large-scale organiza- tions, regional agencies, state agencies, and local districts expend funds for the professional de- velopment of in-service teachers. The financial support provided for a variety of professional development activities is one indicator of organizational and agency commitment to the im- provement of mathematics and science education.

The Extent and Character of System-Wide Student Testing in the United States

In this article I review, summarize, and compare studies of the extent of standardized testing in our nation's schools from the early 1980s and from the early 1990s. All show the amount of system-wide (i.e., statewide or district-wide) testing to be less than 2 days per year per student. Methodological issues, including several different ways to count tests, are discussed in some detail. The main focus is on the extent and character of testing results of a General Accounting Office survey of statewide and district-wide tests. The extent-of-testing estimates are roughly updated to 1995 with information from the annual Council of Chief State School Officers and the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory study of state tests.

Latin American Immigration and U.S. Schools

Latin American Immigration and U.S. Schools

Charting the Education Dissemination System

This article uses comparcsons to the transportation system to draw attention to the need for more effective federal leadership in the dissemination of education knowledge. The authors chart the current education dissemination system by discussing the dissemination functions of "spread" or proactive sharing often through public information vehicles, "choice" or responsive dissemination as carried out by libraries and clearinghouses, "exchange" or interactive dissemination, includingfeedbacksystems, and "implementation" or knowledge use. The authors view the chart as lacking coordination among federal discretionary Programs (such as compensatory and special education) and the more general purpose education dissemination Programs (such as the ERIC, the Regional Educational Laboratories, and the National Diffusion Network). The conclusion contains suggested goals and operating principles to use in developing a national education dissemination system that would be orchestrated by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education.

Focus groups: A starting point for needs assessment

Focus groups: A starting point for needs assessment

Knowledge of Computer Ethics: Its Relationship to Computer Attitude and Sociomoral Reasoning

Knowledge of computer ethics and its relationship to attitude toward computers and sociomoral reasoning was examined in a sample of sixty junior-high students. A measure of computer ethics was empirically derived via factor analysis of twenty-four items created by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. Both computer attitude and sociomoral reasoning correlated significantly with knowledge of computer ethics, r = .52, p < .01 and r = .29, p < .05, respectively. Computer attitude, but not sociomoral reasoning, continued to account for variance in computer ethics scores after both gender and verbal ability were statistically controlled.

Peer Review and the NIE/OERI Competition for Regional Educational Laboratories and National R&D Centers

mainstream. Proposal readers were not frequently seized by the originality of a research strategy or a fresh conceptualization of an problem. There were some of these, to be sure, but not a lot. Possibly there were more in the early stages of the competition. Perhaps the peer review process itself, and the government rating systems behind it, tended to screen out less conventional approaches. But even if not exhilarating, the outcome was satisfactory. The centers we ended up with are all promising; each has a serious mission, able individuals, and a worthy plan, some worthier than others at this early stage. I feel good about the process, hopeful about the winners, and determined to do all we can to help them succeed-a judging process, I might add, in which we will use various peer review mechanisms. The situation with the regional labs is a bit more problematic. The contracts describe an ambitious agenda of work that, if satisfactorily carried out, will surely benefit American education. So far, so good. But virtually all the new labs were also old labs or close facsimiles thereof. And of the labs, while it is both conventional and true to remark that their work was uneven, I am not aware of any evidence that American education was palpably improved in consequence of their activities as a group over the years. I say this with sadness, not satisfaction, and in the fervent hope that the future will yield a different record. We on the OERI side of this contractual relationship will do our level best to bring this about. But the record remains to be established. Yet the principles of peer review remain sound, and we shall apply them throughout OERI, even to the point of requiring outside participation in the review of proposals (such as contracts let by our Center for Statistics) that heretofore were appraised only by Department staff members. But we apply them in the full awareness that peer review is a help for decisionmakers, not a substitute for them, and that the ways a peer review process is constituted and managed matter greatly, especially in this field of education where a linear extension of past thinking and familiar practices into the future is simply not good enough.

Peer Review and the NIE/OERI Competition for Regional Educational Laboratories and National R&D Centers

Peer Review and the NIE/OERI Competition for Regional Educational Laboratories and National R&D Centers

A rural development model with potential international applications

A major project in rural planning and development was initiated in the eastern counties of Washington (State) beginning in 1976. The purpose was to merge several previous ‘model’ within a new conceptual framework incorporating collaboration among diverse organizations as a means of integrating development activity. Institutions of higher education, state and federal agencies, regional secondary education organizations, a regional educational laboratory, counties, and local communities, among other units, were drawn together initially as members of the partnership. A process was designed and implemented, based on contemporary findings of social science research, to systematically support ongoing interaction and collaboration in solving specific rural problems or bringing to realization new opportunities. The major thrust of this paper is to report results from the project, suggesting the broad applications of the findings to other rural regions in both developed and less developed nations.

Online Data Bases

[This article is reprinted from the fourth Reports to Decision Makers published by Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. These reports are produced to provide non-technical people with an accurate overview of certain areas in computer technology and computer education.]