Anthony E. Kelly

Theme Issue: The Role of Design in Educational Research:

Inspired by the seminal work of Ann Brown, Allan Collins, Roy Pea, and Jan Hawkins, a growing number of researchers have begun to adopt the metaphors and methods of the design and engineering fields. This special issue highlights the work of some of these active researchers and provides a number of commentaries on it.

Design Research in Education: Yes, but is it Methodological?

... the critic, guided by personal predilection or more often by partisan conventionalism, will take some one procedure as his criterion or judgment and condemn all deviations from it as departures from art [read: research] itself. He then misses the point of all art, the unity of form and matter, and misses it because he lacks adequate sympathy, in his natural and acquired one-sidedness, with the immense variety of interactions between the live creature and his world. (p. 313)

Issues in High-Stakes Testing Programs

The debate over high-stakes testing programs plays out daily in newspapers, on TV, and in the business, education, legal, political, and research communities. This article examines some of the issues at the heart of this debate. Four main areas are covered: the types of tests used, the effects on student motivation and morale, the degree of alignment between the test and the curriculum, and the distinction between assessment of learning and assessment for learning. The article concludes by highlighting the need for teacher input in crafting testing programs that maximize benefits in each of these areas.

Clinical Design Sciences: A View From Sister Design Efforts

In this article the authors argue that the social sciences are clinical-like endeavors, and the sophisticated way that sister fields discover and validate their results may inform research practice in education. The authors provide a brief introduction to three sister fields: engineering product design, research on the diffusion of innovations, and management analysis of institutional change.

Stimulus Features and Sex Differences in Mental Rotation Test Performance.

Abstract This study examined sex differences in spatial abilities using a standard two-dimensional paper-and-pencil test of mental rotation administered to 410 subjects. A personality questionnaire and six other ability tests related to mental rotation were also administered: numerical ability, verbal ability, inductive reasoning, associative memory, perceptual speed and accuracy, and speed of closure. Structural and superficial features of the tasks were specified, and sex differences in accuracy and speed were examined. Certain features of the mental rotation test stimuli (e.g., long trajectories, multilined or multispotted) proved difficult for both males and females, but more difficult for females. These findings were interpreted in the light of Just and Carpenters (1985) model. Males also completed more items than females. In this regard, personality factors related to cautiousness yielded significant negative correlations with speed. On the related ability tests, males outperformed females on a numerical skills test, and females outperformed males on an associative memory test. No significant sex differences emerged on the other four ability tests.

Educational research and the problems of practice

Abstract In this paper we use the lens of an emerging research method in education called “design research” to address questions raised by Sugrue and Uí Thuama (1994) about the lack of strong linkages between research and classroom practice in Irish education. We provide context for this question by contrasting it with similar discussions in the US and UK about research quality in education. Next we elaborate a framework from one member of the design research community in educational research (Bannan‐Ritland, 2003) to show why some varieties of educational research may have little to offer practice at least directly and in the short term. Finally, we offer insight from Lesson Study in Japan (Lewis, 2002) as one possible solution to the problem of research and practice alignment.

Attribute-mastery patterns from rule space as the basis for student models in algebra

Student models for procedural tasks in mathematics have relied heavily on analyses of bugs to guide their remediation. This paper reports on an analysis of data that first confirms the results of recent studies by finding a relatively large number of bugs to be unstable, with stable bugs tending to be infrequent. The paper then illustrates a method for classifying students according to higher-level (and presumably more stable) knowledge deficits using a psychometric classification technique, known as rule space. A rule space analysis is performed on the same test items. The resulting diagnoses (describing attribute-mastery patterns) are shown to demonstrate within-test stability. These patterns are then discussed in the light of their potential contribution to the design of machine-delivered remediation.

Can Cognitive Neuroscience Ground a Science of Learning

In this article, I review recent findings in cognitive neuroscience in learning, particularly in the learning of mathematics and of reading. I argue that while cognitive neuroscience is in its infancy as a field, theories of learning will need to incorporate and account for this growing body of empirical data.

Reflections on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel Final Report

In March 2008, the National Mathematics Advisory Panel final report was released. This report was produced in response to an executive order from President George W. Bush. The report is important because of its subject matter—improving mathematics teaching and learning—its historically significant genesis, and the strong position that the report takes on the primacy of quantitative methods in education research. The author briefly introduces the report and then draws attention to some of the main points in the commentaries offered in this special issue of Educational Researcher. The special issue ends with a rejoinder from the chair and co-chair of the report.

A Constructivist Model for Redesigning AI Tutors in Mathematics

This chapter suggests a new approach to designing AI tutors that grew primarily out of results from a study that is reported in greater detail in a paper entitled The development of tutoring capabilities in middle school mathematics teachers (Lesh & Kelly, in press). That study focused on a ten-week project in which real human tutors provided the intelligence behind a computer-based tutoring system. Our goal was to investigate the understandings, assumptions, and procedures that were really used in tutoring by teachers who were at various levels of expertise — and to observe the evolution of these tutoring abilities over time, as tutoring effectiveness gradually improved.