Barbara Means

Technology and Education Change: Focus on Student Learning.

Abstract This study examined technology implementation practices associated with student learning gains. Interviews and observations were conducted with staff at schools where teachers using reading or mathematics software with their students attained above-average achievement gains and at schools where software-using teachers had below-average gains. The findings highlight the importance of school practices in the areas of principal support and teacher collaboration around software use and of teacher practices concerning classroom management and use of software-generated student performance data. The issues of instructional coherence and competition for instructional time are highlighted as challenges to software implementation.

Toward a Learning Technologies knowledge network

The National Science Foundation-funded Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) is designed to be a national resource for stimulating research and development of technology-enabled solutions to critical problems in K-14 science, math, engineering and technology learning. The Center, launched at the end of 1997, is organized around four themes identified as areas where research is likely to result in major gains in teaching and learning, and sponsors research across disciplines and institutions in its four theme areas. CILT brings together experts in the fields of cognitive science, educational technologies, computer science, subject matter learning, and engineering. It engages business through an Industry Alliance Program and is also training postdoctoral students. CILTs founding organizations are SRI Internationals Center for Technology in Learning, University of California at Berkeley (School of Education and Department of Computer Science), Vanderbilt Universitys Learning Technology Center, and the Concord Consortium. Through its programs, CILT seeks to reach beyond these organizations to create a web of organizations, individuals, industries, schools, foundations, government agencies, and labs, that is devoted to the production, sharing and use of new knowledge about how learning technologies can dramatically improve the processes and outcomes of learning and teaching. This paper describes the rationale and operations of the Center, and first-year progress in defining a set of CILT partnership projects with many other institutions that came out of our national theme-team workshops.

Chapter 5: Technology’s Contribution to Teaching and Policy: Efficiency, Standardization, or Transformation?:

T he dramatic influx of technology into Americas schools since the 1990s prompts the question of technologys role as a lever for policy. We begin this chapter with a brief sketch of alternative perspectives on the ways in which technology can support education policy and practice. We will suggest that the connection between technology and policy is looser than that between policy and the other mechanisms described in this volume (such as standards or state assessments) and that technologys potential for profound influences on instruction is yet to be realized. After the introduction to alternative ways in which policymakers have viewed technologys role, we focus on emerging areas of classroom use of technology where prospects for significant changes in teaching and learning seem strongest. Our selection of particular technology uses for more extended treatment reflects our choice of teaching and learning at the classroom level as our central focus.1 In an education system as decentralized as that of the United States, teachers have considerable latitude-even in these days of increased accountability-in interpreting and implementing policies developed at higher levels of the education system. The view of instruction underlying our thinking concerning the policy-technology connection is congruent with Cohen and Balls (1999) description of instructional capacity as the product of complex interactions among teachers, students, and instructional content. In this view, instructional materials or regimens are not fixed entities with entirely predictable effects. Rather, teachers mediate instruction: their interpretation of educational materials affects curriculum potential and use, and their understanding of students affects students opportunities to learn (p. 4). Students, in turn, respond to teachers and materials in ways that influence subsequent teacher actions. Cohen and Ball caution policymakers against assuming that addressing a single aspect of this complex system (even an aspect that is as strong a policy driver as curriculum materials or assessments) can in fact have the intended effect on the system as

The Effects of Estimation Strategies on the Accuracy of Respondents’ Reports of Cigarette Smoking

Many survey questions ask about the frequency of specific behaviors (e.g., consumption of a particular food, use of a product, voting). Until recently, the assumption has been that responses to these items are formed through a process of episodic recall, in which the respondent mentally retrieves all pertinent incidents and then tallies them (e.g., Bradburn, 1983). Survey research focused on potential sources of response error associated with episodic recall (i.e., retrieval failures and telescoping effects).

Using Large-Scale Databases in Evaluation: Advances, Opportunities, and Challenges

Major advances in the number, capabilities, and quality of state, national, and transnational databases have opened up new opportunities for evaluators. Both large-scale data sets collected for administrative purposes and those collected by other researchers can provide data for a variety of evaluation-related activities. These include (a) identifying or highlighting issues that invite greater client attention; (b) establishing the plausibility of policy theories of action; and (c) program evaluation. The authors illustrate through examples from the fields of education, social services, and public health both the opportunities provided by higher quality, interoperable data systems and the challenges encountered when using databases to identify issues of concern, test the plausibility of a proposed theory of action, or evaluate an existing program. The authors then explore implications for roles evaluators may need to play to support these uses of databases and for funding and infrastructure to support greater evaluator involvement in program planning and improvement.

Cognitive Task Analysis for the Real(-time) World

As part of a review and evaluation of the Federal Aviation Administrations air traffic control (ATC) training program, we tested whether cognitive task analysis techniques could help identify the knowledge, skills, and strategies used by proficient controllers, at a level appropriate for deriving instructional objectives. Our approach involved modifying commonly-used methods (e.g., interviews and think-aloud protocols) for use in a real-time, real-world task domain. Expert controllers were videotaped performing realistic ATC scenarios. We then elicited “play-by-play” analysis of the scenario from other expert controllers and retrospective protocols from the subjects. Other techniques were used to obtain convergent data on controllers knowledge representation and organization. The methodology was successful in describing several cognitive components of ATC expertise that had previously defied explication at a level of detail appropriate for instruction. We discuss briefly training implications and other ways in which we have used the data.

Expanding STEM opportunities through inclusive STEM-focused high schools

Abstract Inclusive STEM high schools (ISHSs) (where STEM is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) admit students on the basis of interest rather than competitive examination. This study examines the central assumption behind these schools—that they provide students from subgroups underrepresented in STEM with experiences that equip them academically and attitudinally to enter and stay in the STEM pipeline. Hierarchical modeling was applied to data from student surveys and state longitudinal data records for 5113 students graduating from 39 ISHSs and 22 comprehensive high schools in North Carolina and Texas. Compared to peers from the same demographic group with similar Grade 8 achievement levels, underrepresented minority and female ISHS students in both states were more likely to undertake advanced STEM coursework. Hispanics in Texas and females in both states expressed more STEM career interest in Grade 12 if they attended an ISHS. Positive relationships between ISHS attendance and grade point average were found in the total sample and each subgroup in North Carolina. Positive ISHS advantages in terms of test scores for the total student sample were found for science in both states and for mathematics in Texas. For the various student subgroups, test score differences favored the ISHS samples but attained statistical significance only for African Americans’ science achievement scores in the Texas study.