Jennifer Jacobs

The Process of Dropping Out of High School: A 19-Year Perspective

In this study, nested latent-variable causal models were contrasted to compare the direct and indirect relationships of distal family and child and proximal adolescent factors to dropping out of high school. The sample included 194 Euro-American conventional and nonconventional families in a 19-year longitudinal study. The findings showed that dropping out of high school is a multiply-determined process, with early influences beginning in childhood, that involves family as well as child and adolescent factors. Early family nonconventionality with higher commitment to lifestyle values was associated with a lower probability of dropping out; cumulative family stress, lower high school achievement and motivation, lower sixth-grade school performance, and adolescent drug use were associated with a higher probability of dropping out. Family lifestyles and values are related to children’s developmental pathways through childhood exposure to drug use, child ability prior to school entry, and early school performance. Nonconventional lifestyles with a higher commitment to lifestyle values may offer long-term protection for children from school failure.

Mathematics Teaching in the United States Today (and Tomorrow): Results From the TIMSS 1999 Video Study:

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 Video Study examined eighth-grade mathematics teaching in the United States and six higher-achieving countries. A range of teaching systems were found across higher-achieving countries that balanced attention to challenging content, procedural skill, and conceptual understanding in different ways. The United States displayed a unique system of teaching, not because of any particular feature but because of a constellation of features that reinforced attention to lower-level mathematics skills. The authors argue that these results are relevant for policy (mathematics) debates in the United States because they provide a current account of what actually is happening inside U.S. classrooms and because they demonstrate that current debates often pose overly simple choices. The authors suggest ways to learn from examining teaching systems that are not alien to U.S. teachers but that balance a skill emphasis with attention to challenging mathematics and conceptual development.

Contemporary Approaches to Teacher Professional Development

Teacher professional development (PD) has been in high demand during the last decade, and the design and dissemination of new PD models have been the impetus for discussion among educators around the world. Previously called teacher in-service training, the preferred label by scholars and practitioners is now teacher professional development. In this article, we consider the distinction between in-service training and “professional development, and go on to discuss the current literature on features of high-quality PD. We also provide examples of programs that illustrate these features and consider the emerging use of new technologies to enhance PD opportunities.

Integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches to the analysis of video data on classroom teaching

Abstract Video data provide a means of integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of classroom teaching. This chapter begins by discussing the usefulness of integrating quantitative and qualitative analyses, and then describes how large-scale video surveys can enable a cyclical process of generating and validating discoveries. The importance of sampling and technology as they bear on efforts to implement the process is noted. The advantages video data offer to researchers are described. Finally, the TIMSS Video Study, a large-scale international video survey of mathematics lessons, is used to illustrate how this cyclical process can be applied to the analysis of lesson content.

Are There National Patterns of Teaching? Evidence from the TIMSS 1999 Video Study

Why do teachers today teach as they do, and why has teaching evolved in the way that it has evolved? In order to improve teaching, it is important to understand why teaching looks the way that it now does and how its general form can be explained. One way to address this question is at the classroom level. This approach has been found in the ethnographic work of anthropologists and has been skillfully applied in the recent work of such researchers as Robin Alexander and Kathryn Anderson-Levitt. In this article we build on ethnographic research by using the 1999 Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) video archives. Here we consider two possible explanations for the general patterns that have developed in school teaching. One explanation is that there are universal elements in most schools today that shape teaching practice. These elements include the physical environment, the social dynamics of classrooms, and the content to be learned. If

Japanese and American Teachers' Evaluations of Videotaped Mathematics Lessons

This article describes a novel assessment method used to examine Japanese and American teachers’ ideas about what constitutes effective mathematics pedagogy. Forty American and 40 Japanese teachers independently evaluated either an American or Japanese mathematics lesson captured on videotape. Their comments were classified into over 1600 idea units, which were then sorted into a hierarchy of categories derived from the data. Next, the authors hypothesized underlying ideal instructional scripts that could explain the patterns of responses. Whereas the U.S. teachers were supportive of both traditional and nontraditional elementary school mathematics instruction and had different scripts for the two lessons, the Japanese teachers had only one ideal lesson script that was closely tied to typical Japanese mathematics instruction. The findings suggest that U.S. teachers may have more culturally sanctioned options for teaching mathematics; however, Japanese teachers may have a more detailed and widely shared theory about how to teach effectively.

Distinguishing Models of Professional Development: The Case of an Adaptive Model's Impact on Teachers' Knowledge, Instruction, and Student Achievement.

We posit that professional development (PD) models fall on a continuum from highly adaptive to highly specified, and that these constructs provide a productive way to characterize and distinguish among models. The study reported here examines the impact of an adaptive mathematics PD model on teachers’ knowledge and instructional practices as well as on students’ achievement over time. Results indicate at least modest impacts in each of these areas. Our findings demonstrate that adaptive models of PD can be subjected to investigations of impact based on quantitative research methodologies; moreover, we argue that utilizing a wider variety of methodologies to study adaptive models is increasingly needed as these models gain in popularity and usage.

Understanding and Improving Mathematics Teaching: Highlights from the TIMSS 1999 Video Study

portion of the TIMSS 1999 Video Study included Australia, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. In this article, we focus on the mathematics lessons; the science results will be available at a later date. Stimulated by a summary article that appeared in the Kappan and by other reports, interest in the TIMSS 1995 Video Study focused on its novel methodology and the striking differences in teaching found in the participating countries. In particular, the sample of eighth-grade Understanding and Improving Mathematics Teaching: Highlights from the TIMSS 1999 Video Study

Video-Based Research Made "Easy": Methodological Lessons Learned from the TIMSS Video Studies

In this article, the authors share some of the methodological lessons learned from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1995 and TIMSS 1999 Video Studies. They focus on their experiences overseeing these large-scale, video-based, cross-national surveys of teaching. The article documents some of the progress the authors made, as well as some of the obstacles they encountered. The authors hope that the ideas shared here help prevent possible missteps, enhance the quality of projects, and encourage researchers to advance the use of video as a methodology.

Facilitating Video-Based Professional Development: Planning and Orchestrating Productive Discussions

Video has become increasingly popular in professional development (PD) to help teachers both learn subject matter for teaching and systematically analyze instructional practice. Like other records of practice, video brings the central activities of teaching into the PD setting, providing an opportunity for teachers to collaboratively study their practice without being physically present in the classroom. In this chapter, we explore how video representations of teaching can be used to guide teachers’ inquiries into teaching and learning in an intentional and focused way. We draw primarily from our experiences developing and field-testing two video-based mathematics PD programs, Learning and Teaching Geometry (LTG) and the Problem-Solving Cycle (PSC), and preparing PD facilitators using those programs to lead video-based discussions. On the basis of evidence from these projects, we argue that PD leaders can guide teachers to examine critical aspects of learning and instruction through the purposeful selection and use of video footage. Furthermore, we use data from the LTG and PSC projects to build a chain of evidence demonstrating that video-based PD can support improvements in teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching, their instructional practices, and, ultimately, student learning.