Sharon L. Nichols

Expectancy Effects in the Classroom: A Special Focus on Improving the Reading Performance of Minority Students in First-Grade Classrooms

Teacher expectations for students has been an exciting topic of research in educational psychology since the publication of Pygmalion in the Classroom by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968). This article reviews the development of research in this area and notes the rich application value of this literature for social policy issues. The article discusses an intervention program for improving the reading performance of 1st-grade low income minority students in general (and Black low income students specifically). This example is but 1 instance of how this broad research base could be used to improve performance in various social settings.

Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth: Understanding Diversity and Promoting Tolerance in Schools.

Societal messages about normative culture permeate the lives of adolescents. Schools, as reflections of societal cultures, weave these messages throughout the informal curriculum by way of discipline, rules, and formal curricula. Many school climates foster norms, values, and belief systems that communicate rejection and intolerance to some students. In particular, gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents are a hidden minority in schools who are forced to negotiate homosexual identity development within typically homophobic climates. In this article I argue that schools are obligated to address the unique needs of homosexual youth because this population is at increased risk for committing suicide, physical and verbal abuse from peers, truancy, dropping out of school, and lowered self-esteem than their heterosexual counterparts. I propose that schools develop a diversity room and staff it with a diversity room specialist not only to meet the unique needs of homosexual adolescents but also to encourage a safe, accepting climate for all students.

Teachers’ and Students’ Beliefs about Student Belonging in One Middle School

This study took place at a newly formed charter school serving 150 students in a large metropolitan city in the southwest. Students were mostly Hispanic (98%), and all were eligible for free or reduced‐price lunch. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected in interviews with 45 sixth‐ (n = 28), seventh‐ (n = 10), and eighth‐ (n = 7) grade students. I used a version of Goodenow’s Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale (which I called the PSSM2) to measure students’ sense of belonging at the school. Interviews also included open‐ended response opportunities for students to define belonging in their own language. Students’ responses were compared with 8 teachers’ ratings of students in terms of their social standing relative to other students. Students estimated the grades they received on their most recent report card. Results suggested that teachers’ ratings of students’ social hierarchy and students’ feelings of belongingness were not related and that students varied in the value they placed on student‐student and student‐teacher relationships in their definitions of belongingness. There was no relation between students’ PSSM2 scores and their estimates of their grades. Teachers’ ratings of how males fit in with their peers were significantly related to males’ grade estimates but not to females’. Study implications and suggestions for future research on student belonging are discussed.

Why Has High-Stakes Testing So Easily Slipped into Contemporary American Life?

H IGH-STAKES testing is the practice of attaching important consequences to standardized test scores, and it is the engine that drives the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The rationale for high-stakes testing is that the promise of rewards and the threat of punishments will cause teachers to work more effectively, students to be more motivated, and schools to run more smoothly — all of which will result in greater academic achievement for all students, but especially those from poverty and minority backgrounds. Although it is certainly arguable, we believe that, to date, there is no convincing evidence that highstakes testing has the intended effect of increasing learning. By contrast, there is a growing literature suggesting that the unintended consequences are damaging to the education of students.

High-Stakes testing: Does it increase achievement?

SUMMARY I review the literature on the impact on student achievement of high-stakes testing. Its popularity as a mechanism for holding educators accountable has triggered studies to examine whether its promise to increase student learning has been fulfilled. The review concludes there is no consistent evidence to suggest high-stakes testing leads to increases in student learning. Some evidence suggests it may have a negative effect for some student groups and in some important subject areas (e.g., reading). Implications for future research and for the practice of school psychology are discussed.

Comprehensive School Reform: An Observational Study of Teaching in Grades 3 through 5

This observational study involved literacy and mathematics instruction of 145 teachers in grades 3 through 5 in 20 low‐income schools enrolled in the U.S. governments Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) Demonstration program. Observed curriculum and instructional practices were primarily and coherently focused on acquisition of basic facts and skills and related elaborations and thinking. With few exceptions, students were on task and productive and teacher‐student relationships were friendly and mutually supportive. Observations were compared with normative teaching practices. This comparison supported the conclusion that instruction in CSR classrooms did not differ from instruction typically observed in elementary school. Recommendations for enhancing normative practice within the constraints of modern school reform are made.

A constructivist approach to change in elementary science teaching and learning

Constructivism is a set of beliefs that can be used by teachers to think about learning and teaching and to plan and enact a science curriculum. This paper is a fictional account of an elementary science teacher and her use of constructivism as a referent for her various roles as a science teacher. The paper also describes how the teacher came to teach in this manner, describing her involvement in staff development activities and an evolution in her thinking from an ojectivist to a constructivist system of semantics. Implications are presented for the reform of science education.

The Pressure to Cheat in a High-Stakes Testing Environment

Publisher Summary High-stakes testing environment creates pressures on educators. These summative high-stakes tests have too much riding on them—bonuses to modestly paid people, school closures and loss of jobs, and shame and humiliation for lack of progress. These conditions induce some educators to engage in blatant cheating, or impel them toward acts that are morally ambiguous. The circumstances now affecting education are the same as those that have affected many fields of endeavor, and there is even a social science law to account for this phenomenon—Campbells law. Whether in finance or in education, both, the blatant and the greyer acts of deceit mislead the public. When indicators take on too much value, as when stakes are high, indicators and educators are corrupted. When the public is misled through outright chicanery or through compromised test validity, the reputation of the whole system and its entire workforce is damaged. If high-stakes testing corrupts the profession as it currently seems to be doing, the nation may lose from the profession those who endured its difficulties for the small honors it bestows. This is too great a price to pay for an accountability system that appears not to work and for which there are alternatives.

Early career teachers’ emotion and emerging teacher identities

Abstract The goal of our project was to develop an understanding of the connections among emotional episodes and emerging professional teacher identities of first year teachers. We interviewed eight first year mathematics and science teachers. We asked them to reflect on emotional episodes and talk about how those emotions informed their teaching identities. Our data yielded a model of ‘identity-work’ that reflected the teachers’ engagement in a reflective process of understanding themselves as it related to those emotional episodes. Our model includes four key processes: (1) Teacher incoming identity beliefs; (2) Teacher identity emotional episodes; (3) Teacher attributions and (4)Identity adjustment. All of our teachers exhibited a form of this process with some teachers elaborating on the ways in which pleasant emotional experiences confirmed their identities and others elaborating on the ways in which unpleasant emotional experiences caused them to confront and/or adjust their emergent identities. Implications for future research and teacher education are discussed.

Assessment as a Context for Student Engagement

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the ways in which assessment-related instructional practices empirically and theoretically link to student motivation and engagement. We discuss these links in three sections. First, we briefly look at the history of standardized testing in America’s schools, drawing connections between the use of testing in practice and student motivation. Next, we look at research on classroom-based assessment practices to discuss how they connect to student motivation. We organize our discussion according to summative and formative distinctions, concluding that summative testing systems tend to connect with traditional motivation processes such as goals and efficacy-related beliefs, whereas formative systems tend to connect with engagement-related processes such as self-regulated learning and self-determination. In the last section, we extrapolate from lessons learned in previous sections to hypothesize on the ways in which high-stakes testing practices may undermine student motivation and engagement.