Educational Researcher

Nhiều phương pháp giảng dạy mặc nhiên cho rằng kiến thức khái niệm có thể được trừu xuất từ các tình huống mà nó được học và sử dụng. Bài viết này lập luận rằng giả định này không thể tránh khỏi việc hạn chế hiệu quả của các phương pháp như vậy. Dựa trên nghiên cứu mới nhất về nhận thức trong hoạt động hàng ngày, các tác giả lập luận rằng kiến thức là định vị, là một phần sản phẩm của hoạt động, bối cảnh và văn hóa nơi nó được phát triển và sử dụng. Họ thảo luận về việc quan điểm này ảnh hưởng đến sự hiểu biết của chúng ta về học tập như thế nào, và họ nhận thấy rằng trường học truyền thống quá thường xuyên bỏ qua tầm ảnh hưởng của văn hóa trường học lên những gì được học ở trường. Như một giải pháp thay thế cho các thực tiễn truyền thống, họ đề xuất học nghề nhận thức (Collins, Brown, & Newman, đang chuẩn bị xuất bản), mở rộng đặc trưng bản chất định vị của kiến thức. Họ xem xét hai ví dụ về giảng dạy toán học thể hiện những đặc điểm chính của cách tiếp cận này đối với giảng dạy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a seismic and ongoing disruption to K–12 schooling. Using test scores from 5.4 million U.S. students in Grades 3–8, we tracked changes in math and reading achievement across the first 2 years of the pandemic. Average math test scores in the fall of 2021 in Grades 3–8 were .20–.27 standard deviation (SD) lower relative to same-grade peers in the fall of 2019, while reading test scores decreased by .09–.18 SD. Achievement gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by .10–.20 SD, primarily during the 2020–2021 school year. Achievement disparities by student race/ethnicity also widened substantively. Observed declines are more substantial than during other recent school disruptions, such as those due to natural disasters.

Policymakers, funders, and researchers today view research–practice partnerships (RPPs) as a promising approach for expanding the role of research in improving educational practice. Although studies in other fields provide evidence of the potential for RPPs, studies in education are few. This article provides a review of available evidence of the outcomes and dynamics of RPPs in education and related fields. It then outlines a research agenda for the study of RPPs that can guide funders’ investments and help developing partnerships succeed.

I argue that enrollment of a diverse student body is but a pragmatic first step toward the broader social goal of inclusion and ask whether motives for campus diversification are aligned with pedagogic goals. I address this question by focusing on inclusion, namely, organizational strategies and practices that promote meaningful social and academic interactions among students who differ in their experiences, views, and traits. After illustrating the contours and pace of diversification, I discuss challenges to achieving meaningful integration as campuses become more racially diverse by focusing on ethnic programming and evidence about students’ social interaction patterns. Integration is not an automatic by-product of campus diversity; therefore, to harness the benefits of diverse student bodies, institutional leaders must pursue deliberate strategies that promote inclusion.

The purposes of this article are to position mixed methods research ( mixed research is a synonym) as the natural complement to traditional qualitative and quantitative research, to present pragmatism as offering an attractive philosophical partner for mixed methods research, and to provide a framework for designing and conducting mixed methods research. In doing this, we briefly review the paradigm “wars” and incompatibility thesis, we show some commonalities between quantitative and qualitative research, we explain the tenets of pragmatism, we explain the fundamental principle of mixed research and how to apply it, we provide specific sets of designs for the two major types of mixed methods research ( mixed-model designs and mixed-method designs), and, finally, we explain mixed methods research as following (recursively) an eight-step process. A key feature of mixed methods research is its methodological pluralism or eclecticism, which frequently results in superior research (compared to monomethod research). Mixed methods research will be successful as more investigators study and help advance its concepts and as they regularly practice it.

Curriculum materials for Grades K–12 that are intended to promote teacher learning in addition to student learning have come to be called educative curriculum materials. How can K–12 curriculum materials be designed to best promote teacher learning? What might teacher learning with educative curriculum materials look like? The authors present a set of design heuristics for educative curriculum materials to further the principled design of these materials. They build from ideas about teacher learning and organize the heuristics around important parts of a teacher’s knowledge base: subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge for topics, and pedagogical content knowledge for disciplinary practices. These heuristics provide a context for a theoretically oriented discussion of how features of educative curriculum materials may promote teacher learning, by serving as cognitive tools that are situated in teachers’ practice. The authors explore challenges in the design of educative curriculum materials, such as the tension between providing guidance and choice.

One of McKenna, Robinson, and Miller’s major problems in proposing a research agenda for whole language is that they do not understand what whole language is. It is not an alternate methodology for language arts instruction. It is an educational paradigm complete with theoretical, philosophical, and political assumptions. As such, it has its own congruent research agenda. What prevents McKenna et al. from understanding whole language and from seeing the legitimacy of whole language-generated research is paradigm blindness. What encourages them to pretend to a role of neutral statesmen are particulars of their own paradigm (which they are also blind to) and the dominant position of that paradigm. What makes their proposal so outrageous is their presumption to speak for whole language educators and their attempt to impose their whole language-violating agenda on them while expecting those educators to cooperate in the violation.

Currently, considerable debate focuses on whether mind is located in the head or in the individual-in-social-action, and whether development is cognitive self-organization or enculturation into established practices. In this article, I question assumptions that initiate this apparent forced choice between constructivist and sociocultural perspectives. I contend that the two perspectives are complementary. Also, claims that either perspective captures the essence of people and communities should be rejected for pragmatic justifications that consider the contextual relevance and usefulness of a perspective. I argue that the sociocultural perspective informs theories of the conditions far the possibility of learning, whereas theories developed from the constructivist perspective focus on what students learn and the processes by which they do so.

As curricular qualities of various narrative practices become more diverse and widely established, a clearer understanding of their particular nature and function should accompany their use. This article reviews rather far-flung practices in relation to the particular narrative functions on which they rely. The author uses Schwab’s commonplaces as common denominators that cut across practices to determine different locations for curricular gain. Then, without wanting to tear apart what is essentially a holistic phenomenon, the author looks at narrative curricula through three different lenses, named by Genette (1980) “narrative,” “story,” and “narrating.” These facets of narrative are highlighted in different ways in various curricula, prompting different forms of narrative engagement. They help locate and distinguish different outcomes.