Can Education Research Be Divorced From Politics and Economics ?

Some blog followers might be interested in “Can Education Research Be Divorced From Politics and Economics ?” [Hake (2011a)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In response to my post “Keynes & Hayek (was ‘Re: History of regulation of finance’)” [Hake (2011c)], PhysLrnR’s William Robertson (2011) wrote (paraphrasing):

“I keep misreading the title ‘PhysLrnR’ of this list, because I could have sworn the word physics is there but the words politics and economics clearly are not. Must be another of my silly non-sequiturs.”

I think Robertson's misperception is due more to non-cogito than non-sequitur. According to the statement on the PhysLrnR archive page http://bit.ly/tLtsIG, one of the issues upon which PhysLrnR is intended to focus is “Political Policy and Social Impacts on Physics Education Research and the Teaching of Physics.”

If education research hopes to affect any change in the current educational system IT CANNOT DIVORCE ITSELF FROM POLITICS AND ECONOMICS - witness the baleful effects on teaching and student learning of NCLB and RTT (Race to the Top) in K-12 as discussed in e.g., The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education [Ravitch (2010, 2011)].
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To access the complete 15 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/uRSYoQ .

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References
which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi
http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com
http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

“ ‘Basic scientists,’ who define basic as ‘looking to the parts,’ need to learn that putting parts together to understand whole systems is equally basic. The scientist who says that synthesis is ‘applied,’ as if it were an inferior activity, must ask which is intellectually more difficult and ultimately more basic, reductionism or synthesism. Surely both are necessary, but we have had too little synthesis, and our science curricula in schools have failed to fulfill their promise because of this. The scientist who uses his discipline to learn more and more about less and less must connect his specialty to the real world as an entirety. Anyone who sets boundaries to his field of interest is limiting his capacity to grow. An old discipline has already yielded what it can; now knowledge must be arranged in different ways and given different names....”
Howard T. & Elisabeth C. Odum (1981)

REFERENCES [All URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 14 Nov 2011.]

Odum, H.T. & E.C. Odum. 1981. Energy Basis For Man and Nature. McGraw-Hill. Barnes & Nobel information http://bit.ly/uhZ9lA.

Hake, R.R. 2011a. “Can Education Research Be Divorced From Politics and Economics ?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/uRSYoQ. Post of 14 Nov 2011 07:58:50-0800-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Hake, R.R. 2011c. “Keynes & Hayek (was ‘'Re: History of regulation of finance’), ” online on the OPEN! Dewey-L archives at http://bit.ly/vkKmaw. Post of 9 Nov 2011 10:23:43-0800 to Dewey-L. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake’sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/uSEuEz with a provision for comments.

Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?

Some blog followers might be interested in discussion-list post “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?” [Hake (2011)].

The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In his PhysLrnR post Rob Spencer pointed out that Sanders & Rivers (1996) in “Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement” concluded that “Within grade levels, the single most dominant factor affecting student academic gain is teacher effect.” This post considers four items relevant to Spencer's post:

I . VALUE-ADDED ASSESSMENT (VAA) criticized earlier in (a) “First, Let's Fire All the Teachers!” [Hake (2010a,b)], and (b) “Value-Added Inequities: Should Value-Added Measures Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?” [Hake (2011a,b)]; and in this post by reference to (c) “Using Student Progress To Evaluate Teachers: A Primer on Value-Added Models” [Braun (2005) http://bit.ly/gZiJdH], (d) “Challenges of Value-Added Assessment” [Doran & Fleischman (2005) http://bit.ly/dF6CuB], (e) “Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers” [Baker, Barton, Darling-Hammond, Haertel, Ladd, Linn, Ravitch, Rothstein, Shavelson, & Shepard (2010) http://bit.ly/h8k5Fw], (f) The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education [Ravitch (2010) http://amzn.to/faJ9JZ].

II. SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS (SES) stressed by Bernard Ricca, who pointed to Toni Feder's 2009 Physics Today report on Marder & Bansal (2009). Their statistical-mechanics study of “Flow and diffusion of high-stakes test scores” http://bit.ly/hYbbLe indicated that: Poverty is a more powerful influence on test scores than value added by teachers and schools. The case that poverty is an overriding influence on students' classroom achievement has been forcefully argued by David Berliner in “Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform” [Berliner (2009) <http://bit.ly/ff8BVj>], and “Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success” [Berliner (2010) <http://bit.ly/fqiCUA>].

III. LESSONS FROM THE PHYSICS EDUCATION REFORM EFFORT suggest that: (a) high school, college, and university courses employing “Interactive Engagement" (IE) methods result in average normalized gains g(ave) in conceptual understanding that are about two standard deviations greater the g(ave) achieved by traditional (T) passive-student lecture courses [Hake (1998a,b; 2008); (b) “Teachers who possess both content knowledge and ‘pedagogical content knowledge’ are better equipped to deliver IE instruction” [Hake (2002)]; and (c) paraphrasing Wells et al. (1995): “teacher expertise is the critical factor in improving introductory physics instruction.” I suspect that the growing body of educational research in disciplines other than physics will eventually show that these same lessons apply to most other academic subjects.

IV. IS THE 'TEACHER EFFECT' THE DOMINANT FACTOR IN STUDENTS' ACADEMIC GAIN?" Judging from the all above:

(a) if “academic gain” means “gain in higher-level learning for U.S. K-12 students,” then the answer is: “NO! POVERTY is the dominant factor” - see ‘I’ and ‘II’ above, and the next most important factor is the degree to which ‘Interactive Engagement’ is provided by courses and teachers - see III above”;

(b) if “academic gain” means “gain in higher-level learning for students in higher education” then the answer is: “The dominant factor in promoting academic gain is the degree to which ‘Interactive Engagement’ in provided by courses and teachers - see III above.”

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To access the complete 69 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/g6UWUZ.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University

Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands

President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the

Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi

http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com

http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

“The [Race to the Top] initiative should support research based on data that links student test scores with their teachers, but should not prematurely promote the use of value-added approaches (which evaluate teachers based on gains in their students' performance) to reward or punish teachers.”

“Letter Report to the U.S. Dept. of Education on the Race to the Top Fund” [NRC (2009)]

REFERENCES [All URL’s accessed on 08 April 2011 and shortened by http://bit.ly/.]

Hake, R.R. 2011. “Is the ‘Teacher Effect’ the Dominant Factor in Students’ Academic Gain?” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/g6UWUZ. Post of 7 Apr 2011 17:51:59-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.

NRC. 2009. National Research Council, Board on Testing and Assessment (chaired by E.H. Haertel), “Letter Report to the U.S. Department of Education on the Race to the Top Fund,” online at http://bit.ly/dOg8v6.