Placing physics undergraduates into a state of confusion: Why we must deliberately perplex learners during their degree course

In this opinion piece (based on personal teaching experience and independent study of the literature) I outline how we as teachers deliberately confuse our students during their physics degrees. I explain how the passing through this confused state can be thought of as a rite of passage for students, and suggest how a greater awareness of this can assist our teaching

Changes in Children’s Cognitive Development at the Start of School in England 2001 – 2008

Since 1997, England has seen massive changes in the Early Years including the introduction of an early childhood curriculum, free pre-school education for three-year-olds and local programmes for disadvantaged communities. Many of these initiatives took time to introduce and become established. Beginning in 2001, and each year thereafter until 2008, the authors collected consistent data from thousands of children when they started school at the age of four on a range of variables, chosen because they are good predictors of later success. These included vocabulary, early reading and early mathematics. Children from the same set of 472 state primary schools in England were assessed each year. This paper contributes to the existing studies of educational trends over time by examining the extent to which children's scores on these measures changed over that period; in general, they were found to have remained stable

The economic benefits of effective reception classes

Report looking at the association between progress in maths and English during the reception year, and earnings in later life

Absolute effects of schooling as a reference for the interpretation of educational intervention effects

Knowledge of the absolute effects of schooling provides a useful reference for the interpretation of the effectiveness of educational interventions. We use discontinuities in test scores between the oldest pupils in one birth cohort and the youngest in the next to assess the absolute effects of schooling. Our study includes 90 % of all pupils in year-groups 4–6 of primary education (ages 7–10) in Northern Ireland. Assignment to year-groups is strictly determined by date of birth in Northern Ireland. This creates a situation which parallels randomized controlled experimentation. The findings support the view that the guidelines suggested by Cohen (in 1969) may be overly ambitious when evaluating the effectiveness of educational interventions

Assessing school effects without controlling for prior achievement?

The research findings presented in this paper illustrate how the “value added” of schooling can be assessed empirically using cross-sectional data. Application of the regression-discontinuity approach within a multilevel framework produces both an estimate of the absolute effect of 1 year schooling and an estimate of the variation across schools of this effect. In the study reported here, the approach was applied to both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal dataset. The research findings indicate to what extent different results are produced when cross-sectional as opposed to longitudinal data are analysed

The Tools of Teacher Evaluation: What Should Be Used in Teacher Evaluation from the Teachers’ Perspective

This paper presents a study that was conducted to investigate the tools of teacher evaluation. The focus is on what teachers state about such tools in terms of what should be used when they are evaluated. Teachers were asked by questionnaire about their support of observation, students’ achievement, self-evaluation, peer-evaluation, student evaluation and portfolios. The sample consisted of 599 teachers and heads of departments from nine primary schools in three different educational districts in Kuwait. The most favoured approach was observation, and the least favoured was student evaluation. Nevertheless, the results show that teachers support the use of several tools in their evaluation

The development of a computer assisted design, analysis and testing system for analysing students’ performance

Recent years have seen increased application of Computer Assisted Assessment (CAA) in education at various levels, and a variety of computer software systems have been developed for use in computer-based testing and analysis. However, many existing system are primarily designed to provide objective assessment of students and analysis of test items. The present study presents the development of a Computer Assisted Design, Analysis and Testing System (CADATS) that can be used by primary and secondary schools and other test organisations to undertake computer assisted assessment. The system incorporates an Item Response Theory (IRT) model – the Rasch model to facilitate the administration of IRT – based tests on computers and the analysis of test items and students’ performance using modern test theories. Specifically, the system has been created to design and undertake computer-based tests (CBTs), including the Computer Adaptive Tests (CATs), and to undertake diagnostic analysis on students’ performance at both individual and school levels in order to identify curriculum areas where students are under performing

Catapult Description of Magnetic Fields and Forces

In many high school teaching materials the force on a current-carrying wire in a magnetic field is discussed using an idea based on a so-called “catapult field” (cf. Fig. 1), an engaging depiction of magnetic forces, albeit one which, to the best of our knowledge, has neither been used in college-level educational material or scrutinized in academic journals. Here we examine carefully the physical basis of the “catapult field” concept, and find both its accuracy and utility seriously questionable