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In a recent contribution, Esser and Seuring (2020) draw on data from the National Educational Panel Study to attack the widespread view that tracking in lower secondary education exacerbates inequalities in student outcomes without improving average student performance. Exploiting variation in the strictness of tracking across 13 of the 16 German federal states (e.g., whether teacher recommendations are binding), Esser and Seuring claim to demonstrate that stricter tracking after grade 4 results in better performance in grade 7 and that this can be attributed to the greater homogeneity of classrooms under strict tracking. We show these conclusions to be untenable: Esser and Seuring’s measures of classroom composition are highly dubious because the number of observed students is very small for many classrooms. Even when we adopt their classroom composition measures, simple corrections and extensions of their analysis reveal that there is no meaningful evidence for a positive relationship between classroom homogeneity and student achievement—the channel supposed to mediate the alleged positive effect of strict tracking. We go on to show that students from more strictly tracking states perform better already at the start of tracking (grade 5), which casts further doubt on the alleged positive effect of strict tracking on learning progress and leaves selection or anticipation effects as more plausible explanations. On a conceptual level, we emphasize that Esser and Seuring’s analysis is limited to states that implement different forms of early tracking and cannot inform us about the relative performance of comprehensive and tracked system that is the focus of most of the previous literature.

This study utilizes a non-equivalent groups research design to compare the educational experiences and outcomes of two student groups – those who did and those who did not receive a needs-based scholarship to attend secondary school and college in the Dowa, Kasungu, and Lilongwe Districts of Malawi. We assess impacts across a range of short and medium-term outcomes, including: school attendance, withdrawal, attainment, graduation, employment status, employment quality, and post-schooling income. The scholarship substantially reduces the household cost of participation in school, and reduces the distance travelled to school. As a result, we find that scholarship recipients attain between 1 and 1.5 years of additional school and graduate at higher rates. In terms of post-schooling outcomes, we find that recipients are in higher wage-earning occupations after leaving school. Overall, results suggest that scholarships are an effective demand-side strategy for improving schooling attainment, progression, and potentially longer-term labor market outcomes.

Teacher expectations of pupil ability can influence pupil’s educational progression, impacting subsequent streaming and exam level entry. Systematic errors in the accuracy of teacher expectations of pupil achievement may therefore have a lasting detrimental effect on a child’s education and life prospects. Associations between socioeconomic and demographic factors with teacher expectation accuracy have been previously investigated, but it is not known how expectation accuracy may relate to genetic factors. We investigated these relationships using data on nationally standardized exam results at ages 11 and 14 from a UK longitudinal cohort study. We found that teacher expectation of achievement was strongly correlated with subsequent achievement, that teacher expectation accuracy was patterned by pupil socioeconomic background but not teacher characteristics, and that teacher expectation accuracy related to pupil’s genetic liability to education. We find no strong evidence for heritability in teacher reporting accuracy, suggesting that the majority of variation in teacher expectation accuracy can be attributed to non-genetic factors.

This study examines how adolescent experience in Internet cafés (known as wangba in Chinese) relates to academic attainment in urban, rural, and Tibetan schools of China. By documenting the frustrations teenagers express in their negotiations with adults surrounding access to and use of wangba and, by comparing self-reported academic standing of students from similar backgrounds with how they differ in their experience in wangba, the study finds that visiting wangba is not strongly correlated with the probability of students reporting either high- or under-achievement. While students without any experience in wangba are substantially less likely to report academic underperformance, the association disappears after matching when the logit regression model is less model-dependent and vulnerable to the problems associated with missing data. The paper concludes that visiting wangba alone is not systematically correlated with academic attainment, and that much adult anxiety concerning adolescent visit to wangba represents moral-technological panic and, offers a simplified explanation for educational problems that have deep macrosocial roots.

Education is influenced by a broad range of factors but there has been limited research into the role that early school enjoyment plays in pupil’s educational achievement. Here we used data from a UK cohort to answer three research questions. What is the association between early school enjoyment and later academic achievement? To what extent do family background factors underlie this association? Do sex differences in school enjoyment underlie sex differences in achievement? School enjoyment was self-reported in two questionnaires completed at age 6. We used multiple imputation to account for missing covariates in this study, giving an imputed sample size of 12,135. Children’s school enjoyment at age 6 associated with sex and cognitive ability but not family socioeconomic background. For example, girls were twice as likely to report enjoying school than boys (OR: 1.97; 95% CI: 1.56, 2.48). School enjoyment strongly associated with later achievement in age 16 compulsory GCSE exams even after adjustment for socioeconomic background and cognitive ability; pupils who reported enjoying school scored on average 14.4 (95% CI: 6.9, 21.9) more points (equivalent to almost a 3-grade increase across all subjects) and were 29% more likely to obtain 5 + A*-C GCSE’s including Maths and English (OR: 1.29; 95% CI: 0.99, 1.7) than those who did not enjoy school. These results highlight the importance of school enjoyment for educational achievement. As a potentially more modifiable factor than socioeconomic background, cognitive ability or sex, school enjoyment may represent a promising intervention target for improving educational outcomes.

The increasing prevalence of non-standard employment and its adverse consequences are well documented. However, we still know little about how prevalent non-standard employment is amongst parents, and whether its negative consequences are further transmitted to their children. Using data from the German Microcensus, we provide a detailed account of the prevalence of fixed-term employment and non-standard work schedules in households with children in Germany. Second, we examine the extent to which variation in this temporal dimension of parents’ employment is associated with their children’s educational attainment. We find that in about half of all German households with children in lower secondary education, at least one parent has a short fixed-term contract or regularly works on evenings or Saturdays. Depending on the concentration of parental non-standard employment in the household, children of parents with fixed-term contracts or non-standard work schedules have a 5 to 16 percent lower probability of being in the academic educational track than children with parents in standard employment, net of parents’ social class, income and education. Based on these results, we argue that the temporal dimension of parental employment is key to understanding how changing labor markets reshape the opportunity structure for children from disadvantaged parental backgrounds and the intergenerational transmission of inequality.

Current studies suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic is worsening existing social inequalities in the field of education worldwide. In this paper, we argue that the pandemic is especially challenging for students from socially disadvantaged and educationally deprived homes, as parental engagement and resources are very important in terms of guiding and supporting students’ learning processes during this school closure period. To examine how well parents were able to help their children with schoolwork during the homeschooling period in Germany, we used data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS, n = 3,714) collected during the first such period in May/June 2020 when students were in Grade 7. Taking known mechanisms of inequality of educational opportunity into account, we explored the effects of parents’ aspirations and cultural, social, and economic capital on their ability to help their children. Our results showed that although the majority of the examined parents were able to provide good schoolwork support, as expected, we found inequalities related to social background. Parents with low education were twice as likely as highly educated parents to be unable to provide sufficient support. In our multivariate analyses, family resources had a significant positive effect on the likelihood of a parent being able to help. Moreover, regardless of the social or cultural capital endowment of the parents, good household technical equipment was associated with a higher probability of support. Thus, ensuring that students have access to technical home equipment could be a way to promote an educationally supportive learning environment across all social groups.

We present first results from an experimental evaluation of a high dosage math tutoring program implemented in a secondary school for pre-vocational education located in a low-income neighborhood in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. From a pool of 98 students in their first year of secondary school (aged 12-13) 49 were randomly assigned to receive 2-on-1 tutoring. Treated students received one class period of personalized tutoring daily in the first 16 weeks of the school year. Outcome test scores were observed at the end of the first semester and at the end of the school year. We find treatment effects of 0.44 (p

Cada día el curso de las cosas parece hacerse más veloz, los cambios son más rápidos en la gran mayoría de los ámbitos del quehacer humanos y esta aceleración de la historia que estamos viviendo, síntoma, causa y efecto de la globalización, en todas sus vertientes, y del desarrollo de las tecnologías de la información, característica de los periodos de transición está provocando que la sociedad demande crecientemente que la historia se reescriba. Así el papel que juega la educación en un contexto global crece en relación con las tendencias nacionales e internacionales, gracias a las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación y a los procesos de integración transnacional en el terreno económico, político, cultural y académico. En el siglo XXI la educación y la pedagogía parecen tener más que ver con las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación de cada país y están, más que nunca condicionadas por esas tendencias internacionales. Es importante pues hacer una reflexión sobre la relación entre las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la pedagogía, su campo de acción, lo que se está haciendo y lo que tal vez se está dejando de hacer.

This article analyzes the results of the Saber Pro, the state exam for students completing higher education, during 2007-2017 concerning the English language section. This analysis uses the reports and databases from the Instituto Colombiano para la Evaluación de la Educación (ICFES) repository and explains the policy in its historical context. The results warn of a quite worrying picture between the goals established by the Ministry of Education and the final achievements. The level of English of future Colombian professionals is not only very low but also without improvement from its beginnings in 2007 to 2017. As a conclusion, it would be necessary to review, from the universities’ perspective, the language educational policy and propose bottom-up structural alternatives that allow a sustained impulse in teacher training, methodology, and curricular and pedagogical organization. Resumen En este artículo se analizan los resultados de la prueba Saber Pro, el examen de estado para estudiantes que terminan la educación superior, en el módulo de inglés del periodo 2007-2017. Este análisis utiliza los informes y bases de datos del Instituto Colombiano para la Evaluación de la Educación (Icfes) y proporciona un breve contexto histórico de la política educativa. Los resultados advierten un panorama preocupante entre las metas establecidas por el Ministerio de Educación Nacional desde el inicio de la prueba de inglés y los logros obtenidos. El nivel de inglés de los futuros profesionales en Colombia no solo sigue siendo muy bajo, sino que además no se observa mejoramiento importante. Como conclusión, se propone revisar desde las universidades la política educativa con alternativas estructurales que permitan un impulso a la capacitación docente, la metodología y la organización curricular y pedagógica.

The global outbreak of the COVID-19 virus created new and challenging circumstances for schools, colleges and universities. In England the closure of schools and cancellation of examinations led to concerns about how pupils would be awarded A Level exam grades. These exam results have a significant impact on outcomes for pupils leaving school including access to the employment market, apprenticeships and university places. This report represents an early analysis of research exploring the impact school closures and cancellation of examinations had on students. The main aims of the study were to examine the impact (mental and academic) of predicted grades being used to award A Level grades; to explore support systems in place for students; and, to analyse differences by race, class, gender and school type. Some of the broader themes that emerged from the research included students concerns about the fairness of their A Level results; and, many students identifying structural inequalities within education being mirrored in the new processes for awarding grades.

Although Machine Learning (ML) is integrated today into various aspects of our lives, few understand the technology behind it. This presents new challenges to extend computing education early on including ML concepts in order to help students to understand its potential and limits and empowering them to become creators of intelligent solutions. Therefore, we developed an introductory course to teach basic ML concepts, such as fundamentals of neural networks, learning as well as limitations and ethical concerns in alignment with the K-12 Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence. It also teaches the application of these concepts, by guiding the students to develop a first image recognition model of recycling trash using Google Teachable Machine. In order to promote ML education, the interactive course is available online in Brazilian Portuguese to be used as an extracurricular course or in an interdisciplinary way as part of science classes covering recycling topics.

The impact of pandemic COVID-19 is observed in every sector around the world. The education sectors of India as well as world are badly affected by this. It has enforced the world wide lock down creating very bad effect on the students’ life. Around 32 crore learners stopped to move schools/colleges and all educational activities halted in India. The outbreak of COVID-19 has taught us that change is inevitable. It has worked as a catalyst for the educational institutions to grow and opt for platforms with technologies, which have not been used before. The education sector has been fighting to survive the crises with a different approach and digitising the challenges to wash away the threat of the pandemic. This paper highlights some measures taken by Govt. of India to provide seamless education in the country. Both the positive and negative impacts of COVID-19 on education are discussed and some fruitful suggestions are also pointed to carry out educational activities during the pandemic situation.

Chemistry is usually seen as a difficult subject for secondary school students. One topic they struggle is when they face chemistry formulation for the first time. The concept of oxidation number is difficult for them. The level of abstraction required is still developing in their minds. We must help them visualise it, to understand bonding and, finally, the symbolic representation of chemical compounds.We find in chemistry a visual description for bond formation: Lewis diagrams. They explicitly show molecular bonds as paired electrons. By using this simple idea, we can introduce formulation to secondary school students. Starting with binary chemical compounds, included in 3rd year of secondary schools in Spain, we can set up the foundations for their future chemistry studies. Of course, the difficulty must be progressively introduced.In this work, we show how a visual method based on Lewis diagrams improves the performance of students when writing formulae of binary chemical compounds. One important difference with current literature on how Lewis dot structures are used in education, is that, while they are usually presented as a learning goal, here we use them as a means to an end.Our results suggest that the improvement is higher for students with previous lower academic performance, low scores in linguistic competencies, and high scores in visual and artistic competencies. Most importantly, it does not worsen performance for students with high scores in linguistic competencies and low scores in visual and artistic competencies. Mathematical competencies do not seem to be so good predictors for students’ performance.Finally, within the Cognitive Load Theory framework, we show how cognitive working load, as well as an approximation of extraneous cognitive load, can be estimated by using information theory measures involving the mistakes students make.

In this study, we adapted the notion of framing, a theoretical construct that refers to a person’s expectations about social spaces (Goffman, 1974), to investigate whether teachers viewed computational thinking (CT) according to subject-specific frames. This case study aimed to understand how teachers make connections between CT and subjects targeted for integration. Epistemological framing contributed new insights on why teachers connected CT in different ways to different subjects: frame shifting focused teachers’ attention on goals and activities specific to each subject. As teachers attended to a subject’s particularities, they drew upon different epistemic resources to construct their descriptions of CT. Our participants (n=6) were teachers who taught 7th-12th grade computing and mathematics as individual subjects. Qualitative coding of interview transcripts revealed that teachers' ideas about CT in computing were strongly influenced by computer programming while their ideas about CT in mathematics corresponded with familiar ways of teaching and learning mathematics. However, rather than accepting the fragmentation of CT as the price of integration into individual subjects, we propose limiting the scope when defining CT. We explain how this non-intuitive strategy can preserve the coherence of CT and how it might be used in CT professional development (PD) for mathematics teachers.

The pandemic Covid-19 came as havoc for developing countries like India. It has significantly disrupted the education sector which is a critical determinant of a country’s economic future. It has compelled the human society to maintain social distancing. It has made people mandatory to sit indoor and sitting idle indoor may lead to mental stress. Hence, it has created more challenges to keep people engaged and free from mental stress. Open and Distance Learning (ODL) system is the best solution to meet the challenges of education during this pandemic situation of COVID-19. Every challenge is an opportunity. These challenges have also created opportunities for the educational institutes to strengthen their technological knowledge and infrastructure to tackle the Covid-19 like situation. Indian education system is more acquainted with face to face or physical teaching learning process. Most of educators and learners are not equipped with use of technology in education and there is also lack of practice and motivation towards use of technology in education which creates more challenges during pandemics. This article highlights different challenges and opportunities created by Covid-19 for ODL system of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). The steps taken by IGNOU to meet the challenges by exploring various opportunities are pointed. Some tools and techniques for distance learning which can ensure the continuity of learning during the current pandemic are described. Some suggestions for handling the challenges created by Covid-19 by exploring various opportunities for ODL system are also pointed in the article.

This study chrono-logically investigates teachers’ professional knowledge in relation to the digitally ‘boosted’ educational landscape caused by the COVID-19-pandemic. The aim is to describe how teachers employ their competences under extreme digitized circumstances compared to ordinary, to a greater extent analogically organized schooling. The study is inspired by action research where five secondary and upper secondary teachers document their work between March 19 and April 2020. A contrastive analysis highlights qualitative aspects of teachers’ (digital) competence when teaching is affected by digital “interferences” in its corporeal and material framing, a dissolved spatiality and “truncated” senses/sensuousness. Employing different dimensions of knowledge in terms of intellectus and ratio, the study argues that subjective, emotional and relational processes of teachers’ digital competence need to be prioritized in contrast to the easily measurable aspects that tend to overrun the discussions about educational digitalization and its knowledge in society.

The outbreak of the Corona virus has led to unprecedented measures in education. From March 16, all schools in the Netherlands are closed, and children must keep up with their schoolwork from home. Parents are expected to take a crucial role in this “homeschooling”: they are primarily responsible for ensuring that their children follow the curriculum. In this article I report the first results of a module in the LISS Panel that was designed to map how parents school their children in primary and secondary education. Data on a nationally representative sample of 1,318 children in primary and secondary education were gathered in April. The results show marked differences between social groups. Whereas all parents find it important that their children keep up with the schoolwork, children from advantaged backgrounds receive much more parental support and have more resources (e.g., own computer) to study from home. Differences in parental support are driven by the ability to help: parents with a higher education degree feels themselves much capable to help their children with schoolwork than lower educated parents. Parents also report that schools provide more extensive distant schooling for children in the academic track in secondary education (vwo) than for children in the pre-vocational track (vmbo). Finally, there is a clear gender gap: parents feel much more capable to support their daughters than their sons.These initial findings provide clear indications that the school shutdown in the Netherlands is likely to have strong effects on the inequality in educational opportunities.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Project-Based Learning (PjBL) is increase effectiveness, create meaningful learning and influence student attitudes in future career pursuit. There are several studies in the literature reporting different aspects of STEM into a PjBL pedagogy. However, the effect of implementing STEM PjBL in terms of improving students’ skills in self-efficacy levels in physics mechanics at high school level has not been demonstrated as expected in the previous literature. This study followed a quasi-experimental research method. Bandura’s social cognitive theory is used to assess and compare the effect of STEM PjBL with conventional teaching method on students’ self-efficacy level in learning physics among over 100 high school students. The result illustrated that STEM PjBL improve students’ self-efficacy to solve physics problem. Also, the study proposes a guideline for future research.

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 4 Quality Education has highlighted major challenges for all nations to ensure inclusive and equitable quality access to education, facilities for children, and young adults. The SDG4 is even more important for developing nations as receiving proper education or vocational training, especially in science and technology, means a foundational step in improving other aspects of their citizens’ lives. However, the extant scientific literature about STEM education still lacks focus on developing countries, even more so in the rural area. Using a dataset of 4967 observations of junior high school students from a rural area in a transition economy, the article employs the Bayesian approach to identify the interaction between gender, socioeconomic status, and students’ STEM academic achievements. The results report gender has little association with STEM academic achievements; however, female students (αa_Sex[2] = 2.83) appear to have achieved better results than their male counterparts (αa_Sex[1] = 2.68). Families with better economic status, parents with a high level of education (βb(EduMot) = 0.07), or non-manual jobs (αa_SexPJ[4] = 3.25) are found to be correlated with better study results. On the contrary, students with zero (βb(OnlyChi) = -0.14) or more than two siblings (βb(NumberofChi) = -0.01) are correlated with lower study results compared to those with only one sibling. These results imply the importance of providing women with opportunities for better education. Policymakers should also consider maintaining family size so the parents can provide their resources to each child equally.

Inquiry-based science instruction is widely advocated, but studies based on international large-scale assessments (ILSA) often show inquiry to be negatively associated with achievement. We re-examine this issue by taking a more nuanced look at the inquiry scale in PISA 2015. Previous studies using PISA and other ILSA assume that scales measuring inquiry-based instruction are invariant across regions/countries. This study tests whether measurement invariance could indeed be established, and if not, what regional patterns of instructional practice exist. This study also examines whether the association between inquiry and learning outcomes depend upon the provision of teacher guidance. Participants were 151,721 students from 5,089 schools from 10 highest and 10 lowest science performers in PISA 2015. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses found that measurement invariance cannot be established, suggesting substantial regional variation in the pattern of inquiry-based instruction. Exploratory factor analyses confirm that at the measurement level, inquiry takes different forms in each region. However, at the conceptual level many regions exhibit a pattern which contrasted between “Guided inquiry” and “Independent inquiry”. Results of structural equation modelling show that inquiry is positively associated with outcomes when it incorporates teacher guidance, and negatively when it doesn’t. This pattern of association is remarkably consistent across the 20 regions examined. These findings are in line with current theories regarding the importance of scaffolding in learning from inquiry. This study suggests that it would be misguided to use PISA findings to support arguments to scale back inquiry and other constructivist approaches to teaching science.

Parents are key players in relation to the online safety of their children. However, while evidence shows that New Zealand teens regard their parents as the first line of support in dealing with online risks and challenges, parents seem to underestimate or be unaware of the frequency of such risks. This report presents findings from a larger quantitative study about parenting, digital technologies and online risks. It focuses on parents and caregivers’ awareness and attitudes towards their child’s access and exposure to sexually explicit content, both deliberately and/or accidentally, in the prior year. We conducted a quantitative survey with parents/whānau (and caregivers) of children aged 9 to 17 years old. The study was conducted in New Zealand based on a nationally representative sample. Our findings show that parents’ main online concerns are their children sharing nudes of themselves, being treated in a hurtful way, and seeing sexually explicit content. Also, the study found that 1 in 5 parents said their children were exposed to sexually explicit content online in the prior year.

In Applied AI, or ‘machine learning’, methods such as neural networks are used to train computers to perform tasks without human intervention. In this article, we question the applicability of these methods to education. In particular, we consider a case of recent attempts from data scientists to add AI elements to a handful of online learning environments, such as Khan Academy and the ASSISTments intelligent tutoring system. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), we provide a detailed examination of the scholarly work carried out by several data scientists around the use of ‘deep learning’ to predict aspects of educational performance. This approach draws attention to relations between various (problematic) units of analysis: flawed data, partially incomprehensible computational methods, narrow forms of educational knowledge baked into the online environments, and a reductionist discourse of data science with evident economic ramifications. These relations can be framed ethnographically as a ‘controversy’ that casts doubts on AI as an objective scientific endeavour, whilst illuminating the confusions, the disagreements and the economic interests that surround its implementations.

This publication deals with the experiences of employees, cooperation partners and opponents of the Norwegian large scale OER platform NDLA. Since 2006, the counties in Norway have been financing OER, thus ensuring access to high-quality educational materials. In 13 interviews, opportunities and challenges are analysed from the perspective of the experts. Quality assurance, professionalization processes, user-oriented design as well as licensing issues and the development of a new platform are also discussed. The potential of open educational resources for inclusive education is shown.

Data from the English secondary school admissions cycle reveals a substantial ethnic gap in the proportion accessing their chosen schools. Children from minority ethnic groups are, on average, 17% less likely to be admitted into their top-ranked secondary school, compared to white children. This gap is large even after controlling for socio-economic status and prior attainment. However, constraints on the length of preference lists mean that stated preferences may not be truthful, as parents may have incentives to strategise by excluding preferred schools. By accounting for strategic stated preferences and biased beliefs about chances of admission, this paper recovers parametric estimates of preference parameters and the degree of strategic selection. To examine the relative contribution of geographic sorting, strategies, and market design (mechanism and admission rules), the corrected revealed preference estimates are used to estimate expected welfare under three scenarios. The analysis reveals that both underlying preferences and strategising behaviour exhibit substantial heterogeneity by ethnicity, income and ability. When comparing welfare, I find that differences in admissions priority between white and minority ethnic families create small but significant and consistent differences in welfare. However, larger welfare differences are due to differences in preferences and strategy between the two groups.

How are young people constituted as subjects in schools today, as digital technology becomes increasingly widespread? Buzz words for twenty-first-century education include “creativity”, “critique”, “collaboration”, “communication”, or sets of core skills that are often linked to the now classic flexible, entrepreneurial selves of neoliberal imaginaries (Miller & Rose, 2008; Sennett, 1998). This chapter overviews recent critical scholarship on education and technology in the twenty-first-century, highlighting three aspects: practices, datafication and subject formation. It then explores subjectivation in more detail, looking closely at one worked example to map the kinds of future students imagined in current policy (in Germany and across Europe). Mainstream policies for education in a digital world foreground three digital subject figures: The User, the Critic, and the Maker. Each of these, in some ways, re-establishes dominant power relations and relations of inequality in today’s schools. On the margins of the policy discourse are, however, further subject figures which interrupt dominant imaginaries: The Expert, the Ecosoph, and the Social Designer. The chapter suggests that these marginal subject figures illustrate diffraction patterns in today’s world in which we can think otherwise about what constitutes a livable, legitimate life.

As digital technologies become more prominent in schools, and a host of new media products appear in classrooms, critical questions are being asked about the erasure of power and politics in contemporary education. To explore the discourse on digital education, this paper draws on discourse analysis of ethnographic interviews with for-profit and non-profit organizations in the field. It asks (i) what industry insiders describe as driving change in contemporary educational technology (edtech), and (ii) whether new actors/technologies shaping a novel educational hegemony, and if so, what this hegemony looks like. Initial findings suggest that while the teacher was seen as key to driving change in printed educational materials, three different discourses appear when describing change in today’s educational technology. In the first, learners drive change; the focus lies on the individual dimension. In the second, schools drive change; the systemic dimension. In the third, data drive change; the analytics dimension. Linking these three discourses is a shift from “education” to “learning”. The accounts of educational technology simultaneously advocate for improving opportunities for all students, especially weaker or disadvantaged learners, and also strengthen the hegemonic shift across policy and practice towards an instrumental understanding of education. Overall, the paper suggests that power and politics are by no means erased from the edtech industry’s accounts of digital technologies and datafication. The socio-material affordances engineered into the technologies invite particular teaching practices and thus affect power relations in education.

This study bridges discipline silos between science courses and computer science by indicating how they fit into and complement each other. A study of eight K12 teachers and 26 K12 secondary students participated in a GenCyber (cybersecurity) camp for a week during July 2018. External evaluations of the camp show its success and how cybersecurity fits into science and mathematics classrooms. This GenCyber camp was a five-day introductory camp for middle school and high school teachers and students. The GenCyber camp offered morning modules of CORE instruction, or cyber-oriented reinforced education, with the afternoon focused on differentiated learning adventures for teachers and students in specialized subject options engaging in hands-on labs. Most instruction utilized Micro:bit technology. Teachers and students made explicit connections to chemistry (battery function chemistry, sensors), physics (frequency, particle vs. wave, movement, acceleration, photon detection, magnetic fields), biology (simulating biological behavior, synchronizing, pattern detection) and mathematics (matrix, functions, modeling, unit conversion).

The Ten Simple Rules (TSR) series covers topics ranging from the very broad (career paths, scientific communication) to the more specific (illustrating figures, managing software), and all the various TSRs focus on one’s scientific and professional development. The present TSR shares that goal, and is authored by consumers and suppliers of research opportunities. Here, the consumers are individuals in their late teenage years, i.e., late-high school (LHS) or early-college (EC), who are either considering or actively searching for their first opportunity in a research lab at a university, national lab or beyond (ANM and JC). The suppliers are university researchers (CM and PEB), along with the views of a seasoned educator (MC). We write this TSR for three reasons. First, research requests have become more frequent in recent years and, while our general area has been computational biology, that’s probably secondary: the Rules articulated here may apply equally well across many disciplines. Second, in the past decade or so there has been an astonishing increase in the intensity of HS students, on many fronts—in terms of technical skill-sets (e.g., mastery of programming languages), academic preparation and scientific sophistication (e.g., courses in advanced math), and beyond (e.g., career-related ambitions, such as searching for research opportunities!). Finally, some of these HS students who spent time in our laboratories have gone on to productive and rewarding research careers, underscoring that this is a formative stage in one’s scientific career. Reflecting on these experiences, through the eyes of trainee and mentor, we hope that this TSR affords some useful tips on whether research is right for you, how to go about procuring a research position, and the broader topic of navigating the LHS/EC stage of your own scientific trajectory.

In recent years there has been an increase of immigrants in the United States and upward mobility has become extremely challenging through secondary education. Higher education is deemed to be one of the most important factors associated with upward mobility and economic stability. While the achievement gap continues to widen, children of immigrants continue to struggle to assimilate and in gaining access to the white middle-class mainstream. Ultimately, the snowball effect of intergenerational low socioeconomic status rolls over on to the disadvantage immigrant children in the new generation. I propose that children of U.S. born parents have a greater educational attainment than children of immigrants. Using the 2016 General Social Survey (N= 1,899) ¬ this study investigates the relationship between parents’ place of birth and respondents’ educational attainment. At the bivariate level, children of immigrants attain fewer years of school. However, this relationship appears to be largely mediated by parental education. After controlling for sex, race, and perceived income at age 16, it was found that respondents' educational attainment is not greatly affected by parents' birthplace but by parents’ years of education completed. Guided by insights from Bourdieu’s theory of Habitus and straight-line assimilation theory, the findings show that education plays a major role in patterns related to the assimilation theory and the acquisition of the habitus. Respondents’ educational attainment is fundamentally driven by the systematic structures in society concerning parent’s education and status.

Active Learning Classrooms (ALCs) are learning spaces specially designed to optimize the practice of active learning and amplify its positive effects in learners from young children through university-level learners. As interest in and adoption of ALCs has increased rapidly over the last decade, the need for grounded research in their effects on learners and schools has grown proportionately. In this paper, we review the peer-reviewed published research on ALCs, dating back to the introduction of “studio” classrooms and the SCALE-UP program up to the present day. We investigate the literature and summarize findings on the effects of ALCs on learning outcomes, student engagement, and the behaviors and practices of instructors as well as the specific elements of ALC design that seem to contribute the most to these effects. We also look at the emerging cultural impact of ALCs on institutions of learning, and we examine the drawbacks of the published research as well as avenues for potential future research in this area.

This study determines the effects of the application of multimedia technology -Computer-Assisted language learning (CALL) in the development of five language skills using ‘English Discoveries’. It shows that the effects of multimedia materials for language learning are not necessarily better as a whole, but different from those obtained in traditional classroom work. Only two of the five variables showed significant differences in favor of the use of Multimedia: pronunciation and oral production. However, grammar showed opposite results. The teachers’ and students’ reactions suggest the need to adapt their roles to the new context in the future use of CALL and multimedia. The high level of acceptance of this type of materials by the students shows the need for more research and better adaptation of activities to the new context.

This paper investigates whether school socioeconomic composition has a stronger association with standardized test scores among lower-socioeconomic status (lower-SES) students than it does among higher-SES students. School socioeconomic composition, measured here as average SES, has repeatedly been demonstrated to have a strong influence on a variety of student outcomes, but there has been little systematic examination of whether this association is stronger for more disadvantaged students. Such a finding would be consistent with evidence from related research areas suggesting that the learning outcomes of disadvantaged students are particularly sensitive to schools and school characteristics. We use data from a large, cross -national study—the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)—to examine patterns across a wide variety of economic, demographic, and cultural contexts. Contrary to expectation, we find no general pattern of school socioeconomic composition being more strongly associated with test scores among lower-SES students; if anything, the relationship appears to be slightly weaker among lower-SES students.

This article deals with the spread of computer applications in education in general and in Higher Education, in particular, making up the new context of Information and Communication Technology and the need for teacher training. Today, only a comparatively small proportion of teachers and schools are using the technology in an extended way. However, it is still very early to show significant or dramatic changes since the current situation cannot be taken as anything other than an initial stage. However, the impact on individual schools and individual practitioners, where the innovation has been made available, is said to be significant.

Research calls attention to the divergent school and labor market trajectories of Europe’s youth while, across the Atlantic, researchers describe the long-lasting consequences of poverty on adolescent development. In this paper we incorporate both processes to shed a new light on a classic concern in the sociology of stratification: how are adolescents’ aspirations, expectations, and school performance shaped by the combined socioeconomic contexts of family, school and neighborhood life? Theoretically, social contexts provide children with cultural resources that may foster their ambitions and bolster their academic performance. Reference group theory instead highlights how seemingly positive settings can depress educational performance as well as aspirations and expectations. We empirically test these competing claims, drawing on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) which describes the school and neighborhood trajectories of 7,934 British children followed from birth to adolescence. We find that, generally, childhood school and neighborhood deprivation is negatively associated with adolescents’ school performance, aspirations and expectations for their future, in line with the cultural resource perspective. However, there are important exceptions to this pattern which point to reference group processes for (1) children of highly-educated parents, whose academic performance especially suffers from growing up in a poor neighborhood, and (2) for children from low-educated parents, whose academic aspirations and expectations are unexpectedly high when they either went to an affluent school or lived in an affluent neighborhood—but not both. We conclude by discussing implications for theory, policy and future research.

Despite growing descriptive evidence of discrimination against minority religious groups and atheists in the United States, little experimental work exists studying whether individuals face differential barriers to receiving public services depending on their religious affiliation. Here we report results from a large-scale audit study of street-level bureaucrats in the American public school system. We emailed the principals of more than 45,000 public schools and asked for a meeting, randomly assigning the religious affiliation/non-affiliation of the family. To get at potential mechanisms, we also randomly assigned belief intensity.We find evidence of substantial discrimination against Muslims and atheists. These individuals are substantially less likely to receive a response, with discrimination growing when they signal that their beliefs are more intense. Protestants and Catholics face no discrimination unless they signal that their religious beliefs are intense. Our ?findings suggest that minority religious groups and atheists face important barriers to equal representation in the public arena.

Envisioning the Graduate of the Future (March 8 to April 5, 2018) was an experiment in rapidly producing a compelling, open, online learning experience. This massive open online course (MOOC) featured schools at various stages of developing their vision of a high school graduate. Over 2,000 educators and others from across the United States and 100+ countries registered for a collaborative and exploratory design process to develop a graduate profile, a shareable document that conveys what a community and/or school believes a high school graduate should know and be able to do.

This report presents the findings of a nationally representative study whose purpose was to explore the experiences, attitudes, and behaviours of New Zealand teens about digital communications including harm and/or distress. While there is growing interest in examining young people’s experiences and use of digital technologies, including the challenges and risks teens face, evidence based on representative data in the New Zealand context has been unavailable. The study focuses on the prevalence of New Zealand teens' experiences with a range of unwanted digital communications in the previous year and the impact these experiences had on them, both emotionally and in carrying out everyday life activities. It also describes teens’ responses, the effectiveness of their coping actions, and to whom they would turn for help in the future.

The literature on achievement inequality has recently started to focus on the dynamics of the socio-economic achievement gap in cognitive abilities. The main findings come from research in the U.S. revealing that the 90th/10th income achievement gap has widened by about 50% in the last 30 years. This chapter aims to investigate whether there are discernible patterns in the evolution of the achievement gap from a comparative perspective. Using over 15 years of data and 32 countries from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), I find that there is considerable variation in the way in which the gap is evolving, with the U.S. and Germany closing at about 50% and 30% in the last 15 years while France is widening at a similar rate. I find that curricular tracking and vocational enrollment explain 40% of the variance in the achievement gap between countries and show that the relationship is conditioned by a strong interaction. Low curricular tracking is associated with a small achievement gap, whereas high levels of curricular tracking is associated with wide achievement gaps. However, once tracking is coupled with high vocational enrollment this can remedy the potential adverse effects and reduce the gap by over 1 standard deviation. I use simulations to show that switching to less curricular tracking can help decrease a country’s SES gap by about 11% while switching to more tracking would increase the achievement gap by about 51% percent.