Validation Study of Elementary School Teacher Reports

9722723目前改善美国学校数学和科学教育的努力受到基于对学校及其学生的全国性调查的研究的强烈影响。关于课程内容和教学实践的高质量数据越来越被视为理解学生教育结果的变异性的关键。这种需求很可能在小学层面上最大，因为那里的国家数据相对稀缺。这项拟议的研究旨在通过评估从早期小学教师那里收集的关于他们教授什么和如何教授的数据的有效性，来提高对小学教育和结果差异的理解。美国教育部国家教育统计中心即将开始一项史无前例的数据收集工作，名为幼儿纵向研究(ECLS)。ECLS将于1998年秋季开始，从1000多所小学中抽取23,000名具有全国代表性的幼稚园儿童作为样本。这些学生将被跟踪到五年级，数据将每年从他们的老师那里收集。教师问卷包括一组广泛的关于课程和教学的问题，但对这些测量的有效性知之甚少：它们在多大程度上衡量了实际感兴趣的现象？作为美国有史以来对早期基础教育进行的最大规模的研究，ECLS的数据和数据收集工具将在未来多年被其他研究所借鉴，并将对课程和教学的构思和研究产生重大影响。显然，把乐器做得尽可能好有很大的好处。为了解决有效性问题，拟议的研究将对12所学校的60名幼儿园、一年级和二年级教师进行实地测试版本的ECLS教师问卷调查。然后，这些教师将完成他们如何利用自己的时间教授数学和科学的日常日志。该项目将收集课堂上使用的文本和材料的广泛档案记录，并对这些信息进行编码，使其与调查问卷项目相比较。然后，将每日日志和档案数据与调查问卷数据进行系统比较，以找出一致和不一致之处。如果研究在1996-97学年的春季进行，教师班级中随机抽样的儿童的认知成绩测试数据将会与从教师那里收集的课程和教学变量相关联。在分析工作之后，将与参与教师举行汇报会议和焦点小组，作为进一步检查研究人员对结果的解释的手段。这项研究将编写记录整个项目的技术报告，以及侧重于研究的一般方法和实质性影响的期刊文章。这些文件将在与数学和科学教育研究领域的主要机构密切磋商的情况下编写。

9722723 Hoffer Current efforts to improve mathematics and science education in American schools are strongly influenced by research based on national surveys of schools and their students. Highquality data on curriculum content and instructional practice are increasingly seen as crucial to understanding the variability in student educational outcomes. This need may well be greatest at the elementary school level, where national data are relatively scarce. The proposed study seeks to improve the understanding of elementary schooling and outcome differences, by assessing the validity of data collected from early elementary teachers on what they teach and how they teach it. The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics is about to embark on an unprecedented data collection effort, titled the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS). The ECLS will begin in fall 1998 with a nationally-representative sample of 23,000 kindergartners drawn from over 1,000 elementary schools. These students will be followed through the fifth grade, and data will be collected from their teachers each year. The teacher questionnaires include extensive sets of items asking about curriculum and instruction, but little is known about the validity of these measures: To what extent do they measure the phenomena of actual interest? As the largest study ever conducted of early elementary education in the United States, the ECLS data and data-collection instruments will be drawn upon by other studies for many years to come, and will greatly influence how curriculum and instruction are conceived and studied. Clearly, there are great benefits to making the instruments as good as possible. To address the issues of validity, the proposed study will administer field-test versions of the ECLS teacher questionnaires to a sample of 60 kindergarten, first-grade, and second-grade teachers in 12 schools. These teachers will then complete daily logs of how they used their time to teach mathematics and scie nce. The project will collect extensive archival records of the texts and materials used in the classes, and will code this information to make it comparable with the questionnaire items. The daily log and archive-derived data will then be systematically compared with the questionnaire data to identify points of agreement and disagreement. If the study is conducted in the spring ofthe 1996-97 school year, cognitive achievement test data for random samples of children in the teachers' classes will be available, and will be correlated with the curriculum and instruction variables collected from the teachers. The analytic efforts will be followed by debriefing sessions and focus groups with the participating teachers as a means of further checking the researchers' interpretations of the results. The study will produce technical reports documenting the entire project, as well as journal articles focussing on the general methodological and substantive implications of the study. These documents will be written in close consultation with leading authorities in research on mathematics and science education.