Validation Study of Elementary School Teacher Reports

小行星9722723 目前，美国学校改善数学和科学教育的努力受到了基于全国学校及其学生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成果差异的关键。这种需要在小学一级可能最大，因为这一级的国家数据相对较少。这项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什么和如何教的数据的有效性，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前所未有的数据收集工作，名为早期儿童纵向研究（ECLS）。ECLS将于1998年秋季开始，从1，000多所小学抽取具有全国代表性的23，000名学生作为样本。这些学生将被跟踪到五年级，每年将从他们的老师那里收集数据。教师问卷包括广泛的项目，询问有关课程和教学，但鲜为人知的是，这些措施的有效性：他们在多大程度上衡量的现象，实际利益？作为美国有史以来规模最大的早期基础教育研究，ECLS的数据和数据收集工具将在未来许多年内被其他研究所借鉴，并将极大地影响课程和教学的构思和研究。显然，尽可能地使仪器好有很大的好处。 为了解决的有效性问题，拟议的研究将管理ECLS教师问卷的实地测试版本的样本60幼儿园，一年级，二年级教师在12所学校。然后，这些教师将完成他们如何使用他们的时间来教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大量档案记录，并将对这些信息进行编码，使其与问卷项目相比较。然后将每日日志和档案数据与调查表数据进行系统比较，以确定一致和不一致之处。如果这项研究在1996-97学年春季进行，就可以获得教师班级中随机抽样儿童的认知成就测试数据，并将其与从教师那里收集的课程和教学变量相关联。分析工作之后，将与参与教师举行情况汇报会和焦点小组会议，作为进一步检查研究人员对结果的解释的手段。 这项研究将产生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。这些文件将与数学和科学教育研究领域的主要权威机构密切协商编写。

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.