38th Annual PDK/Gallup Poll

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Nel Noddings Sources

Nel Noddings, The ethics of care and education

Research Jumpstarts

Making Mathematics Accessible to All Learners

Brewer, D. J.  (1995).  Detracking America's schools: The reform without cost?  "Phi Delta Kappa", 77(3), 210-215.

Gallagher, J.  (1995). Comments on "The reform without cost?" "Phi Delta Kappan", 77(3), 216-217.

Marsh, R. S., & Raywid, M. A. (1994). How to make detracking work. Phi Delta Kappan,76, 314-317.

A Key Quote: “Successful detracking is tantamount to school restructuring. Viewed and handled as such, it offers much promise both for ending an arrangement that has proven highly inequitable and for improving educational practice. But if it is to succeed, a detracking effort must acknowledge the magnitude of the changes involved. As our respondents suggested, it must be carefully planned and initiated, it must acknowledge and meet the concerns of skeptics and resisters, it must prepare teachers adequately for their new circumstances, and it must align organizational structures and practices to support the new grouping arrangements” (p. 317).

Moses, R.  (2001).  "Radical Equations - Math Literacy and Civil Rights."  Boston: Beacon Press.

Review - From Book News, Inc.
Moses was already a venerable civil rights campaigner when he embarked on what became an illustrious career in education and mathematics. He has now returned to Mississippi to teach math to descendants of the sharecroppers he helped mobilize 40 years before. With journalist and fellow activist Cole, he tells his personal story and shares his vision of universal math literacy among poor and minority children. He founded the Algebra Project.
Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR -- Hardcover edition.

Review - From Booklist
They seem like unrelated concepts: civil rights and math literacy; Freedom Summer and the Algebra Project. When the individual who links them is Bob Moses, however, the unanticipated connections are worth exploring. Moses was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizer in Mississippi in the 1960s. In part 1, he discusses the lessons of that experience, particularly involving the entire community and defining a goal (in Mississippi, voting rights) that empowers the community to address its other needs. In the twenty-first century, Moses argues, "the most urgent social issue affecting poor people and people of color is economic access . . . [and] economic access and full citizenship depend crucially on math and science literacy." For two decades, Moses and his associates have been developing an approach to middle-school math aimed at preparing every child for high-school and then college mathematics. Part 2 of Radical Equations traces that effort, its experiential pedagogy, and its application in urban and rural school districts. A surprising study of continuity and change in the struggle to reduce inequality and empower communities.
Mary Carroll Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Hardcover edition.

Smith-Maddox, R.  (1995).  Untracking and students' futures.  "Phi Delta Kappan", 77(3), 222-228.

Slavin, R. E.  (1995). Detracking and its detractors.  "Phi Delta Kappan", 77(3), 220-221.

Cooperative Learning

The following research jumpstarts have been culled from the Journal of Educational Research. Find more information at: www.questia.com or http://static.highbeam.com/t/thejournalofeducationalresearch/index.html

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Gillies, R. M. (2002). The Residual Effects of Cooperative-Learning Experiences: A Two-Year Follow-Up. The Journal of Educational Research, 96.

Research has shown that students benefit academically and socially from cooperative, small-group learning. Academic benefits include higher attainments in reading comprehension (Mathes, Fuchs, & Fuchs, 1997) and mathematics (Ross, 1995; Whicker, Nunnery, & Bol, 1997) and enhanced conceptual understanding and achievement in science (Lonning, 1993, Watson, 1991). Social benefits include more on-task behaviors and helping interactions with group members (Burron, James, & Ambrosio, 1993; Gillies & Ashman, 1998; McManus & Gettinger, 1996), higher self-esteem, more friends, more involvement in classroom activities, and improved attitudes toward learning (Lazarowitz, Baird, & Bowlden, 1996; Lazarowitz, Hertz-Lazarowitz, & Baird, 1994), including more positive links between motivation and achievement (Daniels, 1994). Cooperative learning also has been successful in promoting inclusion of students with disabilities into regular classrooms (Putnam, Rynders, Johnson, & Johnson, 1989). Hunt, Staub, Alwell, and Goetz (1994) found that students with severe disabilities independently demonstrated target basic skills while within cooperative academic activities and generalized those skills during follow-up sessions to activities with other members of a newly formed cooperative learning group. In short, cooperative learning has been used as a strategy for promoting learning and adjustment across diverse teaching-learning structures and subject areas to prevent student alienation, social isolation, and disengagement from learning.

Mueller, A., & Fleming, T. (2001). Cooperative Learning: Listening to How Children Work at School. The Journal of Educational Research, 94.

Research into children's behavior in groups and their productivity was pioneered at the University of Iowa's Child Welfare Research Station toward the end of the 1930s. Working under the direction of Kurt Lewin, an acclaimed experimental psychologist, graduate students Ronald Lippitt and Ralph White undertook a series of experiments in 1938 to investigate how children worked, together in groups (Marrow, 1965). Participants chosen for the studies were 20 children who met after school to make papier mache masks and to engage in other play activities. The children were divided into three groups, two of which were directed by an adult; each child was rotated through each of the three groups. The results of the experiments proved remarkable. Researchers found that children in an, autocratically led group seemed discontented, often aggressive, and lacking in initiative. Youngsters in groups without a leader experienced similar problems: members appeared frustrated and much of the work remained unfinished. In marked contrast, children in groups organized with a democratic leader--someone who allowed the group to set its, own agendas and priorities--appeared far more productive socially satisfied, and demonstrated greater originality and independence in the work they completed.

Although the Iowa studies excited the educational community, the advent of World War II--and its aftermath--greatly interrupted research into how children behaved and, learned in groups. Scholarly attention did not again turn toward efforts to understand children's behavior and learning in groups until the 1970s (Slavin, 1991). Since that time researchers have come to agree that cooperative and collaborative learning are valuable components of classroom learning (Blumenfeld, Marx, Soloway, & Krajcik, 1996; Gamson, 1994; Kohn, 1991; Webb, Troper, & Fall, 1995) and children are often instructed to "work together" at school (Gamson, 1994; Patrick, 1994; Wood & Jones, 1994).

Vaughan, W. (2002). Effects of Cooperative Learning on Achievement and Attitude among Students of Color. The Journal of Educational Research, 95.

Cooperative learning has been widely researched and used in classrooms around the world since the 1970s. Research has proven that this methodology can be very effective in encouraging student interaction and developing positive attitudes toward school. Research also indicates that cooperative learning can produce positive effects on student achievement (Cohen, 1986; Davidson, 1989; Devries & Slavin, 1978; Johnson & Johnson, 1989; Okebukola, 1985; Reid, 1992; Slavin, 1990).

Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small heterogeneous groups of students who work together to maximize their own and each other's learning. Although there are various forms of cooperative learning, Deutsch (1962) and Johnson and Johnson (1989) recommended that in the truest form, there is positive interdependence among students' goal attainments. In other words, students perceive that they can reach their goals if and only if the other students in the group reach theirs. Cooperative-learning skills incorporate five basic elements: positive interdependence, promotive interaction (preferably face to face), individual and group accountability, collaborative skills, and group processing (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1987).

Positive interdependence is successfully structured when group members understand that they are linked together for a common cause. One cannot succeed without the others.

Lopata, C., Miller, K. A., & Miller, R. H. (2003). Survey of Actual and Preferred Use of Cooperative Learning among Exemplar Teachers. The Journal of Educational Research,96.

Cooperative learning is an instructional technique designed to promote the academic and social development of students. Over the last 2 decades, cooperative learning has achieved broad-based support from researchers and classroom teachers (Slavin, 1999). According to Antil, Jenkins, Wayne, and Vadasy (1998), "the frequency of references to cooperative learning in textbooks on instructional materials indicates that this approach to instruction is well situated in the educational mainstream" (p. 420).

In their seminal work, Johnson, Johnson, Holubec, and Roy (1984) delineated the foundations of one structured model of cooperative learning. This model comprises four elements that should be present for a group to be considered cooperative. The first, positive interdependence, requires that students recognize their dependence upon one another to reach a common goal. The second, individual accountability, requires individual responsibility for learning of content. The third, face-to-face interaction, involves student valuing of group meetings and interaction. The fourth element, group process, should be embedded throughout the learning experience (Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Johnson et al., 1984; Slavin, 1985). A clear understanding of the elements of cooperative learning is essential because the term cooperative learning is sometimes inappropriately applied to other instructional approaches, such as small groups composed for intense direct instruction (Cohen, 1994).

Although Johnson et al.'s (1984) model is often cited, other models of cooperative learning are available. Examples of models and methods include complex instruction (Cohen, 1986), jigsaw (Aronson, Blaney, Stephen, Sikes, & Snapp, 1978), co-op team building (Kagan, 1992), and think-pair-share, as well as cooperative activities such as spontaneous group discussions and projects (Slavin, 1995). These alternative models are based on collaborative principles but differ from the structured model proposed by Johnson et al. (1984).