Classroom discourse analysis and educational outcomes in the era of education reform.

BACKGROUND: In the era of education reform when new teaching approaches are being advocated, it is important to investigate how different classroom discourse patterns are related to different educational outcomes. AIM: The purpose of the study was to analyse the whole classroom discourse of two teacher interns' writing classes. It was conducted against a background of education reform in which teachers were being encouraged to make major changes in their teaching approaches. We investigated what approaches were adopted and what discourse patterns were related to better educational outcomes. SAMPLE: The participants were two teacher interns and their 61 students in Hong Kong. The students (35 boys, 26 girls) were seventh graders from two classes in the same secondary school. METHOD: An instruction unit of each teacher intern on expository writing (120 min) was video-recorded and analysed. Discourse analysis of the whole classroom interaction was supplemented by the students' perceptions and independent observers' evaluations of the instruction. RESULTS: The results indicated that both teacher interns adopted a traditional direct instruction although student-centred approaches were being recommended in the education reform. The effectiveness of the instruction was associated with certain features of the classroom discourse patterns. Better educational outcomes were associated positively with utterances of high cognitive demand but negatively with utterances related to discipline. Students tended to have better performances in writing when they and the independent observers perceived that the teachers used more motivating strategies. CONCLUSIONS: The effectiveness of instruction is a complicated phenomenon that involves a myriad of interrelated factors. Teacher- or student-centred approaches are only part of these diverse factors.

Beliefs about learning, self-regulated strategies and text comprehension among Chinese children.

BACKGROUND: Most studies have investigated college and high school students' epistemological beliefs in Western contexts, with few studies examining how beliefs about learning are related to children's strategies and comprehension in the Chinese cultural context. AIMS: The present study investigated Chinese elementary school children's beliefs about learning and examined their relations with self-regulated learning strategies and text comprehension. SAMPLE: The participants were 417 Grade 5 (mean age=10.8 years) and 420 Grade 6 (mean age=11.9 years) elementary school children in Hong Kong. METHODS: A questionnaire assessing children's beliefs about learning was constructed; children were also asked to complete the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire and several text comprehension tasks assessing deep understanding. RESULTS: Factor analysis indicated two contrasting factors of constructivist and reproductive beliefs about learning. High achievers outperformed low achievers on beliefs, strategy and comprehension scores. Multiple regression indicated that constructivist beliefs contributed to text comprehension over and above the effects of grade and strategy. CONCLUSIONS: This study corroborates current research on the roles of beliefs and strategies in text comprehension and suggests that meta-cognitive beliefs and strategies examined in English reading can also be identified among Chinese children in text comprehension.

A nonparametric item analysis of a selected item subset of the learning process questionnaire.

BACKGROUND: Although there have been numerous studies conducted on the psychometric properties of Biggs' Learning Process Questionnaire (LPQ), these have involved the use of traditional omnibus measures of scale quality such as corrected item total correlations, internal consistency estimates of reliability, and factor analysis. However, these omnibus measures of scale quality are sample dependent and fail to model item responses as a function of trait level. And since the item trait relationship is typically nonlinear, traditional factor analytic methods are inappropriate. AIMS: The purpose of this study was to identify a unidimensional subset of LPQ items and examine the effectiveness of these items and their options in discriminating between changes in the underlying trait level. In addition to assessing item quality, we were interested in assessing overall scale quality with non-sample dependent measures. METHOD: The sample was split into two nearly equal halves, and a undimensional subset of items was identified in one of these samples and cross-validated in the other. The nonlinear relationship between the probability of endorsing an item option and the underlying trait level was modelled using a nonparametric latent trait technique known as kernel smoothing and implemented with the program TestGraf. After item and scale quality were established, maximum likelihood estimates of participants' trait level were obtained and used to examine grade and gender differences. RESULTS: A undimensional subset of 16 deep and achieving items was identified. Slightly more than half of these items needed some of their options combined so that the probability of endorsing an item option as a function of increasing trait level corresponded to the ideal rank ordering of the item options. With this adjustment, scale quality as measured by the information function and standard error function was found to be good. However, no statistically significant gender differences were observed and, although statistically significant grade differences were observed, they were not substantively meaningful. CONCLUSIONS: The use of nonparametric kernel-smoothing techniques is advocated over parametric latent trait methods for the analysis of attitudinal and psychological measures involving polychotomous ordered-response categories. It is also suggested that latent trait methods are more appropriate than traditional test-based measures for studying differential item functioning both within and between cultures. Nonparametric kernel-smoothing techniques hold particular promise in identifying and understanding cross-cultural differences in student approaches to learning at both the item and scale level.