Tracking instructional quality across secondary mathematics and English Language Arts classes

Donaldson, Morgaen L.; LeChasseur, Kimberly; Mayer, Anysia

doi:10.1007/s10833-015-9269-x

Cited by 19 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…Students’ instructional experiences vary between different tracks of courses, and within lower tracks, students are often exposed to a range of educational ills. Donaldson et al (2017) found significant differences in instructional quality between tracks, with lower instructional quality taking place in lower tracks. This difference in quality may be attributable to the teachers’ years of experience.…”

Section: Review Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 88%

“…In addition, students assigned to lower track classes are often exposed to less instructional material than students in higher tracked classes. In one multidistrict study, teachers in low-track classrooms provided significantly less instructional support to students in their classes than did teachers in high-track classrooms (Donaldson et al, 2017). Mayer et al (2018) repeated these findings in six additional schools and found that most teachers scored lower in emotional support, institutional support, and classroom organization in their low-track versus high-track classes using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (Allen et al, 2013).…”

Section: Review Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond Tracking: The Relationship of Opportunity to Learn and Diminished Math Outcomes for U.S. High School Students

Wronowski

Thornton

Razavi-Maleki

et al. 2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background/Context: In this study, we draw on evolving definitions of opportunity to learn (OTL) to conceptualize mathematics OTL has having two main components: structural OTL, defined by gatekeeping access to specific mathematics courses through the process of tracking, and instructional OTL, defined by the learning experiences of students in their mathematics courses. We also conceptualize both of these aspects of OTL as occurring in the current educational milieu, where sociopolitical factors reward or punish specific school strategies. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study seeks to examine, using an OTL framework, the relationship between high school math teachers’ instructional practices, students’ course tracks in mathematics, students’ perceptions of mathematics, and students’ distal measures of academic attainment, including completion of advanced math coursework and completion of a high school diploma. Research Design: Using latent class analysis, this secondary data analysis analyzed the 2009 High School Longitudinal Study data from the National Center for Educational Statistics to examine mathematics instructional OTL based on math teachers’ objectives of emphasis and its relationship to structural OTL in the form of course tracking. Findings/Results: We identified “Enriched” and “Rote Knowledge and Skills” latent classes of math OTL. Teachers providing Enriched OTL emphasize the widest variety of objectives, including cognitively demanding problem-solving and logic objectives and practical applications of mathematics, while teachers providing Rote Knowledge OTL emphasize basic computation, algorithms, and computation skills. Black students, Hispanic students, and students living in poverty were more likely to be in math OTL classes focused primarily on basic concepts, algorithms, and computation, with little to no emphasis in more applied and cognitively demanding math course objectives, and they were less likely to be enrolled in advanced ninth-grade math courses. Students in Rote Knowledge OTL courses with little to no emphasis in applied and cognitively demanding math course objectives had lower mathematics identity and self-efficacy, and math achievement. Conclusions/Recommendations: This study adds to the literature suggesting that students in the United States experience an opportunity gap rather than an achievement gap, and that opportunity gaps are both structural and instructional. This study also adds to the literature suggesting student sorting systems are inherently unequal and must be addressed through policy, leadership, and cultural shifts in both schools and districts.

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Section: Review Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Review Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Tracking: The Relationship of Opportunity to Learn and Diminished Math Outcomes for U.S. High School Students

Wronowski

Thornton

Razavi-Maleki

et al. 2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In contrast, instructional practices noted in low‐track classes include reading aloud, acting out characters from a book, using workbook, less permeable textual discussion and more initiation‐response‐evaluation talk, and completing fill‐in‐the‐blank worksheets (Caughlan & Kelly, ; Gamoran, ; Gritter, ; Hodge, ). In addition to using different instructional practices, teachers in low‐track classrooms also provide less instructional support to their students, which includes supporting content understanding through teacher depth of understanding, background knowledge, and ability to communicate the concepts to students; providing opportunities in class to use higher order thinking skills through problem solving; and quality of teacher feedback (Donaldson, LeChasseur, & Mayer, ). These differences in instructional practices reflect differences in the level of cognitive demand, with students in high‐track classes receiving more rigorous and challenging assignments.…”

Section: Tracking and Instruction In Elamentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Gets to Read What? Tracking, Instructional Practices, and Text Complexity for Middle School Struggling Readers

Northrop

Kelly

2018

Reading Research Quarterly

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In this study, the authors used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 to examine the instructional time allocation and instructional practices in eighth‐grade English language arts classes for struggling readers, as measured by track level. The authors also analyze the titles and text complexity of the last three books assigned to students. The authors found that track level continues to be a significant predictor of what happens instructionally in the classroom. Struggling readers placed in low‐track classes spent a larger portion of class time on skills and strategy instruction, completing worksheets, watching videos, and reading aloud than students in grade‐level classes. Students in high‐track classes spent more time on literature analysis, comprehension instruction, and group projects and were more frequently assigned homework than students in grade‐level classes. Although there was considerable overlap in the text complexity and the text titles of books assigned at each track level, students in low‐track classes read less challenging texts than students in grade‐level or above‐grade‐level classes. Regression models controlling for a variety of student, teacher, and school variables, including student achievement, show that these adjustments in class time allocation, instructional practices, and text complexity go above and beyond what would be expected based on student achievement alone.

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“…In addition, an early study in the United States showed that students in low‐track classes perceived their relationships with their teachers to be more alienated, distanced, and punitive in comparison with students in high‐track classes (Oakes, 1982). Similarly, another study indicated that teachers of low‐track classes provided significantly less emotional, organizational, and instructional support in comparison with teachers of high‐track classrooms (Donaldson, LeChasseur, & Meyer, 2017). To summarize, students from low‐track schools and classes tend to perceive their teacher–student relationships more negatively, although one study found that the opposite occurred.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

The role of social belonging and exclusion at school and the teacher–student relationship for the development of learned helplessness in adolescents

Raufelder

Kulakow

2021

Brit J of Edu Psychol

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Background. Based on learned helplessness theory and conservation of resources theory, the present study explores the role of schools' social environments (i.e., school belonging, school exclusion, and teacher-student relationships) as potential buffers and amplifiers in students' development of learned helplessness during adolescence.Aims. We examine whether school belonging, school exclusion, and teacher-student relationship moderate the longitudinal association of learned helplessness differently for students from low-track schools and high-track schools.Sample. The study uses a sample of N = 1,088 (M age = 13.70, SD = 0.53; 54% girls) adolescent students who participated in a two-wave longitudinal study.Methods. We conducted latent moderated structural equation modelling to examine whether school belonging, school exclusion, and teacher-student relationship moderate the longitudinal association of learned helplessness differently for students from lowtrack schools and high-track schools.Results. The moderation analyses revealed that students from both school tracks are differently affected by school belonging and school exclusion in their development of learned helplessness. Teacher-student relationship did not moderate the association. Conclusion.Our findings underline the important role of the social environment in students' development of learned helplessness. Particularly, the differential effects found for the different educational tracks highlight the necessary awareness of educators to interindividual differences of their students.According to the theory of learned helplessness (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978;Peterson, 2010;Seligman & Maier, 1967), learned helplessness results from the repeated perception that the outcome of a specific stressful situation is independent of an individual's behaviour when confronted with that situation. In other words, learned helplessness is effectively 'an internalisation of stable causes following failure' (Covington, 1986, p. 259). If students repeatedly face experiences of failure, then schools become breeding grounds for learned helplessness (Dweck & Goetz, 1978;Walling & Martinek, 1995). Unfortunately, learned helplessness impedes academic success and achievementThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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Tracking instructional quality across secondary mathematics and English Language Arts classes

Cited by 19 publications

References 73 publications

Beyond Tracking: The Relationship of Opportunity to Learn and Diminished Math Outcomes for U.S. High School Students

Beyond Tracking: The Relationship of Opportunity to Learn and Diminished Math Outcomes for U.S. High School Students

Who Gets to Read What? Tracking, Instructional Practices, and Text Complexity for Middle School Struggling Readers

The role of social belonging and exclusion at school and the teacher–student relationship for the development of learned helplessness in adolescents

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