International Guide to Student Achievement

John Hattie, Eric M. Anderman, John Hattie, Eric M. Anderman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136962042
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Méthodes pédagogiques

The International Guide to Student Achievement brings together and critically examines the major influences shaping student achievement today. There are many, often competing, claims about how to enhance student achievement, raising the questions of "What works?" and "What works best?" World-renowned bestselling authors, John Hattie and Eric M. Anderman have invited an international group of scholars to write brief, empirically-supported articles that examine predictors of academic achievement across a variety of topics and domains.

Rather than telling people what to do in their schools and classrooms, this guide simply provides the first-ever compendium of research that summarizes what is known about the major influences shaping students' academic achievement around the world. Readers can apply this knowledge base to their own school and classroom settings. The 150+ entries serve as intellectual building blocks to creatively mix into new or existing educational arrangements and aim for quick, easy reference. Chapter authors follow a common format that allows readers to more seamlessly compare and contrast information across entries, guiding readers to apply this knowledge to their own classrooms, their curriculums and teaching strategies, and their teacher training programs.

Section 1

Understanding Achievement

EDITORS: ERIC M. ANDERMAN

Ohio State University

JOHN HATTIE

Melbourne University

1.1

Defining Student Achievement

THOMAS R. GUSKEY

University of Kentucky

Introduction

Student achievement is the basis of nearly every aspect of education. It gives direction to all educational improvement efforts, provides the foundation for education accountability programs, and serves as the primary outcome variable in most educational research studies. The phrase student achievement is included in the titles of over 2,000 research studies and reports listed in the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) system—more than any other phrase. Google Scholar lists nearly 5,000 resources published within the past decade with “student achievement” in the title.

Given the prominence of student achievement in education policy, practice, and research, one might assume that we have a shared understanding of what it means. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Not only do policy makers, legislators, school leaders, teachers, parents, and researchers often define student achievement differently, tremendous variation exists in the definitions of individuals within each of these groups (Guskey, 2007). This lack of a common definition confounds efforts to determine the effectiveness of education improvement initiatives and thwarts attempts to develop consensus regarding the success of education reforms.

The Concept of Achievement

In simplest terms, “achievement” implies “the accomplishment of something.” In education, that “something” generally refers to articulated learning goals. Although learning can occur in a wide variety of contexts, the focus of educators rests more narrowly on the learning that takes place in established instructional environments, specifically in classrooms and schools. Educators interact with students in these environments in purposeful and intentional ways to help students acquire explicit knowledge and skills.

Because learning goals are typically multifaceted and involve different kinds of learning in different subject areas, “student achievement” must be considered a multifaceted construct. To be accurate, therefore, discussions of student achievement should always include descriptors that clarify the specific learning goals that were the focus of instructional activities and that students were expected to attain.

Domains of Learning. Learning goals in education have long been classified in three broad domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. Cognitive goals (Bloom, Englehart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956) provide the basis of most forms of academic achievement and come first to mind when we think about the purposes of formal education. They describe the concepts and skills educators strive to have students gain through planned instructional activities. Cognitive goals also provide the foundation of every school's academic curriculum. Although some cognitive goals apply across multiple content areas (e.g., problem solving and critical thinking), most are subject area specific. Hence, “student achievement in language arts” may be distinct from “student achievement in mathematics” or “student achievement in science.”

The curriculums of most countries throughout the world consider a broad range of content areas. Australia's national curriculum, for example, focuses on reading, spelling, writing, and numeracy skills, as well as science literacy, civics and citizenship, and information and communication technology (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, 2006). In Japan the Education Ministry highlights creating well-rounded students in the national curriculum by emphasizing subjects such as music, arts and handicrafts, and homemaking, physical education, and moral education, as well as math and science. Their curriculum also devotes a large amount of time to Japanese language and life activities that give younger students personal life experiences in preparation for classroom-oriented science. In life activities class, students participate in activities such as picking flowers, raising rabbits, catching frogs and insects, and watching falling stars (Wu, 1999).

Furthermore, because cognitive goals span a broad range of subdomains and topics in each subject area, student achievement within a subject area can vary in its breadth. The Common Core State Standards Initiative (Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors' Association [CCSSO & NGA, 2010) in the United States, for example, divides student learning goals (standards) in language arts into the subdomains of Reading, Writing, Speaking/Listening, and Language. Mathematics sub-domains consist of Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Number and Operations—Base Ten, Number and Operations—Fractions, Measurement and Data, Geometry, and Mathematical Practices. Researchers concerned with the content validity of measures of student achievement in a subject area must ensure adequate sampling of concepts and skills across these subdomains (Sireci, 1998).

Within each subdomain, cognitive goals also can vary in intellectual complexity or depth. They can range from simple goals that require only recall of factual information, to more complex goals that call for sophisticated reasoning and higher mental processes, such as the ability to make applications, analyze relationships, or draw inferences. Recent criticism of mathematics instruction in the United States, for example, focused on these issues of depth. Noting that U.S. teachers tend to cover a wider range of topics than do teachers in other developed countries, but explore few topics in great depth, researchers described the U.S. mathematics curriculum as “a mile wide and an inch deep” (Duffrin, 1998). The current emphasis on 21st century skills (Larson & Miller, 2011) comes largely from concerns about the lack of depth in many established curriculums.

Affective goals (Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia, 1964) refer to students' attitudes, interests, feelings, beliefs, and dispositions. They relate to how students feel and what they believe about the subjects they are studying, their teachers, school, learning, and themselves as learners. Affective goals also relate to the development of responsibility, consideration, empathy, respect for others, self-confidence, motivation, and self-regulation. Some researchers, teachers, and parents believe that affective goals are just as important as cognitive goals, although they seldom hold the same prominence in school curriculums (Guskey & Anderman, 2008). Affective goals tend to be emphasized more in elementary grades than in secondary grades, and student report cards at the elementary level often include teachers' evaluations of students' achievement of specific affective goals (Guskey & Bailey, 2010).

Psychomotor learning goals (Simpson, 1966) typically require student performances or demonstrations of specific skills or behaviors. In certain technical fields, like the performing arts and physical education, these skills and behaviors are the focus of instruction and a vital aspect of student achievement. In other instances psychomotor goals involve student learning behaviors such as participation or engagement, attendance, persistence, punctuality, work habits, and effort. The life activities in the Japanese curriculum described earlier reflect largely psychomotor goals.

Relations among Domains. Over the years researchers have debated the relations among the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. Studies consistently yield positive but moderate correlations among measures of student achievement in each domain (e.g., Knuver & Brandsma, 1993), but cause-and-effect relations have been diff cult to confirm. Some researchers consider affective and psychomotor goals to be “enabling” traits or behaviors that facilitate student achievement of cognitive outcomes (McMillan, 2001). Students with interest in the content, confidence in their ability to learn, and who actively engage in instructional activities, for example, tend to perform well on associated cognitive tasks. Other researchers contend, however, that cognitive results prompt affective and psycho-motor responses. Students who succeed on cognitive tasks tend to like the content, experience increased confidence, and are more likely to engage in subsequent, related learning experiences (Creemers, & Kyriakides, 2010). Significant differences among students in these relations are also known to exist. The best that can be said, therefore, is that measures of student achievement in these three domains tend to be moderately related, and those relations appear to be reciprocal.

Attainment versus Improvement. Further complicating efforts to def ne “student achievement” is the distinction between “attainment” and “improvement.” “Attainment” describes students' level of achievement at a particular point in time. It provides a time-specific snapshot of what students have accomplished. Individual measures of attainment may be interpreted in comparison to the performance on the same items or tasks of a large, normative group of students who are similar in age or at the same grade level. When we say that a student is “on grade level” or “scored at the 60th percentile,” we are making these kinds of “norm-referenced” comparisons. Attainment measures also may be described in terms of the particular learning criteria that students have met at a grade level or in a specific course of study. Such “criterion-referenced” comparisons are use when we say that a student has “reached proficiency” or has “met grade level expectations.” Attainment measures provided the basis for accountability in the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act, which required schools to record the percent of students in various subgroups at each grade level that reached a predetermined level of proficiency on state assessments.

“Improvement” describes what a student or group of students gain as a result of their learning experiences in school. Because it is based on documented change in performance, “improvement” requires two, parallel or “linked” measures of student learning: one administered at the beginning of an instructional sequence and another at the end. Measures of improvement provide the basis for “growth trajectories” in education and “value-added” models of accountability (Martineau, 2010; see also, Harris, 2010).

Most educators have assumed that attainment and improvement measures of student achievement would be comparable because both are based on similar assessment results. But the relation between measures of attainment and improvement tends to be quite modest (Weiss, 2008). Certain students might make significant learning progress and improve greatly on measures of their achievement during an academic term, but still not reach the predetermined level of proficiency expected for their grade level or course. Students with learning disabilities and those from disadvantaged backgrounds frequently fall into this category. Other students, especially those with exceptional ability, may attain the same high level of performance on initial and final measures of their achievement but demonstrate little or no improvement. Thus, examining attainment and improvement might yield very different conclusions about what students have achieved.

Instructional Sensitivity. Another factor confounding the way we interpret measures of student achievement is the “instructional sensitivity” of the measurement (Popham, 2007). All tests and assessments are designed for a specific purpose. Some are developed to measure the competence or proficiency students gain as a result of their learning experiences in school. Such “instructionally sensitive” assessments must be well aligned with established learning goals in order to provide evidence of the effectiveness of instructional activities. As the quality of instruction improves, measures of student achievement based on “instructionally sensitive” assessments also would be expected to improve. Having many students do well on such an assessment is a good thing. It shows that the instruction was effective and succeeded in having lots of students learn well.

Other measures of student achievement are designed for selection purposes. College entrance exams such as the ACT and SAT, for example, help colleges and universities decide whom to admit. Some standardized assessments similarly help educators identify and sort students into various educational programs or tracks. Having many students do well on a selection assessment is not so good. Instead, such measures of student achievement must yield widely varied scores that separate students and allow for clear ranking in order to make the selection process easier.

To serve these different purposes, proficiency and selection assessments include different types of items or tasks. Proficiency assessments contain items related to the most essential knowledge and skills that all competent students would be expected to answer correctly. Selection assessments, on the other hand, cannot include items that all or nearly all student...