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published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

許慶豫. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2001. / 參考文獻 (p. 346-364) / 中英文摘要. / Available also through the Internet via Dissertations & theses @ Chinese University of Hong Kong. / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Xu Qingyu. / Lun wen (Zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2001. / Can kao wen xian (p. 346-364) / Zhong Ying wen zhai yao.

The purpose of this study is to determine what differences, if any, exist in reading, math and spelling achievement scores as measured by the Stanford Achievement Tests of the second grade students who were grouped homogeneously (i.e., were assumed to have similar academic abilities) and the second grade students who were heterogeneously grouped (i.e., were grouped according to no particular criteria) when compared to their first grade scores. These two groups of second graders, each consisting of four classes with approximately twenty-five students in each class, provide an excellent opportunity for research study for the purpose stated above because they were all exposed to the same four teachers, similar methods and materials. All of these students involved in this experiment attended the same school in the first grade and most of them attended the same school in kindergarten.

The aim of this essay is to examine why and how three teachers who work in elementary classes choose to use ability grouping during math lessons and what they think of ability grouping as a method to individualize the activities according to the pupil’s needs. I chose one main question for this study that is the following: What is the teacher’s point of view and experience of ability grouping in teaching mathematics? And three sub-questions: What are the motives behind the choice of ability grouping? What are the advantages of ability grouping? What are the disadvantages of ability grouping? In order to be able to answer my questions, I used the qualitative method. I interviewed three teachers who work in the elementary classes (First to fifth grade) to find out what they think about ability grouping and how it is experienced in mathematic teaching.The result shows that the common thing between these three teachers is that they don’t use ability grouping as the only teaching method. They all agree that the whole class teaching has many benefits for the pupils. Regarding the teachers’ views on advantages of ability grouping, they all regard it as a method that contributes to differentiating the math activities according to the pupil's personal needs. My conclusion is that the teachers’ different experiences of ability grouping have an impact on their point of view of ability grouping.

This study has a twofold purpose. The first is to develop a systems approach to education that is based on the seven levels of existence which were identified by Clare W. Graves. The second is to project and forecast the development of the eighth level of existence and to develop an approach to education for this eighth level. In order to establish an understanding of Graves' theory of the levels of psychological existence, an extensive study was made of Graves' papers, both published and private. Based on Graves' theory and the research of others in the field, an approach to education was designed for each of eight levels of existence—reactive, tribalistic, egocentric, absolutistic, achievist, sociocentric, existential, and experientialistic—that complements and utilizes the unique characteristics of each level. The design of each educational approach includes learning system, motivational strategy, evaluation procedure, classroom management, and facility design. The issues of student grouping by level of existence, assessment of the individual levels of existence, and matching of instructor and students by level of existence are also addressed.

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School personnel are concerned that reading gaps of grade 3 and grade 4 students have persisted in 4 rural elementary schools in the southern United States despite the use of ability grouping to improve student reading proficiency scores. Between the 2014-2016 school years, less than 50% of students in grades 3 and grade 4 scored at the proficient level in reading at the 4 target rural schools. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the teachers' and administrators' perceptions regarding the influence of grouping on the reading performance of students in grades 3 and 4. Using Vygotsky's framework, the research investigated teachers' and administrators' perceptions of grouping and nongrouping in relation to students' reading progress, socioeconomic status, and achievement gaps between minority and non-minority students. Using purposeful sampling, interview data were collected from 4 administrators who met the criteria of working in a target site that used ability and nonability grouping. Teacher data came from focus groups, and surveys from 15 teacher participants who met the criteria of being certified in English Language Arts, and assigned to Grades 3 and/or 4 in ability or nonability grouping environments. Using emergent coding, themes supported the findings that assessment strategies are positively and negatively perceived, nonability grouping is preferred, reading achievement is perceived as higher in nonability grouping, and gaps in learning are influenced by socioeconomic status. Based on this research the use of nonability grouping may promote greater positive social change that will enhance student success in reading.

Content analyses of research in the literature of gifted education (Coleman, 2006; Rogers, 1999, 2006) has shown a consistent absence of research investigating methodology for instructing gifted students and for the development of expertise using new technologies. In this study, utilising electronic instructional delivery, an investigation was undertaken of the differential effects and appropriateness of matching the prior knowledge of the learner to the instructional method. Underpinned with a theoretical understanding of gifted education and cognitive load theory, a series of three experiments was designed and implemented to determine whether gifted students learn more effectively under guided discovery design than with example based instruction, while not identified as gifted ability students perform significantly better under direct example based instruction than with guided discovery. Data were collected and analysed in three stages. Experiment 1 was conducted in the novel domain of Boolean switching equations. Experiments 2 and 3 used identical test instruments with novel tasks in the semi-familiar domain of geometry. A total of 155 Years 7, 8 and 9 students at three metropolitan secondary schools participated. The study explored whether the presence of schemas, that facilitated greater problem-solving ability in gifted students, would generate clear evidence of instructional efficiency and preference for either mode of instruction. As students advanced from novice state to expert in particular domains of learning, it was anticipated that gifted students would progress from benefiting from worked example instruction to more efficient learning in guided discovery mode. This hypothesis was rejected as the results from each of the experiments did not confirm the hypothesised outcomes. There was no manifested expertise-reversal effect. The absence of any clear delineation of enhanced learning proficiency mode of instruction for gifted students does, however, contribute to the advancement and understanding of cognitive load theory and the complexity of learning strategies necessary for gifted learners.

The central research question is the extent to which gifted programming affects student academic outcomes of gifted as compared to not-gifted students and how this differs by race/ethnicity and/or poverty status. Since the identification of elementary school students as gifted is not random, propensity score matching is used to remove this bias in the estimates of the effects. A matched sample of North Carolina middle school students based on individual level data of both gifted and not-gifted students of varied racial/ethnic groups and income levels is used for this analysis. This enables a comparison of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade student achievement to determine the extent to which participating in gifted programming differentiates effects by race/ethnicity and poverty status. I show the additional test score gain, if any, from being in gifted programming compared to students not participating in gifted programs. Variations in gifted program effects across race/ethnicity and income are assessed. This research adds empirical evidence to the more qualitatively focused gifted debate by analyzing differences in student outcomes between gifted and not-gifted students in North Carolina. Since black and lower income students are less likely to participate in gifted programs, they disproportionately encounter less experienced teachers, lower expectations, and fewer resources. The extent to which these additional learning supports translate to differences in student outcomes are analyzed.