2002 - Volume 25, Number 1
Editor, David L. Hough, Missouri State University
Preface
Research in Middle Level Education is online for the first time. This inaugural issue is now available to all 30,000+ National Middle School Association members. The manuscripts that have undergone review and ultimately made it to publication here are a "mixed bag" of studies illustrative of the type of research being undertaken to address middle level education issues.
The first article, "A Case Study of Leadership in the Middle Grades: The Work of the Instructional Lead Teacher," by Sally J. Zepeda, & R. Stewart Mayers at the University of Georgia, Athens, is a single subject case study. It examines a middle school lead teacher’s efforts to become an instructional leader. The researchers conducted four interviews with the teacher over a four-month time frame, using a semi-structured research protocol. School and district documents such as the faculty handbook and school improvement plan were collected unobtrusively and analyzed; interviews were videotaped, and field notes were taken for subsequent analyses.
The researchers found that this lead teacher became a "gatekeeper" who was either "called upon" or emerged as the person caught in the middle of disputes between teachers and groups of teachers. He became the person "in charge" of the school calendar, the one most often asked to find resource materials for teachers, a report writer for administrators, and the person charged with coordinating the district’s state mandated testing program.
Because of the nature of these duties, mistrust emerged between the lead teacher and the principal. While case studies are not generalizable, I would suggest that more studies of this nature be conducted to determine if patterns emerge across cases.
In "Middle School Students Increase Their Vocabulary Knowledge Using Learning Style Preferences," authors Vivian Nespoli Koppelman, Public School 97M, New York, New York; & Marilyn Ann Verna, St. Francis College, Brooklyn, New York use a student self-identifying learning style inventory instrument (Dunn & Dunn, 1989) as their framework. The researchers examined factors contributing to vocabulary achievement of 240 African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic seventh grade students in the New York metropolitan area. This study could not validate that tactual, kinesthetic, visual, and auditory rich curricula and instructional methods produce improvements in student learning that are statistically significant.
Despite others’ claims in the research literature, student learning was not improved by teaching to "learning styles." Vocabulary scores for the 240 students identified in this study did not improve significantly as a result of the "learning style" teaching methods used by teachers. While this is but one from among a bevy of studies in the literature that examine learning styles, it serves to bring back into focus the need for (1) more careful review of learning style approaches to teaching, (2) closer scrutiny of self-identified learning modalities, and (3) research methods used to examine relationships between the two
Carol S. Parke, West Virginia University, Morgantown, examines a "hot" topic. In "Mathematics Performance Assessment: Discovering Why Some Items or Rubrics Don’t Measure Up," she takes a critical look at the rubric used to score one state’s mandated performance-based mathematics assessments. This study used a qualitative approach to examine the validity of highly reliable mathematics performance assessments. Data from the 53 test items studied suggest that a number of issues need to be addressed including: "the creation of well-defined criteria that accurately assess understanding of mathematical concepts, the consistency in applying rubric criteria across items, the range of points in the rubric, the mathematical richness of items, and the importance of having sample scored student responses that appropriately illustrate each score level in the rubric."
While this study addresses mathematics assessments only, it serves to illustrate what every content field must examine when using rubrics as a means of assessing student performance. It also serves to point out that qualitative methods need to be incorporated along with quantitative methods when constructing and item analyzing performance measures.
The researcher chose 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students in six middle schools that were involved in the QUASAR national mathematics project headquartered at the Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As editor of RMLE, this is of special personal interest to me because I have received a number of studies associated with the QUASAR project over the last 6 or 7 years. Tracking this project via the studies that have emerged from it has been an enlightening experience that makes me wonder why more projects don’t receive the level of examination, i.e., evaluation, this one has.
In "Relational Ways of Knowing in Middle School: A Case Report of Conversation in the Discovery Team," ethnographic researchers Richard R. Powell & Sue Chandler, University of Colorado, Denver, observe a variety of conversations in a middle school, especially among a team of teachers. In sum, this research is actually a story told by an observer, sometimes a participant observer. Types of conversations that took place in a middle school are recorded and summarized.
For five months a researcher observed classrooms and interviewed teachers who were on the same teaching team. What emerged from the researcher’s field notes and reflections were a variety of "types" of conversations that could be generally grouped into what I would term "communicative constructs."
The fifth and final article in this initial installment of Research in Middle Level Education Online originated from National Middle School Association’s Research Committee which facilitated their first ever research poster session during the annual conference in Washington, D.C., November 1-3, 2001. A special emphasis and invitation was extended to beginning researchers such as graduate students, doctoral students, and assistant professors. As a result, seven research studies were showcased: one study was published in the last issue of RMLEA, and five will be published in a special 2002 issue of RMLE Online. The study here is the seventh and serves to illustrate what the special upcoming issue will entail.
In "School Uniforms: Policies and Procedures," authors Catherine Stockton, David E. Gullatt, & D. Randall Parker, Louisiana Tech University, explore seven hypotheses associated with dress codes and their related policies. While this topic has been the subject of debate for years, the approach taken in this study begins with a succinct review of legal cases beginning with the landmark 1969 Tinker case. From there, the narrative leads readers systematically to the research team’s "snapshot" of outcomes from data collected across nine public schools in northwestern Louisiana.
I believe the following statement in the summary section of this study captures the entire debate pretty well: ". . . schools must juggle two ideals of justice that are apparently in conflict: a student’s right to freedom of expression and the need for a safe, focused, positive school environment." The quantitative methods used to examine the seven different hypotheses are fundamental, and the discussion and conclusions are well framed.
I look forward to the next issue of RMLE Online in which the other five poster papers are presented. Stay tuned.
David Hough, Editor
ISSN 1084-8959