Summary of Thoughts Over the Past Months

It's been a while since I posted, mostly because I have been preoccupied with little things like getting through a quarter of classes and life. But here's a summary of some relevent thoughts/events over the past few months.

• I received IRB approval for my study just before Thanksgiving without having to make any major changes to the proposal. (Once I figure out how to link to pdf documents I'll include a copy of the proposal.)

• Came across another study of the effects of algebra in middle school. Based on my skimming of the article, Xin Ma (2005) used the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY) data for the 1987 cohort of 7th graders and hierarchical linear growth modeling to examine growth in mathematics achievement over time. Ma found that mathematics achievement among low achieving middle school students who took algebra “grew not only faster than low achieving students who were not accelerated into formal algebra but also faster than high achieving students who were not accelerated into formal algebra” (pp. 452-453). Like the other studies that look at this issue, selection into algebra is not addressed and selection bias is still a concern.

• For one of my classes I started using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), which follows a 1988 cohort of 8th graders, to examine the effects of algebra in 8th grade. The dataset is less than ideal because the base year data collection occures during the second semester of 8th grade. This means it lacks good pre-selection measures and threfore any analysis of selection or effects of algebra in 8th grade could be confounded.

• I discovered that the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS), which follows a 1998 cohort of kindergarteners, final wave of data collection was spring of 2007 ... when the cohort should be in 8th grade (first look at results here). I'm hoping the public use files will be available some time soon because this could be the best national data source available to examine the factors associated with 8th grade algebra selection. 

---

Ma, X. (2005). Early Acceleration of Students in Mathematics: Does it Promote Growth and Stability of Growth in Achievement across Mathematical Areas? Contemporary Educational Psychology, 30, 439-460.

Reflective Practice

A chapter by Michael Seltzer and Mike Rose in the Sage Handbook for Research in Education (2006) keyed my interest in formally reflecting and documenting the subjective aspects of the research process.

In that chapter Seltzer and Rose speak about reflective practice as "thinking about what we are doing, why we are doing it, what might be flawed about it, and how best to convey the important aspects of the process to others" (p. 477). They then go on to discuss:

• the importance of context
• attending to alternative explanations
• the importance of getting close to the data

In regards to attending to alternative explanations is the "need to try to understand the selection process by which individuals wind up in the different groups that we wish to compare" (p. 487). Hence justification for investigating the policies and process schools utilize to place 8th graders in Algebra 1 or pre-Algebra.

---

Seltzer, M. & Rose, M. (2006). Constructing Analyses: The development of thoughtfulness in working with quantitative methods, in Conrad, C. F. & Serlin, R. C., Eds. The Sage Handbook for Research in Education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.