2004 - Volume 27, Number 1
Editor, David L. Hough, Missouri State University

Preface

This issue of Research in Middle Level Education Online, is an array of five articles that reflect a variety in topics, research design, and methodologies. Ranging from a study of pedagogical approaches to the teaching of mathematics to an evaluation of a program designed to teach students how to create a "justice-based community," the articles included herein also range in approach from a case study to a quasi-experimental design.

In "Teaching Mathematical Problem Solving to Middle School Students in Math, Technology Education, and Special Education Classroom," Brian A. Bottge, University of Wisconsin-Madison, studied 93 sixth grade students who had received instruction either in (a) enhanced anchored instruction or (b) text-based instruction coupled with applied problems in one of two different approaches to solve mathematical problems in math, technology, and special education classrooms. Seventeen of these students were children with disabilities. He found that students in the special education classroom performed at low levels regardless of which approach was used. On average, students in both groups who had received enhanced anchored instruction and text-based instruction coupled with applied problems in the math class showed measured improvement. Students who received anchored instruction maintained and transferred what they had learned in the technology classroom for a longer period of time than students who received text-based instruction coupled with applied problems.

This study documents how some children who received additional small-group instruction in the special education classroom that was examined achieved at higher levels and made significant gains when compared to their peers without disabilities. This is a good lesson in data disaggregation, analysis, and reporting that could well serve to point out the value of research that is not always generalizable, albeit in need of replication.

The second article, "Social Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in Middle School Physical Education Classes," by Samuel R. Hodge, The Ohio State University, is a case study that describes social interactions of students with and without disabilities in a general physical education program. Non-participant observation protocols were used to collect data that were analyzed from a behavioral coding system.

The two groups of students used in this study - those with and those without disabilities - exhibited infrequent, yet positive interactions. That is, when interactions between the two groups of students did take place they were friendly and cooperative. The researchers used this finding, along with related information from their study to advocate for inclusive practices in the particular physical education classroom studied.

This study is a good example of how data can be used to document positive classroom environments that can also be helpful to school leaders searching for ways to help children become socialized to schooling. The study is also of value to researchers who want to examine this issue further by replicating the protocols used to collect information. I’m sure policymakers, school leaders, community members, and others consider the socialization of children to be an important outcome of the American educational system. I would think a bevy of studies like this one could be assembled to lend credence to the positive impact schools and schooling have on American youth.

Next up is an article titled "School Aggression and Dispositional Aggression Among Middle School Boys," by Mary Ballard, Kelvin Rattley, Willie Fleming, and Pam Kidder-Ashley, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. These researchers used regression techniques to examine the relationship between dispositional (trait) aggression and administrative reports of school aggression among 100 adolescent males in an urban middle school.

With almost 60% of the male subjects studied found to have some record of school aggression, the major finding was that middle school boys with higher levels of dispositional aggression also had more records of school aggression. More subtly, however, dispositional aggression was significantly, positively correlated with verbal and physical aggression at school and family income and age accounted for only a minimal amount of the variance in school aggression.

If the boys examined in this study had been tested for achievement only, the above relationships would not have been the focus. Recent trends in school accountability are now encouraging researchers and school decision makers to take data (similar to those collected in this study), add achievement scores, and determine the relationship between these findings and scores on a test.
The fourth article in this issue, "Problem-Based Learning in the Middle School," by Nancy Cerezo, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, is another qualitative study. The researcher used interviews with students to collect data to examine problem-based learning and the manner in which middle grades students perceive its effectiveness. An examination of student perceptions of changes in their learning processes and self-efficacy guided analyses of the data.

The author found that "students believed they became more confident and took control of their learning as a result of the problem-based learning approach they experienced. Additionally, the researcher noted that problem-based learning enhanced group dynamics and had positive effects on students labeled 'at risk.'" Many educators and researchers find the study of metacognition to be an important component of teaching and learning theory, making this topic an important one to examine.

The final article in this issue is an evaluation of Project WIN (Working out Integrated Negotiations), designed to help low-income, urban, young adolescents learn how to create a justice-based community. Researchers Laura Roberts and George White of Lehigh University titled this article “An Endurance Test for Project WIN: A Conflict Transformation Program in a Low-Income, Urban, Middle Level Classroom.”

Instruments used in this quasi-experimental study were found to be valid and reliable measures of two constructs: "sense of community" and "transforming power." A major finding was that "both variables showed sustained gains for the treatment group and sustained declines for the control group." This study is a good example of how quasi-experimental designs can be implemented in school research. Selecting participants from pre-existing groups to form experimental and control groups can produce excellent designs and high quality action research. This latter approach, action research, is now producing a larger body of research at the middle level than any other. See my latest book, Research, Rhetoric, and Reality (Hough, 2003), for example.

Different approaches, designs, and methods such as a t-test, case study, regression, interview, survey, or some other type of instrumentation and a variety of issues, topics, and questions such as mathematics instruction, social interactions, aggression, problem-solving, "futuristics," or conflict transformation are necessary if quality research is going to be able to contribute to the existing body of knowledge. Test scores alone can sometimes be misleading. What is needed are data that help us understand the who, why, and how associated with those scores. In a pragmatic world where outcomes are directly related to inputs, a full understanding of the former is, perhaps, just as important as the latter. For classroom teachers to be assisted much by research, they need to know what works best for whom, how, and why. They also need to understand what seemingly extraneous variables, in fact, impact differences in learning among students. I suspect sociology and anthropology have about as much to do with test scores as does psychology.

David Hough, Editor


ISSN 1084-8959