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Fixed and Sliding Goals in Education?

Fixed and Sliding Goals in Education?. A tiny example of a famous systems insight, applied to education. Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal. Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal. Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal. Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal.

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Fixed and Sliding Goals in Education?

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  1. Fixed and Sliding Goals in Education? A tiny example of a famous systems insight, applied to education

  2. Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal

  3. Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal

  4. Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal

  5. Striving to Reach an Achievement Goal

  6. Striving (But Falling a Bit Short)

  7. Where Does the Goal Come From?

  8. Where Does the Goal Come From?

  9. A Flexible Goal Can Slide

  10. Sliding Goals in Sophistication of School Texts?School Texts Have Gotten Simpler Over Time • The most difficult readers were generally published before 1918. By modern standards, Professor McGuffy’s pre- and post-Civil War readers were very difficult. • Average sentence length of 1963-91 books was shorter than that of 1945-1962 books. • Mean length dropped from 20 to 14 words, “the equivalent of dropping one or two clauses from every sentence” • Wording of schoolbooks after 1963 for 8th graders was as simple as that in books used by 5th graders before 1963 • Wording of 12th grade texts after 1963 was simpler than the wording of 7th grade texts before 1963. • Today’s mean sixth, seventh, and eighth grade readers are simpler than fifth grade readers were before World War II.

  11. Could Declining Sophistication of Texts Account for Declining SAT Verbal Scores?

  12. Sliding Goals in School Texts?

  13. A Formal Model to Fit to the Data

  14. Historical and Simulated SAT Verbal Scores

  15. The Endogenous Point of View Causal forces (school texts?) are not exogenous but feed back upon themselves “System as cause”

  16. The “X/N” Matrix Endogenous Predominant Mode of Analysis Exogenous Exogenous Endogenous True (Predominant) State of Affairs

  17. School Texts Studies • Marilyn Jager Adams, Advancing our Students’ Language and Literacy, The Challenge of Complex Texts, The American Educator 34, 4 (winter 2010-11) • Hayes, Wolfer & Wolfe (1996), Schoolbook Simplification and Its Relation to the Decline in SAT-Verbal Scores, American Educational Research Journal 33 (2): 498-508.   • http://www.soc.cornell.edu/hayes-lexical-analysis/schoolbooks/Papers/HayesWolferAndWolf1996.pdf

  18. Optimal Parameters for SAT Fit • Maximum of simulations/optimizations found at: • Pressure to devote time and effort elsewhere = 7.99971 • Time to act on gap = 17.2977 • *Time to adjust goal = 37.935 • Simulations = 25138 • Optimizations = 107 • Pass = 3 • Payoff = -711.039 • --------------------------------- • The final payoff is -711.039

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