Here
is the format that should be used for your journal critique when you post to
the discussion board as a discussion leader.
Part I: Article Identification
The
full citation of the article (in APA format) should be listed first.
Part II: What was found
This
section should contain the following information in no more than three
paragraphs:
•
The rationale behind the study (the
broad area that was being studied)
•
The objective of the study (what did the
researchers set out to find?)
•
The method(s) used in the study
•
The findings of the study
•
The authors’ conclusions
Part III: Your
response
This
section should address the following issues:
•
Was the paper well-written or was it
difficult to follow? Note that stating that the paper was hard to follow
because of vocabulary is not a valid response for this assignment. If you
do not understand a word or term it is up you to rectify the situation.
•
What were pros and cons of the research
method(s) that was/were used?
•
How could the method(s) have been
improved?
•
What problems do you see with the
obtained results? Are there confounding variables or other issues that
weren’t taken into account when the study was designed?
•
Do you agree or disagree with the
authors’ conclusions based on their results?
•
What questions remain unanswered?
•
Could these aforementioned questions
have been answered in this study with a better research design?
•
What research logically follows from the
current study (What is the “next step”) ?
Document Preview: Journal of Educational Psychology Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association
2007, Vol. 99, No. 2, 221– XXXXXXXXXX/07/$12.00 DOI: XXXXXXXXXX/ XXXXXXXXXX
How Does Bennett Woods Elementary School Produce Such High Reading
and Writing Achievement?
Michael Pressley, Lindsey Mohan, Lisa M. Raphael, and Lauren Fingeret
Michigan State University
The authors developed a grounded theory about how a school serving relatively advantaged children
produces high reading and writing achievement compared with schools serving similar populations of
students. The school’s faculty is reading and writing focused, and students experience many books as
they receive explicit, demanding instruction (i.e., about how to read words, comprehend, write) con-
nectedtocontentlearning.Theschooloffersapositive,motivatingenvironment.Insum,manyelements
thatpotentiallysupportedachievementwereidentified,includingexplicitteachingofskillsinthecontext
ofmuchreading,writing,andcontentlearning,whichisconsistentwithbalancedperspectivesonreading
and writing development. A major hypothesis in the grounded theory is that even with relatively
advantaged populations, great efforts may be required to produce high reading and writing achievement.
Keywords: effective schooling, effective teaching, effective literacy instruction, balanced literacy in-
struction
There has been considerable study of the characteristics of students?” When we searched the literature for studies potentially
schools that are effective in producing achievement in disadvan- illuminating this question, we found little, especially at the ele-
tagedstudents(Reynolds,Creemers,Stringfield,Teddlie,&Schaf- mentary school level (see Shouse, XXXXXXXXXXThus, we report an
fer, 2002; Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000), including the nature of the in-depth examination of the reading and writing instruction at
reading and writing instruction in elementary schools serving Bennett Woods Elementary School, an elementary school that
disadvantaged...