System Level Flashcards
What does scholarship increasingly demonstrate about student characteristics and environmental system features?
Interactions of individual student characteristics with environmental system features like home, community, peer group, classroom, school, and culture are responsible for student successes and difficulties in learning, emotional and social adjustment, and behavior.
What is the ecological orientation in educational services?
It emphasizes addressing classroom and school climates, facilitating home-school collaboration, and augmenting educational system capacities for universal interventions.
Who must school psychologists direct their expertise and attention to for effective service to children?
Adults, as they control children’s contexts for development and learning.
What is the role of school-based organizational consultants?
They intervene at the systems level to promote effective organizational functioning, which helps students.
What are the three types of consultation models mentioned?
- Client-centered consultation
- Consultee-centered consultation
- Organizational consultation
What does Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory focus on?
Child development through transactions between the child and several nested environmental systems.
Define the microsystem in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory.
Contexts of the child’s direct, immediate membership, such as family, neighborhood, and classroom.
What is the mesosystem?
The system of interactions between different microsystems, such as between school and family.
What does the exosystem represent?
Settings where the child is not actively involved but which still indirectly affect the child.
What does the macrosystem include?
Governments, laws, policies, and the larger cultural context influencing all lower-order systems.
What is the chronosystem?
The system of time, encompassing all life experiences including historical events and major life transitions.
What is the primary focus of the three-tiered schoolwide positive behavior support systems?
Primary (Tier 1/universal) prevention.
Who originated the concepts of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention and intervention?
Caplan.
What is the significance of ecological theory in multi-tiered preventive approaches?
It informs the emphasis on interventions targeting contextual factors.
What are the stages of school-based organizational consultation?
- Entry
- Operational problem definition
- Systemic needs assessment
- Intervention
- Evaluation of intervention efficacy
What does standards-based education aim to address?
Student achievement through clearly defined academic content standards.
What is a criticism of standards-based education?
It may force teachers to focus on average students at the expense of remedial and gifted students.
What is the role of organizational consultation in standards-based education?
To help educators differentiate instruction and support students with social and emotional learning (SEL) standards.
What does Response to Intervention (RtI) typically provide?
Preventive, primary intervention universally to students in Tier 1; targeted, secondary interventions to at-risk students in Tier 2; and individualized, intensive interventions to selected high-needs students in Tier 3.
What is resource mapping?
A system-building process for aligning resources and policies with specific goals, strategies, and expected outcomes.
What are the steps in the resource mapping process?
- Pre-mapping
- Mapping
- Taking action
- Maintaining and evaluating mapping work.
What criteria should guide data collection methods in resource mapping?
- Credibility
- Practicality
- Timeliness
- Accuracy
- Ease
- Objectivity
- Clarity
- Scope
- Availability
- Usefulness
- Balance
- Cost-effectiveness
What are the advantages of high-stakes standardized achievement tests?
- Help teachers base learning plans on student needs
- Enable parents to compare school performance
- Improve test-taking skills with practice
What are some disadvantages of high-stakes testing?
They can detract time and attention from subject content not assessed by these tests.
What is the primary benefit of state-level testing data for parents?
It enables parents to compare their school’s performance to others’ to make better-informed decisions about their children’s education.
What are the potential disadvantages of standardized achievement tests?
Preparing for these tests can detract from subject content that promotes creativity, leading to sacrifices in arts, sciences, history, and social studies.
What is ‘social promotion’ in education?
Passing students to the next grade even when they have not met grade-level performance standards or academic requirements.
What are the adverse educational results associated with retention?
Increased probability of dropping out of school.
Which states determined promotion to certain grades based on statewide test performance?
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin.
True or False: Most educators support social promotion as an effective practice.
False
What is the public opinion regarding social promotion versus retention?
More than 80% of teachers and employers, and about 75% of parents are against social promotion.
What is School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS)?
A system for preventing and remediating learning and behavior problems, emphasizing prevention.
What are the three tiers of intervention in SWPBS?
- Tier 1: Primary prevention
- Tier 2: Secondary intervention
- Tier 3: Tertiary intervention
What is included in Tier 1 of SWPBS?
- Defining and teaching behavioral expectations
- Implementing a system of rewards
- Applying consequences for undesirable behaviors
- Continuously collecting data
What are the key components of Tier 2 in SWPBS?
- Universal screening of students
- Monitoring progress of at-risk students
- Enhancing home-school communication
What does Tier 3 of SWPBS focus on?
Intensive and individualized interventions for students with higher educational/behavioral needs.
What criteria must a practice meet to be considered evidence-based?
- Explicit description of the practice
- Clear definitions of implementation
- Identification of expected outcomes
- Support from peer-reviewed research
What role does organizational theory and systems theory play in school improvement?
They inform efforts to understand and improve school organizations and systems.
What are some activities included in a district improvement plan?
- Guiding improvement actions
- Identifying high-priority areas
- Supporting implementation of strategies
- Assessing progress with measurable indicators
What is the relationship between student learning and school improvement?
Instruction must improve on the same scale as learning improvements; both are influenced by organizational and social contexts.
What factors are critical to effective school organizations?
- A shared mission emphasizing teaching and learning
- A strong professional community
- Instructional leadership
- Sufficient resources
What is the primary requirement for improving student learning according to research in the 1990s?
Improving schools is required for improving student learning.
What are some critical factors for effective school organizations?
- A shared mission emphasizing teaching and learning
- A strong professional community
- Instructional leadership
- Sufficient resources
- Accurate, timely student learning data
- Well-qualified instructional personnel
- Professional development opportunities
- Parent-teacher relational trust
- Community support