Books by J. D. Butler, PhD, PE
Exploring Some Inattended Affective Factors in Performing Nonroutine Mathematical Tasks
By John D. Butler, PhD, PE
Exploring some inattended affective factors in performing nonroutine mathematical tasks: The purpose of this study was to describe students' attempts to solve nonroutine math problems and to explore possible correlates of their performance. The focus of this study was on inattended (i.e., intentionally avoided) dimensions that have been underrepresented in the literature, including attitudes, interests, values, aesthetics, metacognition, and representation. Both objective and subjective data—drawn from 13 separate sources—using quantitative and qualitative procedure were analyzed. Fine-grained rubrics were developed and used to score student work on six nonroutine math problems. These objective data were complemented with students' written "logs" of their work in real time, followed by semi-structured debriefing interviews after they had finished. Structured scales were used to document students' math-related attitudes, career interests, and work values, along with essays describing their long-term experience with math, in and out of school. Data was gathered on students' math aesthetics, including the features of "attractive" problems and their individual preferences for the different modes of instructional explanation. School records provided students' demographic data and their scores on generic measures of aptitude and achievement.
Students' age, art discipline, attendance, sending school district, socioeconomic status (SES), and ethnicity were not found to be correlates for either students' aptitude/achievement/experience measures or problem-solving ability. Girls significantly outperformed boys on ability/achievement/experience measures, but not on problem-solving measures. Individualized Education Plan (IEP) status was found to be a strong correlate of both aptitude/achievement/experience and problem-solving measures, with students without IEPs consistently scoring higher on all significant measures than students with IEPs. Overall, most math-related attitude variables had little effect on both aptitude/achievement/experience and problem-solving measures. However, there was strong evidence of students' math aesthetics in problem solving. Specifically, students appreciating more than one type of solution scored consistently higher in problem-solving measures and frequency of use of higher-order internal representations. A close relationship between metacognition, aesthetics, and representation was found, as well as a strong link between mathematics and language usage. The discovery of students' use of higher-order internal representation during post-task videotaped interviews, undetected by paper-and-pencil assessments, supported a conclusion that studies of problem-solving ability cannot be purely quantitative in method but must contain a qualitative component.
This an open access dissertation
Click on the link below: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/2344/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Who’s the New Kid in Chemistry? by John D. Butler, PhD, PE
ISBN 978-0-7618-6229-1
Who’s the New Kid in Chemistry? offers an unprecedented look at student engagement and teacher best practices through the eyes of an educational researcher enrolled as a public high school student. Over the course of seventy-nine consecutive days, John D. Butler participates in and observes science teacher Jessica M. Waters’s high school chemistry class, documenting his experiences as they unfold. Who’s the New Kid in Chemistry? is a compelling example of what can be accomplished when an educational researcher and teacher collaborate in the classroom.
Dr. Butler’s research was conducted in 2011, and Mrs. Waters was named the Rhode Island 2013 Teacher of the Year. This work includes a discussion on flexible homework assignments, data-driven instruction, and thirty teacher best practices. This book is an invaluable resource for teachers across all content areas, master's and doctoral research method classes, and future Teachers of the Year.
Published by the University Press of America, Inc.
Available on Amazon
Click on the title below: Who’s the New Kid in Chemistry?
Inventing School
The Bricks and Mortar Asynchronous e-Learning RotoFlex Blended Learning Model by John D. Butler, PhD, PE
ISBN 978-0-692-66335-6
Hidden in the shadows of the “Superman Building” (tallest building in Providence) and those of other brick-and-mortar structures, behind the 7-Eleven on Weybosset Street, is a vibrant, highly successful educational laboratory of innovation for 225 high school students, their teachers, administrators, and staff of the Village Green Virtual Charter School (VGV) pioneering the school of the future—the first full e-curriculum based and most intense blended learning “bricks and mortar” model in Rhode Island K-12 public education and one of just a few of its type in the nation. Now in its fourth year of operation, the school has been visited by several teams of educators from school districts around the country to study the model in hopes of replicating it for their own districts.
The high school uses a “blended learning” model of online curriculum (Edgenuity) as its primary curriculum delivery system as well as in-classroom teaching. Students are in “workshops” working with teachers about 40% of the time and online. The other 60% of students have their own partitioned workspace in large rooms referred to as learning centers. Teachers at Village Green work with students when there is a skill or strategy that cannot be mastered in the online curriculum.
The author presents an unprecedented look at the birth of this “school of the future,” from the initial conception of Dr. Robert Pilkington, widely acknowledged as the founder of the Rhode Island charter school movement, through all of the trials and tribulations, and through the school’s first graduating class in the spring of 2016. The book provides a comprehensive blueprint for schools/school districts that wish to implement the Edgenuity e-courseware platform for a high school program of study. Included are detailed descriptions of the technology infrastructure, student and teacher survey data, teacher best practices and lessons learned, and several innovations to share.
Published by Village Green Virtual
Available on Amazon
Click on the title below: Inventing School: The Bricks and Mortar Asynchronous e-Learning RotoFlex Blended Learning Model
Knocking Out of the PARCC by John D. Butler, PhD, PE
ISBN 978-0-692-80592-3
November 17, 2015 was not a good day for the Village Green Virtual Charter School. At 1:30 p.m. that Tuesday afternoon, the results of the Spring 2015 Rhode Island state assessments in English Language Arts and Literacy (ELA/L) and Mathematics, referred to as PARCC, were released. Our scores were in the toilet—only 16.3% of our students were proficient in ELA/L and an abysmal 4.2% proficient in math. I remember the sick feeling in my stomach and the immediate thought of the stressful year that surely would follow. There would now be the inevitable pressure to dramatically improve our PARCC performance—especially considering the spring 2016 scores would provide the “growth” evidence used by the Rhode Island Department of Education for our charter renewal review during the forthcoming 2016-2017 school year—thus began an intensive schoolwide goal to improve student performance on the rigorous PARCC assessments.
“We followed Pearson’s breadcrumbs—the 59 PARCC released scored student responses. Using analytics, we cracked the code, created resources for VGV teachers to prepare our students for the assessments, and raised student achievement with historic gains in ELA and Literacy.”
This book describes how one urban school followed Pearson’s breadcrumbs, cracked the code, and raised student achievement on PARRC’s high school English Language Arts & Literacy assessments by historic gains in one year with just a few months of targeted preparation supplemental to the normal ELA curriculum. The author presents his research in developing profiles for the Literary Analysis, Narrative Writing, and Research Simulation Tasks based on analyses of PARCC’s released scored student essays. Also included are the actual teacher resources developed and related interventions implement-ed for teaching students the targeted skills for demonstrating writing proficiency and thereby inherently scoring high on the PARCC. The author begins with a fascinating look at the current “state of the art” of automated essay scoring (AES) and shares several of his discoveries during his development of an in-house classroom teacher tool for analyzing and scoring student essays. A must read for high school English department chairs and teachers of ELA and Literacy!
Published by Village Green Virtual
Available on Amazon
Click on the title below: Knocking Out of the PARCC
A Personalized Learning Framework for Non-Thematic Pathways
The VGV High School Model
by John D. Butler, PhD, PE
ISBN 978-0-692-86663-4
The Village Green Virtual Charter "bricks and mortar" High School (aka VGV) is Rhode Island’s first competency-based, personalized blended learning school by design. This book details the development of a high school program of study framework generalizable to "bricks and mortar" schools by using an e-curriculum platform informed by a diagnostic for meeting students where they are at ( i.e., providing remedial interventions to close skill gaps where needed and providing opportunities for those students capable to accelerate their learning).
The model provides a truly personalized and equitable framework for all students. Students entering the school take externally scored, nationally normed assessments in reading and mathematics. Their performance on the assessments, along with other measures (e.g., eighth grade performance on state assessments, student’s Lexile reading level), determines which of 16 pathways they will follow. Two pathways provide the opportunity for capable students to complete their program of study in three years. Approximately 14% of VGV students are able to complete their high school program of study in three years. This is quite impressive for an urban school wherein 90% of students qualify for “free or reduced-price meals.” The remaining 14 pathways contain some degree of remedial coursework to close skill gaps. These pathways require four years. However, students are continuously monitored and can move between pathways over their high school experience.
Every pathway contains opportunities for students to take career-related elective courses of interest. All 16 personal pathways lead to the opportunity for dual enrollment in a local college in their last year at VGV. Given the research supporting a high "effect" size for student opportunities to accelerate their learning, every high school should provide at least one pathway toward completing a high school program of study in less than four years (e.g., a school within a school).
Published by Village Green Virtual
Available on Amazon
Click on the title below: A Personalized Learning Framework for Non-Thematic Pathways: The VGV High School Model
