Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Lit. Review Article 3

Literature Review

Article 3

APA Citation: Jackson, Gregg B. (1975). The Research Evidence on the Effects of Grade Retention. Review of Educational Research, Vol. 45, No. 4, 613-635. Retrieved from JSTOR database 31 July 2007.

I. Title: The Research Evidence on the Effects of Grade Retention.

II. Author: Gregg B. Jackson

III. Author’s Purpose for Writing: To examine the practice of grade retention and its effects on students.

IV. What are the points made in the review of the literature? Do they support the need for the study? There is little doubt that a pupil who is having serious academic difficulties in one grade is likely to continue having difficulties if merely promoted to the next grade. What is not clear is how the mere repetition of a grade of schooling is likely to reduce these difficulties (p.614).

V. Author’s Inquiry Question: Do students who are doing poor academic work or who manifest emotional or social maladjustment in school are generally likely to benefit more from being retained in a grade than from being promoted to the next one?

VI.
A. Author’s methodology: A systematic review of the research literature on the effects of grade retention was completed.

B. Who is being studied? Other research on grade retention

C. Over what length of time? Fall of 1973

D. What data is being collected? Data collected from appropriate journal articles and books.

VII. How the author collected information: By analyzing the information found in articles and books and making cross references to other articles and books.

VIII. What the author discovered:
Three general types of analytical design prevailed in these studies:
•The most commonly used type of design compared the outcomes of students retained under normal school policies with the outcomes of students promoted under normal policies.
•The second type of design compared the outcomes of retained students before and after their retention.
•The third design was the experimental one, where each pupil in a group of potential retainees was randomly assigned to repeat a grade or to be promoted to the next one, and then a semester or more later the retained students were compared with their promoted counterparts.
One general conclusion about the effects of grade retention relative to grade promotion is clearly warranted by all the results taken as whole: There is no reliable body of evidence to indicate that grade retention is more beneficial than grade promotion for students with serious academic or adjustments difficulties.

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