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Re: Is this OT?




With regard to boarding schools, since I teach at one, I'd
love to discuss it in this context. Since we are an
academically selective school, it is hard to say whether the
fact that we are residential makes a big difference, but it
certainly has some advantages (also some disadvantages). I
wonder what its effect is in the private schools, where the
selection is more economic than academic?

Even though your school is selective, I still think being
residential makes a big difference. There are very
selective non-residential schools, but the few statistics
I've examine show residential schools do provide a big
academic advantage. Even less excusive residential
schools provide a big academic advantage.

Tim O'Donnell

Unfortunately it is very difficult to determine whether a residential school
is better, because usually such schools get better students to start with.
Shayer and Adey studied a variety of schools in England and found that the
output was determined by the intake. Essentially they have a graph with the
intake on the horizontal and the output on the vertical (with a non linear
scale). They show that you can then fit a straight line to the data.
However schools that implemented "Thinking Science" had much better output
relative to the curve. Indeed some very low intake schools had better
output than high intake schools. Shayer & Adey do not differentiate between
types of schools and all control schools fall on the same line.

There is one study reported in "Instrumental Enrichment", Feuerstein, 1980
in which students in a residential school did better than ones in a day
school. The experiment started with students who were all 2 years behind in
their schooling. Half of the group was given an experimental treatment and
the other half an enrichment designed by teachers. The experimental
treatment had a very interesting effect. These students ended up scoring
average on a general intelligence test, while the control group scored below
40 on the test with a mean about 50. Residential students did perform
better than day students, but this effect was very small compared to the
experimental effect. This is from the graph on page 373 and text on 374.

While it may be possible that such things as uniforms can defuse some
problems, and residential schools may enhance performance slightly, research
based curricula can have such a large effect that other factors pale by
comparison.

Incidentally none of this research used the FCI or FMCE, but the Shayer and
Adey curricula resemble PER based curricula. The Feuerstein curricula is
very strange, but in some ways may resemble the Benezit study. Essentially
it is a set of puzzles designed to promote development of thinking skills
and dampen excessive impulsivity.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX