Staff development for multigrade teachers improved time-on-task and teaching skills but did not raise achievement relative to untrained single-grade classes¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · quant-synthesisr2·q3
Currency · newest study 1996 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q3 i? Three studies of a staff development program for multigrade teachers revealed a significant treatment effect for student time-on-task and for teachers' instructional and management skills, but no significant achievement differences versus untrained single-grade classes. → Simon Veenman 1996
Evidence¶
Simon Veenman 1996¶
Simon Veenman. (1996). Effects of multigrade and multi-age classes reconsidered. Review of Educational Research, 66(3), 323-340. https://doi.org/10.2307/1170526
q3 · i? · quant-synthesis · r2
Three studies assessing short-term and long-term effects of a staff development program for teachers in multigrade classes, using pretraining and posttraining classroom observation. The article reports a significant treatment effect for time-on-task and teacher skills, with no significant achievement differences against untrained single-grade classes; no effect size is printed.
"Based on pretraining and posttraining classroom observation, these studies revealed a significant treatment effect for the time-on-task levels of the students in the multigrade classes and for the instructional and management skills of the teachers. However, no significant differences in achievement were found between the students in classes with trained multigrade teachers and the students in classes with untrained single-grade teachers"
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Meta-analysis shows no significant difference in cognitive outcomes between multigrade and single-grade classes — related
- Experimental staff development programs mostly raised student achievement relative to control teachers (review attribution) — related
- Multigrade classes show negative weighted effects for science and social studies but not English as a foreign language — related
- Trained teachers allocated about 20 percent of class time to the feedback-corrective/enrichment loop after staff development, having devoted virtually none before — related
- Noncognitive outcomes of multigrade classes show essentially zero overall effect after outlier removal — related
- Multi-age classes show no significant cognitive or noncognitive differences from single-age classes — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
staff-development-multigrade-teachers-effects |
title |
Staff development for multigrade teachers improved time-on-task and teaching skills but did not raise achievement relative to untrained single-grade classes |
description |
Staff development for multigrade teachers improved time-on-task and teaching skills but did not raise achievement relative to untrained single-grade classes |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
1996 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-20 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — simon-veenman-1996 |
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