In this reflection, I contextualize my own experiences conducting educational ethnography in a synchronous online kindergarten classroom during the COVID-19 pandemic. I highlight how conducting research in online classrooms transforms ethnographic research methodologies and concepts such as the field site. I offer four suggestions, derived from my…

Sensing technologies that provide continuous, real-time information about teachers' and students' individual experiences are increasingly being applied to classroom-based research. Sensing technologies provide a possible alternative to costly and time-intensive in-person or hand-coded observations and have the potential to increase our present…

Purpose: The current study examines the ways preschool teachers handle parents' WhatsApp groups. The study explores the associations between professional capital, perception of the application, and communication patterns with the parents utilizing WhatsApp, an instant message application. Design/methodology/approach: A group of 214 Israeli…

Before the 2020-21 school year, educators, policymakers, and parents confronted the stark and uncertain trade-offs implied by the health, educational, and economic consequences of offering instruction remotely, in person, or through a hybrid of the two. Most public schools in the U.S. chose remote-only instruction and enrollment fell dramatically…

Students who do not read proficiently by the end of first grade are likely to remain poor readers and suffer academic difficulties across all subjects during their school career (Moats, 2017). Therefore, early identification and intervention of reading difficulties are essential for students' academic success (Partanen & Siegel, 2014; Vadasy…

This brief provides an overview of the four attendance-focused interventions districts partnering with the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) implemented and evaluated through randomized controlled trials in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years. The tested interventions were personalized messaging, mentoring, family…

Because parental engagement has been shown to have a positive relationship with K-12 student academic achievement, the problem for this study was that though information and communication technology applications (ICT apps) are available to engage parents with teachers and schools, it was unclear whether parents are aware of and use them. The…

School closures can occur not only during a pandemic, but also during disasters, which can impact students' social and emotional well-being and lead to detrimental behavioral outcomes and trauma-related symptomatology. Such negative impacts can potentially be alleviated by inclusion of effective virtual or blended SEL programming that supports…

During the past year, teachers have expended much time and effort moving their mathematics instruction online. To do this, teachers had to build their content, pedagogical, and technological knowledge, or technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). As teacher educators facilitating a professional learning sequence during the shift to…

An important characteristic of expert teaching is the ability to adapt instruction to meet learners' needs. One way this type of ownership of instruction happens is through teachers interactively constructing knowledge about pedagogical content with others. In this article, the authors looked at how a group of thirteen participants enrolled in an…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across North America closed to in person learning in March 2020. Since then, it has becoming increasingly clear that physical distancing will need to be prolonged in the 2020/2021 school year and possibly resumed in the future. In response, education ministries shifted teaching and learning online. Research is…

California districts were forced to shift to distance learning models in the spring of 2020 and the transition to distance learning for students in the early grades--transitional kindergarten through third grade (TK-3)--has proved difficult for students, parents, and teachers alike. As distance learning persists, administrators and teachers can…

Poor school attendance in the early grades is predictive of poor subsequent educational outcomes. We report on a pilot intervention aiming to reduce chronic absenteeism in kindergarten. We designed and implemented a two-way, text-based parent-school communication system to encourage daily attendance, provide parents with personalized feedback on…

One of the symptoms of neurosis at preschool age children is fear. In our opinion, research in this area will help to solve a number of problems of children of preschool age, including difficulties of acceptance on themselves in the new social roles in relation from kindergarten transition to school adjustment problems and a number of other…

In rural Kansas, five high school students take seats in their school's distance learning classroom for a Mandarin language class they share with students at four other schools around the state. In Atlanta, an entire class of kindergartners sits in front of a big screen, speaking to their teacher in China. The students laugh, raise their hands,…