Purpose: The purpose of the article is to contribute to a discussion about quality for social science teaching and in continuation hereof to develop a tool for social science classroom observation and interpretation, for both direct and video-based observation. Design/methodology/approach: Classroom teaching is communication. Therefore, it is…

Following the pandemic-related school shutdowns in spring 2020, direct observations continued to be a necessary component of special education evaluations even when students were not present at school. As students began learning at home instead of in classrooms, the continued need for observational data likely compelled most educators to use video…

Many instructional observation systems are designed to provide rough, qualitative, highly-evaluative assessments on numerous core dimensions of teaching. Such systems achieve comprehensive overviews of teaching but are poorly suited to answering many discovery-oriented research questions. In contrast, fine-grained agnostic systems are needed to…

The research is clear: Including students with disabilities in general education classrooms is the most effective way for all students to learn. If you are working toward greater inclusivity in your school or system, this book from educators and inclusion experts Julie Causton, Kate MacLeod, Kristie Pretti-Frontczak, Jenna Mancini Rufo, and Paul…

There is a problem in the state of Michigan's evaluation system regarding the training received by those conducting classroom teacher observations. A performance gap between teachers and students and provides training solutions for classroom observers was identified. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of…

"Inclusive Assessment" presents the complex procedures of the assessment process using an easy-to-follow, step-by-step approach. Each step includes practice exercises that introduce portions of assessment instruments, protocols, and scoring tables. You are given the background, guidance and tools you need to participate in the…

The science of reading has become a buzzword in education across the nation. In 2017, the Arkansas General Assembly passed the Right to Read Act (Right to Read Act, 2017). The law requires all elementary core (reading, mathematics, science, and social studies) teachers, kindergarten through sixth grade, and all kindergarten through twelfth-grade…

For coaches, access to classrooms isn't straightforward and is far from guaranteed. Access is a prerequisite for coaching, yet there are many barriers beyond a coach's control, making their job difficult to impossible. In this article, the authors detail how five administrative and structural forces shaped coaches' access to teachers' classrooms.…

To provide a landscape of mathematics activities children experience in U.S. preschool and kindergarten classrooms, we observed time children spent in mathematics activities (and -- as a contrast -- literacy) in 101 geographically diverse early childhood classrooms in seven U.S. states. We also observed what mathematics content, grouping…

This study examines how well school groups in the Coastal Plains region of a southeastern state align with the socio-emotional strategies for four-year-olds outlined by the Key Practices in the Pyramid Model Framework (Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool-Research Edition [Manual], Baltimore, MD: Brookes, 2014). Many schools in these groups serve…

Supported by decades of research on praise and its effect on student behaviors, we developed the Behavior-Specific Praise--Observation Tool (BSP-OT) to measure characteristics of effective praise. We evaluated interrater reliability of the BSP-OT to measure praise specificity, contingency, and variety using intraclass correlation (ICC) and Cohen's…

In this study, we examined the scoring and generalizability assumptions of an explicit instruction (EI) special education teacher observation protocol using many-faceted Rasch measurement (MFRM). Video observations of classroom instruction from 48 special education teachers across four states were collected. External raters (n = 20) were trained…

The spaces we inhabit and the physical communities in which we learn all affect how we come to experience the world, construct what mathematics is to us, and develop how we teach mathematics. In this theory-to-practice article, we discuss why explicitly considering spatial ways of knowing is important in mathematics teacher education. We begin by…

This article provides a vignette to exemplify how the training of teachers in primary schools in England was adapted in one context during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the key challenges the HEIs and schools faced was how to continue to assess the practicum of trainee teachers while trying to maintain the integrity of classroom 'bubbles'. A fast…

The urgent need to help students -- and particularly students who are Black or Hispanic -- recover from the negative effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on mathematics learning and access equitable opportunities in mathematics will require that teachers use every available tool to diagnose student learning needs and…