This volume presents the second edition of the "Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching (COLT) Observation Scheme." Since the book's original publication, COLT has become well established as a research instrument in L2 teaching and learning. This new edition brings COLT into the 21st century by introducing digital versions of the…

Although pronunciation instruction (PI) has started to gain prominence in second language teacher professional development (PD) research (e.g. Nguyen & Newton, 2021), relatively less attention has been given to PD programs in an online format. Adopting a Sociocultural Theoretical (SCT) perspective, this dissertation explored the role of an…

Classroom management practices are critical to the success of teachers and students, and a growing number of programs have been developed to improve these practices. However, there has been less investigation into observational tools to assess classroom management and exploration of whether it can be measured consistently by observers across…

Helping students engage with complex texts has been a longstanding challenge, though teachers have received little guidance about practices that help students in engaging with texts. This paper provides a range of empirical evidence about a tool designed to provide formative insight into text-focused teaching, which we used to reliably score more…

Classroom discourse is a core medium of instruction -- analyzing it can provide a window into teaching and learning as well as driving the development of new tools for improving instruction. We introduce the largest dataset of mathematics classroom transcripts available to researchers, and demonstrate how this data can help improve instruction.…

In this case study, we explore how principal candidates made sense of their internship by analyzing their weekly reflections during a school year. We found that candidates' views of leadership developed from viewing leadership solely through the lens of making decisions and providing direction, to recognizing that much of the work of a school…

This research describes the application of improvement science focusing on implementing restorative practices (RP) to decrease suspension and expulsion rates of Black students. Black students are suspended and expelled disproportionately compared to their White peers in South Carolina. Due to the high suspension and expulsion rates, school…

Regular class observations are one of the means to monitor factors and dynamics that influence quality learning. From 2016, the Rwanda education system introduced a new curriculum known as Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC), which ensures fosters more the learner-centered approach. This study was carried out to assess CBC input after four years of…

The constraints and demands on teachers and students, related to implementing English medium instruction (EMI), mean that teachers need to be able to reflect on their practice and make appropriate adjustments. Reflective practice generally means that EMI teachers subject their philosophy of practice, principles, theories and practices to a…

A gulf exists between prior work testing metacognitive instructional interventions and teacher practices that may support metacognition in the classroom. To help bridge this gulf, we designed an observational protocol to capture whether and how teachers provide metacognitive support in their talk and examined whether these supports were related to…

Despite the prevalent use of observational measures in teacher evaluation systems, research has only recently begun to take into account how aspects of the instructional environment and lesson sampling design may interact with teachers' scores on these measures. Instead, one assumption guiding current evaluation systems is that the variation in…

The study examines reliability and validity evidence of observational systems for evaluating teacher effectiveness and fostering professional development conversations in schools. Specifically, this study compared the Framework for Teaching's (FFT) validity evidence using the traditional scoring approach with a new composite scoring approach that…

Despite the accumulating body of knowledge on action research, the scope of research on teacher identity construction in action research is still limited. This study relied on the concept of identities-in-practice and examined four second language (L2) teachers' identity construction across the plan, act, observe, and reflect stages of action…

Raters must score accurately and consistently for classroom observation scores to be valid. This requires (a) a standard defining when scoring is accurate and consistent enough and (b) measuring and remediating rater performance against that standard. Current practice has focused on this second problem to the exclusion of the first. My goal here…

This quantitative study was conducted to describe and compare the perceptions of Missouri secondary principals and teachers regarding the duration of classroom observations and evaluative feedback. The study explored the effects of variation in classroom observation durations from the perspective of both principals and teachers. A survey…