California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) and the Riverside County Office of Education (RCOE) were awarded an Investing in Innovation (i3) Development grant in 2015 to investigate the impact of an early education mathematics program on English Learner students at two rural school districts in Riverside, CA. Teaching English Learners…

The UTeach Observation Protocol (UTOP) was designed to inform STEM teacher education. The instrument has been used in prior studies examining inter-rater reliability and relationships to teacher value-added scores. However, prior work has not shown examples of how rating with the UTOP works in practice nor has it discussed the instrument's…

This appendix augments a report that updates 2013 guidance to school district leaders and their partners across the country who are interested in launching summer learning programs or improving established ones. In that report, the authors present recommendations based on evaluations, conducted between 2011 and 2016, of summer programs in five…

In many teacher preparation programs at institutions of higher education in the United States, pre-service teachers receive mentoring and constructive feedback during their internship placement from an experienced supervising teacher and a university coordinator. Often the feedback loop is closed by asking interns, 'was this useful?' To better…

Although consistency in teacher effectiveness has attracted scholarly interest since the 1960s, revived interest in differential teacher effectiveness is recently witnessed, with empirical studies more systematically testing this assumption. Most of these studies, however, focus on cognitive outcomes in "core" subject matters. Drawing on…

Recent education reforms including the "Next Generation Science Standards" emphasize integrating engineering into K-12 science instruction. Although prior studies have characterized engineering design (ED) in K-12 settings, no validated protocols attempt to characterize ED integration in secondary science classrooms. The present study…

Observations seem particularly susceptible to rater error due to the level of subjectivity involved in assessment. Thus, the present paper aims to investigate: (1) inter-rater agreement (IRA) using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System -- Secondary version (CLASS-S) and (2) the CLASS-S factor structure in a Norwegian context. Inter-rater…

Institutions of higher education have a primary mission of providing a quality eduation to all of its student, including students with disabilities. This practice brief describes tools used in an innovative approach to teaching observations that were designed to improve access for students with disabilities through inclusive teaching strategies,…

Historically, early cognitive skills have been underestimated, largely as a result of the ways these competencies have been measured, which is particularly pervasive in the area of metacognition. Only recently have researchers begun to detect evidence of contextualized metacognition in 3-5 year old preschool children through the use of…

Economically disadvantaged (ECD) students come to classrooms performing below grade level, particularly in reading. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine master educators' identities and practices that contribute to success in literacy development with ECD students. The performance of ECD students compared to more affluent…

The pursuit of multiple educational outcomes makes teaching a complex craft subject to potential conflicts and competing commitments. Using a data set in which teachers were randomly assigned to classes paired with videotaped lessons, we both document and unpack such a tradeoff. Upper-elementary teachers who excel at raising students' math test…

Background: Adult-child relational interactions constitute an essential component of out-of-school-time programs, and training staff to effectively interact with children is key to improving program quality. Efficient staff training, that meets the limited time availability of out-of-school time staff, is particularly needed. Objective: This pilot…

In this study, we investigated the factor structure underlying the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement using confirmatory and exploratory factor-analytic methods and under conditions of multilevel (nested) data structures and ordinal measurement scales. We found evidence of generally poor fit with the system's posited first-order,…

This study investigates the physical literacy environment of preschools in three Nordic countries. The environments were assessed using an observation protocol in a total of 131 classrooms with children aged between one and seven in Sweden, Norway and Finland. The results showed that children's books were common and accessible in all three…

This study aimed to examine the impact of a universal, school-based intervention, the Good Behavior Game (GBG), on children's behavior, and to explore any subgroup moderator effects among children at varying levels of cumulative risk (CR) exposure. A 2-year cluster-randomized controlled trial was conducted comprising 77 primary schools in England.…