Reading proficiency has been identified as one of the most reliable indicators of whether a learner will attain the competence needed to achieve academic success and contribute actively to society. Research findings in Kenyan primary and secondary schools reveal inadequate reading skills among the students. There are different approaches in…

The report contains real-world, proven school climate strategies to guide policymakers in building a comprehensive and coherent state-wide approach for improving school climate. It features 12 recommendations linked to existing state policy examples policymakers can use to build a comprehensive, coherent state-wide approach for improving school…

Observational assessment is being used on a large scale to evaluate the quality of interactions between teachers and children in classroom environments. When one performs observations at scale, features of the protocol such as the scheduling of observations can potentially influence observed scores. In this study interactions were observed for 88…

Research on the evaluation of the professional knowledge of mathematics teachers (comprising for example mathematical content knowledge, mathematics pedagogical content knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge) has become prominent in the last decade; however, the development of video-based assessment approaches is a more recent topic. This…

Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of the Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED), declared a "new wave" of Local Area Under-performance Inspections (LAUI) of schools "denying children the standard of education they deserve". This paper examines how the threat of LAUI played out over three mathematics lessons taught by a teacher…

Novice teachers begin their careers with certain instructional ideals; however, in practice, novice teachers tend to enact classroom practices that only partially align with these ideals--a phenomenon referred to as the problem of enactment. This article explores this phenomenon by investigating the classroom thinking of three novice teachers.…

This research aims to improve the learning activity and achievement of a 10th grade class made up of 30 students in a vocational high school located in the city of Surakarta, Indonesia, by applying the Numbered Heads Together (NHT) approach. The experiment was divided into two stages of four activities each: planning, implementation, observation,…

A modified Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) (Piburn & Sawada, 2000) instrument was used to separately examine eight technology and engineering (T&E) educators' teaching of science, and T&E content and practices, as called for by the "Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology"…

The international application of standard-based measures to assess ECEC quality raises crucial questions concerning the cultural complexities and the problematic validity of instruments migrating out of their cultural cradle; nevertheless the topic has received only marginal attention in the literature. This paper, which aims to address this gap,…

The present study reports on the psychometric properties of the Early Childhood Classroom Observation Measure (ECCOM) in Finnish and Estonian first and third grade classrooms. The observation data were collected from 91 first grade teachers and 70 third grade teachers. Teachers' curriculum goals, teaching experience and the classroom size were…

When four forces create shift in the landscape of PK-12 education, change in response to the environment is inevitable and necessary. It is such in the United States, as schools face increased accountability for the growth and attainment of reading skills, rigorous demands of the Common Core State Standards, a rapidly growing population of…

Observation systems are increasingly used around the world for a variety of purposes; 2 critical purposes are to understand and to improve teaching. As observation systems differ considerably, individuals must decide what observation system to use. But the field does not have a common specification of an observation system, nor does it have…

We examined the degree to which assessment of teachers' instructional and behavior management practices, as measured by the Classroom Strategies Assessment System (CSAS; Reddy & Dudek, 2014), relates to gains in student achievement as measured by the Measures of Academic Progress (Northwest Evaluation Association [NWEA], 2011). Two-level…

We investigated the premise that observation measures of instruction are indicators of effective teaching, using the definition of effectiveness articulated by departments of education: teaching that boosts student achievement. We argued that student motivation is equally as important as achievement in the evaluation of teaching effectiveness…

Teacher evaluation systems commonly rely on observation of teaching practice (OTP) by school principals. However, the value of OTP as evidence of teacher effectiveness depends on its psychometric quality. In this study, we address a key aspect of the psychometric quality of principals' OTP ratings. Specifically, we investigate the degree to which…