Categories for Education Outcomes
January 11, 2021
Implementation Science: Fidelity Predictions and Outcomes. This paper examines the importance of science in the effective implementation and sustainability of new practices and initiatives. The authors provide examples of significant attempts to remedy critical social issues over the past 50 years and how the failure of systematic implementation and, in particular, the lack of implementation fidelity has hindered progress in the use of practices found useful in research but have failed in the general application in the community.
Citation: Fixsen, D. L., Van Dyke, M., & Blase, K. A. (2019). Implementation Science: Fidelity Predictions and Outcomes. Retrieved from Chapel Hill, NC: Active Implementation Research Network: www.activeimplementation.org/resources.
Link: https://www.activeimplementation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Implementation-Science-FidelityPredictionsOutcomes.pdf
December 8, 2020
The Big Test: The Future Of Statewide Standardized Assessments. Standardized testing has been a cornerstone of school reform for two decades. But a bipartisan backlash against testing in recent years and the suspension of statewide testing in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic have left the future of state assessments in question. Standardized testing has a vital role to play in building effective schools. Unfortunately, the purpose of testing is misunderstood to the detriment of schools, teachers, parents, and students. The report examines the evolution of the testing backlash, the current landscape, and how state testing systems must change to survive.
Citation. Olson, L. & Jerald, C. (2020). The Big Test: The Future Of Statewide Standardized Assessments. Future Ed. Georgetown University. https://www.future-ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/TheBigTest_Final.pdf
Link: https://www.future-ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/TheBigTest_Final.pdf
December 4, 2020
Learning as We Go: Principles for Effective Assessment During the COVID-19 Pandemic. This paper summarizes the findings from a panel of assessment experts on diagnostic assessments and their role in helping educators and parents support student learning due to covid-19. Schools struggle with finding solutions on how to meet the needs of students who encounter dramatically different models of instruction due to the 2020 pandemic. It is becoming clear that students will need various academic and nonacademic interventions and supports as schooling resumes. The panel’s task was to advise the field on the state of diagnostic testing: which types of assessment are best for what purposes, and which produce more noise than useful guidance.
Citation: Lake, R., & Olson, L. (2020). Learning as We Go: Principles for Effective Assessment during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Center on Reinventing Public Education.
Link: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED606373.pdf
December 4, 2020
The Association between Teachers’ Use of Formative Assessment Practices and Students’ Use of Self-Regulated Learning Strategies. Three Arizona school districts surveyed teachers and students in grades 3–12 in spring 2019 to understand the teachers’ use of formative assessment practices and students’ use of self-regulated learning strategies. The study found only a small positive association between the frequency of teachers’ formative assessment practices and the average number of self-regulated learning strategies that their students use. The correlation was more robust in elementary school than in secondary school and stronger in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classrooms than in non-STEM classrooms. The research identified the more frequently teachers reported using these practices, the more self-regulated learning strategies their students reported using.
Citation: Makkonen, R., and Jaquet, K. (2020). The Association between Teachers’ Use of Formative Assessment Practices and Students’ Use of Self-Regulated Learning Strategies. San Francisco, CA: Regional Educational Laboratory West. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/west/pdf/REL_2021041.pdf
Link: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/west/pdf/REL_2021041.pdf
December 4, 2020
Using smartphones for formative assessment in the flipped classrooms. This paper describes different strategies used to incorporate smartphones to enhance teaching and learning effectively. The authors offer ways to integrate formative assessment with the use of smartphones. The paper provides innovative teaching practices to improve student understanding and performance using a classroom response system app. Results suggest that using this technology enhances student understanding of course concepts.
Citation. Onodipe, G., & Ayadi, M. F. (2020). Using smartphones for formative assessment in the flipped classroom. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 23.
Link: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1241944.pdf
December 2, 2020
Fidelity of implementation is a critical but often neglected component of any new system, practice, or intervention in educational research and practice. Fidelity is a multidimensional construct focused on providing evidence of adherence, quality, dosage, differentiation, and responsiveness following implementation. Unfortunately, fidelity has not always been prioritized, although evidence suggests that is changing, at least in published research. Further, although there are myriad methods for measuring fidelity, psychometric evaluations of fidelity tools have been limited, except in the SWPBIS literature. Calls for a science of fidelity have been made (Gresham, 2017) and are beginning to be answered. Overall, there appears to be more research focused exclusively on fidelity, including measurement approaches, psychometric evaluations, and relation to outcomes. As this research expands, we hope that the broad use and integration of fidelity in practice follows. We believe that the days of neglecting fidelity are behind us in education and see fidelity playing a central role in education moving forward. Through reliable and valid measurement of fidelity, scalable evidence-based practices can be developed and proliferated, positively impacting students’ academic and behavioral outcomes.
Citation: Gage, N., MacSuga-Gage, A., and Detrich, R. (2020). Fidelity of Implementation in Educational Research and Practice. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/systems-program-fidelity
Link: https://www.winginstitute.org/systems-program-fidelity
November 16, 2020
Fidelity of implementation is a critical but often neglected component of any new system, practice, or intervention in educational research and practice. Fidelity is a multidimensional construct focused on providing evidence of adherence, quality, dosage, differentiation, and responsiveness following implementation. Unfortunately, fidelity has not always been prioritized, although evidence suggests that is changing, at least in published research. Further, although there are myriad methods for measuring fidelity, psychometric evaluations of fidelity tools have been limited, except in the SWPBIS literature. Calls for a science of fidelity have been made (Gresham, 2017) and are beginning to be answered. Overall, there appears to be more research focused exclusively on fidelity, including measurement approaches, psychometric evaluations, and relation to outcomes. As this research expands, we hope that the broad use and integration of fidelity in practice follows. We believe that the days of neglecting fidelity are behind us in education and see fidelity playing a central role in education moving forward. Through reliable and valid measurement of fidelity, scalable evidence-based practices can be developed and proliferated, positively impacting students’ academic and behavioral outcomes.
Citation: Gage, N., MacSuga-Gage, A., and Detrich, R. (2020). Fidelity of Implementation in Educational Research and Practice. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/systems-program-fidelity
Link: https://www.winginstitute.org/systems-program-fidelity
November 13, 2020
Toward Automated Feedback on Teacher Discourse to Enhance Teacher Learning. Research supports coaching as critical for effective teacher professional development. A key element of coaching is observing teachers in classrooms implementing newly trained skills. Unfortunately, one of the obstacles to providing coaching to teachers is the cost of delivering the service. Educators are on the lookout for any innovations that promise to reduce this cost of coaching while sustaining the impact of coaching. Research has found the use of video and remote viewing coaching to show much promise (Scheeler, Congdon, & Stansbery, 2010; Suhrheinrich, 2017). This study examines the use of an automated recording of high-quality audio using speech recognition and machine learning to develop teacher-generalizable computer-scored estimates of crucial features of teacher’s performance.
The study found that computerized models were moderately accurate compared to human coders and that speech recognition errors did not influence performance. The authors conclude that teacher discourse can be recorded and analyzed for timely feedback. The next step is to incorporate the automatic models into an interactive visualization tool that will provide teachers with objective feedback on student instruction quality.
Citation: Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective teacher professional development.
Link: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3313831.3376418 (This paper may also be requested on Researchgate)
https://eric.ed.gov/?q=use+of+video+in+coaching&id=EJ1129933
November 13, 2020
Effective teacher professional development. For the past 20 years, school systems have heavily relied on professional development as the primary means for improving student performance, as evidenced by the massive allocation of funds for in-service training. Few educators or policymakers challenge the importance of teacher training that ensures teachers have the knowledge and skills required to be effective in the classroom. Despite the overwhelming support for teacher professional development, research has shown that most teacher training is ineffective in changing how teachers teach and students perform. This paper analyzed 35 studies that found a link between professional development and positive teacher and student outcomes.
The authors identified the following features significant if professional development is to produce meaningful results;
- They are content focused.
- They incorporate active learning strategies.
- They engage teachers in collaboration.
- They use models and/or modeling.
- They provide coaching and expert support.
- They include time for feedback and reflection.
- They are of sustained duration.
The authors conclude that professional development should incorporate the identified features and training needs to link to teachers’ experiences in preparation, induction, and teaching standards and evaluation.
Citation: Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective teacher professional development.
Link: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56b90cb101dbae64ff707585/t/5ade348e70a6ad624d417339/1524511888739/NO_LIF%7E1.PDF
November 12, 2020
Teacher Inservice Professional Development. he American education system values in-service training to improve teacher performance, spending an average of $18,000 annually per teacher. Like many promising practices, it has failed to produce as promised. Schools invest extensively in teacher induction in the early years of a teacher, supplemented with in-service training throughout the teacher’s career. Unfortunately, this training is often delivered in unproductive ways, for example, workshop sessions that commonly rely on passive didactic techniques, such as lecturing or reading, shown to have minimal or no impact on the teacher’s use of the practices in the classroom. This is especially true when the outcome, using the practices in the classroom, is assessed. Coaching-based clinical training, with the teacher practicing skills on students in a classroom setting and receiving feedback from the coach, has been found to produce the best results. Sustained professional development with scope and sequence curriculum, accompanied by manuals for interventions in which the teacher is being trained, is superior to single events. Computer-assisted instruction as a companion to systematic training techniques identified above has been found to be a cost-effective adjunct staff development tool.
Citation: Cleaver, S., Detrich, R., States, J. & Keyworth, R. (2020). Overview of Teacher Inservice. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/in-service-professional-development
Link: https://www.winginstitute.org/in-service-professional-development
