Categories for Quality Teachers
February 9, 2021
Building From the Bottom Up: The Importance of Tier 1 Supports in the Context of Tier 2 Interventions. School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) relies on effective implementation of Tier 1 practices to ensure accurate identification of students in need of more intensive supports at Tier 2 or Tier 3. While measures of school-level fidelity are widely used, measures of classroom-level implementation of Tier 1 supports are less common. In the context the authors assessed whether a class-wide Tier 1 program, Class-Wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT), enhanced the effectiveness of the Tier 2 intervention.
Citation: Van Camp, A. M., Wehby, J. H., Copeland, B. A., & Bruhn, A. L. (2021). Building From the Bottom Up: The Importance of Tier 1 Supports in the Context of Tier 2 Interventions. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 23(1), 53-64.
Link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1098300720916716
February 9, 2021
An Evaluation of the Caught Being Good Game With an Adolescent Student Population. This study investigated the Caught Being Good Game (CBGG), for use with an adolescent student population. The CBGG is a positive variation of the Good Behavior Game (GBG), a popular group contingency intervention in classroom management literature. The CBGG was effective in leading to increases in academically engaged behavior and decreases in disruptive behavior in the participating class group.
Citation: Bohan, C., Smyth, S., & McDowell, C. (2021). An Evaluation of the Caught Being Good Game With an Adolescent Student Population. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 23(1), 42-52.
Link: https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/ws/files/78831798/JPBI_19_112.R3_Proof_hi.pdf
February 9, 2021
Effective classroom management is critical for student and teacher success. Current approaches to assess teachers’ classroom management are either (a) simple and efficient, but have unknown psychometric properties, or (b) psychometrically sound, but resource intensive.This article describes the development and validation of a four-item rating of teachers’ active supervision, opportunities to respond, specific praise, and positive to corrective ratio.
Citation: Simonsen, B., Freeman, J., Kooken, J., Dooley, K., Gambino, A. J., Wilkinson, S., … & Kern, L. (2020). Initial validation of the Classroom Management Observation Tool (CMOT). School Psychology, 35(3), 179. (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-32849-001)
Link: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-32849-001
January 25, 2021
Differential Reinforcement Overview. Across school settings, the ultimate goal is for students to engage in appropriate behavior instead of inappropriate behavior so all students may access a safe and productive learning environment. In the overviews on supporting appropriate behavior and decreasing inappropriate behavior, the behavioral processes of reinforcement and negative consequences are discussed along with interventions based on these principles. Differential reinforcement involves combining these two processes to promote optimal behavior; appropriate or desirable behavior is reinforced, and inappropriate or undesirable behavior is not reinforced. Further, there are several variations of differential reinforcement, allowing for flexibility and individualization for the context in which the intervention is to be applied.
Citation: Guinness, K., Detrich, R., Keyworth, R. & States, J. (2021). Overview of Differential Reinforcement. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/instructional-delivery-differential
Link: https://www.winginstitute.org/instructional-delivery-differential
January 21, 2021
Planning for the Future: Leadership Development and Succession Planning in Education. School Superintendents face immense challenges in recruiting and retaining high-quality principals and district leaders. As a result, superintendents continually recruit and hire new assistant principals and district-level leaders. This article looks at the research and best practices on succession planning in education and other sectors.
Citation: Fusarelli, B. C., Fusarelli, L. D., & Riddick, F. (2018). Planning for the future: Leadership development and succession planning in education. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 13(3), 286-313.
Link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1942775118771671
December 14, 2020
School Teams. Distributed leadership and collaborative school cultures have a strong base of research support, and school teams represent these concepts “in action.” School teams today are ubiquitous; however, their effectiveness in enhancing school outcomes is not automatic and they must be intentionally and carefully designed, implemented, and supported. Collaborative school cultures are enabled when high trust levels and a culture of shared practice among staff are present, and leadership capacity building for teachers is provided. School leadership teams, which include the principal and teacher leaders, are tasked with addressing school improvement, and often analyze learning data and determine professional learning needed for staff. These teams need ample planning time and professional development (e.g., in methods of data analysis) to guide their work. Instructional teams, which may include grade-level or subject-area groups of teachers, often take the form of professional learning communities, which develop curriculum and instructional strategies, review student performance data, and adjust practice as necessary. Principals support these teams effectively when they establish a direction for their work, identify and/or develop teacher leaders to lead teams, and provide sufficient time for the collaborative work to take place. Multidisciplinary, or problem-solving teams, include specialists (e.g., special education teachers) and general educators working together to plan programming for students who need specialized supports to be successful. Research shows these teams can be effective when training and organizational supports are in place to foster collaboration. For successful implementation, all types of school teams will benefit from school leaders who can instill a collaborative school culture, and ensure that team members have the resources and support to work together effectively.
Citation: Donley, J., Detrich, R., States, J., & Keyworth, (2020). Teams. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/leadership-models-teams
Link: https://www.winginstitute.org/leadership-models-teams
November 17, 2020
Sustaining Teacher Training in a Shifting Environment. Brief No. 7. This brief is a part of a series of briefs that address critical issues schools face because of the coronavirus. This paper provides K-12 education policymakers and school administrators with an evidence base about how best to provide teacher practicum experience and professional development during the coronavirus. Evidence supports student teaching placements are a critical training opportunity for new teachers. The covid-19 pandemic has constrained student teaching experiences. Acknowledging this fact, educators need to develop new ways of providing alternative clinical training during certification training and when these new teachers enter the workforce. This summary examines what we know about training, offers strategies to overcome the obstacles to be confronted by covid-19, and warns professional development planners to avoided specific practices unsupported by evidence.
Citation: Goldhaber, D., & Ronfeldt, M. (2020). Sustaining Teacher Training in a Shifting Environment. Brief No. 7. EdResearch for Recovery Project.
Link: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED607712.pdf
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
