Categories for Quality Leadership
April 12, 2021
Does Teacher Learning Last? Understanding How Much Teachers Retain Their Knowledge After Professional Development. Teacher professional development (PD) is seen as a promising intervention to improve teacher knowledge, instructional practice, and ultimately student learning. While research finds instances of significant program effects on teacher knowledge, little is known about how long these effects last. If teachers forget what is learned, the contribution of the intervention will be diminished. Using a large-scale data set, this study examines the sustainability of gains in teachers’ content knowledge for teaching mathematics (CKT-M). Results show that there is a negative rate of change in CKT after teachers complete the training, suggesting that the average score gain from the program is lost in just 37 days.
Citation: Liu, S., & Phelps, G. (2020). Does Teacher Learning Last? Understanding How Much Teachers Retain Their Knowledge After Professional Development. Journal of Teacher Education, 71(5), 537-550.
Link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Geoffrey-Phelps/publication/337356641_Does_Teacher_Learning_Last_Understanding_How_Much_Teachers_Retain_Their_Knowledge_After_Professional_Development/links/5ed1530c92851c9c5e6640b0/Does-Teacher-Learning-Last-Understanding-How-Much-Teachers-Retain-Their-Knowledge-After-Professional-Development.pdf
April 12, 2021
Making the Most of Student Teaching: The Importance of Mentors and Scope for Change. A growing literature documents the importance of student teaching placements for teacher development. Emerging evidence from this literature highlights the importance of the mentor teacher who supervises this placement, as teachers tend to be more effective when they student teach with a mentor who is a more effective teacher. But the efficacy of policies that aim to have effective teachers perform as mentors depend a great deal on the availability of effective teachers to serve in this role. This paper examines data from Washington State to identify ways for improving student-teacher placements. The authors propose if policymakers value teacher candidate development equivalently to teacher in-service development, they should be willing to pay substantially more than the current average compensation for mentor teachers to recruit effective teachers to serve in this role.
Citation: Goldhaber, D., Krieg, J., Naito, N., & Theobald, R. (2020). Making the most of student teaching: The importance of mentors and scope for change. Education Finance and Policy, 15(3), 581-591.
Link: https://direct.mit.edu/edfp/article/15/3/581/58672/Making-the-Most-of-Student-Teaching-The-Importance
March 19, 2021
The effects of historical reading and writing strategy instruction with fourth-through sixth-grade students. This quasi-experimental study of fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade students explored the use of a cognitive apprenticeship model to teach students historical reading and writing strategies. These results suggest that with appropriate supports and the opportunity to engage in meaningful historical content, students in fourth through sixth grade can analyze primary and secondary source documents and write evidence-based historical arguments.
Citation: Wissinger, D. R., De La Paz, S., & Jackson, C. (2021). The effects of historical reading and writing strategy instruction with fourth-through sixth-grade students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113(1), 49.
Link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel-Wissinger/publication/339508391_The_Effects_of_Historical_Reading_and_Writing_Strategy_Instruction_With_Fourth-Through_Sixth-Grade_Students/links/5e58006e92851cefa1c9d8f0/The-Effects-of-Historical-Reading-and-Writing-Strategy-Instruction-With-Fourth-Through-Sixth-Grade-Students.pdf
March 19, 2021
Effective programs for elementary science: A best-evidence synthesis. This article presents a systematic review of research on the achievement outcomes of all types of approaches to teaching science in elementary schools. The review concludes that science teaching methods focused on enhancing teachers’ classroom instruction throughout the year, such as cooperative learning and science-reading integration, as well as approaches that give teachers technology tools to enhance instruction, have significant potential to improve science learning.
Citation: Slavin, R. E., Lake, C., Hanley, P., & Thurston, A. (2012). Effective programs for elementary science: A best-evidence synthesis. Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University.
Link: https://bestevidence.org/category/science/science-elementary/
March 17, 2021
Teacher Outreach. Ensuring that qualified teachers are available to fill the nation’s classrooms begins with attracting a sufficient number of qualified candidates and matching aspiring teachers to enrollment needs. Until recently, aligning staffing to fluctuating enrollment has been complicated by a steady growth in population and the need to fill teaching vacancies produced by high turnover. This landscape is shifting as student enrollment declines and a sufficient supply of teachers is difficult to predict for the foreseeable future. With enough teachers, the spotlight can move from quantity to quality of candidates. Currently, the competence of teacher candidates in the United States compares poorly with that of candidates internationally. Nationally, lower entrance criteria and more lenient grading for pre-service students in teaching allow less capable students to graduate than is the case in other professions. Fortunately, this picture is changing as federal and state policies raise standards and increase academic abilities of new teachers. To maintain progress in attracting qualified candidates, working conditions and compensation should be improved to alter the perception that teaching is undervalued and to reverse past trends in which less-qualified people chose careers in teaching.
Citation: Cleaver, S., Detrich, R., States, J. & Keyworth, R. (2021). Teacher Outreach. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/quality-teachers-outreach.
Link: https://www.winginstitute.org/quality-teachers-outreach
March 11, 2021
Student teaching, field experience, and practicum experience are powerful methods for training new teachers. These methods all feature working with students in classrooms or in laboratory environments that bridge the gap between university instruction and the experience of teaching. Integrating theory, knowledge, and skills, student teaching generally occurs under the direction of a supervisor at the end of the preparation process.
Citation: Cleaver, S., Detrich, R., States, J. & Keyworth, R. (2020). Overview of Teacher Induction. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/pre-service-student.
Link: https://www.winginstitute.org/pre-service-student
February 9, 2021
Improving Attendance in a Remote Learning Environment. The purpose of this brief is to adapt the suggestions and strategies provided in Improving Attendance and Reducing Chronic Absenteeism to guide practice during remote instruction. Strategies from both briefs will be helpful during hybrid instructional models.
Citation: Freeman, J., Flannery, B., Sugai, G., Goodman, S., Simonsen, B., & Barrett, S. (Aug, 2020). Improving Attendance in a Remote Learning Environment. Eugene, OR: Center on PBIS, University of Oregon. www.pbis.org.
Link: https://assets-global.website-files.com/5d3725188825e071f1670246/5ff34f3363042168264ed6e3_Remote%20Attendance%20Brief%20Revised%2012.23.2020.pdf
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
January 25, 2021
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, States are struggling to reopen and keep open, most, if not all, of their 138,000 K-12 schools. Given this level of uncertainty, it is critical to track data that will help schools identify problems quickly, assess their nature, and respond in timely and effective ways to safeguard the health of students and education staff while providing a quality education. This Wing Institute dashboard will on track issues regarding the reopening of schools under the Covid-19 pandemic.
Citation: American Academy of Pediatrics. (2021). Children and COVID-19: State-Level Data Report. 2021. Available in: https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP%20and%20CHA%20-%20Children%20and%20COVID-19%20State%20Data%20Report%201.14.21.pdf
Link: https://www.winginstitute.org/covid-19-impact
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
