eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The work described in this report is the second phase of a project to provide easy-to-use tools for authoring and rendering secondaryschool algebra-levelmath expressions insynthesized speech that is useful for studentswithblindnessor lowvision.This report describes the development and results of the second feedback study performed for our project, Expanding Audio Access toMathematics Expressions by StudentsWith Visual Impairments viaMathML. That study focused on the use of certain prosodic and lexical elements in the ClearSpeak speech style and served as a basis for further refinements in that style’s definition and implementation in the MathPlayer software. The primary parameters evaluated are students’ success in drawing conclusions about the content and structure of certain math expressions and their perceptions regarding the helpfulness of the pace and wording of different text-to-speech renditions of… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: To succeed in today’s economy, students need both proficiency in the “three Rs” (reading, writing and arithmetic) and strong applied skills. Communication skills, team work, and critical thinking have long been at the top of employers’ lists of applied skills they seek in employees. States are responding to employers’ needs by putting in place new educational standards. These standards include not only higher levels of basic academic knowledge that students are expected to master but also applied skills pertaining to presenting information, explaining one’s reasoning, and effectively collaborating in groups. As a result, teachers nationwide are having students work in groups more frequently. This report examines a recent large-scale effort to expand a cooperative learning program in middle schools. The change in standard instructional practices gives schools… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The aim of the intervention was to raise levels of engagement and attainment across English, maths, and science in primary schools by improving the quality of teacher and pupil talk in the classroom. The approach, termed “dialogic teaching”, emphasises dialogue through which pupils learn to reason, discuss, argue, and explain in order to develop their higher order thinking as well as their articulacy. The intervention was developed and delivered by a team from the Cambridge Primary Review Trust (CPRT) and the University of York. Year 5 teachers in 38 schools, and a teacher mentor from each school, received resources and training from the delivery team, and then implemented the intervention over the course of the autumn and spring terms in the 2015/2016 school year. Following the intervention,… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: In a time of evolving Algebraic standards and expectations for Minnesota teachers and students, the establishment of quality professional development and technical assistance can help educators move more confidently toward greater mathematics understanding and, subsequently, successful teaching and learning. To this end, the Minnesota Department of Education has developed the Math and Science Teacher Academy (MSTA), a statewide infrastructure focused on the improvement of mathematics and science instruction. As external evaluators, Hezel Associates has supported Minnesota’s initiative through formative and summative research since the program’s inception during the summer of 2008. In this report of the MSTA evaluation’s activities, findings, commendations and recommendations, the evaluators focus on presenting new information that has not been presented elsewhere. They combine this new information with key points that were described… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: On August 14, 2010, the “Los Angeles Times” published the results of a statistical analysis of student test data to provide information about elementary schools and teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The analysis, covering the period from 2003 to 2009, was put forward as an evaluation of the effects of schools and their teachers on the performance of students taking the reading and math portions of the California Standardized Test. In Los Angeles, teachers were classified into one of five levels of “effectiveness” for their teaching in reading, math and a composite of the two. The decision by the “L.A. Times” to make these results publicly available at a dedicated web site, and to publish an extensive front page story that contrasted–by name–teachers… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The United States’ education system needs to take its critical next step: fairly and accurately measuring teacher performance. Successful reforms to teacher pay, career advancement, professional development, retention, and other human capital systems that lead to better student outcomes depend on it. Where can the U.S. find the best-practice know-how for this? To start, it should look to nations that have revamped teacher performance measurement to sustain teaching excellence, and Singapore offers a remarkable example. In the early 2000s, the small but racially and economically diverse nation of Singapore designed and implemented a new, performance-linked method of measuring teacher effectiveness that enables measurement of teachers in all subjects and grades. Singapore had already developed a high-performing education system. But as global economic opportunities for its citizens increased,… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Lesson Study is a popular approach to teacher professional development used widely in Japan. It involves a small group of teachers co-planning a series of lessons based on a shared learning goal for the pupils, with one teacher leading the co-constructed lesson and their colleagues invited to observe pupil learning in the lesson. The team then develop their practice further, based on feedback. Some of the features of Lesson Study have been adopted, in a variety of formats, in the U.K. A team at Edge Hill University developed a Lesson Study programme combined with a Talk for Learning content focus, which involved a team of three teachers collaborating to plan, teach, (informally) observe and analyse the impact of teaching on pupil response and progress. Each teacher identified… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Lack of researcher consensus on how to measure disadvantaged students’ access to effective teaching has made it challenging for practitioners to draw lessons from the data. This brief aims to help policymakers understand the emerging evidence by synthesizing findings from three peer-reviewed studies that collectively span 17 states. The studies provide two lessons: (1) on average, disadvantaged students received less effective teaching than other students, equivalent to about four weeks of learning for reading and two weeks for math, or about 2 to 4 percent of the student achievement gap between these groups; and (2) access to effective teaching for disadvantaged students varied across districts, with a statistically significant difference between more and less disadvantaged students’ access in some districts and no statistically significant difference in access… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This evaluation report summarizes Year 4 of the Math and Science Academy (MSA), an initiative of the Northern New Mexico Council on Excellence in Education (NNMCEE). The report begins with an overview of the project and its objectives, and then outlines the research questions and methods used to carry out the evaluation. Findings from the Year 4 evaluation are presented next; the report concludes with recommendations and refinements for future years of MSA. Years 1, 2, and 3 of the UCLA/CRESST evaluation of the MSA project were designed to describe how the program was implemented, to assess program effects and to generate recommendations for the improvement and enhancement of the project. Year 4 of the MSA evaluation paralleled the same research questions as Years 1 – 3… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: As the final stage of West Virginia’s rollout of the Next Generation Content Standards and Objectives (NxGen CSOs), the regional education service agencies (RESAs) conducted six train-the-trainer events in the spring of 2013 to prepare educators–mostly teachers–to provide professional development back in their home schools and districts. These events, called Educator Enhancement Academies (EEAs), lasted two or three days depending on which RESA conducted them, and targeted teachers in grade levels that had not yet received professional development in the NxGen CSOs, that is, Grades 2-3, 6-8, and 10-12. The first phase of this study looked at how well prepared those trainers were at the end of their EEA experience by asking them about their experiences during the training and after they, themselves, conducted training sessions during… Continue Reading →