This brief provides policymakers and practitioners with a comprehensive overview of the purpose, characteristics, uses, and types of Kindergarten Entry Assessments (KEAs). It emphasizes the importance of high-quality KEAs in guiding instructional practices and assessing developmental progress in young learners. It highlights that high-quality KEAs…

"Accountable Talk" begins with students thinking out loud about a complex problem that requires collaboration: noticing something about the problem, questioning a surprising finding, or articulating, explaining, and reflecting upon their own reasoning. The teacher works to elicit a range of ideas, which may be incomplete. With teacher…

How can we use insights from cutting-edge science to improve the well-being and long-term life prospects of the most vulnerable children in our society? This is both a critical challenge and a powerful opportunity to affect the trajectories of millions of children in the United States and around the world. It is a question of particular importance…

Each year, approximately 100,000 refugees arrive in the United States (Refugee Council USA). Nearly half of these arrivals are children. The number of refugees worldwide has more than sextupled since the 1950s, and according to the United States Committee for Refugees and immigrants (USCRI) this number is expected to continue to grow in coming…

The Promising Practices Network (PPN) on Children, Families and Communities (www.promisingpractices.net) began as a partnership between four state-level organizations that help public and private organizations improve the well-being of children and families. The PPN website, archived in June 2014, featured summaries of programs and practices that…

Summarizes school readiness and retention research issues, including youngest first graders' performance, entrance age policies, voluntary decisions to wait an extra year, assessment of children's readiness, and the negative effects of kindergarten and first-grade retention. Concludes that age disadvantages are seldom serious and usually disappear…

To foster individual development, educators must seek the gifts in every child, in those not demonstrating academic abilities as well as in the most brilliant. Instead of stifling thinking, creativity, and interest development, educators must encourage these behaviors. Currently, a big discrepancy exists between the child's potential and what…

The Information Age has been shaping the conception of thinking in education through the capability of computerized problem solving, through the resulting application of the information processing model to human thinking, and through the theories emerging from other cognitive science research in metacognition, construction of knowledge, and…

The central aim of this monograph is to stimulate discussion, both of the assumptions that are made about what makes one teacher more effective than another, and of the actions and decisions that are taken as a result of these assumptions. Organizationally, the monograph: (1) presents a brief overview of research on teacher effectiveness; (2)…

Interview data exemplify students' attempts to integrate the concepts of electrochemistry with related knowledge that they had previously constructed or acquired in other classes. The implications for minimizing potential misconceptions center on the difficulties students experience when using more than one model for explaining scientific…

Assisting students in the development of their ability to think has long been a basic goal of education. Creative thinking and critical thinking have been defined jointly as higher-order thinking based on fact and logic, insight and empathy; they are seen as necessary for problem solving, invention, and achievement. Because the primary goal of…

Explored are several facets of the quality of the science curriculum at the undergraduate level. Discussed are maturation of disciplines, entry-level courses, the development of intellectual skills, and academic majors. Recommendations for college science departments are provided. (CW)

Reviews recent research on brain development from the time of birth through the development of complex intellectual functioning. Contends that brain hemisphere functions have a significant impact on learning and behavior. Recommends that religious educators should learn how to use knowledge about cognitive development to encourage religious…

Supporting earlier research evidence showing that participation in school activities is related to later positive cognitive, social, and personality development, the findings of this study suggest that the advantages for the well rounded development of the individual student in small schools--those graduating 150 or fewer students per year--may…

Over a decade of research findings representing the work of more than 100 scholars are contained in the growing body of knowledge about effective schools. This report summarizes the results of studies that focus specifically on the characteristics of effective principals, classrooms, and teachers. The report also offers notes of caution to users…