The authors contend that, although recent research--especially concerning the role of teachers--shows play to be critical for early childhood education, most kindergartens in the United States limit play because of accountability worries. And this is especially true for those kindergartens serving Black and Brown children. To support the…

A recent Early Learning Network study, led by researchers at the University of Michigan, MDRC and the Harvard Graduate School of Education in partnership with Boston Public Schools (BPS), adds valuable evidence to improving future early childhood education assessments of quality -- an essential step for shaping effective practices and promoting…

Sensing technologies that provide continuous, real-time information about teachers' and students' individual experiences are increasingly being applied to classroom-based research. Sensing technologies provide a possible alternative to costly and time-intensive in-person or hand-coded observations and have the potential to increase our present…

This study explores the validity of the Culturally Responsive Instruction Observation Protocol (CRIOP) an instrument that measures the implementation of culturally responsive instruction (CRI) in K-8 classrooms with multilingual students. The validity study uses a Rasch measurement approach. With strong findings from analyses, including…

When classroom observations are increasingly used for accountability and evaluation purposes, a deeper understanding of the psychometric properties of such measurement tools is needed. The present study took a unique approach to examine the psychometric properties of a commonly used classroom observation measure by testing the reliability of…

To provide a landscape of mathematics activities children experience in U.S. preschool and kindergarten classrooms, we observed time children spent in mathematics activities (and -- as a contrast -- literacy) in 101 geographically diverse early childhood classrooms in seven U.S. states. We also observed what mathematics content, grouping…

This paper introduces a new observation system that is designed to investigate students' and teachers' talk during literacy instruction, "Creating Opportunities to Learn from Text" (COLT). Using video-recorded observations of 2nd-3rd grade literacy instruction (N = 51 classrooms, 337 students, 151 observations), we found that nine types…

The aim of this action research was to make significant changes to mathematics teaching in a combined second and third primary school class based on the characteristics of high-quality mathematics teaching. A further aim was to improve student satisfaction with the lessons. The changes in teaching were systematically monitored and reflected upon…

Despite an increasing research interest in subject-specific teacher knowledge, there is limited research on teachers' knowledge of English as a foreign language (EFL) in early childhood education (ECE). This paper, therefore, reports a mixed-methods study which investigated the relationships between ECE EFL teachers' knowledge and their practices…

The National Quality Framework is used across Australia to drive quality improvement in early childhood settings. Unique to Western Australia, the National Quality Standard is also used in schools to improve quality in classrooms up to Year two (seven to eight years). However, the literature suggests the National Quality Standard is too broad with…

In math classrooms, actively engaging with the subject matter can be crucial to learning. However, not all students speak up, ask questions, or express their ideas. Aware of the importance of the equitable participation of all students, mathematics education experts developed an observation tool called Equity Quantified In Participation, or EQUIP.…

Children have mathematical understanding beginning from the early years of life. Mathematics education during these years has a significant effect on children's future lives. Play is a significant issue in children's lives and can be used as a way for teaching and learning. It presents a rich learning environment. In this study, therefore, we…

Research has suggested that measures of both general classroom observational tools (Classroom Organization and Teacher Emotional/Instructional Support) and content-specific observational tools (Ambitious Math Instruction and Errors and Imprecision) are related to K-6 student math achievement and therefore there is encouragement to use both types…

According to the Michigan Department of Education, between 2011 and 2017, the number of multilingual learners (MLs) enrolled in K-12 schools in the state increased by more than 50%. In 2017, the average teacher to ML ratio in the state was an alarmingly low 1:168. To increase the number of teachers prepared to effectively serve MLs, we developed…

Research Findings: We evaluated the score stability of the Mathematical Quality of Instruction (MQI), an observational measure of mathematics instruction. Three raters each scored, independently, 100 video-recorded lessons taught by 20 kindergarten teachers in the spring. Using generalizability theory analyses, we decomposed the MQI's score…