Trauma-informed approaches are increasingly being integrated within early care and education (ECE) settings due to the plethora of research linking adversity and trauma in early childhood (e.g., maltreatment, violence, and racial discrimination) to children's social-emotional, behavioral, and academic well-being. However, despite widespread use of…

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play an essential role in the teaching of introductory chemistry courses at many higher education institutions. On the basis of best practices suggested by the literature, we developed our GTA training course to focus on modeling best practices in the classroom, providing opportunities for incoming GTAs to try…

This appendix augments a report that updates 2013 guidance to school district leaders and their partners across the country who are interested in launching summer learning programs or improving established ones. In that report, the authors present recommendations based on evaluations, conducted between 2011 and 2016, of summer programs in five…

High-quality, evidence-based professional development is essential to ensure that teachers obtain the knowledge, strategies and skills necessary to positively impact student learning. While the primary form of professional development, training has rarely been evaluated for quality beyond the satisfaction of those being trained. The Observation…

Commonly described as youth-led or youth-driven, the youth-adult partnership (Y-AP) model has gained increasing popularity in out-of-school time (OST) programs in the past two decades (Larson, Walker, & Pearce, 2005; Zeldin, Christens, & Powers, 2013). The Y-AP model is defined as "the practice of (a) multiple youth and multiple…

Educator Excellence Innovation Program (EEIP) is a Texas Education Agency (TEA) grant program that funds innovation in teacher supports and leadership opportunities. This report summarizes the third year of implementation in Austin Independent School District (AISD).

This article presents a description of how an interdisciplinary network of academic researchers, community-based programs, parents, and state agencies have joined together to design, test, and scale a suite of innovative intervention strategies rooted in new knowledge about the biology of adversity. Through a process of cocreation, collective…

Many early childhood assessment practices involve table top testing that requires young children to behave like an adult (e.g., follow adult directives, attend to task, and answer questions). Research and professional policy standards have identified and mandated alternatives. Authentic assessment is the alternative to conventional testing…

Many students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have specialized interests and passions that are highly reinforcing. Such special interest areas (SIAs) are more than mere hobbies or simple curiosities. Rather, the SIAs of an individual with autism may be characterized by (a) significant depth and breadth of knowledge about the area, (b)…

This paper provides a summary of the design, development, and evaluation of a mobile distance supervision system for teacher interns in their field-based teaching experiences. Developed as part of the University of Florida's Restructuring and Improving Teacher Education 325T grant project, the prototype system streams video of teachers in rural…

Evaluations of vocational education and training (VET) programs play a key role in informing training policy in Australia and elsewhere. Increasingly, such evaluations use observational data from surveys or administrative collections to assess the effectiveness of VET programs and interventions. The difficulty associated with using observational…

Museums often evaluate various aspects of their audiences' experiences, be it what they learn from a program or how they react to an exhibition. Each museum program or exhibition has its own set of goals, which can drive what an evaluator studies and how an evaluation evolves. When designing an evaluation, data collection methods are purposefully…

For educators to be successful in ensuring that students are college-and career-ready, they must have high-quality professional learning. This article describes how the foundation and guidance for evaluating the impact of professional learning can be enhanced with the "Standards for Professional Learning Tool" (Learning Forward, 2011).…

Growing evidence shows that participation in out-of-school time (OST) activities positively supports youth development in general. However, simply participating in a self-identified STEM program is not sufficient. Youth will benefit more if they participate in "quality" afterschool programs. Therefore, a common understanding of quality…

Teachers are responsible for using evidence-based practices to improve students' academic and behavioral outcomes. Although teachers have access to a variety of resources on evidence-based practices, poor implementation can adversely affect their effectiveness. However, an inadequate student response to intervention may also be the result of…