During a two-term observational study of my Secondary English Language Arts (ELA) class, I introduced "Surrealism" to the existing curriculum. Jot notes, personal interviews, and a self-study comprised my data strands. The COVID-19 pandemic struck shortly before my scheduled in-person interviews. This uncertainty disrupted my doctoral…

There is a growing body of literature around digital research, specifically regarding data collection and how to pivot research designs to be more conducive to online and virtual research, but little in the way of how to analyze data remotely. In this article, we share firsthand experiences from a qualitative study utilizing Google apps, Zoom, and…

Valid and reliable measurements of teaching quality facilitate school-level decision-making and policies pertaining to teachers. Using nearly 1,000 word-to-word transcriptions of fourth- and fifth-grade English language arts classes, we apply novel text-as-data methods to develop automated measures of teaching to complement classroom observations…

Valid and reliable measurements of teaching quality facilitate school-level decision-making and policies pertaining to teachers, but conventional classroom observations are costly, prone to rater bias, and hard to implement at scale. Using nearly 1,000 word-to-word transcriptions of 4th- and 5th-grade English language arts classes, we apply novel…

These are the appendices to the report, "Using High School Data to Predict College Success in Palau" (ED610714). Prior research, particularly for the United States, has shown that earning a community college credential increases an individual's likelihood of gaining stable employment, earning a living wage, and working in a higher-paying…

This work underscores how English Language Arts (ELA) faculty and school administrators in middle schools can partner with area colleges and universities to mine available data generated from high stakes writing assessments, and to answer teachers' questions about students' attitudes to writing. We first discuss the nature of the writing…

Preservice teachers are placed in educational environments to learn about teaching literacy and about literacy's role in the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Of particular significance is how preservice teachers perceive and understand the varied components of language arts (i.e., reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and visually…

From an improvement research perspective, this study explores strategies used to implement a school-wide vocabulary intervention into language arts instruction at an urban elementary school. Academic language time, an innovative change in the instructional delivery system, allots time and structure for deliberate teaching of cross-disciplinary…

During my English Language Arts methods class, I noticed that my discussion patterns were teacher-focused and in an Initiation-Response-Evaluation format. Because I wanted to model dialogic methods of whole-class discussions for my preservice teachers, I recoiled from this finding and began a self-study using an action research method to examine…

Data literate educators can generate questions about learning in their classes; collect and analyze classroom data to answer them; and develop inferences and explanations. Two elements may promote data literacy: (a) breadth of classroom-based data collection and (b) depth of analysis. We examined these in inquiries conducted by 80 preservice…

Students across the nation are encountering more and more difficulties in their transition to high school. Not only are a significant number of students dropping out, but those who stay are also leaving high school without the skills they need to become productive citizens. Several intervention strategies are recommended to help students make a…

Researchers often presume that it is better to use administrative data from grades 4 and 5 than data from grades 6 through 8 for conducting research on teacher effectiveness that uses value-added models because (1) elementary school teachers teach all subjects to their students in self-contained classrooms and (2) classrooms are more homogenous at…

This study compared the underlying factors measured by a state standards-based grade 4 English-Language Arts (ELA) assessment given to several groups of students. The focus of the research was to gather evidence regarding whether or not the tests measured the same construct or constructs for students without disabilities who took the test under…

In this article the four pedagogical components outlined by the New London Group (1996)--situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice--were used to focus attention on the case studies of three beginning teachers and their use of digital media (particularly the creation of a digital literacy autobiography) in an…

In the United States in the last few years, a considerable amount of attention has been given to literacy programs as a way to close the academic gap between English-only (EO) students and English language learners (ELL). Teacher education programs around the country have been dealing with issues of academic inequity for some time. There are no…