The Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) provides descriptive feedback to instructors by capturing student and instructor behaviors occurring in the classroom. Due to the increasing prevalence of COPUS data collection, it is important to recognize how researchers determine whether groups of courses or instructors have…

Classroom management practices are critical to the success of teachers and students, and a growing number of programs have been developed to improve these practices. However, there has been less investigation into observational tools to assess classroom management and exploration of whether it can be measured consistently by observers across…

Effective teaching is a key factor in educational effectiveness and improvement. To facilitate the knowledge exchange regarding effective teaching in secondary education internationally, there has been a growing interest in using classroom observation measures. However, little is known regarding the comparability of observation measures across…

Classroom management practices are critical to the success of teachers and students, and a growing number of programs have been developed to improve these practices. However, there has been less investigation into observational tools to assess classroom management and explore whether it can be measured consistently by observers across elementary,…

This study connects descriptions of effective teaching with descriptions of teacher development to advance an initial understanding of how effective teaching may develop. The study's main premise is that descriptions of effective teaching develop cumulatively where more basic teaching strategies and behaviors are required before teachers may…

Although effective teaching behaviour is central for pupil outcomes, the extent to which pre-service teachers behave effectively in the classroom and how their behaviour relates to pupils' engagement remain unanswered. The present study aims to validate a theoretical model linking effective pre-service teaching behaviour and pupil's engagement,…

Research Findings: This study explored the quality of teacher-child interactions within the context of a newly developed standardized task, Teacher-Child Structured Play Task (TC-SPT). A sample of 146 teachers and 345 children participated. Children who displayed the highest disruptive behaviors within each classroom were selected to participate.…

The purpose of the present study is to examine how first-year secondary teaching interns' classrooms compare to those of more experienced teachers. Through the simultaneous use of three unique observation instruments, the authors addressed the following research questions: (a) How do first-year secondary teachers' classroom behaviors compare to…

It is the learners' right to get an education free from discrimination. Discrimination in education ranges from gender to race, age, social class, financial status, and other characteristics. In this study the focus is on discrimination in education in regard to social class and financial status. The paper describes observations of the school…

Qatar is undergoing major educational reform that is shifting its educational policy toward an instructional orientation grounded in constructivism and student-centered instruction. Differences in cultural conceptions of knowledge acquisition and the purpose of education are examined to highlight challenges to Qatar's reform implementation…

This study compared classroom interactive behaviors of science pre-service teachers and pre-service teachers of other subjects. Participants included pre-service teachers enrolled in a general methods course for secondary educators and its school-based fieldwork counterpart. Statistical tests found that science pre-service teachers had fewer…

Teaching young students to think critically has always been important, however, as the United States transitions to a national set of learning standards which emphasizes higher-order thinking, it becomes essential. In this quasi-experimental study we evaluate the effects of exposure to the Journeys and Destinations (J&D) unit from the William…

The experimental evaluation of the "Tools of the Mind Pre-K Curriculum" described in this report was designed to examine the effectiveness of the "Tools of the Mind" ("Tools") curriculum for enhancing children's self-regulation skills and their academic preparation for kindergarten when compared to the usual…

Using a low-inference observational instrument, the authors empirically described and compared pedagogical behaviors in bilingual and structured English-immersion programs serving Spanish-speaking English language learners in a large urban school district in Southeast Texas. The two programs included both intervention/control of each type during…

It is suggested that the low reliability of five low-inference and two high-inference classroom observation systems are due not to lack of agreement among rates, but to apparent variation in teacher behavior across occasions. (Author/MJB)