In the United States, educators are tasked with responding to the increased needs of diverse K-12 students in mainstream classrooms through co-teaching roles that require collaborative partnerships. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to understand how students in teacher preparation programs within the United States describe the…

The Optimizing Learning Opportunities for Students (OLOS) Observation System was developed by the Early Learning Network's assessment team at the University of California, Irvine. OLOS is a user-friendly, web-based tool designed to help teachers understand what is happening in their classrooms and uncover ways to meet the unique learning needs of…

I begin with my experience, with the importance of words during my early years, then as a teacher. Through the Prospect Center's Summer Institutes, I learned a descriptive process, Reflection on a Word, based in the work of Pat Carini at the Prospect School. I write about learning this process, the ways it entered my teaching life, and how it is…

This dissertation address two significant challenges in the causal inference workflow for Big Observational Data. The first is designing Big Observational Data with high-dimensional and heterogeneous covariates. The second is performing uncertainty quantification for estimates of causal estimands that are obtained from the application of black box…

Infants who receive better counting input at home tend to become toddlers with better number knowledge in preschool. However, for many children, in-person counting experience is not always available, despite educational media becoming increasingly prevalent. Might virtual counting experience benefit the young mind? Using a novel online looking…

There is a critical need for high-quality clinical outcome assessments to capture the important aspects of communication ability of individuals with Angelman syndrome (AS). To center the perspective of caregivers, our team developed the novel Observer-Reported Communication Ability (ORCA) measure using best practice guidelines, with the goal of…

The family resemblance approach to nature of science is receiving increasing attention by science educators since its inception about a decade ago. Many scholars of science education have contributed and continue to contribute to it not only theoretically but also by applying it empirically to a wide range of areas such as curriculum and textbook…

In this study, we examine "what went wrong" in our professional development program for encouraging cognitively demanding instruction, focusing on the difficulties we encountered in using an observational tool for evaluating this type of instruction and reaching inter-rater reliability. We do so through the lens of a discursive theory of…

Objective: The precise measurement of treatment fidelity (quantity and quality in the delivery of treatment strategies in an intervention) is essential for intervention development, evaluation, and implementation. Various informants are used in fidelity assessment (e.g., observers, practitioners [clinicians, teachers], clients), but these…

The researcher sought to understand how the complexities and challenges of offering high-quality professional development district-wide impacted teachers' ability to implement their new learning. The literature posits that to be considered effective, professional development must include six distinct design elements: (1) Is data driven, (2)…

The emergence of educational technologies has spurred research interest in exploring effective ways to enhance human learning in digital environments. Social Learning Theory (SLT), as a crucial theory that offers a conceptual framework for understanding the role of human agency in learning, can shed light on the underlying mechanisms of learners'…

Teachers in a collaborative learning (CL) environment have the demanding task of monitoring several groups of students at the same time and intervening when needed. This withitness (both the situational awareness and interventions taken in class) of the teacher might be increased with the help of a guiding dashboard alerting the teacher of…

Teacher evaluation systems are associated with teacher quality, accountability, performance observations, and support. These systems are typically comprised of multiple measures including at least observations of teaching and student performance data reflecting teacher impact. Many criticisms of these systems have emerged not necessarily from the…

Approximately 3-4 boys for every girl meet the clinical criteria for autism in studies of community diagnostic patterns and studies of autism using samples of convenience. However, girls with autism have been hypothesized to be underdiagnosed, possibly because they may present with differing symptom profiles as compared to boys. This secondary…

In recent years, the concept of "deeper learning" has generated great interest in the field of preschool education in China. However, deep learning in the preschool stage is different from that in school education, as it requires explaining content characteristics, developing observational tools to identify deep learning, and exploring…