Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore opportunities to develop higher-order thinking for students in social studies, with a focus on teachers' content coverage and support for engaging in social studies analysis. Design/methodology/approach: A video study using naturalistic classroom observations of 80 social studies lessons was conducted…

This "Rating a Teacher Observation Tool" identifies five simple questions and provides an easy-to-use scorecard to help policymakers decide whether an observation framework is likely to produce fair and accurate results. The five questions are: (1) Do the criteria and tools cover the classroom performance areas most connected to student outcomes?…

Observation measures of instructional quality tend to fall into two broad categories--those for use across subject areas and those intended for use in specific subject areas. The move toward content-specific measures is a result of research suggesting that effective teaching looks different across subject areas and that both content knowledge and…

This paper both reviews results of research related to teacher evaluation and then presents a suggested evaluation format to be used based on these research findings. The research reviewed falls into five general categories: format for evaluation, guidelines for evaluation, criteria for evaluation, problems with evaluation, and definitions of…

The relationship between lesson characteristics and the improvement of the delivery of educational services to Hispanic Americans was examined, using data from four contrasting classrooms (two successful and two unsuccessful) located in a Southern California medium-sized school district. The contrast between classrooms was determined by the…