Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for Improvement:

Learning the lessons.

Professional development programs are based on different theories of how students learn and different theories of how teachers learn. Reviewers often sort programs according to design features such as program duration, intensity, or the use of specific techniques such as coaches or online lessons, but these categories do not illuminate the programs’ underlying purpose or premises about teaching and teacher learning. This review sorts programs according to their underlying theories of action, which include (a) a main idea that teachers should learn and (b) a strategy for helping teachers enact that idea within their own ongoing systems of practice. Using rigorous research design standards, the review identifies 28 studies. Because studies differ in multiple ways, the review presents program effects graphically rather than statistically. Visual patterns suggest that many popular design features are not associated with program effectiveness. Furthermore, different main ideas are not differentially effective....

How Does Professional Development Improve Teaching

A continuum of ages exists within each starting class due to the use of a single school cut-off date – making the “oldest” children approximately twenty percent older than the “youngest” children at school entry. We provide substantial evidence that these initial maturity differences have long lasting effects on student performance across OECD countries. In particular, the youngest members of each cohort score 4-12 percentiles lower than the oldest members in grade four, and 2-9 percentiles lower in grade eight, depending upon the country. In fact, data from Canada and the United States shows that the youngest members of a cohort are even less likely to enroll in pre-university academic track courses and high-end academic universities. Taken together, these findings point to important early relative maturity effects that propagate themselves into adulthood through the structure of education systems.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/25098831

The Persistence of Early Childhood Maturity: International Evidence of Long-Run Age Effects

Purpose: This study investigated the relationship between principal leadership and variation in teachers’ participation in a new literacy coaching program: Content-Focused Coaching ® (CFC). Research design: Twenty-nine schools were randomly assigned to participate in the CFC program or to serve as a comparison. Interviews were conducted with elementary school principals and coaches, and teach ers completed surveys describing their experiences with their new coach. Correlation analyses investigated the relationship between the categories of principal support and the frequency of teachers’ participation in individual coaching activities. Principals’ actions and beliefs were also compared across schools, with teachers’ relatively high and low participation in coaching, to identify patterns in principal leadership. Findings: Principal leadership was significantly associated with the frequency with which teachers conferred with their new CFC coach and were observed by their new coach as teaching reading comprehension lessons. Principal behaviors associated with teachers’ increased engagement with coaches included actively participating in the CFC program and publicly endorsing the coach as a source of literacy expertise to teachers. Principal beliefs

Leadership for Literacy Coaching: The Principal’s Role in Launching a New Coaching Program:

Teacher mobility is a factor that impacts schoolwide implementation of professional development programs. In this article, we present interim results of a longitudinal randomized field trial of a comprehensive literacy coaching program (Content-Focused Coaching, CFC) for improving instruction and learning in schools with high teacher mobility. We investigate program effects on 73 new treatment and comparison teachers recruited to replace the large proportion of teachers who left their schools during the first year of the program. HLM analyses indicated that the CFC program predicted significantly higher school-level gains on the state standardized test for English language learners (N = 496, ES = .51). By spring, the quality of teachers' self-reported and observed instruction in the CFC schools exceeded that of comparison teachers. Implications for accommodating new teachers into an ongoing and established coaching program to improve instruction and student learning, and conducting randomized tri...

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Investigating the Effectiveness of a Comprehensive Literacy Coaching Program in Schools with High Teacher Mobility

Chronological age at entrance to first grade: Effects on elementary school success

In this article, the authors report results from two pilot studies (n = 15 teachers total) investigating the effectiveness of the Online Content-Focused Coaching (CFC) programme for increasing clas...

Online Content-Focused Coaching to Improve Classroom Discussion Quality.

Effects of Online Content-Focused Coaching on Discussion Quality and Reading Achievement: Building Theory for How Coaching Develops Teachers’ Adaptive Expertise

Donna DiPrima Bickel

Papers

Leadership for Literacy Coaching: The Principal’s Role in Launching a New Coaching Program:

Investigating the Effectiveness of a Comprehensive Literacy Coaching Program in Schools with High Teacher Mobility

Chronological age at entrance to first grade: Effects on elementary school success

Online Content-Focused Coaching to Improve Classroom Discussion Quality.

Effects of Online Content-Focused Coaching on Discussion Quality and Reading Achievement: Building Theory for How Coaching Develops Teachers’ Adaptive Expertise