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Study shows students in ‘active learning’ classrooms learn more than they think

For decades, there has been evidence that classroom techniques designed to get students to participate in the learning process produces better educational outcomes at virtually all levels.

And a new Harvard study suggests it may be important to let students know it.

The study , published Sept. 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that, though students felt as if they learned more through traditional lectures, they actually learned more when taking part in classrooms that employed so-called active-learning strategies.

Lead author Louis Deslauriers , the director of science teaching and learning and senior physics preceptor, knew that students would learn more from active learning. He published a key study in Science in 2011 that showed just that. But many students and faculty remained hesitant to switch to it.

“Often, students seemed genuinely to prefer smooth-as-silk traditional lectures,” Deslauriers said. “We wanted to take them at their word. Perhaps they actually felt like they learned more from lectures than they did from active learning.”

In addition to Deslauriers, the study is authored by director of sciences education and physics lecturer Logan McCarty , senior preceptor in applied physics Kelly Miller, preceptor in physics Greg Kestin , and Kristina Callaghan, now a physics lecturer at the University of California, Merced.

The question of whether students’ perceptions of their learning matches with how well they’re actually learning is particularly important, Deslauriers said, because while students eventually see the value of active learning, initially it can feel frustrating.

“Deep learning is hard work. The effort involved in active learning can be misinterpreted as a sign of poor learning,” he said. “On the other hand, a superstar lecturer can explain things in such a way as to make students feel like they are learning more than they actually are.”

To understand that dichotomy, Deslauriers and his co-authors designed an experiment that would expose students in an introductory physics class to both traditional lectures and active learning.

For the first 11 weeks of the 15-week class, students were taught using standard methods by an experienced instructor. In the 12th week, half the class was randomly assigned to a classroom that used active learning, while the other half attended highly polished lectures. In a subsequent class, the two groups were reversed. Notably, both groups used identical class content and only active engagement with the material was toggled on and off.

Following each class, students were surveyed on how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as “I feel like I learned a lot from this lecture” and “I wish all my physics courses were taught this way.” Students were also tested on how much they learned in the class with 12 multiple-choice questions.

When the results were tallied, the authors found that students felt as if they learned more from the lectures, but in fact scored higher on tests following the active learning sessions. “Actual learning and feeling of learning were strongly anticorrelated,” Deslauriers said, “as shown through the robust statistical analysis by co-author Kelly Miller, who is an expert in educational statistics and active learning.”

Those results, the study authors are quick to point out, shouldn’t be interpreted as suggesting students dislike active learning. In fact, many studies have shown students quickly warm to the idea, once they begin to see the results. “In all the courses at Harvard that we’ve transformed to active learning,” Deslauriers said, “the overall course evaluations went up.”

Co-author Kestin, who in addition to being a physicist is a video producer with PBS’ NOVA, said, “It can be tempting to engage the class simply by folding lectures into a compelling ‘story,’ especially when that’s what students seem to like. I show my students the data from this study on the first day of class to help them appreciate the importance of their own involvement in active learning.”

McCarty, who oversees curricular efforts across the sciences, hopes this study will encourage more of his colleagues to embrace active learning.

“We want to make sure that other instructors are thinking hard about the way they’re teaching,” he said. “In our classes, we start each topic by asking students to gather in small groups to solve some problems. While they work, we walk around the room to observe them and answer questions. Then we come together and give a short lecture targeted specifically at the misconceptions and struggles we saw during the problem-solving activity. So far we’ve transformed over a dozen classes to use this kind of active-learning approach. It’s extremely efficient — we can cover just as much material as we would using lectures.”

A pioneer in work on active learning, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics Eric Mazur hailed the study as debunking long-held beliefs about how students learn.

“This work unambiguously debunks the illusion of learning from lectures,” he said. “It also explains why instructors and students cling to the belief that listening to lectures constitutes learning. I recommend every lecturer reads this article.”

Dean of Science Christopher Stubbs , Samuel C. Moncher Professor of Physics and of Astronomy, was an early convert. “When I first switched to teaching using active learning, some students resisted that change. This research confirms that faculty should persist and encourage active learning. Active engagement in every classroom, led by our incredible science faculty, should be the hallmark of residential undergraduate education at Harvard.”

Ultimately, Deslauriers said, the study shows that it’s important to ensure that neither instructors nor students are fooled into thinking that lectures are the best learning option. “Students might give fabulous evaluations to an amazing lecturer based on this feeling of learning, even though their actual learning isn’t optimal,” he said. “This could help to explain why study after study shows that student evaluations seem to be completely uncorrelated with actual learning.”

This research was supported with funding from the Harvard FAS Division of Science.

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Enhancing Student Learning: Seven Principles for Good Practice

The seven principles resource center, winona state university.

The Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education grew out of a review of 50 years of research on the way teachers teach and students learn (Chickering and Gamson, 1987, p. 1) and a conference that brought together a distinguished group of researchers and commentators on higher education.  The primary goal of the Principles’ authors was to identify practices, policies, and institutional conditions that would result in a powerful and enduring undergraduate education (Sorcinelli, 1991, p. 13).

The following principles are anchored in extensive research about teaching, learning, and the college experience.

1. Good Practice Encourages Student – Instructor Contact

Frequent student – instructor contact in and out of classes is an important factor in student motivation and involvement. Instructor concern helps students get through rough times and keep on working. Knowing a few instructors well enhances students’ intellectual commitment and encourages them to think about their own values and future plans.

Implementation Ideas:

• Share past experiences, values, and attitudes.
• Design an activity that brings students to your office during the first weeks of class.
• Try to get to know your students by name by the end of the first three weeks of the term.
• Attend, support, and sponsor events led by student groups.
• Treat students as human beings with full real lives; ask how they are doing.
• Hold “out of class” review sessions.
• Use email regularly to encourage and inform.
• Hold regular “hours” in the Michigan Union or residence halls where students can stop by for informal visits.
• Take students to professional meetings or other events in your field.

2.  Good Practice Encourages Cooperation Among Students

Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one’s own ideas and responding to others’ reactions improves thinking and deepens understanding.

• Ask students to share information about each other’s backgrounds and academic interests.
• Encourage students to prepare together for classes or exams.
• Create study groups within your course.
• Ask students to give constructive feedback on each other’s work and to explain difficult ideas to each other.
• Use small group discussions, collaborative projects in and out of class, group presentations, and case study analysis.
• Ask students to discuss key concepts with other students whose backgrounds and viewpoints are different from their own.
• Encourage students to work together.

3.  Good Practice Encourages Active Learning

Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to instructors, memorizing assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.

• Ask students to present their work to the class.
• Give students concrete, real life situations to analyze.
• Ask students to summarize similarities and differences among research findings, artistic works or laboratory results.
• Model asking questions, listening behaviors, and feedback.
• Encourage use of professional journals.
• Use technology to encourage active learning.
• Encourage use of internships, study abroad, service learning and clinical opportunities.
• Use class time to work on projects.

4.  Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback

Knowing what you know and don’t know focuses learning. Students need appropriate feedback on performance to benefit from courses. In getting started, students need help in assessing existing knowledge and competence. In classes, students need frequent opportunities to perform and receive suggestions for improvement. At various points during college, and at the end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how to assess themselves.

• Return examinations promptly, preferably within a week, if not sooner.
• Schedule brief meetings with the students to discuss their progress.
• Prepare problems or exercises that give students immediate feedback on how well they are doing. (e.g., Angelo, 1993)
• Give frequent quizzes and homework assignments to help students monitor their progress.
• Give students written comments on the strengths and weakness of their tests/papers.
• Give students focused feedback on their work early in the term.
• Consider giving a mid-term assessment or progress report.
• Be clear in relating performance level/expectations to grade.
• Communicate regularly with students via email about various aspects of the class.

5.  Good Practice Emphasizes Time on Task

Time plus energy equals learning. There is no substitute for time on task. Learning to use one’s time well is critical for students and professionals alike. Students need help in learning effective time management. Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for students and effective teaching for instructors.

• Communicate to students the amount of time they should spend preparing for class.
• Expect students to complete their assignments promptly.
• Underscore the importance of regular work, steady application, self-pacing, scheduling.
• Divide class into timed segments so as to keep on task.
• Meet with students who fall behind to discuss their study habits, schedules.
• Don’t hesitate to refer students to learning skills professionals on campus.
• Use technology to make resources easily available to students.
• Consider using mastery learning, contract learning, and computer assisted instruction as appropriate.

6.  Good Practice Communicates High Expectations

Expect more and you will get it. High expectations are important for everyone—for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and well motivated. Expecting students to perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when instructors hold high expectations for themselves and make extra efforts.

• Make your expectations clear at the beginning of the course both in writing and orally. Tell them you expect them to work hard.
• Periodically discuss how well the class is doing during the course of the semester.
• Encourage students to write; require drafts of work.  Give students opportunities to revise their work.
• Set up study guidelines.
• Publish students’ work on a course website. This often motivates students to higher levels of performance.
• Be energized and enthusiastic in your interaction with students.

7.  Good Practice Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning

There are many roads to learning. People bring different talents and styles of learning to college. Students rich in hands-on experiences may not do so well with theory. Students need the opportunity to show their talents and learn in ways that work for them. They can be pushed to learning in new ways that do not come so easily.

• Use a range of teaching activities to address a broad spectrum of students.
• Provide extra material or exercises for students who lack essential background knowledge or skills.
• Identify students’ learning styles, backgrounds at the beginning of the semester.
• Use different activities in class – videos, discussions, lecture, groups, guest speakers, pairwork.
• Use different assignment methods – written, oral, projects, etc. – so as to engage as many ways of learning as possible (e.g., visual, auditory).
• Give students a real-world problem to solve that has multiple solutions. Provide examples and questions to guide them.

Contributors:   The Teaching Excellence Center at Brigham Young University; Northern Essex Community College; Dennis Congos, University of Central Florida; Edward Nuhfer, University of Colorado at Denver and Delores Knipp, United States Air Force Academy; and James W. King, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Sources Cited:

Angelo, T.A., & Cross, K.P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers .  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Chickering, A.W., & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin, 39 (7): 3-7. Sorcinelli, M.D. (1991). Research findings on the seven principles. In A.W. Chickering & Z.F. Gamson (Eds.) Applying the seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education (pp. 13-25). New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No. 47. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Adapted with permission from The Seven Principles Resource Center, Winona State University, Winona, Minnesota.

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• Columbia University in the City of New York
• Office of Teaching, Learning, and Innovation

Being an online learner will initially feel very different than being in a traditional classroom, but a n online or hybrid course can be just as rewarding as one set within a traditional classroom. As with most things in higher education, the quality of your experience will depend a lot on what you choose to bring to it.

Each section of this resource will provide strategies to be a successful online student. You will be introduced to a number of tools that will help you implement those strategies. Don’t be afraid to explore as many of these as you think would be useful for you. Similarly, don’t be afraid to abandon tools that don’t work for you. 

This resource is organized into the sections listed under “On this page”. Please explore them all, and consider returning to these strategies and suggestions for support as you engage in online or hybrid learning in the upcoming semester.

On this page:

Manage your time and environment, maximize your learning, manage your technology, participate in your learning community, use your support network, prioritize wellness and emotional wellbeing, time management strategies and tools.

Taking control of your time is an essential part of participating in online learning. Online learning gives you a degree of freedom but also the responsibility for scheduling your own time. Here are some strategies to help you use your time effectively.

Limit Distractions

Some students find that playing instrumental music, whether it’s classical, flamenco, movie scores, etc., can help keep them focused. Other students find that silence or white noise is more conducive to focusing on the task at hand. As you think about setting yourself up for success in online learning, you should consider what environment will be most productive for you. Either way, you should avoid working in a crowded space with music, the TV, and social media available at the same time. Try to put the work you need to do at the center of your attention so you can’t avoid it. Block out distractions and try to work during uninterrupted blocks of time. 

• Stay focused. Don’t surf the web, use social media, or answer email unrelated to your course while you are working. Turn off notifications on your phone.
• Tell yourself you’ll work two to four “sessions.” Each session could run for 30 minutes.
• Set a timer for each session’s duration.
• After a session take a five minute break.
• Once you’ve completed the block of time, reward yourself.   

Research proof points: Better student engagement improves student learning

Research shows that using formative assessment can improve student learning . One of the ways formative assessment does this is by improving student engagement , a challenge for any teacher.

Research has historically indicated strong correlations between student engagement (typically defined as attention to the area of focus, active participation in learning, and time on task) and student achievement. These correlations remain strong for all levels of instruction, across all subject areas, and for varying instructional activities. Let’s explore some research that shows this correlation.

A review of the research

In “Attitudinal and intellectual correlates of attention: A study of four sixth-grade classrooms,” Henriette Lahaderne shares findings of research conducted in the 1960s. Researchers rated student attention in sixth grade after observing four classrooms. Ratings were positively correlated with student performance on a standardized achievement test, showing that “the pupil who paid attention gained the most from his instruction” (p. 322).

A few years later, in 1972, Joseph Cobb investigated the relationship between peer conversations and academic performance. More than 100 fourth-grade students in two schools were observed for nine days. The findings, published in “Relationship of discrete classroom behaviors to fourth-grade academic achievement,” indicated that the level of attentiveness to classroom activities and engagement in peer conversations about appropriate academic material correlated to performance across subject areas.

In 1974, Jay Samuels and James Turnure reported consistent results for first graders during reading instruction in their article “Attention and reading achievement in first-grade boys and girls.” The attention of 88 first-grade students was observed during reading instruction. The authors found that as attention increased, word recognition rates also increased.

Lawrence Hecht examined whole-class instruction in high school mathematics in 1978. During a six-week period, observers recorded participation. The article “Measuring student behavior during group instruction” shares their findings: the amount of time on task had a positive correlation with student achievement.

More than a decade later, Ellen Skinner, J. G. Wellborn, and J. P. Connell published “What it takes to do well in school and whether I’ve got it: A process model of perceived control and children’s engagement and achievement in school.” The engagement of 200 elementary students, defined as participation and emotional tone, was assessed by their teachers. Path analyses were performed to examine the model of teacher behavior, perceived control, engagement, and academic outcomes. The predicted relations between engagement and grades/achievement (higher engagement leads to higher academic performance) were obtained.

Then, in 1995, Jeremy Finn, Gina Pannozzo, and Kristin Voelkl shared their research. “Disruptive and inattentive-withdrawn behavior and achievement among fourth graders” explains that the researchers found that students who are inattentive, withdrawn, and disengaged in the classroom have poorer academic performance when compared to engaged students. Teachers rated the classroom behavior of 1,013 fourth-grade students using a participation questionnaire. Results indicated that engagement (defined as effort and initiative taking) were positively correlated with grades from the end of the previous year and achievement test scores while inattentive or disengaged behaviors were negatively correlated with these measures.

Finally, in “Academic success among students at risk for school failure,” J. D. Finn and D. A. Rock analyzed data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 and focused on understanding the behavior of 1,803 low-income minority students in grades 8–12. The authors found that students who displayed engagement as measured by coming to class on time, being prepared for and participating in class work, and making the effort to complete assignments and homework were more likely to be academically successful, have passing grades throughout high school, and graduate on time.

Improve engagement

In general, it is not uncommon to find a classroom where a few highly motivated students monopolize classroom discussions. To ensure learning for all students, opportunities to actively engage everyone in meaningful ways must be provided. The following articles can help you focus on student engagement in your classroom this year:

• “How to keep kids engaged in class” 
• “Golden rules for engaging students in learning activities” 
• “Engaging students” 
• “4 powerful ways to engage students this school year”
• “A step-by-step guide for using stress- and trauma-sensitive practices in your classroom”
• “The importance of student self-assessment”

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Optimize Student Learning

The Science of Learning literature is actually quite clear about this. We are best positioned to optimize memory through “desirable difficulties.” In this sense, learning is about challenge, failure, understanding why something is wrong before getting it right. Hence, why most of the pedagogical practices we are about to highlight typically meet (at least initially) with student resistance. The traditional methods of highlighting the textbook and using flashcards simply do not have evidence to support their value in promoting learning. Actually, there are neurobiological reasons these do NOT work well. It “feels” good to get something right, even when “right” means passively turning over the flashcard to read the correct answer. The brain gives itself a hit of dopamine regardless (Yeah, you got it right!), therefore reinforcing a habit that doesn’t actually optimize learning.

Challenging the memory system strengthens memories. In other words, make your students “own it" through techniques like ELABORATIVE INTERROGATION and SELF-EXPLANATION.

Retrieving information from memory (or even attempting to!) makes that memory more likely to be recalled. Retrieval via self-testing results in better subsequent memory than the equivalent amount of passive studying (e.g., highlighting, reviewing flashcards or notes). The optimal technique to leverage here is PRACTICE TESTING.

Retrieval practice is much more effective if sessions are temporally spaced rather than massed. In this case, draw on DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE.

If possible, topics to be learned should be interleaved by type rather than blocked. This tends to be most applicable to topics in which discriminating among ways to approach and/or solve a problem is critical. The technique of choice to reinforce this is INTERLEAVED PRACTICE.

ELABORATIVE INTERROGATION

• Learn explicit fact or concept introduced
• Develop an explanation of why it’s true or applies in a particular case:
• Why does it make sense that . . . ?
• Why is it true that . . . ?
• Why would this be true of [EXAMPLE 1] but not of [EXAMPLE 2]?
• Show greater performance improvements when they:
• Are asked to develop more precise elaborations;
• Have greater prior knowledge;
• Generate the elaboration, rather than using one provided by instructor, text, or other source.

Theoretical Rationale:

• Helps students integrate new knowledge with prior knowledge, enabling students to organize knowledge components in relation to each other, thus promoting retrieval.
• Helps students distinguish among knowledge components and identify when they’re relevant.

Generalizability:

• Learning conditions
• Effective in both intentional and incidental uses
• Used across a wide range of subject-matter areas and disciplines
• Must be used with facts or established concepts
• Criterion tasks
• Relatively few measures used for retrieval
• Mixed results on studies of effect when measures of comprehension and application are used
• Little research on effects after gap between learning and testing
• Most studies in lab

Implementation Issues

• Clear guidance as to question types to use and teach students
• Less clear how specific to make questions on complex processes
• With long texts, students must identify facts to target, and frequent use may be needed to ensure performance gains

Overall Rating: Moderate Utility

• Primarily due to the need for further research

SELF-EXPLANATION

• Solve a problem using if, then statements or other instructions
• Generate an explanation of the processes used to solve the problem
• Helps students integrate new knowledge with prior knowledge
• Mechanisms may differ: content-specific or content-free prompts
• Variation in prompts, tasks, and measures studied
• Effective with direct instruction and discovery learning
• Effective with concurrent explanation
• Most effective when no explanations provided to students
• Effective across subject matter areas and disciplines
• Effectives across task types
• Wide range of measures; improvement of near- and far-transfer
• More studies needed on effects with meaningful delay
• Most studies in labs – a few in natural settings are promising
• Effective across subject-matter areas and task types
• Substantial efficacy across disciplines and task types; improves transfer into new contexts,
• No conclusive research on effects with delay, on whether training improves efficacy, and on technique vs. time on task.

PRACTICE TESTING

• Engage in low- or no-stakes practice assessments
• Use any of multiple formats, e.g., project phases, problems, questions, or tests/quizzes
• Practice testing involves generating information oneself, rather than encountering it in an external source
• Practice testing may prompt learners to develop more elaborated links
• Practice testing may improve mental organization of knowledge components
• Practice testing can benefit learners even when practice test and criterion tests use different formats
• The greater the use of practice testing, the greater the performance improvement
• Most studies involve simple facts or concepts
• Most studies have involved verbal materials
• Cued recall used most often; recall for both facts and concepts improves
• Several studies suggest improvements to comprehension, inference, and application
• Meaningful delays improve retrieval

Implementation Issues:

• Practice testing material often available to students (textbooks, online platforms)
• Repeated testing until correct answers are repeated across study sessions has greatest effect
• Practice testing consistently produces stronger effects than does restudying
• Instructors can support students’ use of practice testing by using low- or no-stakes testing in class

Overall Rating: High Utility

• Extensive research shows the benefits of practice testing across a range of subject materials, test formats, outcome measures, and with meaningful delays between learning and testing, though more research is needed on the effects of learners’ ability levels and prior knowledge.

DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE

Space learning of specific material over time – within a single study session or across sessions; the term “distributed practice” is intended to indicate the benefit of both spaced practice over time and of longer delays between practice sessions

Competing theories – reduced attention if practice sessions are too close together; reminding prompts retrieval, thus enhancing memory; or later practice sessions benefit from memory consolidation between sessions. Regardless, while greater delay between study sessions increases forgetting between sessions, it increases accurate retrieval at testing.

• Most effective when delay between practice sessions totals 10 – 20% of desired recall interval
• Intentional processing more effective than incidental processing

Effective across subject matter areas, disciplines, and task types

• Most effective with free recall
• Effects often strongest with greater delay between practice and test
• More studies are needed to ascertain any effects on tasks more complex than basic recall
• Studies in both labs and natural settings

Potential obstacles

• Textbooks not structured to allow distributed practice
• Research shows that infrequent testing increases students’ tendency to mass practice just before an exam
• Extensive research shows substantial effects with a range of subject matter areas and task types, as well as with long delays, although more research is needed on complex material and more cognitively demanding tasks, as well as on the impact of students’ prior knowledge and motivation.

INTERLEAVED PRACTICE

• Alternate study topics and/or subject matter during study sessions, rather than focusing on a single topic or subject matter area
• May teach students to distinguish more effectively between problem types
• May improve organization processing and item-specific processing by increasing students’ ability to compare problem types
• May increase instances of retrieval from long-term, vs. working, memory
• Spacing alone does not produce effects as significant as spacing that includes interleaving
• More extensive initial massed practice may be required for students with lower ability levels or prior knowledge
• Studies across subject matter areas and task types show differing results
• Effective in math, decision-making in complex situations with multiple dimensions (e.g., medical diagnoses), and conceptualizing artistic styles
• Ineffective in second-language vocabulary
• Always involved mixed problem sets
• Effective with delays up to 1 – 2 weeks
• Studies in both lab and natural settings
• Interleaved practice should be implemented cumulatively, as topics are introduced
• While interleaved practice takes more time, the performance improvements offset the cost
• While significant benefits have been shown for math and interleaved practice improves other cognitive abilities, the literature is still small, and more research is needed to understand when students have adequate initial understanding and skill.

* Findings and techniques adapted from  Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K.A., Marsh, E.J., Nathan, M.J., & Willingham, D.T. (2014). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4 – 58; and  The Reinvention Center, Advancing Undergraduate Education in America’s Research Universities (2015). Science of Learning/Pedagogical Innovation Network

Ending with Impact: Practices to Maximize Student Learning

By Lynne West, Founder  Sunodia Educational Consulting and Former Teacher

It is almost the end of the period and the bell will ring in 2 minutes. What are your students doing at this precise moment?   They may be packing up their materials and migrating towards the door.  Or perhaps they are intently listening to you as you try to squeeze in a couple more important points.

It could be that they are working in groups or pairs to finish an activity.  And the truth it is that is probably all of the above over the span of a week.  At a workshop on differentiation, Carol Ann Tomlinson posed the question “are we concluding a lesson or are we quitting?”  This question really resonates with me and, I suspect, a good number of other teachers.

We often plan more activities than we can complete in a single lesson.  As the end of the instructional period grows near, the teacher is forced to cut out the last learning activities of the lesson and, often in a flurry, make the required announcements and reminders.

Rather than this abrupt end to a lesson, Tomlinson suggests that we should offer a conclusion.  What techniques can we intentionally use to provide closure at the end of a lesson to ensure that our students have the greatest gains in learning?

Educational research shows that students naturally remember the beginning and the end of a lesson due to an educational principle that Saphier et al. have termed sequencing .  In short, we remember the first and last items in a list more easily than items in other positions.   Saphier notes that the principle is also in effect when we consider our use of time.

Given this, if we want our lessons to have the greatest impact on student learning then we must intentionally plan closure activities that capitalize on the value offered in last minutes of a class.  As noted earlier, many teachers regularly plan more activities than they have time for.

If this rings true to your experience, consider establishing a routine to check in with yourself towards the end of the class period to determine what will be most beneficial for students as the last learning activities.  If it is clear that there is not enough time to do everything planned, revise on the spot so that you have enough time do the closure activity that will be most valuable. Tips for Ending a Lesson

There are many ways that we can provide an impactful closure activity at the end of a lesson.  Giving students the opportunity to actively use the new knowledge and skills they have developed over the course of the class is particularly powerful.   Here are some suggestions:

• Ask student to keep a learning journal .  Students can contribute to their journals in a variety of different ways.  For example, they can summarize what they’ve learned from the day’s lesson in a few sentences.  Students can also reflect on their progress tackling one of the unit’s essential questions.
• Students can consolidate their learning by writing a postcard to absent an student. They write a quick message to any absent students explaining what was missed.  The messages can be written on post-it notes or note cards and displayed in an area of the classroom for students to see when they return.
• Ask students to create a visual . Students spend a few minutes creating a graphic representation of what they learned.  The class ends with a gallery walk or pair-share.
• Assign a 3-2-1 activity . Students note 3 takeaways, 2 interesting points, and 1 question they have.  Results can be incorporated into an opening activity the following day.
• Invite students to generate one or more formative questions . Students write questions that are connected to the lesson’s focus.  The questions can be compiled into a formative activity for students at a later date.
• Do a “whiparound” activity . Students gather or sit in a circle and the teacher states a topic or poses a question and provides some reflection  Then students offer a comment, reflection, takeaway, or question that relates to the teacher’s prompt.
• Chat stations – Students pair up and have several brief chats with different classmates on topics identified by the teacher.

The last moments of a lesson offer an important opportunity for students to reflect on, process, and synthesize what they have learned as well as consider where they still have gaps or questions.  Protecting these minutes and using them intentionally will have a positive impact on student learning.

References:

Saphier, Jon, et al. The Skillful Teacher: Building Your Teaching Skills . Research for Better Teaching, Inc., 2008.

Gonzalez, Jennifer. “Students Sitting Around Too Much? Try Chat Stations.” Cult of Pedagogy , 24 Oct. 2013, www.cultofpedagogy.com/chat-stations/.

Next, learn tips and strategies for starting strong to maximize student learning.

FariaPD supports teachers and leaders around the world with hands-on, active and creative professional development experiences. Join one of our online or in-person professional development events , each designed to support the unique goals of your school or district. FariaPD is part of Faria Education Group , an international education company that provides services and systems for schools around the world including ManageBac , a curriculum-first learning platform , OpenApply , an online admissions service , and Atlas , a tailored curriculum management solution for schools.

Contributing Author:

After spending 17 years both teaching and leading teachers in K-12 schools in San Jose, California, Lynne West founded Sunodia Educational Consulting to share her passion for teaching with her fellow educators. As a teacher, she used her foundation in backward curricular planning and cooperative learning to design creative and engaging lessons for her students. She brings the same enthusiasm to her work with educators to provide individualized professional development and instructional coaching.

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Strategies for Teachers to Maximize Student Learning Time

• An Introduction to Teaching
• Tips & Strategies
• Policies & Discipline
• Community Involvement
• School Administration
• Technology in the Classroom
• Teaching Adult Learners
• Issues In Education
• Teaching Resources
• Becoming A Teacher
• Assessments & Tests
• Elementary Education
• Secondary Education
• Special Education
• Homeschooling
• M.Ed., Educational Administration, Northeastern State University
• B.Ed., Elementary Education, Oklahoma State University

Time is a precious commodity for teachers. Most teachers would argue that they never have enough time to reach every student, particularly the ones that are below grade level. Therefore, every second a teacher has with their students should be a meaningful and productive second. 

Successful teachers establish procedures and expectations that minimize wasteful downtime and maximize engaging learning opportunities. Wasted time does add up. A teacher who loses as little as five minutes of instructional minutes per day due to inefficiencies wastes fifteen hours of opportunity over the course of a 180-day school year. That extra time would likely make a significant difference for every student, but particularly those who are struggling learners. Teachers can utilize the following strategies to maximize student learning time and minimize downtime.

Better Planning and Preparation

Effective planning and preparation are essential in maximizing student learning time. Too many teachers under-plan and find themselves with nothing to do for the last few minutes of class. Teachers should get in the habit of over-planning— too much is always better than not enough. In addition, teachers should always have their materials laid out and ready to go before students arrive.

Another important—and often overlooked—component of planning and preparation is practice. Many teachers skip this essential element, but they shouldn't. Independent practice of lessons and activities allows teachers to work out the kinks beforehand, ensuring that minimum instructional time will be lost.

Buffer the Distractions

Distractions run rampant during school hours. An announcement comes over the loudspeaker, an unexpected guest knocks on the classroom door, an argument breaks out between students during class time. There is no way to eliminate every single distraction, but some are more easily controlled than others. Teachers can evaluate distractions by keeping a journal over the course of a two-week period. At the end of this period, teachers can better determine which distractions can be limited and formulate a plan to minimize them.

Create Efficient Procedures

Classroom procedures are an essential part of the learning environment. Those teachers who operate their classroom like a well-oiled machine maximize student learning time. Teachers should develop efficient procedures for every aspect of the classroom. This includes routine activities such as sharpening pencils, turning in assignments , or getting into groups. 

Eliminate “Free Time”

Most teachers give “free time” at some point during the school day. It is easy to do when we may not be feeling the best or we under-plan. But we know when we give it, we are not taking advantage of the precious time that we have with our students. Our students love “free time”, but it is not what is best for them. As teachers, our mission is to educate. “Free time” runs directly counter to that mission.

Ensure Quick Transitions

Transitions occur every time you switch from one component of a lesson or activity into another. Transitions when poorly executed can slow a lesson down tremendously. When done right, they are practiced procedures that are quick and seamless. Transitions are a major opportunity for teachers to gain back some of that valuable time. Transitions may also include changing from one class to another. In this case, students must be taught to bring the correct materials to class, use the bathroom or get a drink, and be in their seats ready to learn when the next class period starts.

Give Clear and Concise Directions

A major component in teaching is providing your students with clear and concise directions. In other words, directions should be easy to understand and as simple and straightforward as possible. Poor or confusing directions can stymie a lesson and quickly turn the learning environment into total chaos. This takes away valuable instruction time and disrupts the learning process. Good directions are given in multiple formats (i.e. verbal and written). Many teachers select a handful of students to summarize the directions before turning them lose to get started on the activity.

Have a Backup Plan

No amount of planning can account for everything that could go wrong in a lesson. This makes having a backup plan critical. As a teacher, you make adjustments to lessons on the fly all the time. Occasionally, there will be situations where more than a simple adjustment is needed. Having a backup plan ready can ensure that learning time for that class period will not be lost. In an ideal world, everything will always go according to plan, but the classroom environment is often far from ideal . Teachers should develop a set of backup plans to fall back on should things fall apart at any point.

Maintain Control of the Classroom Environment

Many teachers lose valuable instructional time because they have poor classroom management skills. The teacher has failed to gain control of the classroom environment and establish a relationship of mutual trust and respect with their students. These teachers are continuously having to redirect students and often spend more time correcting students than teaching them. This is perhaps the most limiting factor in maximizing learning time. Teachers must develop and maintain effective classroom management skills where learning is valued, the teacher is respected, and expectations and procedures are set and met beginning on day one.

Practice Procedural Steps With Students

Even the best intentions fall by the wayside if students do not truly understand what is being asked of them. This problem can be easily taken care of with a little practice and repetition. Veteran teachers will tell you that the tone for the year is often set within the first few days . This is the time to practice your expected procedures and expectations over and over. Teachers who take the time within the first few days to drill these procedures will save valuable instructional time as they move throughout the year.

Stay on Task

It is easy for teachers to get distracted and veer off topic from time to time. There are some students who, frankly, are masters at making this happen. They are able to engage a teacher in a conversation about a personal interest or tell a funny story that captivates the classes attention but keeps them from completing the lessons and activities scheduled for the day. To maximize student learning time, teachers must maintain control of the pace and flow of the environment. While no teacher wants to miss out on a teachable moment, you don't want to chase rabbits either.

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• Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Equity and Engagement
• School Issues That Negatively Impact Student Learning
• Strategies to Handle a Disruptive Student
• 7 Factors that Make Teaching So Challenging
• 5 Keys to Being a Successful Teacher
• Classroom Strategies for Improving Behavior Management
• Classroom Procedures
• Creating a Great Lesson to Maximize Student Learning
• How Teachers Can Build a Trusting Relationship With Their Principal
• What Teachers Should Never Say or Do
• What Teachers Do Beyond the Classroom When No One Is Looking

How to Maximize Your Student Learning Outcomes

Whether you love them or despise them, the purpose of Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) is to guide instruction and, in return, communicate to students what they should know or be able to do at the end of a lesson, unit, or course. In most districts, SLOs are used as a foundation to measure student growth. You may have even seen these goals as part of your teacher evaluation. No matter how you look at it, SLOs are a big part of the educational paradigm today.

The stakes of SLOs are high and writing them requires diligent effort and planning.

Because SLOs clarify what students should know or be able to do, it is critical that they are written at an appropriate level of difficulty for students.

If you identify SLOs that are too easy, you’ll risk decreased student engagement. Write SLOs that are too intense and you’ll have frustrated learners. On top of that, it can be difficult to find a balance in an art room specifically. More often than not, students of all ability levels are lumped into one class together. Differentiation becomes increasingly complicated.

How do we, as art teachers, develop SLOs that are meaningful yet challenging for our students? What is the best way to define outcomes that are attainable for all students? The answer lies in the verbs.

It’s important as you articulate your SLOs to consider the complexity of the verbs used in the statements.

As you work through a lesson, pay attention to how you scaffold the learning. Start with goals that require students to use foundational knowledge while you gravitate to more complex targets. Of course as art teachers, our lessons naturally align to more cognitively complex skills because of the very nature of creativity and creating art. Just be sure not to leave out those goals that progressively move students to more difficult objectives.

In order to assist you in the planning and organizing of your SLOs, we’ve compiled a taxonomy of art verbs. Download the quick-reference chart below.

Looking for more guidance in planning or reviewing your curriculum? See our full graduate class schedule here including our Designing Your Art Curriculum and Showing Student Growth courses. All 19 of AOE’s courses will be offered every month until the end of August. Take a look at our extensive offerings today! 

How do you balance the verb use in your SLOs?

Do you have any tricks for quickly writing or revising your SLOs?

Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.

Tracy Hare, a middle school art educator, is a former AOEU Writer. She strives to deepen students’ 21st-century skills by encouraging them to practice critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills.

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Science Teachers' Learning: Enhancing Opportunities, Creating Supportive Contexts (2015)

Chapter: 9 conclusions, recommendations, and directions for research.

Conclusions, Recommendations, and Directions for Research

In many ways, the message of this report is a simple one: all students deserve to understand and enjoy science, and helping teachers offer rich instruction will require building similarly rich learning environments for all science teachers. Creating such environments entails creating meaningful formal professional development programs and other opportunities for teachers to learn, as well as implementing policies and practices in schools that nurture cultures of learning for teachers and students alike.

As simple as this message may seem, the proverbial devil is in the details. As the new vision for the science education of K-12 students set forth in the Next Generation Science Standards (hereafter referred to as NGSS) and A Framework for K-12 Science Education (hereafter referred to as the Framework) has evolved, it is one that engages students in learning scientific and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts. To achieve this new vision, teaching and learning in science classrooms will need to change, and so, too, will professional learning opportunities for teachers. This chapter summarizes the committee’s major conclusions and recommendations for effecting the needed changes, which are based on the evidence reviewed in this report and on the committee members’ collective expertise. We begin with the conclusions that flow directly from the analyses of existing literature in each chapter. We then lay out a set of conclusions the committee drew after looking across these analyses.

CONCLUSIONS

In reviewing the available research related to issues of contemporary science teacher learning, the committee drew a series of interrelated conclusions:

Conclusion 1: An evolving understanding of how best to teach science, including the NGSS, represents a significant transition in the way science is currently taught in most classrooms and will require most science teachers to alter the way they teach.

This vision of science learning and teaching draws on a long tradition of reform in science education that has emphasized the need for all students to learn significant disciplinary core ideas, coupled with scientific and engineering practices that are part of inquiry. In addition, the vision emphasizes the need to integrate knowledge through crosscutting concepts. To teach science in these ways, teachers will need to move away from traditional models of instruction that emphasize memorizing facts and covering a large number of discrete topics, focusing instead on core ideas, studied in depth, through active student engagement in investigations and opportunities to reflect on and build scientific explanations for phenomena.

Conclusion 2: The available evidence suggests that many science teachers have not had sufficiently rich experiences with the content relevant to the science courses they currently teach, let alone a substantially redesigned science curriculum. Very few teachers have experience with the science and engineering practices described in the NGSS. These trends are especially pronounced both for elementary school teachers and in schools that serve high percentages of low-income students, where teachers are often newer and less qualified.

Although professional development is available to all teachers, the committee found no evidence that elementary, middle, and high school science teachers have adequately rigorous opportunities to learn content related to the courses they teach, the new vision of science education, or how to teach to that new vision in challenging and effective ways. Instead, professional development appears to be more piecemeal, with few—if any—opportunities for the majority of teachers to engage in sustained study of science, scientific practices, and effective science instruction. High school teachers have some of these opportunities, while middle and elementary school teachers, who themselves may not have had much preparation in science and science teaching in their initial teacher prepa-

ration experiences, have fewer. Again, this situation is most pronounced in schools that serve high percentages of low-income students, and in which teacher turnover is especially high, leading to a less experienced and qualified workforce.

Conclusion 3: Typically, the selection of and participation in professional learning opportunities is up to individual teachers. There is often little attention to developing collective capacity for science teaching at the building and district levels or to offering teachers learning opportunities tailored to their specific needs and offered in ways that support cumulative learning over time.

While teachers in U.S. schools are required to participate regularly in professional development, mandated professional development tends to be generic, with little attention to systematically meeting the needs of science teachers. Many teachers pursue their own learning, taking summer professional development courses, volunteering to participate in curriculum development and/or review, working with preservice teachers, or taking on the role of professional developer or instructional coach. However, these individual pursuits are seldom linked to a well-articulated theory of teacher learning over time or a systemic vision of how to develop individual and collective teacher capacity.

Conclusion 4: Science teachers’ learning needs are shaped by their preparation, the grades and content areas they teach, and the contexts in which they work. Three important areas in which science teachers need to develop expertise are

• the knowledge, capacity, and skill required to support a diverse range of students;
• content knowledge, including understanding of disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and scientific and engineering practices; and
• pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science, including a repertoire of teaching practices that support students in rigorous and consequential science learning.

The set of professional knowledge and skills that informs good teaching is vast. Central to this knowledge base are the knowledge and skill needed to teach all students, mastery of science and science practices, and understanding and skill in teaching science. The committee acknowledges that there are other domains of knowledge equally essential to effective science teaching, and chose to focus on these three as there is considerable science-specific research on how these domains enable high-quality

teaching. The capacity to teach all students science depends on teachers’ respect for and understanding of the range of experiences and knowledge that students from diverse backgrounds bring to school, and how to capitalize on those experiences in crafting rigorous instruction. Knowledge of the sciences one is assigned to teach, of how those sciences are related to one another and to other fields like engineering, and knowledge and skill in how best to teach students science also are essential to high-quality instruction as envisioned in the NGSS and Framework.

This new vision of science teaching and learning will require new learning on the part of all teachers in all of these domains. The knowledge that students bring with them from their families and communities that is relevant to disciplinary core ideas, scientific and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts is an area yet to be fully explored. In general, many teachers have had limited opportunities to engage in scientific and engineering practices themselves, much less to explore them in connection with the disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts that animate the new vision. New curricula and instructional experiences will need to be crafted—with input from and the active engagement of teachers themselves—to bring that vision to life in U.S. classrooms. The knowledge demands of this new vision will require that the entire community—science teachers, teacher educators, professional developers, and science education researchers, as well as institutions of higher education, cultural institutions, and industry all of which invest in professional development—to create new, ongoing opportunities for teachers to rise to these new standards and to document what they learn from their efforts along the way.

Conclusion 5: The best available evidence based on science professional development programs suggests that the following features of such programs are most effective:

• active participation of teachers who engage in the analysis of examples of effective instruction and the analysis of student work,
• a content focus,
• alignment with district policies and practices, and
• sufficient duration to allow repeated practice and/or reflection on classroom experiences.

The national interest in the power of professional development to enhance teacher quality has led to considerable investments in such programs and in research on what makes them effective. While the goal of linking professional development to student learning outcomes through

research remains somewhat elusive, a great deal has been learned from the careful work of researchers and professional development leaders who have iteratively built professional learning programs for teachers. More research remains to be conducted in this area, but the research in science education, as well as mathematics, suggests that professional development of sufficient duration to allow teachers to deepen their pedagogical content knowledge and practice new instructional methods in their classrooms can lead to improved instruction and student achievement. Hallmarks of high-quality professional learning opportunities include focus on specific content that is aligned with district or school curriculum and assessment policies, as well as the proactive and professional engagement of teachers are hallmarks of high-quality professional learning opportunities.

Conclusion 6: Professional learning in online environments and through social networking holds promise, although evidence on these modes from both research and practice is limited.

The potential to use new media to enhance teacher learning is undeniable. Social networking and online environments hold promise for meeting the “just-in-time” learning needs of teachers, and for providing access to science expertise and science education expertise for teachers in schools and communities that lack rich resources in these domains. While these areas have yet to be fully explored by teacher developers and science education researchers, the committee sees considerable potential for these resources as research accumulates concerning their effective use.

Conclusion 7: Science teachers’ professional learning occurs in a range of settings both within and outside of schools through a variety of structures (professional development programs, professional learning communities, coaching, and the like). There is limited evidence about the relative effectiveness of this broad array of learning opportunities and how they are best designed to support teacher learning.

Recently, there has been increasing commitment to creating schools where both students and teachers can learn. This heightened interest in “embedded professional learning” can take many forms, including professional learning communities; professional networks that reach across districts, the state, or the country; induction programs for early-career teachers; and coaching and mentoring for teachers wishing to improve their practice. Since teachers spend the majority of their professional time in classrooms and schools, it seems wise to capitalize on efforts to design

settings that support their professional learning, both individually and collectively and to expand research in those settings.

Conclusion 8: Schools need to be structured to encourage and support ongoing learning for science teachers especially given the number of new teachers entering the profession.

A growing body of research documents the generative conditions established for teacher learning when schools foster collective responsibility for student learning and well-being. However, the evidence base related to learning opportunities for teachers in schools and classrooms is weak, especially with regard to science. This, too, appears to be an area with too much potential to ignore. In particular, building school infrastructure that systematically develops the science and science teaching expertise necessary to engage all students meaningfully in the new vision embodied the Framework and NGSS can work proactively to ameliorate differences between schools that have ready access to such expertise and those that struggle to connect with it.

Conclusion 9: Science teachers’ development is best understood as long term and contextualized. The schools and classrooms in which teachers work shape what and how they learn. These contexts include, but are not limited to school, district, and state policies and practices concerning professional capacity (e.g., professional networks, coaching, partnerships), coherent instructional guidance (e.g., state and district curriculum and assessment/accountability policies), and leadership (e.g., principals and teacher leaders).

Teachers’ capacity to teach science well over time is intimately related to the environments in which they teach. The policies and practices that shape instruction vary from teacher evaluation to curriculum and accountability to teacher assignment. For example, teachers cannot teach science courses that do not align with their preparation. Nor is it productive for the feedback teachers receive concerning their annual evaluations to run counter to messages about effective science instruction embodied in curriculum policies.

Conclusion 10 : School and district administrators are central to building the capacity of the science teacher workforce.

Conditions in schools and districts can create contexts that allow teachers to take better advantage of professional learning opportunities both within the workday and outside of school. These conditions might

include, for example, required professional development time and other learning opportunities designed to foster better understanding of how to teach the redesigned science curriculum. Administrators can direct resources (e.g., location of teachers, scheduling of classes, materials budget) toward science and teachers’ learning in science. They also can send messages about the importance of science in schools. As instructional leaders, they need to understand the vision for science education in the Framework and NGSS and align policies and practices in the school to support this vision.

Conclusion 11: Teacher leaders may be an important resource for building a system that can support ambitious science instruction. There is increasing attention to creating opportunities for teachers to take on leadership roles to both improve science instruction and strengthen the science teacher workforce. These include roles as instructional coaches, mentors, and teacher leaders.

Expertise in both science and pedagogy in science is an important component of building capacity in schools and districts. The development of science teacher leaders can be an important mechanism for supporting science learning for all teachers. The range of new roles for teacher leaders—lead teacher, curriculum specialist, mentor, collaborating teacher, instructional coach, professional development leader—holds considerable potential for enhancing the science teacher workforce. Not only do these teacher leaders engage in advanced study of science and science teaching themselves, but they also take on roles that involve helping fellow teachers learn. Such leaders can guide school- or district-based professional learning communities, identify useful resources, and provide feedback to teachers as they modify their instructional practices. While little research exists on the effects of these leaders on teacher learning more generally, the committee sees these new roles as a potentially powerful mechanism for improving science teacher quality collectively.

In addition to the above conclusions, all of which are drawn from chapter-specific analyses, the committee drew two additional conclusions based on the big picture emerging from these related, but separate analyses.

Conclusion 12: Closing the gap between the new way of teaching science and current instruction in many schools will require attending to individual teachers’ learning needs, as well as to the larger system of practices and policies (such as allocation of resources, use of time, and provision of opportunities for collaboration) that shape how science is taught.

The committee’s view of science teacher learning is both individual and collective. That is, we see science teacher learning as an issue of building the capacity not only of individual teachers, but also of the science educator workforce more generally, particularly the capacity of science teachers in a school or district. The demands of schooling are such that distributed expertise is essential and building capacity across a group of teachers needs to be the goal. In addition, enhancing the collective teacher workforce is not simply a matter of ensuring that teachers, individually and collectively, have the necessary knowledge and skill. It is also necessary for schools, districts, school networks, and states to develop practices and policies including teacher hiring and retention, teacher evaluation, curriculum and accountability guidance, and school staffing and school/district leadership that enable good science teaching. Contexts shape the work of teaching, and enhancing science instruction in the United States will require new policies as well as well-prepared teachers.

Conclusion 13: The U.S. educational system lacks a coherent and well-articulated system of learning opportunities for teachers to continue developing expertise while in the classroom. Opportunities are unevenly distributed across schools, districts, and regions, with little attention to sequencing or how to support science teachers’ learning systematically. Moreover, schools and districts often lack systems that can provide a comprehensive view of teacher learning; identify specific teacher needs; or track investments—in time, money and resources—in science teachers’ professional learning

This is not a new observation, but it is a continuing problem. Despite a wealth of opportunities for science teacher learning offered in schools and districts and through cultural institutions and industry—ranging from summer institutes to research apprenticeships to curriculum development to Lesson Study—the majority of the nation’s science are impoverished in terms of targeted, coherent, aligned, and cumulative opportunities to enrich their understanding and practices in teaching all students challenging science. Piecemeal approaches have not redressed this well-established problem.

New incentives and investments to redesign/restructure science teachers’ learning opportunities in schools, districts, school networks, and partnerships are needed. In particular, leadership by administrators at the school and district levels is critical to promoting and supporting the enabling conditions for science teachers to learn. Teacher leaders also play a critical role in these efforts. Approaches for elementary, middle, and high schools may need to vary, but in every case, school systems need ways to identify the myriad opportunities that exist for teacher learning, when and under what conditions these opportunities are aligned with one

another, and how scarce resources can best be used to maximize opportunities for teacher learning and growth.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTICE AND POLICY

Teachers matter, but they do not work in a vacuum. Their ability to elevate students’ scientific understanding depends on the schools, districts, and communities in which they work and the professional communities to which they belong. The recommendations below are intended to address the issues identified in the conclusions with particular attention to the ways that the current education system needs to be changed in order to support teachers’ ongoing learning as they respond to the demands placed by current reforms in science education.

Here, we focus on how schools and school systems (such as districts or charter networks) can improve the learning opportunities for science teachers. Focusing on this level of the system is essential, given the important roles played by principals and teacher leaders in connecting the rhetoric of visions such as that embodied in the Framework and NGSS to the realities of how teachers and students spend their time. Below we offer some specific recommendations for practices and policies we view as necessary to enhance ongoing teacher learning. Because the research base in this area is so uneven, often lacking science-specific studies related to the issues raised in this report, we think that these recommendations go hand-in-hand with research needs, and we offer recommendations for meeting these needs later in this chapter.

The following recommendations are not intended to be in chronological order—Recommendation 1, for example, does not have to be carried out first. Indeed, a plan for acting on recommendations toward the goal of enhancing science teacher learning to meet student learning goals is needed, and that plan might entail acting on a small number of recommendations, ordered in a way that capitalizes on current practice and policy and accelerates change.

In an ideal world, all these recommendations would be implemented. But in the real and complex world of schooling, it is important to start with one recommendation, building momentum, and with a long term goal of acting on the full set. Equally important is that acting on these recommendations will require additional resources (money, material, time, and personnel) or significant shifts in priorities. Such tradeoffs are inevitable, but investing in the individual and collective capacity of the workforce is essential to the improvement of science teaching in the United States. Finally, the committee presumes that acting on these recommendations

will require the engagement of teachers, teacher leaders, and administrators as partners in creating strong systems of science teacher learning.

Recommendation 1:

Take stock of the current status of learning opportunities for science teachers: School and district administrators should identify current offerings and opportunities for teacher learning in science—using a broad conceptualization of teacher learning opportunities, and including how much money and time are spent (as well as other associated costs). Throughout this process, attention should be paid to the opportunities available for teachers to learn about

• approaches for teaching all students,
• science content and scientific practices, and
• science pedagogical knowledge and science teaching practices.

When identifying costs, administrators should consider both traditional professional development time and other supports for learning, such as curriculum, teacher evaluation, and student assessment/accountability. Given differences in the learning needs of elementary, middle, and high school teachers, expenditures and time allocations should be broken down by grade level and by school and district level. Plans to address any inequities across classrooms or schools should be developed with an eye toward policies and practices that will equitably distribute teacher expertise and teacher learning opportunities across the system.

Recommendation 2:

Design a portfolio of coherent learning experiences for science teachers that attend to teachers’ individual and context-specific needs in partnership with professional networks, institutions of higher education, cultural institutions, and the broader scientific community as appropriate: Teachers and school and district administrators should articulate, implement, and support teacher learning opportunities in science as coherent, graduated sequences of experiences toward larger goals for improving science teaching and learning. Here, too, attention should be paid to building teachers’ knowledge and skill in the sciences and scientific practices, in science pedagogical content knowledge, and in science teaching practices. It is critical to support teachers’ opportunities to learn how to connect with students of diverse backgrounds and experiences and how to tap into relevant funds of knowledge of students and communities.

District personnel and school principals, in collaboration with teachers and parents, should identify the specific learning needs of science teachers in their schools and develop a multiyear growth plan for their

science teachers’ learning that is linked to their growth plan for students’ science learning. Central to this work are four questions:

• In light of our school’s/district’s science goals for our students, what learning opportunities will teachers need?
• What kinds of expertise are needed to support these learning opportunities?
• Where is that expertise located (inside and outside of schools)?
• What social arrangements and resources will enable this work?

Using a variety of assessments/measures designed to provide the kind of concrete feedback necessary to support (teacher and program) improvement, school principals, in collaboration with teachers and school partners, should regularly consult data form such sources as (teacher observations, student work, and student surveys or interviews) to assess progress on the growth plan. It will also be important to consider the larger contexts in which the plan will unfold and how existing policies and practices regarding personnel (hiring, retention, placement) and instructional guidance (curriculum and assessment) can enable or limit the plan.

Recommendation 3:

Consider both specialized professional learning programs outside of school and opportunities for science teachers’ learning embedded in the workday: A coherent, standards and evidence-based portfolio of professional learning opportunities for science teachers should include both specialized programs that occur outside of the school day and ongoing learning opportunities that are built into the workday and enhance capacity in schools and districts. Development of this portfolio will require some restructuring of teachers’ work in schools to support new learning opportunities. School and district leaders will need to develop policies and practices that provide the necessary resources (fiscal, time, facilities, tools, incentives).

As school and district leaders identify professional learning opportunities for science teachers, they should work to develop a portfolio of opportunities that address teachers’ varied needs, in ways that are sensitive to the school or district context. School and district leaders should not only make this portfolio of opportunities available to teachers; but also actively encourage, through their leadership and provision of resources, teachers’ engagement in these opportunities, and provide time during the school day for teachers to engage meaningfully in them. Furthermore, school and district leaders should work with teams of teachers to build coherent programs of science teaching learning opportunities, tailored to individual teachers and the school as a whole. The portfolio of teacher

learning opportunities should include structured, traditional professional development; cross-school teacher professional communities, and collaborations with local partners.

Recommendation 4:

Design and select learning opportunities for science teachers that are informed by the best available research: Teachers’ learning opportunities should be aligned with a system’s science standards, and should be grounded in an underlying theory of teacher learning and in research on the improvement of professional practice, and on how to meet the needs of the range of adult and student learners in a school or district. Learning opportunities for science teachers should have the following characteristics:

• Designed to achieve specific learning goals for teachers.
• Be content specific, that is, focused on particular scientific concepts and practices.
• Be student specific, that is, focused on the specific students served by the school district.
• Linked to teachers’ classroom instruction and include analysis of instruction.
• Include opportunities for teachers to practice teaching science in new ways and to interact with peers in improving the implementation of new teaching strategies.
• Include opportunities for teachers to collect and analyze data on their students’ learning.
• Offer opportunities for collaboration.

Designers of learning opportunities for teachers including commercial providers, community organizations, institutions of higher education and districts and states, should develop learning opportunities for teachers that reflect the above criteria.

When selecting learning opportunities for teachers, district and school leaders and teachers themselves should use the above criteria as a guide for identifying the most promising programs and learning experiences. District and state administrators should use these criteria to provide guidance for teachers on how to identify high-quality learning experiences.

District and state administrators should use (and make public) quality indicators to identify, endorse, and fund a portfolio of teacher learning opportunities, and should provide guidance for school leaders and teachers on how to select high-quality learning experiences in science appropriate to specific contexts.

Recommendation 5:

Develop internal capacity in science while seeking external partners with science expertise: School and district leaders should work to build school- and district-level capacity around science teaching. These efforts should include creating learning opportunities for teachers but might also include exploring different models for incorporating science expertise, such as employing science specialists at the elementary level or providing high school science department heads with time to observe and collaborate with their colleagues. When developing a strategy for building capacity, school and district leaders should consider the tradeoffs inherent in such choices.

School and district leaders should also explore developing partnerships with individuals and organizations—such as local businesses, institutions of higher education or science rich institutions—that can bring science expertise.

Crucial to developing relevant expertise is developing the capacity of professional development leaders. Investing in the development of professional developers who are knowledgeable about teaching all students the vision of science education represented in the NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards Lead States, 2013) and the Framework (National Research Council, 2012) is critical. It is not sufficient for these leaders to be good teachers themselves; they must also be prepared and supported to work with adult learners and to coordinate professional development with other policies and programs (including staffing, teacher evaluation, curriculum development, and student assessment).

Recommendation 6:

Create, evaluate, and revise policies and practices that encourage teachers to engage in professional learning related to science: District and school administrators and relevant leaders should work to establish dedicated professional development time during the salaried work week and work year for science teachers. They should encourage teachers to participate in science learning opportunities and structure time to allow for collaboration around science. Resources for professional learning should include time to meet with other teachers, to observe other classrooms, and to attend discrete events; space to meet with other teachers; requested materials; and incentives to participate. These policies and practices should take advantage of linkages with other policies For example, natural connections can be made between policies concerning professional development and teacher evaluation. Similarly, administrators could develop policies that more equitably distribute qualified and experienced science teachers across all students in school, districts, and school networks.

At the elementary level, district and school leaders should work to

establish parity for science professional development in relationship to other subjects, especially mathematics and English language arts.

Recommendation 7:

The potential of new formats and media should be explored to support science teachers’ learning when appropriate: Districts should consider the use of technology and online spaces/resources to support teacher learning in science. These tools may be particularly useful for supporting cross-school collaboration, providing teachers with flexible schedules for accessing resources, or enabling access to professional learning opportunities in rural areas where teachers may be isolated and it is difficult to convene in a central location.

As noted, the above recommendations focus on schools and districts/school networks, as the committee sees work at that level as a necessary condition for realizing the vision of the Framework and NGSS. Without the work of teachers, professional development leaders, and school leaders at the local level, the promise of these visionary documents cannot be realized.

Of course, working at that local level—while necessary—is not sufficient to change how science is taught across the United States and determining whether all children have access to high-quality science learning experiences. Within and across states, as well as nationally, science education needs to be elevated through policies, practices, and funding mechanisms. Without that kind of support, the local and essential work described in these recommendations will fall short. Other reports of the National Research Council (2014, 2015) include recommendations targeted to the state level that identify policies such as those related to assessment (National Research Council, 2014), high school graduation requirements (National Research Council, 2015), and teacher certification (National Research Council, 2015) that can help create supportive contexts for improving science education. The National Research Council (2013) also has issued recommendations for a national indicator system that would make it possible to track improvement in STEM education reforms, covering domains of state policy, curriculum, accountability, and teacher quality, and the National Science Teachers Association has issued a number of relevant position statements on accountability, teacher preparation and induction, leadership, and professional development. 1

As states, districts, and schools move forward with initiatives aimed at improving supports for science teachers’ learning, they should leverage these and other relevant resources that have been developed by such national organizations as the National Science Teachers Association, the

______________

1 See http://www.nsta.org/about/positions/#list [November 2015].

Council of State Science Supervisors, and Achieve, Inc. and are available online. These organizations also are creating networks of science educators who are exploring the Framework and NGSS and sharing ideas about implementation of the vision set forth in those documents. It is a massive undertaking to support all students, teachers, and schools in rising to the challenges of the new vision of science teaching and learning. And while the committee’s recommendations focus on a set of strategic activities that schools and districts might undertake to make progress, the science teachers, scientists, science teacher educators, and professional development leaders who constitute the membership of these organizations can contribute much to an enriched understanding of how to support ongoing teacher learning.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR RESEARCH

Considerable research exists, both in science education and in education more generally on which to draw, for insights into the wise development of policies, programs, and practices that will enhance teacher learning. At the same time, much remains to be learned. The committee identified several areas of research that would inform the work of school leaders interested in supporting ongoing teacher learning. Before offering our recommendations for future research, we reiterate the major gaps in the research literature.

• No system is in place to collect data on the science teacher workforce, their qualifications, experience, and preparation. This is due in part to differences across states in both teacher certification and data collection; the problem is exacerbated by a lack of measures that could be used to do comparative work. The authors of the National Research Council (2010) study of teacher preparation make a similar observation.
• No system is in place to collect data on general trends in science teaching and learning. This gap will challenge the collective capacity to assess any progress that may be made on meeting the challenges of the vision in the Framework and the NGSS. The observations in the National Research Council report Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K-21 STEM Education (2013) are similar. Studies vary in both their conceptions of good science teaching and how teaching is measured, compromising the capacity to ascertain general trends.
• No system in place to collect data about the myriad professional learning opportunities that teachers encounter in and out of

school. The committee found enormous variation in teacher learning opportunities, with no centralized way to determine general trends or the effectiveness of various programs or combinations of experiences. This observation is similar to a conclusion drawn by the authors of the National Research Council (2010) report on teacher preparation.

• While there is a body of research on formal science professional development, that research tends to focus on individual programs and to rely heavily on teacher self report. Few studies used research designs involving control or comparison groups and incorporating pre/post measures of teachers’ knowledge and beliefs, instruction, and students’ outcomes. Without such studies, it is difficult to draw strong conclusions about effectiveness. The field lacks consistently used, technically powerful measures of science teachers’ knowledge and practice, as well as measures that capture the full range of student outcomes. There are a handful of noteworthy exceptions to this pattern (e.g., Heller et al., 2012; Roth et al., 2011).
• Substantially less research exists on other, potentially equally important opportunities for science teacher learning, including professional learning communities, mentoring and coaching, online learning, teacher networks, and teacher evaluation. In general, the evidence base related to learning opportunities for teachers that are embedded in schools and classrooms is weak, especially with regard to science.
• Almost no studies address school organization and context and how they might affect the impact of professional development programs. Little to no published research exists on the effects of recruitment, retention, and staffing policies on the quality of the science teaching workforce and of science instruction in schools and districts.
• Research on how and under what conditions principals and leaders affect the quality of science learning in their schools has yet to be conducted. Also lacking in the research literature are studies of how teachers learn to become leaders, as well as research that examines the role, expertise, or preparation of science professional development providers and facilitators.

Research Recommendation 1: Focus Research on Linking Professional Learning to Changes in Instructional Practice and Student Learning

In general, more research is needed to understand the path from professional learning opportunities to changes in teacher knowledge and

practice to student learning and engagement in terms of both individual teachers and the teacher workforce more generally. To be maximally helpful, that research should attend to the contexts in which teachers learn and teach (see Figure 8-2). The contextual factors that shape and are shaped by teachers’ learning opportunities, include teacher hiring, staffing, and assignment policies and practices; student and school demographics; resource distribution and use; instructional guidance; teacher evaluation; and school organization.

Research Recommendation 2: Invest in Improving Measures of Science Instruction and Science Learning

Fundamental to most research aimed at linking science teacher learning to student science learning and engagement is the development of publicly credible, technically sound, and professionally responsible measures of relevant teacher and student outcomes. Because teaching and learning also have subject-specific aspects, these outcome measures need to sample broadly from the practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts outlined in the new vision of science teaching and learning. The committee cannot emphasize enough the centrality of good measures of teacher and student learning, particularly for addressing gaps in all of the domains cited above. This issue is noted in the National Research Council report Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K-12 STEM Education (National Research Council, 2013) as well. Lacking good outcome measures, considerable resources will continue to be devoted to professional learning opportunities with a limited ability to gauge their effects. Such measures would enable a great deal of needed research.

Research Recommendation 3: Design and Implement Research That Examines a Variety of Approaches to Supporting Science Teachers’ Learning

The committee urges a broad conceptualization of professional learning and thus research that examines how teachers learn from portfolios of learning opportunities, including both off-site and embedded professional development (e.g., study groups, professional learning communities, lesson study). Of particular benefit would be research assessing the effects of the interactions among various learning opportunities, as well as the particular contributions of different kinds of learning experiences to teacher knowledge and practice. The conduct of such research would require having much better documentation of the range of learning opportunities in which teachers participate and that were designed intentionally to build upon, extend, and enhance one another. Moreover, any investment in

teacher learning ought to be designed to document its effects; this would mean designing strong research in tandem with professional learning experiences, whether those experiences are based in cultural institutions, industry, universities, or schools. As is the case with all of the research recommended here, attention should be paid to contextual variation and how aspects of state, district, and school context mediate and/or moderate the effects of professional learning opportunities on teacher practice and student learning.

Typical research on professional learning is small scale, conducted by the program designers or providers, and uses locally developed measures. Although a growing number of studies entail carrying out large-scale, rigorous examinations of professional development interventions that link teachers’ learning to student outcomes, the results of those studies are mixed. The collective body of small-scale research has produced some insights, but understanding of the nature and effects of the range of professional learning opportunities will remain limited without large-scale studies that include multiple programs and are not as dependent on teacher self-report. A wide range of research methodologies have important roles in shedding light on science teacher learning, as does the use of multiple measures of teacher knowledge and practice and student engagement and learning.

Research Recommendation 4: Commit to Focusing on Meeting the Needs of Diverse Science Learners Across All Research on Professional Development

The committee urges that research on science teacher learning focus on opportunities that help teachers meet the needs of diverse students while teaching to the standards. Accomplishing this goal will require developing and studying professional learning programs—in and outside of schools—that interweave attention to science content with attention to the needs and experiences of all students, including English language learners, special education students, gifted and talented students, and diverse learners. Compelling research exists in many of these areas. But teachers do not teach diverse learners on Tuesdays and science on Wednesdays; they teach the two together, and supportive professional learning experiences for teachers will integrate knowledge across a range of domains. For example, teachers would be aided in achieving the new vision by research documenting how they can tap into students’ funds of knowledge when teaching a specific scientific practice or disciplinary idea. In other words, research that attends to the development of all three dimensions of teacher knowledge and skill discussed in this report—the

capacity to respond to all learners, disciplinary scientific knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge—is essential.

Research Recommendation 5: Focus Research on Exploring the Potential Role of Technology

When relevant, attending to the potential role of technology in enabling teacher learning would help schools and school districts take advantage of the capabilities of new technologies in enabling teacher learning. Such research could focus on online or hybrid professional development programs, face-to-face learning opportunities that take advantage of the use of technology in pursuit of ambitious instruction, the use of technology to teach to the new vision of science learning, or the support of online professional networks of teachers.

Research Recommendation 6: Design and Implement Research Focused on the Learning Needs of Teacher Leaders and Professional Development Providers

The field also needs research on the development of teacher educators, professional development leaders, and teacher leaders more generally. Learning to teach teachers is related to but distinct from learning to teach. Research documenting and explaining how skilled teacher developers acquire relevant knowledge and practice would help improve the quality of professional learning across the myriad settings in which it takes place.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

First, given current efforts toward developing new curriculum and assessment materials aligned with the Framework and NGSS, it would be strategic to design research that documents what teachers learn in developing and implementing those materials, especially in their classrooms and with the range of supports provided to help them. As teachers and schools embrace the new vision for science teaching and learning, teachers, teacher leaders, principals, and professional development staff will be learning a great deal. Research should document that learning so that efforts to reform science instruction can learn productively from that experimentation.

Second, many fields of research relevant to science teaching and learning currently do not address what science teachers and their students learn. Science education would benefit greatly from being integrated into programs of research concerning instructional reform, English language

learners, how to reach and teach diverse student populations, teacher preparation, and teacher evaluation.

Finally, given that many schools and school networks are currently engaged in efforts to improve teacher learning opportunities, some of the research envisioned here might draw on design-based implementation research, networked improvement communities, strategic education partnerships, or other research designs. These research traditions—which are designed as collaborations among various stakeholders (schools, teachers, policy makers, and researchers) and committed to responding quickly to data and shifting course when necessary—holds great promise for helping teachers and schools respond in a timely fashion to the mandate to raise standards and teach all children scientifically rich curricula.

Heller, J.I., Daehler, K.R., Wong, N., Shinohara, M., and Miratrix, L.W. (2012). Differential effects of three professional development models on teacher knowledge and student achievement in elementary science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching , 49 (3), 333-362.

National Research Council. (2010). Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy. Committee on the Study of Teacher Preparation Programs in the United States, Center for Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

National Research Council. (2012). A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core ideas. Committee on a Conceptual Framework for New K-12 Science Education Standards, Board on Science Education. Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

National Research Council. (2013). Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K-12 STEM Education: A Nation Advancing? Committee on the Evaluation Framework for Successful K-12 STEM Education. Board on Science Education and Board on Testing and Assessment, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

National Research Council. (2014). Developing Assessments for the Next Generation Science Standards. Committee on Developing Assessments of Science Proficiency in K-12. Board on Testing and Assessment, Board on Science Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

National Research Council. (2015). Guide to Implementing the Next Generation Science Standards . Committee on Guidance on Implementing the Next Generation Science Standards. Board on Science Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Next Generation Science Standards Lead States. (2013). Next Generation Science Standards: For States, By States . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Roth, K., Garnier, H., Chen, C., Lemmens, M., Schwille, K., and Wickler, N.I.Z. (2011). Videobased lesson analysis: Effective science PD for teacher and student learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48 (2), 117-148.

Currently, many states are adopting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or are revising their own state standards in ways that reflect the NGSS. For students and schools, the implementation of any science standards rests with teachers. For those teachers, an evolving understanding about how best to teach science represents a significant transition in the way science is currently taught in most classrooms and it will require most science teachers to change how they teach.

That change will require learning opportunities for teachers that reinforce and expand their knowledge of the major ideas and concepts in science, their familiarity with a range of instructional strategies, and the skills to implement those strategies in the classroom. Providing these kinds of learning opportunities in turn will require profound changes to current approaches to supporting teachers' learning across their careers, from their initial training to continuing professional development.

A teacher's capability to improve students' scientific understanding is heavily influenced by the school and district in which they work, the community in which the school is located, and the larger professional communities to which they belong. Science Teachers' Learning provides guidance for schools and districts on how best to support teachers' learning and how to implement successful programs for professional development. This report makes actionable recommendations for science teachers' learning that take a broad view of what is known about science education, how and when teachers learn, and education policies that directly and indirectly shape what teachers are able to learn and teach.

The challenge of developing the expertise teachers need to implement the NGSS presents an opportunity to rethink professional learning for science teachers. Science Teachers' Learning will be a valuable resource for classrooms, departments, schools, districts, and professional organizations as they move to new ways to teach science.

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• Direct & Indirect Measures Summary
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Measuring student learning

Assessment methods should help the instructor answer the questions, “How do I know the required learning has taken place? What might I need to modify about the course to best support student learning?”  

Information about student learning can be assessed through both direct and indirect measures. Direct measures may include homework, quizzes, exams, reports, essays, research projects, case study analysis, and rubrics for oral and other performances. Examples of indirect measures include course evaluations, student surveys, course enrollment information, retention in the major, alumni surveys, and graduate school placement rates. 

Approaches to measuring student learning 

Methods of measuring student learning are often characterized as summative or formative assessments: 

• Summative assessments - tests, quizzes, and other graded course activities that are used to measure student performance. They are cumulative and often reveal what students have learned at the end of a unit or the end of a course. Within a course, summative assessment includes the system for calculating individual student grades. 
• Formative assessment  - any means by which students receive input and guiding feedback on their relative performance to help them improve. It can be provided face-to-face in office hours, in written comments on assignments, through rubrics, and through emails. 

Formative assessments can be used to measure student learning on a daily, ongoing basis. These assessments reveal how and what students are learning during the course and often inform next steps in teaching and learning. Rather than asking students if they understand or have any questions, you can be more systematic and intentional by asking students at the end of the class period to write the most important points or the most confusing aspect of the lecture on index cards. Collecting and reviewing the responses provides insight into what themes students have retained and what your next teaching steps might be. Providing feedback on these themes to students gives them insight into their own learning. 

You can also ask students to reflect and report on their own learning. Asking students to rate their knowledge about a topic after taking your course as compared to what they believe they knew before taking your course is an example.  

Considerations for Measuring Student Learning

As you develop methods for assessing your students consider:

• including indirect and direct assessments as well as formative and summative assessments
• evaluating whether or not the assessment aligns directly with a learning outcome
• ensuring the measurement is sustainable and reasonable in terms of time and resources, both for the students and the instructors (e.g., grading, response time, and methods). To estimate the time that students need to complete different assignments, see the Rice University workload calculator
• using a mid-semester student survey, such as the CTI's  Mid-Semester Feedback Program , a great way to gather feedback on what students are learning and what is helping them learn
• using the results of the assessments to improve the course. Examples include revising course content in terms of depth vs. breadth, realignment between goals and teaching methods, employment of more appropriate assessment methods, or effective incorporation of learning technologies

Getting started with measuring student learning

At the course level, it is helpful to review course assignments and assessments by asking: 

• What are the students supposed to get out of each assessment? 
• How are the assessments aligned with learning outcomes ? 
• Knowledge acquired? 
• Skill development? 
• Values clarification? 
• Performance attainment? 
• How are homework and problem sets related to exams? 
• How are the exams related to each other? 
• What other forms of assessment (besides exams) can be used as indicators of student learning? 
• If writing assignments are used, are there enough of them for students to develop the requisite skills embedded in them? 
• How is feedback on student work provided to help students improve? 
• Are the assessments structured in a way to help students assess their own work and progress? 
• Does the assignment provide evidence of an outcome that was communicated? Is the evidence direct or indirect? 

Education Drivers

Teacher competencies.

There currently is an abundant knowledge-base to inform us that in schools teachers play the critical role in student learning and achievement. Research reveals that how teachers instruct and these interactions with students is the cornerstone around which to build effective schools. A summary of the available studies accumulated over the past 40 years on a key education driver, teacher competencies offers practical strategies, practices, and rules to guide teachers in ways to improve instruction that improves student performance and the quality of the work experience. Four groupings of these competencies can help organize and simply for teachers what they need to master to maximize their performance: classroom management, instructional delivery, formative assessment, and personal competencies. These four categories also provide the essential core around which decision makers can construct teacher preparation, teacher hiring, teacher development, and teacher and school evaluations.

What are teacher competencies? Competencies are the skills and knowledge that enable a teacher to be successful. To maximize student learning, teachers must have expertise in a wide-ranging array of competencies in an especially complex environment where hundreds of critical decisions are required each day (Jackson, 1990). Few jobs demand the integration of professional judgment and the proficient use of evidence-based competencies as does teaching.

Why is this important? The transformational power of an effective teacher is something many of us have experienced. Intuitively, the link between teaching and student academic achievement may seem obvious, but what is the evidence for it?

Research confirms this common perception of a link and reveals that of all factors under the control of a school, teachers are the most powerful influence on student success (Babu & Mendro, 2003; Sanders & Rivers, 1996). What separates effective teachers from ineffective ones, and how can this information be used to support better teaching? We can now begin to build a profile of exemplary classroom instruction derived from effectiveness research (Wenglinsky, 2002; Hattie, 2009).

Which competencies make the biggest difference? An examination of the research on education practices that make a difference shows that four classes of competencies yield the greatest results.

• Instructional delivery
• Classroom management
• Formative assessment
• Personal competencies (soft skills)

Further, the research indicates that these competencies can be used to organize the numerous specific skills and knowledge available for building effective teacher development.

Instructional delivery: Research tells us what can be expected from a teacher employing instructional strategies and practices that are proven to lead to increased mastery of lessons. Better learning happens in a dynamic setting in which teachers offer explicit active instruction than in situations in which teachers do not actively guide instruction and instead turn control over content and pace of instruction to students (Hattie, 2009). 

Is there a diverse set of practices that teachers can efficiently and effectively use to increase mastery of content for a variety of curricula? The structured and systematic approach of explicit instruction emphasizes mastery of the lesson to ensure that students understand what has been taught, become fluent in new material, and can generalize what they learn to novel situations they encounter in the future.

The following are hallmarks of an explicit approach for teachers (Archer & Hughes, 2011; Knight, 2012).

• Teacher selects the learning area to be taught.
• Teacher sets criteria for success.
• Teacher informs students of criteria ahead of the lesson.
• Teacher demonstrates to the students successful use of the knowledge/skills through modeling.
• Teacher evaluates student acquisition.
• Teacher provides remedial opportunities for acquiring the knowledge/skills, if necessary.
• Teacher provides closure at the end of the lesson.

A common complaint of an explicit instruction approach is that it does not offer sufficient opportunities for students to build on acquired knowledge/skills in creative and novel ways that help them to assimilate the material. The reality is that all effective instruction, regardless of philosophy, must aid students in generalizing newly taught knowledge/skills in a context that is greater than a single lesson. An explicit model accomplishes the goal of building toward “big ideas” by first emphasizing mastery of foundation skills such as reading and mathematics, and then systematically introducing opportunities to integrate these critical skills in discovery-based lessons to maximize students’ experience of success.

Effective explicit instruction practices include these features.

• Well-designed and planned instruction: Instruction that is well planned moves students from their current level of competency toward explicit criteria for success.
• Instructional design with clear instructional objectives: The teacher should present these objectives to students for each lesson.
• Scope and sequencing: The teacher should teach the range of related skills and the order in which they should be learned.
• Instruction that offers sufficient opportunities for successful acquisition:
• High rates of responding for each student to practice the skill: The teacher should provide sufficient opportunities for unpunished errors and ample reinforcement for success.
• Sufficient quantity of instruction: The teacher should allocate enough time to teach a topic.
• Teaching to mastery: Students need to learn the knowledge/skills to criteria that are verified by teachers or students’ peers.
• Teaching foundation knowledge/skills that become the basis for teaching big ideas: Current lessons should be built on past knowledge to increase fluency and maintain mastery of material. The teacher should relate lessons to complex issues and big ideas that provide deeper meaning and give students better understanding of the content.

View graph detail

Classroom management: Classroom management is one of the most persistent areas of concern voiced by school administrators, the public, and teachers (Evertson & Weinstein, 2013). Research consistently places classroom management among the top five issues that affect student achievement.

To put its in perspective, classroom management was associated with an increase of 20% in student achievement when classroom rules and procedures were applied systematically (Hattie, 2005).

A good body of research highlights four important areas that classroom teachers should be proficient in to create a climate that maximizes learning and induces a positive mood and tone.

• Rules and procedures: Effective rules and procedures identify expectations and appropriate behavior for students. To be effective, these practices must be observable and measurable.
• Schoolwide rules and procedures : Clearly stated rules identify, define, and operationalize acceptable behavior specific to a school. These rules, applicable to all students, are designed to build pro-social behavior and reduce problem behavior in a school. They distinguish appropriate from problem behavior as well as specify consequences for infractions.
• Classroom rules and procedures : Another set of clearly stated rules establishes acceptable behavior specific in a classroom. These rules need to be consistent with schoolwide rules, but may be unique to meet the needs of an individual classroom.
• Proactive classroom management: These are the practices that teachers and administrators can employ to teach and build acceptable behavior that is positive and helpful, promotes social acceptance, and leads to greater success in school. The key to proactive classroom management is active teacher supervision. The practice elements that constitute active supervision require staff to observe and interact with students regularly. The goal is to build a positive teacher-student relationship by providing timely and frequent positive feedback for appropriate behavior, and to swiftly and consistently respond to inappropriate behaviors.
• Effective classroom instruction: The key to maintaining a desirable classroom climate is to provide students with quality instructional delivery aligned to the skill level of each student. This enables students to experience success and keeps them attentive.
• Behavior reduction: These practices, designed to reduce problem and unacceptable behavior, are employed in the event the first three strategies fail. Behavior reduction strategies include giving students corrective feedback at the time of an infraction, minimizing reinforcement of a student’s unacceptable behavior, and guiding students in how to behave appropriately.

Formative assessment: Effective ongoing assessment, referred to in education literature as formative assessment and progress monitoring, is indispensable in promoting teacher and student success. It is frequently listed at the top of interventions for school improvement (Walberg, 1999).

Feedback, a core component of formative assessment, is recognized as an essential tool for improving performance in sports, business, and education. Hattie (2009) identified feedback as the single most powerful educational tool available for improving student performance, with a medium to large effect size ranging from 0.66 to 0.94.

Formative assessment consists of a range of formal and informal diagnostic testing procedures, conducted by teachers throughout the learning process, for modifying teaching and adapting activities to improve student attainment. Systemic interventions such as Response to Intervention (RtI) and Data-Based Decision Making depend heavily on the use of formative assessment (Hattie, 2009; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001).

The following are the practice elements of formative assessment (Fuchs & Fuchs, 1986).

• Assessment: (Effect size 0.26) Assessing a student’s performance throughout a lesson offers a teacher insight into who is succeeding and who is falling behind. It is important that teachers collect and maintain data gained through both informal and formal assessments.
• Data display: (Effect size 0.70) Displaying the data in the form of a graphic has a surprisingly powerful effect on formative assessment’s usefulness as a tool.
• Data analysis following defined rules: (Effect size 0.90) Formative assessment is most valuable when teachers use evidence-based research and their own professional judgment to develop specific remedial interventions, before it is too late, for those falling behind.

Personable competencies (soft skills): An inspiring teacher can affect students profoundly by stimulating their interest in learning. It is equally true that most students have encountered teachers who were uninspiring and for whom they performed poorly. Unfortunately, effective and ineffective teachers have no readily discernable personality differences. Some of the very best teachers are affable, but many ineffective instructors can be personable and caring. Conversely, some of the best teachers appear as stern taskmasters, but whose influence is enormous in motivating students to accomplish things they never thought possible.

What soft skills do successful teachers have in common? Typically, the finest teachers display enthusiasm and excitement for the subjects they teach. More than just generating excitement, they provide a road map for students to reach the goals set before them. The best teachers are proficient in the technical competencies of teaching: instructional delivery, formative assessment, and classroom management. Equally significant, they are fluent in a multilayered set of social skills that students recognize and respond to, which leads to greater learning (Attakorn, Tayut, Pisitthawat, & Kanokorn, 2014). These skills must be defined as clear behaviors that teachers can master for use in classrooms.

Indispensable soft skills include:

• Establishing high but achievable expectations
• Encouraging a love for learning
• Listening to others
• Being flexible and capable of adjusting to novel situations
• Showing empathy
• Being culturally sensitive
• Embedding and encouraging higher order thinking along with teaching foundation skills
• Having a positive regard for students

What does research tell us about personal competencies? Quantitative studies provide an overall range of effect sizes from 0.72 to 0.87 for effective teacher-student relations. Better teacher-student relations promote increased student academic performance and improve classroom climate by reducing disruptive student behavior (Cornelius-White, 2007; Marzano, Marzano & Pickering, 2003).

There is abundant research to support the notion that teachers play the critical role in improving student achievement in schools. What teachers do in the classroom is crucial in this process. The breadth of high-quality research accumulated over the past 40 years offers educators a clear picture of how to maximize teacher competency in four critical categories: instructional delivery, classroom management, formative assessment, and personal competencies. There is now ample evidence to recommend these competencies as the core around which to build teacher preparation, teacher hiring, teacher development, and teacher and school evaluations.

Archer, A. L., & Hughes, C. A. (2011). Explicit instruction: Efficient and effective teaching. New York, NY: Guilford Publications.

Attakorn, K., Tayut, T., Pisitthawat, K., & Kanokorn, S. (2014). Soft skills of new teachers in the secondary schools of Khon Kaen Secondary Educational Service Area 25, Thailand. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences, 112, 1010–1013.

Babu, S., & Mendro, R. (2003). Teacher accountability: HLM-based teacher effectiveness indices in the investigation of teacher effects on student achievement in a state assessment program. Presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Chicago, IL, April.

Cornelius-White, J. (2007). Learner-centered teacher-student relationships are effective: A meta-analysis. Review of educational research, 77 (1), 113–143.

Evertson, C. M., & Weinstein, C. S. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of classroom management: Research, practice, and contemporary issues. New York, NY: Routledge.

Fuchs, L. S., & Fuchs, D. (1986). Effects of systematic formative evaluation: A meta-analysis. Exceptional Children, 53 (3), 199–208.

Hattie, J., (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses related to achievement. New York, NY: Routledge.

Jackson, P. W. (1990). Life in classrooms. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Knight, J. (2012). High-impact instruction: A framework for great teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Marzano, R. J., Marzano, J. S., & Pickering, D. (2003). Classroom management that works: Research-based strategies for every teacher. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).

Sanders, W. L., & Rivers, J. C. (1996). Cumulative and residual effects of teachers on future student academic achievement. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Center. Retrieved from http://heartland.org/policy-documents/cumulative-and-residual-effects-teachers-future-student-academic-achievement.

Walberg, H. (1999). Productive teaching. In H. C. Waxman & H. J. Walberg (Eds.), New directions for teaching practice and research (pp. 75–104). Berkeley, CA: McCutchen Publishing.

Wenglinsky, H. (2002). How schools matter: The link between teacher classroom practices and student academic performance. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10 (12).

White, W. A. T. (1988). A meta-analysis of the effects of direct instruction in special education. Education and Treatment of Children, 11 (4), 364–374.

Yeh, S. S. (2007). The cost-effectiveness of five policies for improving student achievement. American Journal of Evaluation, 28 (4), 416–436.

Publications

A substantial body of evidence is available to guide teacher preparation programs in developing a pre-service curriculum based on universal skills needed for success across settings, age ranges, and subjects being taught. These skills include instructional delivery, classroom management, formative assessment, and personal competencies (soft skills)

Cleaver, S., Detrich, R., States, J. & Keyworth, R. (2021). Curriculum Content for Teacher Training Overview . Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/pre-service-teacher-curriculum-content.

To produce better outcomes for students two things are necessary: (1) effective, scientifically supported interventions (2) those interventions implemented with high integrity.  Typically, much greater attention has been given to identifying effective practices.  This review focuses on features of high quality implementation.

Detrich, R. (2014). Treatment integrity: Fundamental to education reform. Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology, 13 (2), 258-271.

Heward and Wood consider a range of instructional practices that were identified by participants of the eighth Wing Institute summit and make an argument that Active Student Responding (ASR) has the potential to significantly improve student learning. The authors consider ASR in the context of the positive benefits and the cost considerations including equipment/materials, training, logistical fit, and the fit with the teacher's belief about effective instruction.

Heward, W.L. & Wood, C.L. (2015). Improving Educational Outcomes in America: Can A Low-Tech, Generic Teaching Practice Make A Difference Retrieved from ../../uploads/docs/2013WingSummitWH.pdf.

This article shared information about the Wing Institute and demographics of the Summit participants. It introduced the Summit topic, sharing performance data on past efforts of school reform that focused on structural changes rather than teaching improvement. The conclusion is that the system has spent enormous resources with virtually no positive results. The focus needs to be on teaching improvement.

Keyworth, R., Detrich, R., & States, J. (2012). Introduction: Proceedings from the Wing Institute’s Fifth Annual Summit on Evidence-Based Education: Education at the Crossroads: The State of Teacher Preparation. In Education at the Crossroads: The State of Teacher Preparation (Vol. 2, pp. ix-xxx). Oakland, CA: The Wing

Keyworth, R., Detrich, R., & States, J. (2012). Introduction: Proceedings from the Wing Institute’s Fifth Annual Summit on Evidence-Based Education: Education at the Crossroads: The State of Teacher Preparation. In  Education at the Crossroads: The State of Teacher Preparation  (Vol. 2, pp. ix-xxx). Oakland, CA: The Wing

In this overview, classroom management strategies have been grouped into four essential areas: rules and procedures, proactive management, well-designed and delivered instruction, and disruptive behavior management. These strategies are devised for use at both school and classroom levels.

States, J., Detrich, R. & Keyworth, R. (2017).  Overview of Classroom Management. Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. https://www.winginstitute.org/effective-instruction-classroom.

This analysis examines the available research on effective teaching, how to impart these skills, and how to best transition teachers from pre-service to classroom with an emphasis on improving student achievement. It reviews current preparation practices and examine the research evidence on how well they are preparing teachers

States, J., Detrich, R. & Keywroth, R. (2012). Effective Teachers Make a Difference. In Education at the Crossroads: The State of Teacher Preparation (Vol. 2, pp. 1-46). Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute.

This commentary review the critical competencies for teacher success in the classroom.

Twyman, J. S. (2013) Seven Habits of Superhero Teachers. Wing Institute. Date accessed: 5/7/14.

This paper argues that ineffective practices in schools carry a high price for consumers and suggests that school systems consider the measurable yield in terms of gains in student achievement for their schooling effort.

VanDerHeyden, A. (2013). Are we making the differences that matter in education. In R. Detrich, R. Keyworth, & J. States (Eds.), Advances in evidence- ‐ based education :   Vol  3 (pp. 119–138). Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute. Retrieved from http://www.winginstitute.org/uploads/docs/Vol3Ch4.pdf

Data Mining

Presentations.

The book is written for individuals interested in procedures for increasing consultation skills to assist parents, teachers, and other socialization agents to solve mental health and educational problems of children and youths.

This study was guided by a reduced version of the Self-System Process Model developed by Connell. This paper report the optimal and risk thresholds for the Student Performance and Commitment Index (SPCI) and engagement, and then data on how much engagement matters for later success in school are presented. 

Klem, A. M., & Connell, J. P. (2004). Relationships matter: Linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement.  Journal of school health ,  74 (7), 262-273.

This is a meta-analysis that examines teacher-student relations impact on student performance.

Learner-centered teacher-student relationships are effective: A meta-analysis Retrieved from http://rer.sagepub.com/content/77/1/113.full?patientinform-links=yes&legid=sprer;77/1/113.

This study compared the impact of long and short reprimands on children's off-task behavior in a classroom.

Abramowitz, A. J., O'Leary, S. G., & Futtersak, M. W. (1988). The relative impact of long and short reprimands on children's off-task behavior in the classroom. Behavior Therapy, 19(2), 243-247.

The main focus of this study is to find different kinds of variables that might contribute to variations in the strength and direction of the relationship by examining quantitative studies that relate mathematics teachers’ subject matter knowledge to student achievement in mathematics.

Ahn, S., & Choi, J. (2004). Teachers' Subject Matter Knowledge as a Teacher Qualification: A Synthesis of the Quantitative Literature on Students' Mathematics Achievement.  Online Submission .

Environmental features of elementary school classrooms are examined in relation to distraction and privacy. Teachers' adjustments of their activities to make their settings less distracting are also explored. 

Ahrentzen, S., & Evans, G. W. (1984). Distraction, privacy, and classroom design.  Environment and Behavior ,  16 (4), 437-454.

This study examines the effectiveness of simultaneous prompting in teaching naming relatives to

Akmanoglu-Uludag, N., & Batu, S. (2005). Teaching naming relatives to individuals with autism using simultaneous prompting. Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities, 40(4), 401.

Value-added assessment proves that very good teaching can boost student learning and that family background does not determine a student's destiny. Students taught by highly effective teachers several years in a row earn higher test scores than students assigned to particularly ineffective teachers.

American Education Research Association (AERA). (2004). Teachers matter: Evidence from value-added assessments. Research Points, 2(2). Retrieved from http://www.aera.net/ Portals/38/docs/Publications/Teachers%20Matter.pdf

This article explores the theoretical underpinnings surrounding quality teaching in online settings as well as practical considerations for what teachers should know and be able to do in online environments. 

Archambault, L., DeBruler, K., & Freidhoff, J. (2014). K-12 online and blended teacher licensure: Striking a balance between policy and preparedness.  Journal of Technology and Teacher Education ,  22 (1), 83-106. Retrieved from

https://www.academia.edu/6459023/K-12_Online_ and_blended _Teacher_licensure_Striking_a_balance_between_Policy_ and_Preparedness

This book gives special and general education teachers the tools to implement explicit instruction in any grade level or content area. The authors provide clear guidelines for identifying key concepts, skills, and routines to teach; designing and delivering effective lessons; and giving students opportunities to practice and master new material.

Archer, A., & Hughes, C. A. (2011). Explicit instruction: Efficient and effective teaching.  New York, NY: Guilford Publications .

This research objective was to study soft skills of new teachers in the secondary schools of Khon Kaen Secondary Educational Service Area 25, Thailand. The data were collected from 60 purposive samples of new teachers by interviewing and questionnaires. The results of this study were informed that new teachers have all of soft skills at high level totally. Communicative skills were highest among seven of soft skills and next Life-long learning and information management skills, Critical and problem solving skills, Team work skills, Ethics, moral and professional skills, Leadership skills and Innovation invention and development skills were lowest in all skills. Based on the research findings obtained, the sub-skills of seven soft skills will be considered and utilized in the package of teacher development program of next research.

Attakorn, K., Tayut, T., Pisitthawat, K., & Kanokorn, S. (2014). Soft skills of new teachers in the secondary schools of Khon Kaen Secondary Educational Service Area 25, Thailand.  Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences ,  112 , 1010-1013.

This study examined whether associations between teacher policies and student achievement were mediated by the teacher–student relationship climate. Results of this study were threefold. These findings are discussed in light of their educational policy implications.

Barile, J. P., Donohue, D. K., Anthony, E. R., Baker, A. M., Weaver, S. R., & Henrich, C. C. (2012). Teacher–student relationship climate and school outcomes: Implications for educational policy initiatives.  Journal of Youth and Adolescence ,  41 (3), 256-267.

The later effects of the Direct Instruction Follow Through program were assessed at five diverse sites. Low-income fifth and sixth graders who had completed the full 3 years of this first- through third-grade program were tested on the Metropolitan Achievement Test (Intermediate level) and the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT).

Becker, W. C., & Gersten, R. (1982). A follow-up of Follow Through: The later effects of the Direct Instruction Model on children in fifth and sixth grades.  American Educational Research Journal ,  19 (1), 75-92.

In this article aspects of lecturing are explored. Attention is given to explaining and to other strategies of lecturing and to the possibility of demarcating certain lecturing styles.

Behr, A. L. (1988). Exploring the lecture method: An empirical study.  Studies in Higher Education ,  13 (2), 189-200.

This well-written book on assertiveness clearly describes the non assertive, assertive, and aggressive styles of supervision. Each chapter provides numerous examples, practice exercises, and self-tests. The author identifies feelings and beliefs that support aggressiveness, non aggressiveness, or non assertiveness which help the reader "look beyond the words themselves."

Black, M. K. (1991). Assertive Supervision-Building Involved Teamwork.  The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing ,  22 (5), 224-224.

This paper is a review of the literature on classroom formative assessment.

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in education, 5(1), 7-74.

This is a review of the literature on classroom formative assessment. Several studies show firm evidence that innovations designed to strengthen the frequent feedback that students receive about their learning yield substantial learning gains.

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: principles, policy & practice, 5(1), 7-74.

This paper theorizes that variations in learning and the level of learning of students are determined by the students' learning histories and the quality of instruction they receive.

Bloom, B. (1976). Human characteristics and school learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.

This study was conducted to create a reliable and valid low- to medium-inference, multidimensional measure of instructor clarity from seminal work across several academic fields. The five factors were explored in regards to their ability to predict the outcomes. Implications for instructional communication researchers are discussed.

Bolkan, S. (2017). Development and validation of the clarity indicators scale.  Communication Education ,  66 (1), 19-36.

The author shares nine teachable competencies that can serve as a principal's guide for empathy education. This paper will help answer which practices enhance empathy and how will principals know if teachers are implementing them effectively. 

Borba, M. (2018). Nine Competencies for Teaching Empathy.  Educational Leadership ,  76 (2), 22-28.

The purpose of this guide is to help district leaders take on the challenge of ensuring that students have equitable access to excellent teachers. It shares some early lessons the Education Trust has learned from districts about the levers available to prioritize low-income students and students of color in teacher quality initiatives. The guide outlines a seven-stage process that can help leaders define their own challenges, explore underlying causes, and develop strategies to ensure all schools and students have equitable access to effective teachers.

Bromberg, M. (2016). Achieving Equitable Access to Strong Teachers: A Guide for District Leaders.  Education Trust .

This paper, prepared as a chapter for the "Handbook of Research on Teaching" (third edition), reviews correlational and experimental research linking teacher behavior to student achievement. It focuses on research done in K-12 classrooms during 1973-83, highlighting several large-scale, programmatic efforts. 

Brophy, J., & Good, T. L. (1984). Teacher Behavior and Student Achievement. Occasional Paper No. 73.

This paper describes a survey of teachers trained in Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement (TESA). The study examined whether teachers: agreed that TESA interactions were useful with today's children; continued to practice the TESA coding and observation process after being trained; and would recommend TESA to colleagues. 

Cantor, J., Kester, D., & Miller, A. (2000). Amazing Results! Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement (TESA) Follow-Up Survey of TESA-Trained Teachers in 45 States and the District of Columbia.

This book provide detailed information on how to systematically and explicitly teach essential reading skills. The procedures describe in this text have been shown to benefit all student, especially powerful with the most vulnerable learners, children who are at risk because of poverty, disability, or limited knowledge of English. 

Carnine, D., Silbert, J., Kameenui, E. J., & Tarver, S. G. (1997).  Direct instruction reading . Columbus, OH: Merrill.

This book provides evidence-based principles of effective teaching. College students preparing to teach, new teachers struggling to find their way, and experienced teachers eager to hone their skills will benefit from this set of commonsense principles that, when practiced together, will markedly improve student performance.

Chance, P. (2008).  The teacher's craft: The 10 essential skills of effective teaching . Waveland PressInc.

This meta-analysis looks at the effectiveness of two strategies in teaching motor skills to students: practice and reciprocal. The research examined two of the 11 teaching strategies identified in Mosston’s Spectrum of Teaching Styles designed for teachers in physical education. Six studies met the criteria for inclusion in this paper. The practice strategy involves the student in the decision-making process. The reciprocal strategy assigns each learner to a specific role: One learner performs the task and the other is the observer who offers immediate and ongoing feedback using a criteria sheet designed by the teacher. At the end of the practice, the students switch roles.

The study showed a very large effect size of 1.16 for the practice strategy, and a large effect size of 0.94 for the reciprocal strategy. It would not be surprising to see these particularly large effect sizes moderated in subsequent replication studies (Makel & Plucker, 2014; van Aert & van Assen, 2018). The study confirms previous research on reciprocal teaching as an effective instructional strategy. Reciprocal teaching has been found to be a powerful strategy for teaching reading and other academic subjects. John Hattie (1995) reported an effect size of 0.74 for reciprocal teaching. The takeaway from this meta-analysis is that practice and reciprocal styles have positive effects on motor skill acquisition.

Chatoupis, C., & Vagenas, G. (2018). Effectiveness of the practice style and reciprocal style of teaching: A meta-analysis.  Physical Educator ,  75 (2), 175–194.

This study presents the Teacher Clarity Short Inventory (TCSI) as an alternative to existing measures of teacher clarity. Analyses revealed a 10 item scale with an acceptable factor structure, acceptable reliability and validity. 

Chesebro, J. L., & McCroskey, J. C. (1998). The development of the teacher clarity short inventory (TCSI) to measure clear teaching in the classroom.  Communication Research Reports ,  15 (3), 262-266.

Neither holding a college major in education nor acquiring a master's degree is correlated with elementary and middle school teaching effectiveness, regardless of the university at which the degree was earned. Teachers generally do become more effective with a few years of teaching experience, but we also find evidence that teachers may become less effective with experience, particularly later in their careers. 

Chingos, M. M., & Peterson, P. E. (2011). It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness.  Economics of Education Review ,  30 (3), 449-465.

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview for those interested in the current state‐of‐the‐art in time management research. The review demonstrates that time management behaviours relate positively to perceived control of time, job satisfaction, and health, and negatively to stress.

Claessens, B. J., Van Eerde, W., Rutte, C. G., & Roe, R. A. (2007). A review of the time management literature.  Personnel Review ,  36 (2), 255–276.

The purpose of this appear is to describe a school-wide staff development model that is based on a proactive instructional approach to solving problem behavior on a school-wide basis and utilizes effective staff development procedures. 

Colvin, G., Kameenui, E. J., & Sugai, G. (1993). Reconceptualizing behavior management and school-wide discipline in general education.  Education and treatment of children , 361-381.

This systematic review of the literature examines the evidence behind teacher-directed strategies to increase students’ opportunities to respond (OTR) during whole-group instruction. 

Common, E. A., Lane, K. L., Cantwell, E. D., Brunsting, N. C., Oakes, W. P., Germer, K. A., & Bross, L. A. (2019). Teacher-delivered strategies to increase students’ opportunities to respond: A systematic methodological review.  Behavioral Disorders , 0198742919828310.

This study sought to investigate the impact of a supplemental program’s script on the rate of on-task and off-task instructional opportunities offered by the instructor for students to practice the specific skills targeted in lesson exercises.

Cooke, N. L., Galloway, T. W., Kretlow, A. G., & Helf, S. (2011). Impact of the script in a supplemental reading program on instructional opportunities for student practice of specified skills.  The Journal of Special Education ,  45 (1), 28-42.

This book is a comprehensive description of the principles and procedures for systematic change of socially significant behavior. It includes basic principles, applications, and behavioral research methods.

Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2007). Applied behavior analysis.

The author reviewed about 1,000 articles to synthesize 119 studies from 1948 to 2004 with 1,450 findings and 355,325 students. The meta-analysis design followed Mackay, Barkham, Rees, and Stiles’s guidelines, including comprehensive search mechanisms, accuracy and bias control, and primary study validity assessment.

Cornelius-White, J. (2007). Learner-centered teacher-student relationships are effective: A meta-analysis.  Review of educational research ,  77 (1), 113-143.

This monograph summarizes a sample of programs and procedures demonstrated to work. Each program included in the monograph has been validated through solid scientific research.

Crandall, J., & Sloane, H. (1997). What works in education. Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies.

This article describes what communication strategies are and provides an overview of the teachability issue, discussing the arguments for and against strategy instruction, and suggests three possible reasons for the existing controversy. 

Dörnyei, Z. (1995). On the teachability of communication strategies.  TESOL quarterly ,  29 (1), 55-85.

The framework for teaching is a research-based set of components of instruction that are grounded in a constructivist view of learning and teaching. The framework defines four levels of performance--Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient, and Distinguished--for each element, providing a valuable tool that all teachers can use.

Danielson, C. (2007).  Enhancing professional practice: A framework for teaching . ASCD.

The authors respond to Dan Goldhaber and Dominic Brewer’s article in the Summer 2000 issue of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis that claimed from an analysis of NELS teacher and student data that teacher certification has little bearing on student achievement. Goldhaber and Brewer found strong and consistent evidence that, as compared with students whose teachers are uncertified, students achieve at higher levels in mathematics when they have teachers who hold standard certification in mathematics. 

Darling-Hammond, L., Berry, B., & Thoreson, A. (2001). Does teacher certification matter? Evaluating the evidence.  Educational evaluation and policy analysis ,  23 (1), 57-77.

Recent debates about the utility of teacher education have raised questions about whether certified teachers are, in general, more effective than those who have not met the testing and training requirements for certification, and whether some candidates with strong liberal arts backgrounds might be at least as effective as teacher education graduates.

Darling-Hammond, L., Holtzman, D. J., Gatlin, S. J., & Heilig, J. V. (2005). Does teacher preparation matter? Evidence about teacher certification, Teach for America, and teacher effectiveness.  Education Policy Analysis Archives/Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas ,  13 , 1-48.

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) recently released a summary report of the impact of School Improvement Grants (SIG). The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided states and school districts with $3 Billion for SIG. By accepting SIG grants states agreed to implement one of four interventions to improve the lowest performing schools: transformation, turnaround, restart, or closure. The goals of SIG were to improve practices in four main areas: (1) adopting comprehensive instructional reform strategies, (2) developing and increasing teacher and principal effectiveness, (3) increasing learning time and creating community-oriented schools, and (4) having operational flexibility and receiving support. The report finds minimal positive effects from the grants and no evidence that SIG had significant impacts on math and reading scores, graduation rates, or increased college enrollment.

Dragoset, L., Thomas, J., Herrmann, M., Deke, J., James-Burdumy, S., Graczewski, C., … & Giffin, J. (2017). School Improvement Grants: Implementation and Effectiveness (No. 76bce3f4bb0944f29a481fae0dbc7cdb). Mathematica Policy Research.

Reports a meta-analysis of research on the bases of teacher expectancies. The following conclusions were drawn: Student attractiveness, conduct, cumulative folder information, race, and social class were related to teacher expectancies. 

Dusek, J. B., & Joseph, G. (1983). The bases of teacher expectancies: A meta-analysis.  Journal of Educational psychology ,  75 (3), 327.

Collective teacher efficacy is an emergent school level variable reflecting a faculty’s collective belief in its ability to positively affect students. It has been linked in the literature to school achievement. The research questions addressed the distribution of effect sizes for the relationship and the moderator variables that could explain any variance found among the studies.

Eells, R. J. (2011).  Meta-analysis of the relationship between collective teacher efficacy and student achievement  (Doctoral dissertation, Loyola University Chicago).

This monograph presents a synthesis of the literature on empirically supported effective teaching principles that have been derived from research on behavioral, cognitive, social-learning, and other theories.

Ellis, E. S., Worthington, L. A., & Larkin, M. J. (1994).  research synthesis on effective teaching principles and the design of quality tools for educators. (Tech. Rep. No. 6). Eugene, OR: University of Oregon, National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators.

Classroom management is a topic of enduring concern for teachers, administrators, and the public. It consistently ranks as the first or second most serious educational problem in the eyes of the general public, and beginning teachers consistently rank it as their most pressing concern during their early teaching years. Management problems continue to be a major cause of teacher burnout and job dissatisfaction. Strangely, despite this enduring concern on the part of educators and the public, few researchers have chosen to focus on classroom management or to identify themselves with this critical field. 

Evertson, C. M., & Weinstein, C. S. (Eds.). (2013).  Handbook of classroom management: Research, practice, and contemporary issues.  New York, NY: Routledge.

The purpose of this commentary is to consider the crisis in education and the complex role teachers play in our society; to examine critically major aspects of the traditional modus operandi of behavior analysis that are counterproductive to teacher use; and to identify practices related to promoting greater teacher use and thereby enhancing the relevance of behavioral technology in education.

Fantuzzo, J., & Atkins, M. (1992). Applied behavior analysis for educators: Teacher centered and classroom based.  Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis ,  25 (1), 37.

Thirty-one studies were located in each of which students and faculty specified the instructional characteristics they considered particularly important to good teaching and effective instruction. 

Feldman, K. A. (1988). Effective college teaching from the students' and faculty's view: Matched or mismatched priorities?.  Research in Higher Education ,  28 (4), 291-329.

This paper aim to determine the correlation between teacher clarity and the mean class student learning (achievement gain) in normal public-education classes in English-speaking, industrialized countries.

Fendick, F. (1992). The correlation between teacher clarity of communication and student achievement gain: A meta-analysis.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of contingent teacher praise, as specified by Canter's Assertive Discipline programme, on children's on task behaviour. Continuous data collection indicated that following training in the appropriate use of praise, as specified by Canter, all three teachers successfully increased their rates of praising. Of the 24 children, all but one evidenced increases in levels of on‐task behaviour.

Ferguson, E. & Houghton, S. (1992). The effects of contingent teacher praise, as specified by Canter's Assertive Discipline programme, on children's on-task behaviour. Educational Studies, 18(1), 83-93.

This is a comprehensive literature review of the topic of Implementation examining all stages beginning with adoption and ending with sustainability.

Fixsen, D. L., Naoom, S. F., Blase, K. A., & Friedman, R. M. (2005). Implementation research: A synthesis of the literature.

This article examines the lecture as a pedagogical genre, as “a site where differences between media are negotiated” (Franzel) as these media coevolve. This examination shows the lecture as bridging oral communication with writing and newer media technologies, rather than as being superseded by newer electronic and digital forms.

Friesen, N. (2011). The lecture as a transmedial pedagogical form: A historical analysis.  Educational researcher ,  40 (3), 95-102.

This paper explain a three-stage process of Pilot Research, Formal Evaluation, and Scaling Up. Finally, we discuss several misconceptions about empirical research and researchers.

Fuchs, D., & Fuchs, L. S. (1998). Researchers and teachers working together to adapt instruction for diverse learners.  Learning Disabilities Research & Practice .

In this meta-analysis of studies that utilize formative assessment the authors report an effective size of .7.

Fuchs, L. S., & Fuchs, D. (1986). Effects of Systematic Formative Evaluation: A Meta-Analysis. Exceptional Children , 53 (3), 199-208.

Research begun in the 1960s provided the impetus for teacher educators to urge classroom teachers to establish classroom rules, deliver high rates of verbal/nonverbal praise, and, whenever possible, to ignore minor student provocations.  The research also discuss several newer strategies that warrant attention.

Gable, R. A., Hester, P. H., Rock, M. L., & Hughes, K. G. (2009). Back to basics: Rules, praise, ignoring, and reprimands revisited.  Intervention in School and Clinic ,  44 (4), 195-205.

In this article, a case is made for improving the school success of ethnically diverse students through culturally responsive teaching and for preparing teachers in preservice education programs with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to do this.

Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching.  Journal of teacher education ,  53 (2), 106-116.

Combining insights from multicultural education theory with real-life classroom stories, this book demonstrates that all students will perform better on multiple measures of achievement when teaching is filtered through students’ own cultural experiences. This perennial bestseller continues to be the go-to resource for teacher professional learning and preservice courses.

Gay, G. (2018).  Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice . Teachers College Press.

High-school grades are often viewed as an unreliable criterion for college admissions, owing to differences in grading standards across high schools, while standardized tests are seen as methodologically rigorous, providing a more uniform and valid yardstick for assessing student ability and achievement. The present study challenges that conventional view. The study finds that high-school grade point average (HSGPA) is consistently the best predictor not only of freshman grades in college, the outcome indicator most often employed in predictive-validity studies, but of four-year college outcomes as well.

Geiser, S., & Santelices, M. V. (2007). Validity of High-School Grades in Predicting Student Success beyond the Freshman Year: High-School Record vs. Standardized Tests as Indicators of Four-Year College Outcomes. Research & Occasional Paper Series: CSHE. 6.07. Center for studies in higher education .

This chapter progresses four specific comp onents of “a practical application of time management”.

George, D. (2012).  A practical application of time management. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221928054_A_Practical_Application_of_Time_Management

This paper provide a list of soft skills that are important for collaboration and teamwork, based on the authors own experience and from an opinion survey of team leaders. This paper also outline workable short courses for graduate schools to strengthen teamwork and collaboration skills among research students.

Gibert, A., Tozer, W. C., & Westoby, M. (2017). Teamwork, soft skills, and research training.  Trends in ecology & evolution ,  32 (2), 81-84.

This article evaluates the extent to which quantity of instruction influences time spent on self‐ study and achievement. The results suggest that time spent on self‐study is primarily a function of the degree of time allocated to instruction. 

Gijselaers, W. H., & Schmidt, H. G. (1995). Effects of quantity of instruction on time spent on learning and achievement.  Educational Research and Evaluation ,  1 (2), 183-201.

The article presents an overview of these tenets drawn from opinion positions, practical experiences, and empirical research studies. There is clear evidence that additional empirical research would be beneficial.

Gillard, S. (2009). Soft skills and technical expertise of effective project managers.  Issues in informing science & information technology ,  6 .

This book discuss how extrinsic incentives may come into conflict with other motivations and examine the research literature in which monetary incentives have been used in a nonemployment context to foster the desired behavior. The conclusion sums up some lessons on when extrinsic incentives are more or less likely to alter such behaviors in the desired directions.

Gneezy, U., Meier, S., & Rey-Biel, P. (2011). When and why incentives (don't) work to modify behavior.  Journal of Economic Perspectives ,  25 (4), 191-210.

The goal of this paper was to document and analyze the research on the connection between teachers' preparation to teach special education students, their instructional practices once in the classroom, and their students' eventual learning achievement 

Goe, L. (2006). The teacher preparation→ teacher practices→ student outcomes relationship in special education: Missing links and next steps: A research synthesis.  Washington, DC: National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality. Retrieved September ,  3 , 2009.

FIFTY YEARS after the release of "Equality of Educational Opportunity"--widely known as the Coleman Report--much of what James Coleman and his colleagues reported holds up well to scrutiny. It is, in fact, remarkable to read through the 700-plus pages and see how little has changed about what the empirical evidence says matters. The report's conclusions about the importance of teacher quality, in particular, have stood the test of time, which is noteworthy, given that today's studies of the impacts of teachers use more-sophisticated statistical methods and employ far better data.

Goldhaber, D. (2016). In schools, teacher quality matters most: today's research reinforces Coleman's findings.  Education Next ,  16 (2), 56-63.

This paper examines the consequences of having an apprentice teacher for 4-8 graders in the state of Washington. 

Goldhaber, D., Krieg, J. M., & Theobald, R. (2020). Exploring the impact of student teaching apprenticeships on student achievement and mentor teachers.  Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness , 1-22.

This report provides information about new teachers' preparation experiences and explores whether particular types of experiences are related to teachers' effectiveness in improving their students' test scores. Prior research indicates that teaching effectiveness is the largest in-school factor affecting student achievement.

Goodson, B., Caswell, L., Price, C., Litwok, D., Dynarski, M., Crowe, E., ... & Rice, A. (2019). Teacher Preparation Experiences and Early Teaching Effectiveness. Executive Summary. NCEE 2019-4010.  National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance .

The report analyzes the evidence supporting those teaching methods commonly employed to increase student competency in becoming a fluent writer. The guide is for teachers, literacy coaches, principals, districts, and curriculum developers, and other educators.

Graham, S., Bollinger, A., Olson, C. B., D’Aoust, C., MacArthur, C., McCutchen, D., & Olinghouse, N. (2012). Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers: A Practice Guide. NCEE 2012-4058.  What Works Clearinghouse .

This study examined teachers' relational approach to discipline as a predictor of high school students' behavior and their trust in teacher authority. 

Gregory, A., & Ripski, M. B. (2008). Adolescent trust in teachers: Implications for behavior in the high school classroom.  School Psychology Review ,  37 (3), 337.

This quantitative review examines 20 studies to establish an effect size of .71 for the impact of “metacognitive” instruction on reading comprehension.

Haller, E. P., Child, D. A., & Walberg, H. J. (1988). Can comprehension be taught? A quantitative synthesis of “metacognitive” studies. Educational researcher, 17 (9), 5-8.

This report and podcast examines the scientific basis for how to teach reading to children. This investigation reveals how children learn to read, emphasizing the five critical components of reading instruction. 

Hanford, E, (2018). Hard Words: Why aren’t kids being taught to read? American Public Media (APM). Retrieved from  https://www.apmreports.org/story/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-american-kids-arent-being-taught-to-read

This chapter of  Handbook of The Economics of Education reviews research on teacher labor markets, the importance of teacher quality in the determination of student achievement, and the extent to which specific observable characteristics often related to hiring decisions and salary explain the variation in the quality of instruction.

Hanushek, E. A., & Rivkin, S. G. (2006). Teacher quality. In E. A. Hanushek & F. Welch (Eds.),  Handbook of the economics of education,  vol. 2 (pp. 1051–1078). Amsterdam, Netherlands: North Holland.

This new research addresses a number of critical questions:  Are a teacher’s cognitive skills a good predictor of teacher quality? This study examines the student achievement of 36 developed countries in the context of teacher cognitive skills. This study finds substantial differences in teacher cognitive skills across countries that are strongly related to student performance.

Hanushek, E. A., Piopiunik, M., & Wiederhold, S. (2014).  The value of smarter teachers: International evidence on teacher cognitive skills and student performance  (No. w20727). National Bureau of Economic Research.

The authors study the effects of various types of education and training on the ability of teachers to promote student achievement.

Harris, D. N., & Sass, T. R. (2011). Teacher training, teacher quality and student achievement.  Journal of Public Economics ,  95 (7–8), 798-812.

Hattie’s book is designed as a meta-meta-study that collects, compares and analyses the findings of many previous studies in education. Hattie focuses on schools in the English-speaking world but most aspects of the underlying story should be transferable to other countries and school systems as well. Visible Learning is nothing less than a synthesis of more than 50.000 studies covering more than 80 million pupils. Hattie uses the statistical measure effect size  to compare the impact of many influences on students’ achievement, e.g. class size, holidays, feedback, and learning strategies.

Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement . New York, NY: Routledge.

This influential book is the result of 15 years research that includes over 800 meta-analyses on the influences on achievement in school-aged students. This is a great resource for any stakeholder interested in conducting a serious search of evidence behind common models and practices used in schools.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning. A synthesis of over, 800.

Offering a concise introduction into the ‘Visible Learning Story’, the book provides busy teachers with a guide to why the Visible Learning research is so vital and the difference it can make to learning outcomes.

Hattie, J., & Zierer, K. (2019).  Visible Learning Insights . Routledge.

This book reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds draw their power from the same six traits.

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007).  Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die . Random House.

This book for teachers in the area of Special Education looks at highly effective, research-based practices described in a very step-by-step, applied manner.

Heward, W. L. (2012). Exceptional Children: An Introduction to Special Education. Pearson.

This outstanding textbook presents innovative interventions for youth with severe emotional and behavioral disorders. Community Treatment for Youth is designed to fill a gap between the knowledge base and clinical practice through its presentation of theory, practice parameters, training requirements, and research evidence.

Hoagwood, K. I. M. B. E. R. L. Y., Burns, B. J., & Weisz, J. R. (2002). A profitable conjunction: From science to service in children’s mental health.  Community treatment for youth: Evidence-based interventions for severe emotional and behavioral disorders , 327-338.

This special issue addresses a general question that is at the heart of much research in applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA): What makes a second or foreign language (L2) user, or a native speaker for that matter, a more or less proficient language user?

Housen, A., & Kuiken, F. (2009). Complexity, accuracy, and fluency in second language acquisition. Applied linguistics, 30(4), 461-473. Retrieved from https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/806510/74786_AL_SI_Housen_Kuiken.pdf

This paper investigates organizational characteristics and conditions in schools that drive staffing problems and teacher turnover.

Ingersoll, R. (2001). Teacher turnover and teacher shortages: An organizational analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 38 (3), 499-534.

Focusing on elementary classrooms, chapters include: Students' Feelings about School; Involvement and Withdrawal in the Classroom; Teachers Views; The Need for New Perspectives.

Jackson, P. W. (1990).  Life in classrooms . Teachers College Press.

This report analyses whether and how highperforming systems have supported the subject expertise of their elementary school teachers.

Jensen, B., Roberts-Hull, K., Magee, J., & Ginnivan, L. (2016).  Not so elementary: Primary school teacher quality in high-performing systems . Washington, DC: National Center on Education and the Economy. http://ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/169726_Not_So_Elementary_Report_FINAL.pdf

Demonstrates the experimenting society model using data-based decision making and collaborative consultation to evaluate behavior-management intervention strategies in 25 seventh graders. Each intervention results in improved behavior, but active teaching of classroom rules was determined to be most effective. 

Johnson, T. C., Stoner, G., & Green, S. K. (1996). Demonstrating the Experimenting Society Model with Classwide Behavior Management Interventions.  School Psychology Review ,  25 (2), 199-214.

This study investigated the effects of training preschool teachers to use environmental arrangement and milieu teaching in interactions with children using augmented communication systems. Three teachers were taught seven environmental strategies and four milieu teaching procedures through written materials, lecture, modeling, role-playing, and feedback.

Kaiser, A. P., Ostrosky, M. M., & Alpert, C. L. (1993). Training teachers to use environmental arrangement and milieu teaching with nonvocal preschool children.  Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps ,  18 (3), 188-199.

The authors examined the effectiveness of self-monitoring for increasing the rates of teacher praise statements and the acceptability of using this technique for teachers. This study's results support the use of self-monitoring to increase effective teaching practices, namely praise, and further demonstrates high social validity for the participant and the students.

Kalis, T. M., Vannest, K. J., & Parker, R. (2007). Praise counts: Using self-monitoring to increase effective teaching practices.  Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth ,  51 (3), 20-27.

The nature of effective instruction for students with specific learning disability is explored.

Kavale, K. A. (2005). Effective Intervention for Students with Specific Learning Disability: The Nature of Special Education.  Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal ,  13 (4), 127-138.

Responsiveness to intervention (RTI) is being proposed as an alternative model for making decisions about the presence or absence of specific learning disability. The author argue that there are many questions about RTI that remain unanswered, and radical changes in proposed regulations are not warranted at this time.

Kavale, K. A. (2005). Identifying specific learning disability: Is responsiveness to intervention the answer?.  Journal of Learning Disabilities ,  38 (6), 553-562.

This meta-analysis examines the impact of formative assessment.

Kingston, N., & Nash, B. (2011). Formative assessment: A meta?analysis and a call for research. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 30(4), 28-37.

The authors proposed a preliminary FI theory (FIT) and tested it with moderator analyses. The central assumption of FIT is that FIs change the locus of attention among 3 general and hierarchically organized levels of control: task learning, task motivation, and meta-tasks (including self-related) processes.

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory.  Psychological bulletin ,  119 (2), 254.

This book offers strategies that make a difference in student learning including: content planning, instructional practices, and community building.

Knight, J. (2013). High-impact Instruction: A Framework for Great Teaching. Corwin Press.

The authors introduce Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) as a way of representing what teachers need to know about technology and argue for the role of authentic design-based activities in the development of this knowledge.

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2005). What happens when teachers design educational technology? The development of technological pedagogical content knowledge.  Journal of Educational Computing Research, 32 (2) 131–152.  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.983.6956&rep=rep1&type=pdf

This meta-analysis of findings from 108 studies shows mastery learning programs have positive effects on the examination performance of students in colleges, high schools, and the upper grades in elementary schools.

Kulik, C. L. C., Kulik, J. A., & Bangert-Drowns, R. L. (1990). Effectiveness of mastery learning programs: A meta-analysis. Review of educational research, 60(2), 265-299.

This article discusses differences that are hypothesized to exist between hard‐ (technical) and soft‐ (intrapersonal and interpersonal) skills training that we believe impact the degree of training transfer achieved. 

Laker, D. R., & Powell, J. L. (2011). The differences between hard and soft skills and their relative impact on training transfer.  Human Resource Development Quarterly ,  22 (1), 111-122.

This study examined the effectiveness of social skills instruction for seven elementary-age students at risk for antisocial behavior who were unresponsive to a school wide primary intervention program

Lane, K. L., Wehby, J., Menzies, H. M., Doukas, G. L., Munton, S. M., & Gregg, R. M. (2003). Social skills instruction for students at risk for antisocial behavior: The effects of small-group instruction.  Behavioral Disorders ,  28 (3), 229-248.

This study uses longitudinal administrative data to examine the relationship between third- grade reading level and four educational outcomes: eighth-grade reading performance, ninth-grade course performance, high school graduation, and college attendance.

Lesnick, J., Goerge, R., Smithgall, C., & Gwynne, J. (2010). Reading on grade level in third grade: How is it related to high school performance and college enrollment. Chicago: Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, 1, 12.

in this article, the author describes the policies of precision teaching. 

Lindsley, O. R. (1990). Precision teaching: By teachers for children. Teaching Exceptional Children , 22 (3), 10-15.

The authors examined the effects of pullout small-group and teacher-directed classroom-based social skills instruction on the social behaviors of five third- and fourth-grade students at risk for emotional or behavioral disorders.

Lo, Y. Y., Loe, S. A., & Cartledge, G. (2002). The effects of social skills instruction on the social behaviors of students at risk for emotional or behavioral disorders.  Behavioral Disorders ,  27 (4), 371-385.

The successful implementation of school-based behavioral interventions requires school personnel to be competent with program content and procedures. An unfortunate trend within school-based behavioral intervention research is that the core intervention components and implementation features are often not fully described.

Maggin, D. M., & Johnson, A. H. (2015). The reporting of core program components: an overlooked barrier for moving research into practice.  Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth ,  59 (2), 73-82.

In this special issue, this Journal introduce a fourth peer teaching model, Classwide Student Tutoring Teams. This journal also provide a comprehensive analysis of common and divergent programmatic components across all four models and discuss the implications of this analysis for researchers and practitioners alike.

Maheady, L., Mallette, B., & Harper, G. F. (2006). Four classwide peer tutoring models: Similarities, differences, and implications for research and practice.  Reading & Writing Quarterly ,  22 (1), 65-89.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a model for more effective data-driven decision making in classrooms, schools, and districts.

Mandinach, E. B., Honey, M., & Light, D. (2006, April). A theoretical framework for data-driven decision making. In annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.

This research synthesis examines instructional research in a functional manner to provide guidance for classroom practitioners.

Marzano, R. J. (1998). A Theory-Based Meta-Analysis of Research on Instruction.

How does classroom management affect student achievement? What techniques do  teachers find most effective? How important are schoolwide policies and practices in setting  the tone for individual classroom management? In this follow-up to What Works in Schools,  Robert J. Marzano analyzes research from more than 100 studies on classroom  management to discover the answers to these questions and more. He then applies these  findings to a series of" Action Steps"--specific strategies.

Marzano, R. J., Marzano, J. S., & Pickering, D. (2003).  Classroom management that works: Research-based strategies for every teacher.  Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).

This is a study of classroom management on student engagement and achievement.

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Ascd

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) identified five studies of NBPTS certification that both fall within the scope of the Teacher Training, Evaluation, and Compensation topic area and meet WWC group design standards.

Mathematica Policy Research (2018). What Works Clearinghouse Intervention Report: National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Retrieved from  https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/InterventionReports/wwc_nbpts_021318.pdf .

This research examines the relationship between noise and preschool children's acquisition of prereading skills, environmental factors in preschool inclusive classrooms, and children's use of outdoorplay equipment.

Maxwell, L. E. (1996). Multiple effects of home and day care crowding. Environment and Behavior, 28(4), 494-511.

This study provides a description of 34 practicing teachers' beliefs regarding the role of empathy as an attribute in their effectiveness with culturally diverse students. Empathy involves cognitive, affective, and behavioral components that teachers believed were manifested in their practice.

McAllister, G., & Irvine, J. J. (2002). The role of empathy in teaching culturally diverse students: A qualitative study of teachers’ beliefs.  Journal of teacher education ,  53 (5), 433-443.

This report offers recommendations for the implementation of standards-based reform and outlines possible consequences for policy changes. It summarizes both the vision and intentions of standards-based reform and the arguments of its critics.

McLaughlin, M. W., & Shepard, L. A. (1995).  Improving Education through Standards-Based Reform. A Report by the National Academy of Education Panel on Standards-Based Education Reform . National Academy of Education, Stanford University, CERAS Building, Room 108, Stanford, CA 94305-3084..

The constituent parts of a five component behavioural intervention package are described and the effect of the intervention on the on‐task behaviour of two “disruptive” secondary school classes reported. 

McNamara, E., Evans, M., & Hill, W. (1986). The reduction of disruptive behaviour in two secondary school classes.  British Journal of Educational Psychology ,  56 (2), 209-215.

Less than 1 in 5 general education teachers feel “very well prepared” to teach students with mild to moderate learning disabilities, including ADHD and dyslexia, according to a new survey from two national advocacy groups.

Mitchell, C. (2019, May 29). Most classroom teachers feel unprepared to support students with disabilities.  Education Week .

The current study examined methods for training teachers to use functional analysis methods.

Moore, J. W., Edwards, R. P., Sterling‐Turner, H. E., Riley, J., DuBard, M., & McGeorge, A. (2002). Teacher acquisition of functional analysis methodology.  Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis ,  35 (1), 73-77.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of group inservice training plus written and verbal feedback on four Head Start teachers’ use of incidental teaching. D

Mudd, J. M., & Wolery, M. (1987). Training head start teachers to use incidental teaching.  Journal of the Division for Early Childhood ,  11 (2), 124-134.

This book is designed to help the reader fully comprehend teacher leadership as a pathway to school improvement.

Murphy, J. (2005).  Connecting teacher leadership and school improvement . Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

This book introduces the foundations of the recently revised professional educational leadership standards and provides an in-depth explanation and application of each one.

Murphy, J. F. (2016).  Professional standards for educational leaders: The empirical, moral, and experiential foundations . Corwin Press.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 ESEA Reauthorization

No child left behind act of 2001.  Publ. L , 107-110. (2002)

This Campbell systematic review examines the effect of multi‐component teacher classroom management programmes on disruptive or aggressive student behaviour and which management components are most effective.

Oliver, R. M., Wehby, J. H., & Reschly, D. J. (2011). Teacher classroom management practices: Effects on disruptive or aggressive student behavior.  Campbell Systematic Reviews ,  7 (1), 1-55.

Two instructional studies directed at the comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoringactivitiesof seventhgrade poor comprehendersare reported

Palinscar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities.  Cognition and instruction ,  1 (2), 117-175.

This study examined the hypothesis that teachers’ and students’ assessment of preferred LS correspond. The study found no relationship between pupils’ self-assessment and teachers’ assessment. Teachers’ and students’ answers didn’t match up. The study suggests that teachers cannot assess the LS of their students accurately.

Papadatou-Pastou, M., Gritzal, M., & Barrable, A. (2018). The Learning Styles educational neuromyth: Lack of agreement between teachers’ judgments, self-assessment, and students’ intelligence. Frontiers in Education, 3, 1-5. [105]. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2018.00105

This research synthesis examines randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental research on the mathematics achievement outcomes for elementary school programs. The best outcomes were found for tutoring programs. The findings suggest that programs emphasizing personalization, engagement, and motivation are most impactful in elementary mathematics instruction.

Pellegrini, M., Lake, C., Inns, A, & , Slavin, R. (2018). Effective programs in elementary mathematics: A best-evidence synthesis.  Best Evidence Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://www.bestevidence.org/word/elem_math_Oct_8_2018.pdf

Research using student scores on standardized tests confirms the common perception that some teachers are more effective than others. It also reveals that being taught by an effective teacher has important consequences for student achievement. The best way to assess a teacher's effectiveness is to look at his or her on-the-job performance.

RAND Education. (2012). Teachers matter: Understanding teachers’ impact on student achievement , Santa Monica, Calif.: Author. Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/pubs/corporate_pubs/CP693z1-2012-09.html

Our nation faces a daunting challenge in making sure that we have a sufficient supply of well-educated, well-prepared teachers for our children. There is surely widespread agreement that good teachers are vital to our future. However, there is not widespread agreement about how we accomplish this goal. Some propose that we raise standards for entry into the teaching profession, while others suggest that we lower unnecessary barriers.

Ravitch, D. (2003, August 23).  A brief history of teacher professionalism.  U. S. Department of Education, White House Conference on Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers.

The terms cloze procedure and cohesion are associated with reading development. Specifically, doze applies to the testing and teaching of reading while cohesion applies to a description of how the way in which reading material is written can affect reading development. 

Raymond, P. (1988). Cloze procedure in the teaching of reading.  TESL Canada Journal, 6 (1), 91–97. 

In order to provide accurate estimates of how much teachers affect the achievement of their students, this study used panel data covering over a decade of elementary student test scores and teacher assignment in two contiguous New Jersey school districts.

Rockoff, J. E. (2004). The impact of individual teachers on student achievement: Evidence from panel data.  American economic review ,  94 (2), 247-252.

The present study assessed the relative strength of daily rule review and rehearsal on student behavior when such procedures were added to a token economy. The token program was designed to increase appropriate classroom behaviors of disruptive boys attending a multi categorical resource room.

Rosenberg, M. S. (1986). Maximizing the effectiveness of structured classroom management programs: Implementing rule-review procedures with disruptive and distractible students.  Behavioral Disorders ,  11 (4), 239-248.

The editors of  What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction  present the most recent research on fluency and show how you can put it into practice. 

Samuels, S. J., & Farstrup, A. E. (Eds.). (2006). What research has to say about fluency instruction. International Reading Association.

The Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System determines the effectiveness of school systems, schools, and teachers based on student academic growth over time. Research conducted utilizing data from the TVAAS database has shown that race, socioeconomic level, class size, and classroom heterogeneity are poor predictors of student academic growth. Rather, the effectiveness of the teacher is the major determinant of student academic progress.

Sanders, W. L., & Rivers, J. C. (1996). Cumulative and residual effects of teachers on future student academic achievement.

This article discuss how "Micro-Credentialing" offer an opportunity to shift away from credit-hour and continuing-education requirements that dominate the PD apparatus in most states, toward a system based on evidence of progress in specific instructional skills.

Sawchuk, S. (2016). Can "Micro-Credentialing" Salvage Teacher PD?. Education Week.  Retrieved from  http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/principal-project-phase-2-micro-credentials-edweek.pdf

This book looks at research and theoretical models used to define educational effectiveness with the intent on providing educators with evidence-based options for implementing school improvement initiatives that make a difference in student performance.

Scheerens, J. and Bosker, R. (1997). The Foundations of Educational Effectiveness. Oxford:Pergmon

This is a meta-analysis of research published from 1980 to 2004 on the effect of specific science teaching strategies on student achievement.

Schroeder, C. M., Scott, T. P., Tolson, H., Huang, T. Y., & Lee, Y. H. (2007). A meta?analysis of national research: Effects of teaching strategies on student achievement in science in the United States. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44(10), 1436-1460.

Teacher-centered instruction implies a high degree of teacher direction and a focus of students on academic tasks. And it vividly contrasts with student-centered or constructivist approaches in establishing a leadership role for the teacher

Schug, M. C. (2003). Teacher-centereed instruction.  Where did social studies go wrong , 94-110.

This popular practitioner guide and text presents an effective, problem-solving-based approach to evaluating and remediating academic skills problems. The author provides practical strategies for working with students across all grade levels (K–12) who are struggling with reading, spelling, written language, or math. 

Shapiro, E. S. (2011).  Academic skills problems: Direct assessment and intervention . Guilford Press.

The purpose of this article was to describe the developmental effects of one elementary physical education teacher's proactive teaching of prosocial behavior. An ABA (B) design coupled with a control group comparison across six matched urban physical education classes was used to assess the teaching strategy.

Sharpe, T., Crider, K., Vyhlidal, T., & Brown, M. (1996). Description and effects of prosocial instruction in an elementary physical education setting.  Education & Treatment of Children ,  19 (4), 435.

The goal of this paper is to provide a general understanding for teachers and administrators of the concepts of validity and reliability; thereby, giving them the confidence to develop their own assessments with clarity of these terms.

Shillingburg. W. (2016). Understanding validity and reliability in classroom, school-wide, or district-wide assessments to be used in teacher/principal evaluations. Retrieved from https://cms.azed.gov/home/GetDocumentFile?id=57f6d9b3aadebf0a04b2691a

As the successor to one of NASP's most popular publications,  Interventions for Academic and Behavior Problems II  offers the latest in evidence-based measures that have proven to create safer, more effective schools.

Shinn, M. R., Walker, H. M., & Stoner, G. E. (2002).  Interventions for academic and behavior problems II: Preventive and remedial approaches . National Association of School Psychologists.

In this strategy guide, you will learn how to organize students and classroom topics to encourage a high degree of classroom participation and assist students in developing a conceptual understanding of a topic through the use of the Think-Pair-Share technique.

Simon, C. A. (2019). National Council of Teachers of English. Using the think-pair-share technique. Retrieved from http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/using-think-pair-share-30626.html 

In this grounded theory study, 19 teachers were interviewed and then, in constant comparative fashion, the interview data were analyzed. The theoretical model that emerged from the data describes novice teachers' tendencies to select and implement differing strategies related to the severity of student behavior. 

Smart, J. B., & Igo, L. B. (2010). A grounded theory of behavior management strategy selection, implementation, and perceived effectiveness reported by first-year elementary teachers.  The Elementary School Journal ,  110 (4), 567-584.

Several barriers can impede critical thinking instruction. However, actively engaging students in project-based or collaborative activities can encourage students’ critical thinking development if instructors model the thinking process, use effective questioning techniques, and guide students’ critical thinking processes.

Snyder, L. G., & Snyder, M. J. (2008). Teaching critical thinking and problem solving skills.  The Journal of Research in Business Education ,  50 (2), 90.

This book is written for school administrators, staff developers, behavior specialists, and instructional coaches to offer guidance in implementing research-based practices that establish effective classroom management in schools. The book provides administrators with practical strategies to maximize the impact of professional development. 

Sprick, et al. (2010). Coaching Classroom Management: Strategies & Tools for Administrators & Coaches . Pacific Northwest Publishing.

States, J., Detrich, R. & Keywroth, R. (2012). Effective Teachers Make a Difference. In  Education at the Crossroads: The State of Teacher Preparation  (Vol. 2, pp. 1-46). Oakland, CA: The Wing Institute.

This book examines issues pertaining to making effective hiring decisions. The authors present a research-based interview protocol built on quality indicators.

Stronge, J. and Hindman, J., (2006). Teacher Quality Index. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

This study has 2 purposes: examine the effect of an observation-feedback intervention on the rate of a teacher's behavior-specific praise of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) and the effect of increased rates of a teacher's behavior-specific praise on the on-task behavior of a class of students with EBD.

Sutherland, K. S., Wehby, J. H., & Copeland, S. R. (2000). Effect of varying rates of behavior-specific praise on the on-task behavior of students with EBD.  Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders ,  8 (1), 2-8.

This article summarize changes and challenges that school personnel will face in order to implement The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEIA).

"The Mirage" describes the widely held perception among education leaders that they already know how to help teachers improve, and that they could achieve their goal of great teaching in far more classrooms if they just applied what they knew more widely.

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You’ve graduated college, completed your student teaching, earned your teaching credential, been offered a position, and are ready to jump into the classroom head first. But before your first day, it’s important to recognize the challenges that await many new teachers. According to the Learning Policy Institute , studies show that between 19 and 30 percent of teachers leave within their first five years due to low pay, lack of administrative support, poor work conditions, and other reasons. And the first year can be the most challenging of all. Teachers like you are the cornerstone of our educational system, but often lack the resources needed to succeed – or aren’t sure where to find them.

We’re here to fill that gap with this guide, which provides meaningful support through helpful resources and expert tips, whether you’re teaching Pre-K children or college freshmen. Read on to learn how you and other teachers can make it through your first year and come out stronger on the other side.

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New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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• Published: 09 May 2024

Looking back to move forward: comparison of instructors’ and undergraduates’ retrospection on the effectiveness of online learning using the nine-outcome influencing factors

• Yujie Su   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1444-1598 1 ,
• Xiaoshu Xu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0667-4511 1 ,
• Yunfeng Zhang 2 ,
• Xinyu Xu 1 &
• Shanshan Hao 3  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  594 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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This study delves into the retrospections of undergraduate students concerning their online learning experiences after the COVID-19 pandemic, using the nine key influencing factors: behavioral intention, instruction, engagement, interaction, motivation, self-efficacy, performance, satisfaction, and self-regulation. 46 Year 1 students from a comprehensive university in China were asked to maintain reflective diaries throughout an academic semester, providing first-person perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses of online learning. Meanwhile, 18 college teachers were interviewed with the same questions as the students. Using thematic analysis, the research identified 9 factors. The research revealed that instruction ranked highest among the 9 factors, followed by engagement, self-regulation, interaction, motivation, and others. Moreover, teachers and students had different attitudes toward instruction. Thirdly, teacher participants were different from student participants given self-efficacy and self-regulation due to their variant roles in online instruction. Lastly, the study reflected students were not independent learners, which explained why instruction ranked highest in their point of view. Findings offer valuable insights for educators, administrators, and policy-makers involved in higher education. Recommendations for future research include incorporating a more diverse sample, exploring relationships between the nine factors, and focusing on equipping students with skills for optimal online learning experiences.

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Introduction.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on education worldwide, leading to the widescale adoption of online learning. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), at the peak of the pandemic, 192 countries had implemented nationwide closures, affecting approximately 99% of the world’s student population (UNESCO 2020 a). In response, educational institutions, teachers, and students quickly adapted to online learning platforms, leveraging digital technologies to continue education amidst the crisis (Marinoni et al. 2020 ).

The rapid and unexpected shift to online learning brought about a surge in research aiming to understand its impact, effectiveness, and challenges. Researchers across the globe have been investigating various dimensions of online learning. Some focus on students’ experiences and perspectives (Aristovnik et al. 2021 ), technological aspects (Bao 2020 ), pedagogical strategies (Hodges et al. 2020 ), and the socio-emotional aspect of learning (Ali 2020 ). Tan et al. ( 2021 ) found that motivation and satisfaction were mostly positively perceived by students, and lack of interaction was perceived as an unfavorable online instruction perception. Some center on teachers’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges (Lucas and Vicente, 2023 ; Mulla et al. 2023 ), post-pandemic pedagogisation (Rapanta et al. 2021 ), and post-pandemic further education (Kohnke et al. 2023 ; Torsani et al. 2023 ). It was worth noting that elements like interaction and engagement were central to the development and maintenance of the learning community (Lucas and Vincente 2023 ),

The rise of online learning has also posed unprecedented challenges. Studies have pointed out the digital divide and accessibility issues (Crawford et al. 2020 ), students’ motivation and engagement concerns (Martin and Bolliger 2018 ), and the need for effective online instructional practices (Trust and Whalen 2020 ). The rapid transition to online learning has highlighted the need for robust research to address these challenges and understand the effectiveness of online learning in this new educational paradigm.

Despite the extensive research on online learning during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, there remains a notable gap in understanding the retrospective perspectives of both undergraduates and teachers. Much of the current literature has focused on immediate response strategies to the transition to online learning, often overlooking the detailed insights that reflective retrospection can provide (Marinoni et al. 2020 ; Bao 2020 ). In addition, while many studies have examined isolated aspects of online learning, they have not often employed a comprehensive framework, leaving undergraduates’ voices, in particular, underrepresented in the discourse (Aristovnik et al. 2021 ; Crawford et al. 2020 ). This study, situated in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impetus toward online learning, seeks to fill this crucial gap. By exploring online learning from the perspectives of both instructors and undergraduates, and analyzing nine key factors that include engagement, motivation, and self-efficacy, the research contributes vital insights into the dynamics of online education (Wang and Wang 2021 ). This exploration is especially pertinent as digital learning environments become increasingly prevalent worldwide (UNESCO 2020b ). The findings of our study are pivotal for shaping future educational policies and enhancing online education strategies in this continuously evolving educational landscape (Greenhow et al. 2021 ). Thus, three research questions were raised:

Q1: How do undergraduates and teachers in China retrospectively perceive the effectiveness of online learning after the COVID-19 pandemic?

Q2: Which of the nine outcome influencing factors had the most significant impact on online learning experiences after the pandemic, and why?

Q3: What recommendations can be proposed to enhance the effectiveness of online learning in the future?

The research takes place at a comprehensive university in China, with a sample of 46 Year 1 students and 18 experienced teachers. Their reflections on the effectiveness of online learning were captured through reflective diaries guided by four questions. These questions investigated the students’ online learning states and attitudes, identified issues and insufficiencies in online learning, analyzed the reasons behind these problems, and proposed improvements. By assessing their experiences and perceptions, we seek to explore the significant factors that shaped online learning outcomes after the pandemic and the means to enhance its effectiveness.

This paper first presents a review of the existing literature, focusing on the impact of the pandemic on online learning and discussing the nine significant factors influencing online learning outcomes. Following this, the methodology utilized for this study is detailed, setting the stage for a deeper understanding of the research process. Subsequently, we delve into the results of the thematic analysis conducted based on undergraduate students and teachers’ retrospections. Finally, the paper concludes by offering meaningful implications of the findings for various stakeholders and suggesting directions for future research in this critical area.

Literature review

Online learning application and evaluation in higher education.

Online learning, also known as e-learning or distance learning, refers to education that takes place over the Internet rather than in a traditional classroom setting. It has seen substantial growth over the past decade and has been accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Trust and Whalen 2020 ). Online learning allows for a flexible learning environment, breaking the temporal and spatial boundaries of traditional classroom settings (Bozkurt and Sharma 2020 ). In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions globally have embraced online learning at an unprecedented scale. This has led to an immense surge in research focusing on the effects of the pandemic on online learning (Crawford et al. 2020 ; Marinoni et al. 2020 ).

Researchers were divided in their attitudes toward the effects of online learning, including positive, neutral, and negative. Research by Bahasoan et al. ( 2020 ), Bernard et al. ( 2004 ), Hernández-Lara and Serradell-López ( 2018 ), and Paechter and Maier ( 2010 ) indicated the effectiveness of online learning, including improved outcomes and engagement in online formats, providing flexibility and enhancing digital skills for instance. Research, including studies by Dolan Hancock and Wareing ( 2015 ) and Means et al. ( 2010 ), indicates that under equivalent conditions and with similar levels of support, there is frequently no substantial difference in learning outcomes between traditional face-to-face courses and completely online courses.

However, online learning was not without its challenges. Research showing less favorable results for specific student groups can be referenced in Dennen ( 2014 ), etc. The common problems faced by students included underdeveloped independent learning ability, lack of motivation, difficulties in self-regulation, student engagement and technical issues (Aristovnik et al. 2021 ; Martin and Bolliger 2018 ; Song et al. 2004 ; Zheng et al. 2022 ).

Moreover, factors like instructional strategies, course design, etc. were also linked to learning outcomes and successful online learning (Ali 2020 ; Hongsuchon et al. 2022 ). Careaga-Butter et al. ( 2020 ) critically analyze online education in pandemic and post-pandemic contexts, focusing on digital tools and resources for teaching in synchronous and asynchronous learning modalities. They discuss the swift adaptation to online learning during the pandemic, highlighting the importance of technological infrastructure, pedagogical strategies, and the challenges of digital divides. The article emphasizes the need for effective online learning environments and explores trends in post-pandemic education, providing insights into future educational strategies and practices.

Determinants of online learning outcomes

Online learning outcomes in this paper refer to the measurable educational results achieved through online learning methods, including knowledge acquisition, skill development, changes in attitudes or behaviors, and performance improvements (Chang 2016 ; Panigrahi et al. 2018 ). The literature review identified key factors influencing online learning outcomes, emphasizing their significant role in academic discourse. These factors, highlighted in scholarly literature, include student engagement, instructional design, technology infrastructure, student-teacher interaction, and student self-regulation.

Student Engagement: The level of a student’s engagement significantly impacts their learning outcomes. The more actively a student is engaged with the course content and activities, the better their performance tends to be. This underscores the importance of designing engaging course content and providing opportunities for active learning in an online environment (Martin and Bolliger 2018 ).

Instructional Design: How an online course is designed can greatly affect student outcomes. Key elements such as clarity of learning objectives, organization of course materials, and the use of diverse instructional strategies significantly impact student learning (Bozkurt and Sharma 2020 ).

Technology Infrastructure: The reliability and ease of use of the learning management system (LMS) also play a significant role in online learning outcomes. When students experience technical difficulties, it can lead to frustration, reduced engagement, and lower performance (Johnson et al. 2020 ).

Student-Teacher Interaction: Interaction between students and teachers in an online learning environment is a key determinant of successful outcomes. Regular, substantive feedback from instructors can promote student learning and motivation (Boling et al. 2012 ).

Student Self-Regulation: The autonomous nature of online learning requires students to be proficient in self-regulated learning, which involves setting learning goals, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation. Students who exhibit strong self-regulation skills are more likely to succeed in online learning (Broadbent 2017 ).

While many studies have investigated individual factors affecting online learning, there is a paucity of research offering a holistic view of these factors and their interrelationships, leading to a fragmented understanding of the influences on online learning outcomes. Given the multitude of experiences and variables encompassed by online learning, a comprehensive framework like is instrumental in ensuring a thorough investigation and interpretation of the breadth of students’ experiences.

Students’ perceptions of online learning

Understanding students’ perceptions of online learning is essential for enhancing its effectiveness and student satisfaction. Studies show students appreciate online learning for its flexibility and convenience, offering personalized learning paths and resource access (Händel et al. 2020 ; Johnson et al. 2020 ). Yet, challenges persist, notably in maintaining motivation and handling technical issues (Aristovnik et al. 2021 ; Händel et al. 2020 ). Aguilera-Hermida ( 2020 ) reported mixed feelings among students during the COVID-19 pandemic, including feelings of isolation and difficulty adjusting to online environments. Boling et al. ( 2012 ) emphasized students’ preferences for interactive and communicative online learning environments. Additionally, research indicates that students seek more engaging content and innovative teaching approaches, suggesting a gap between current online offerings and student expectations (Chakraborty and Muyia Nafukho 2014 ). Students also emphasize the importance of community and peer support in online settings, underlining the need for collaborative and social learning opportunities (Lai et al. 2019 ). These findings imply that while online learning offers significant benefits, addressing its shortcomings is critical for maximizing its potential.

The pandemic prompted a reconsideration of instructional modalities, with many students favoring face-to-face instruction due to the immediacy and focus issues (Aristovnik et al. 2021 ; Trust and Whalen 2020 ). Despite valuable insights, research gaps remain, particularly in long-term undergraduate reflections and the application of nine factors of comprehensive frameworks, indicating a need for more holistic research in online learning effectiveness.

Teachers’ perceptions of online learning

The pandemic has brought attention to how teachers manage instruction in virtual learning environments. Teachers and students are divided in terms of their attitudes toward online learning. Some teachers and students looked to the convenience and flexibility of online learning (Chuenyindee et al. 2022 ; Al-Emran and Shaalan 2021 ). They conceived that online learning provided opportunities to improve educational equality as well (Tenório et al. 2016 ). Even when COVID-19 was over, the dependence on online learning was likely here to stay, for some approaches of online learning were well-received by students and teachers (Al-Rahmi et al. 2019 ; Hongsuchon et al. 2022 ).

Teachers had shown great confidence in delivering instruction in an online environment in a satisfying manner. They also agreed that the difficulty of teaching was closely associated with course structures (Gavranović and Prodanović 2021 ).

Not all were optimistic about the effects of online learning. They sought out the challenges facing teachers and students during online learning.

A mixed-method study of K-12 teachers’ feelings, experiences, and perspectives that the major challenges faced by teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic were lack of student participation and engagement, technological support for online learning, lack of face-to-face interactions with students, no work-life balance and learning new technology.

The challenges to teachers’ online instruction included instruction technology (Maatuk et al. 2022 ; Rasheed et al. 2020 ), course design (Khojasteh et al. 2023 ), and teachers’ confidence (Gavranović and Prodanović 2021 ).

Self-regulation challenges and challenges in using technology were the key challenges to students, while the use of technology for teaching was the challenge facing teachers (Rasheed et al. 2020 ).

The quality of course design was another important factor in online learning. A research revealed the competency of the instructors and their expertise in content development contributed a lot to students’ satisfaction with the quality of e-contents.

Theoretical framework

The theoretical foundation of the research is deeply rooted in multifaceted framework for online learning, which provides a comprehensive and interwoven model encompassing nine critical factors that collectively shape the educational experience in online settings. This framework is instrumental in guiding our analysis and enhances the comparability and interpretability of our results within the context of existing literature.

Central to Yu’s framework is the concept of behavioral intention, which acts as a precursor to student engagement in online learning environments. This engagement, inherently linked to the students’ intentions and motivations, is significantly influenced by the quality of instruction they receive. Instruction, therefore, emerges as a pivotal element in this model, directly impacting not only student engagement but also fostering a sense of self-efficacy among learners. Such self-efficacy is crucial as it influences both the performance of students and their overall satisfaction with the learning process.

The framework posits that engagement, a derivative of both strong behavioral intention and effective instruction, plays a vital role in enhancing student performance. This engagement is tightly interlaced with self-regulation, an indispensable skill in the autonomous and often self-directed context of online learning. Interaction, encompassing various forms such as student-teacher and peer-to-peer communications, further enriches the learning experience. It significantly contributes to the development of motivation and self-efficacy, both of which are essential for sustaining engagement and fostering self-regulated learning.

Motivation, especially when intrinsically driven, acts as a catalyst, perpetuating engagement and self-regulation, which ultimately leads to increased satisfaction with the learning experience. In this framework, self-efficacy, nurtured through effective instruction and meaningful interactions, has a positive impact on students’ performance and satisfaction, thereby creating a reinforcing cycle of learning and achievement.

Performance in this model is viewed as a tangible measure of the synergistic interplay of engagement, instructional quality, and self-efficacy, while satisfaction reflects the culmination of the learning experience, shaped by the quality of instruction, the extent and nature of interactions, and the flexibility of the learning environment. This satisfaction, in turn, influences students’ future motivation and their continued engagement with online learning.

Yu’s model thus presents a dynamic ecosystem where changes in one factor can have ripple effects across the entire spectrum of online learning. It emphasizes the need for a holistic approach in the realm of online education, considering the complex interplay of these diverse yet interconnected elements to enhance both the effectiveness and the overall experience of online learning.

The current study employed a qualitative design to explore teachers’ and undergraduates’ retrospections on the effectiveness of online learning during the first semester of the 2022–2023 school year, which is in the post-pandemic period. Data were collected using reflective diaries, and thematic analysis was applied to understand the experiences based on the nine factors.

Sample and sampling

The study involved 18 teachers and 46 first-year students from a comprehensive university in China, selected through convenience sampling to ensure diverse representation across academic disciplines. To ensure a diverse range of experiences in online learning, the participant selection process involved an initial email inquiry about their prior engagement with online education. The first author of this study received ethics approval from the department research committee, and participants were informed of the study’s objectives two weeks before via email. Only those participants who provided written informed consent were included in the study and were free to withdraw at any time. Pseudonyms were used to protect participants’ identities during the data-coding process. For direct citations, acronyms of students’ names were used, while “T+number” was used for citations from teacher participants.

The 46 students are all first-year undergraduates, 9 females and 37 males majoring in English and non-English (see Table 1 ).

The 18 teachers are all experienced instructors with at least 5 years of teaching experience, 13 females and 5 male, majoring in English and Non-English (see Table 2 ).

Data collection

Students’ data were collected through reflective diaries in class during the first semester of the 2022–2023 school year. Each participant was asked to maintain a diary over the course of one academic semester, in which they responded to four questions.

The four questions include:

What was your state and attitude toward online learning?

What were the problems and shortcomings of online learning?

What do you think are the reasons for these problems?

What measures do you think should be taken to improve online learning?

This approach provided a first-person perspective on the participants’ online teaching or learning experiences, capturing the depth and complexity of their retrospections.

Teachers were interviewed separately by responding to the four questions the same as the students. Each interview was conducted in the office or the school canteen during the semester and lasted about 20 to 30 min.

Data analysis

We utilized thematic analysis to interpret the reflective diaries, guided initially by nine factors. This method involved extensive engagement with the data, from initial coding to the final report. While Yu’s factors provided a foundational structure, we remained attentive to new themes, ensuring a comprehensive analysis. Our approach was methodical: familiarizing ourselves with the data, identifying initial codes, systematically searching and reviewing themes, and then defining and naming them. To validate our findings, we incorporated peer debriefing, and member checking, and maintained an audit trail. This analysis method was chosen for its effectiveness in extracting in-depth insights from undergraduates’ retrospections on their online learning experiences post-pandemic, aligning with our research objectives.

According to the nine factors, the interviews of 18 teachers and 46 Year 1 undergraduates were catalogued and listed in Table 3 .

Behavioral intention towards online learning post-pandemic

Since the widespread of the COVID-19 pandemic, both teachers and students have experienced online learning. However, their online teaching or learning was forced rather than planned (Baber 2021 ; Bao 2020 ). Students more easily accepted online learning when they perceived the severity of COVID-19.

When entering the post-pandemic era, traditional teaching was resumed. Students often compared online learning with traditional learning by mentioning learning interests, eye contact, face-to-face learning and learning atmosphere.

“I don’t think online learning is a good form of learning because it is hard to focus on learning.” (DSY) “In unimportant courses, I would let the computer log to the platform and at the same time do other entertains such as watching movies, listening to the music, having snacks or do the cleaning.” (XYN) “Online learning makes it impossible to have eye contact between teachers and students and unable to create a face-to-face instructional environment, which greatly influences students’ initiative and engagement in classes.” (WRX)

They noted that positive attitudes toward online learning usually generated higher behavioral intention to use online learning than those with negative attitudes, as found in the research of Zhu et al. ( 2023 ). So they put more blame on distractions in the learning environment.

“Online learning relies on computers or cell phones which easily brings many distractions. … I can’t focus on studying, shifting constantly from study and games.” (YX) “When we talk about learning online, we are hit by an idea that we can take a rest in class. It’s because everyone believes that during online classes, the teacher is unable to see or know what we are doing.” (YM) “…I am easily disturbed by external factors, and I am not very active in class.” (WZB)

Teachers reported a majority of students reluctantly turning on their cameras during online instruction and concluded the possible reason for such behavior.

“One of the reasons why some students are unwilling to turn on the camera is that they are worried about their looks and clothing at home, or that they don’t want to become the focus.” (T4)

They also noticed students’ absent-mindedness and lazy attitude during online instruction.

“As for some students who are not self-regulated, they would not take online learning as seriously as offline learning. Whenever they are logged onto the online platform, they would be unable to stay focused and keep their attention.” (T1)

Challenges and opportunities in online instruction post-pandemic

Online teaching brought new challenges and opportunities for students during and after the pandemic. The distractions at home seemed to be significantly underestimated by teachers in an online learning environment (Radmer and Goodchild 2021 ). It might be the reason why students greatly expected and heavily relied on teachers’ supervision and management.

“The biggest problem of online learning is that online courses are as imperative as traditional classes, but not managed face to face the same as the traditional ones.” (PC) “It is unable to provide some necessary supervision.” (GJX) “It is incapable of giving timely attention to every student.” (GYC) “Teachers can’t understand students’ conditions in time in most cases so teachers can’t adjust their teaching plan.” (MZY) “Some courses are unable to reach the teaching objectives due to lack of experimental conduction and practical operation.” (YZH) “Insufficient teacher-student interaction and the use of cell phones make both groups unable to engage in classes. What’s more, though online learning doesn’t put a high requirement for places, its instructional environment may be crucial due to the possible distractions.” (YCY)

Teachers also viewed online instruction as an addition to face-to-face instruction.

“Online learning cannot run as smoothly as face-to-face instruction, but it can provide an in-time supplement to the practical teaching and students’ self-learning.” (T13, T17) “Online instruction is an essential way to ensure the normal function of school work during the special periods like the pandemic” (T1, T15)

Factors influencing student engagement in online learning

Learning engagement was found to contribute to gains in the study (Paul and Diana 2006 ). It was also referred to as a state closely intertwined with the three dimensions of learning, i.e., vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli et al. 2002 ). Previous studies have found that some key factors like learning interaction, self-regulation, and social presence could influence learning engagement and learning outcomes (Lowenthal and Dunlap 2020 ; Ng 2018 ). Due to the absence of face-to-face interaction like eye contact, facial expressions and body language, both groups of interviewees agreed that the students felt it hard to keep their attention and thus remain active in online classes.

“Students are unable to engage in study due to a lack of practical learning environment of online learning.” (ZMH, T12) “Online platforms may not provide the same level of engagement and interaction as in-person classrooms, making it harder for students to ask questions or engage in discussions.” (HCK) “The Internet is cold, lack of emotional clues and practical connections, which makes it unable to reproduce face-to-face offline learning so that teachers and students are unlikely to know each other’s true feelings or thoughts. In addition, different from the real-time learning supervision in offline learning, online learning leaves students more learning autonomy.” (XGH) “Lack of teachers’ supervision and practical learning environment, students are easily distracted.” (LMA, T9)

Just as Zhu et al. ( 2023 ) pointed out, we had been too optimistic about students’ engagement in online learning, because online learning relied more on students’ autonomy and efforts to complete online learning.

Challenges in teacher-student interaction in online learning

Online learning has a notable feature, i.e., a spatial and temporal separation among teachers and students. Thus, online teacher-student interactions, fundamentals of relationship formation, have more challenges for both teachers and students. The prior studies found that online interaction affected social presence and indirectly affected learning engagement through social presence (Miao and Ma 2022 ). In the present investigation, both teachers and students noted the striking disadvantage of online interaction.

“Online learning has many problems such as indirect teacher-student communication, inactive informative communication, late response of students and their inability to reflect their problems. For example, teachers cannot evaluate correctly whether the students have mastered or not.” (YYN) “Teachers and students are separated by screens. The students cannot make prompt responses to the teachers’ questions via loudspeakers or headphones. It is not convenient for students to participate in questioning and answering. …for most of the time, the students interact with teachers via typing.” (ZJY) “While learning online, students prefer texting the questions to answering them via the loudspeaker.”(T7)

Online learning interaction was also found closely related to online learning engagement, performance, and self-efficacy.

“Teachers and students are unable to have timely and effective communication, which reduces the learning atmosphere. Students are often distracted. While doing homework, the students are unable to give feedback to teachers.” (YR) “Students are liable to be distracted by many other side matters so that they can keep their attention to online learning.” (T15)

In the online learning environment, teachers need to make efforts to build rapport and personalizing interactions with students to help them perform better and achieve greater academic success (Harper 2018 ; Ong and Quek 2023 ) Meanwhile, teachers should also motivate students’ learning by designing the lessons, giving lectures and managing the processes of student interactions (Garrison 2003 ; Ong and Quek 2023 ).

Determinants of self-efficacy in online learning

Online learning self-efficacy refers to students’ perception of their abilities to fulfill specific tasks required in online learning (Calaguas and Consunji 2022 ; Zimmerman and Kulikowich 2016 ). Online learning self-efficacy was found to be influenced by various factors including task, learner, course, and technology level, among which task level was found to be most closely related (Xu et al. 2022 ). The responses from the 46 student participants reveal a shared concern, albeit without mentioning specific tasks; they highlight critical aspects influencing online learning: learner attributes, course structure, and technological infrastructure.

One unifying theme from the student feedback is the challenge of self-regulation and environmental distractions impacting learning efficacy. For instance, participant WSX notes the necessity for students to enhance time management skills due to deficiencies in self-regulation, which is crucial for successful online learning. Participant WY expands on this by pointing out the distractions outside traditional classroom settings, coupled with limited teacher-student interaction, which hampers idea exchange and independent thought, thereby undermining educational outcomes. These insights suggest a need for strategies that bolster students’ self-discipline and interactive opportunities in virtual learning environments.

On the technological front, participants WT and YCY address different but related issues. Participant WT emphasizes the importance of up-to-date course content and learning facilities, indicating that outdated materials and tools can significantly diminish the effectiveness of online education. Participant YCY adds to this by highlighting problems with online learning applications, such as subpar functionalities that can introduce additional barriers to learning.

Teacher participants, on the other hand, shed light on objective factors predominantly related to course content and technology. Participant T5’s response underscores the heavy dependency on technological advancement in online education and points out the current inability of platforms or apps to adequately monitor student engagement and progress. Participant T9 voices concerns about course content not being updated or aligned with contemporary trends and student interests, suggesting a disconnect between educational offerings and learner needs. Meanwhile, participant T8 identifies unstable network services as a significant hindrance to online teaching, highlighting infrastructure as a critical component of online education’s success.

Teachers also believed the insufficient mastery of facilities and unfamiliarity with online instruction posed difficulty.

“Most teachers and students are not familiar with online instruction. For example, some teachers are unable to manage online courses so they cannot design the courses well. Some students lack self-regulation, which leads to their distraction or avoidance in class.” (T9)

Influences on student performance in online learning

Students’ performance during online lessons is closely associated with their satisfaction and self-efficacy. Most of the student participants reflected on their distractions, confusion, and needs, which indicates their dissatisfaction with online learning.

“During online instruction, it is convenient for the students to make use of cell phones, but instead, cell phones bring lots of distraction.” (YSC) “Due to the limits of online learning, teachers are facing the computer screen and unable to know timely students’ needs and confusion. Meanwhile, it’s inconvenient for teachers to make clear explanations of the sample questions or problems.” (HZW)

They thought their low learning efficiency in performance was caused by external factors like the learning environment.

“The most obvious disadvantage of online learning goes to low efficiency. Students find it hard to keep attention to study outside the practical classroom or in a relaxing environment.” (WY) “Teachers are not strict enough with students, which leads to ineffective learning.” (WRX)

Teacher participants conceived students’ performance as closely related to valid online supervision and students’ self-regulation.

“Online instruction is unable to create a learning environment, which helps teachers know students’ instant reaction. Only when students well regulate themselves and stay focused during online learning can they achieve successful interactions and make good accomplishments in the class.” (T11) “Some students need teachers’ supervision and high self-regulation, or they were easily distracted.” (T16)

Student satisfaction and teaching effectiveness in online learning

Online learning satisfaction was found to be significantly and positively associated with online learning self-efficacy (Al-Nasa’h et al. 2021 ; Lashley et al. 2022 ). Around 46% of student participants were unsatisfied with teachers’ ways of teaching.

“Comparatively, bloggers are more interesting than teachers’ boring and dull voices in online learning.” (DSY) “Teachers’ voice sounds dull and boring through the internet, which may cause listeners to feel sleepy, and the teaching content is not interesting enough to the students.” (MFE)

It reflected partly that some teachers were not adapted to online teaching possibly due to a lack in experience of online teaching or learning (Zhu et al. 2022 ).

“Some teachers are not well-prepared for online learning. They are particularly unready for emergent technological problems when delivering the teaching.” (T1) “One of the critical reasons lies in the fact that teachers and students are not well trained before online learning. In addition, the online platform is not unified by the college administration, which has led to chaos and difficulty of online instruction.” (T17)

Teachers recognized their inadequate preparation and mastery of online learning as one of the reasons for dissatisfaction, but student participants exaggerated the role of teachers in online learning and ignored their responsibility in planning and managing their learning behavior, as in the research of (Xu et al. 2022 ).

The role of self-regulation in online learning success

In the context of online learning, self-regulation stands out as a crucial factor, necessitating heightened levels of student self-discipline and autonomy. This aspect, as Zhu et al. ( 2023 ) suggest, grants students significant control over their learning processes, making it a vital component for successful online education.

“Online learning requires learners to be of high discipline and self-regulation. Without good self-regulation, they are less likely to be effective in online learning.” (YZJ) “Most students lack self-control, unable to control the time of using electronic products. Some even use other electronic products during online learning, which greatly reduces their efficiency in learning.” (GPY) “Students are not well developed in self-control and easily distracted. Thus they are unable to engage fully in their study, which makes them unable to keep up with others” (XYN)

Both groups of participants had a clear idea of the positive role of self-regulation in successful learning, but they also admitted that students need to strengthen their self-regulation skills and it seemed they associated with the learning environment, learning efficiency and teachers’ supervision.

“If they are self-motivated, online learning can be conducted more easily and more efficiently. However, a majority are not strong in regulating themselves. Teachers’ direct supervision in offline learning can do better in motivating them to study hard…lack of interaction makes students less active and motivated.” (LY) “Students have a low level of self-discipline. Without teachers’ supervision, they find it hard to listen attentively or even quit listening. Moreover, in class, the students seldom think actively and independently.” (T13)

The analysis of participant responses, categorized into three distinct attitude groups – positive, neutral, and negative – reveals a multifaceted view of the disadvantages of online learning, as shown in Tables 4 and 5 . This classification provides a clearer understanding of how attitudes towards online learning influence perceptions of self-regulation and other related factors.

In Table 4 , the division among students is most pronounced in terms of interaction and self-efficacy. Those with neutral attitudes highlighted interaction as a primary concern, suggesting that it is less effective in an online setting. Participants with positive attitudes noted a lack of student motivation, while those with negative views emphasized the need for better self-efficacy. Across all attitudes, instruction, engagement, self-regulation, and behavior intention were consistently identified as areas needing improvement.

Table 5 sheds light on teachers’ perspectives, revealing a consensus on the significance and challenges of instruction, motivation, and self-efficacy in online learning. Teachers’ opinions vary most significantly on self-efficacy and engagement. Those with negative attitudes point to self-efficacy and instructional quality as critical areas needing attention, while neutral attitudes focus on the role of motivation.

Discussions

Using a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the questionnaire data showed that among the 18 college teachers and 46 year 1 undergraduate students of various majors taking part in the interview, about 38.9% of teachers and about 30.4% of students supported online learning. Only two teachers were neutral about online learning, and 50% of teachers did not support virtual learning. The percentages of students who expressed positive and neutral views on online learning were the same, i.e., 34.8%. This indicates that online learning could serve as a complementary approach to traditional education, yet it is not without challenges, particularly in terms of student engagement, self-regulation, and behavioral intention, which were often attributed to distractions inherent in online environments.

In analyzing nine factors, it was evident that both teachers and students did not perceive these factors uniformly. Instruction was a significant element for both groups, as validated by findings in Tables 3 and 5 . The absence of face-to-face interactions in online learning shifted the focus to online instruction quality. Teachers cited technological challenges as a central concern, while students criticized the lack of engaging content and teaching methods. This aligns with Miao and Ma ( 2022 ), who argued that direct online interaction does not necessarily influence learner engagement, thus underscoring the need for integrated approaches encompassing interactions, self-regulation, and social presence.

Furthermore, the role of technology acceptance in shaping self-efficacy was highlighted by Xu et al. ( 2022 ), suggesting that students with higher self-efficacy tend to challenge themselves more. Chen and Hsu ( 2022 ) noted the positive influence of using emojis in online lessons, emphasizing the importance of innovative pedagogical approaches in online settings.

The study revealed distinct priorities between teachers and students in online learning: teachers emphasized effective instruction delivery, while students valued learning outcomes, self-regulation, and engagement. This divergence highlights the unique challenges each group faces. Findings by Dennen et al. ( 2007 ) corroborate this, showing instructors focusing on content and guidance, while students prioritize interpersonal communication and individualized attention. Additionally, Lee et al. ( 2011 ) found that reduced transactional distance and increased student engagement led to enhanced perceptions of learning outcomes, aligning with students’ priorities in online courses. Understanding these differing perspectives is crucial for developing comprehensive online learning strategies that address the needs of both educators and learners.

Integrating these findings with broader contextual elements such as technological infrastructure, pedagogical strategies, socio-economic backgrounds, and environmental factors (Balanskat and Bingimlas 2006 ) further enriches our understanding. The interplay between these external factors and Yu’s nine key aspects forms a complex educational ecosystem. For example, government interventions and training programs have been shown to increase teachers’ enthusiasm for ICT and its routine use in education (Balanskat and Bingimlas 2006 ). Additionally, socioeconomic factors significantly impact students’ experiences with online learning, as the digital divide in connectivity and access to computers at home influences the ICT experience, an important factor for school achievement (OECD 2015 ; Punie et al. 2006 ).

In sum, the study advocates for a holistic approach to understanding and enhancing online education, recognizing the complex interplay between internal factors and external elements that shape the educational ecosystem in the digital age.

Conclusion and future research

This study offered a comprehensive exploration into the retrospective perceptions of college teachers and undergraduate students regarding their experiences with online learning following the COVID-19 pandemic. It was guided by a framework encompassing nine key factors that influence online learning outcomes. To delve into these perspectives, the research focused on three pivotal questions. These questions aimed to uncover how both undergraduates and teachers in China view the effectiveness of online learning post-pandemic, identify which of the nine influencing factors had the most significant impact, and propose recommendations for enhancing the future effectiveness of online learning.

In addressing the first research question concerning the retrospective perceptions of online learning’s effectiveness among undergraduates and teachers in China post-COVID-19 pandemic, the thematic analysis has delineated clear divergences in attitude between the two demographics. Participants were primarily divided into three categories based on their stance toward online learning: positive, neutral, and negative. The results highlighted a pronounced variance in attitude distribution between teachers and students, with a higher percentage of teachers expressing clear-cut opinions, either favorably or unfavorably, towards the effectiveness of online learning.

Conversely, students displayed a pronounced inclination towards neutrality, revealing a more cautious or mixed stance on the effectiveness of online learning. This prevalent neutrality within the student body could be attributed to a range of underlying reasons. It might signify students’ uncertainties or varied experiences with online platforms, differences in engagement levels, gaps in digital literacy, or fluctuating quality of online materials and teaching methods. Moreover, this neutral attitude may arise from the psychological and social repercussions of the pandemic, which have potentially altered students’ approaches to and perceptions of learning in an online context.

In the exploration of the nine influential factors in online learning, it was discovered that both teachers and students overwhelmingly identified instruction as the most critical aspect. This was closely followed by engagement, interaction, motivation, and other factors, while performance and satisfaction were perceived as less influential by both groups. However, the attitudes of teachers and students towards these factors revealed notable differences, particularly about instruction. Teachers often attributed challenges in online instruction to technological issues, whereas students perceived the quality of instruction as a major influence on their learning effectiveness. This dichotomy highlights the distinct perspectives arising from their different roles within the educational process.

A further divergence was observed in views on self-efficacy and self-regulation. Teachers, with a focus on delivering content, emphasized the importance of self-efficacy, while students, grappling with the demands of online learning, prioritized self-regulation. This reflects their respective positions in the online learning environment, with teachers concerned about the efficacy of their instructional strategies and students about managing their learning process. Interestingly, the study also illuminated that students did not always perceive themselves as independent learners, which contributed to the high priority they placed on instruction quality. This insight underlines a significant area for development in online learning strategies, emphasizing the need for fostering greater learner autonomy.

Notably, both teachers and students concurred that stimulating interest was a key factor in enhancing online learning. They proposed innovative approaches such as emulating popular online personalities, enhancing interactive elements, and contextualizing content to make it more relatable to students’ lives. Additionally, practical suggestions like issuing preview tasks and conducting in-class quizzes were highlighted as methods to boost student engagement and learning efficiency. The consensus on the importance of supervisory roles underscores the necessity for a balanced approach that integrates guidance and independence in the online learning environment.

The outcomes of our study highlight the multifaceted nature of online learning, accentuated by the varied perspectives and distinct needs of teachers and students. This complexity underscores the necessity of recognizing and addressing these nuances when designing and implementing online learning strategies. Furthermore, our findings offer a comprehensive overview of both the strengths and weaknesses of online learning during an unprecedented time, offering valuable insights for educators, administrators, and policy-makers involved in higher education. Moreover, it emphasized the intricate interplay of multiple factors—behavioral intention, instruction, engagement, interaction, motivation, self-efficacy, performance, satisfaction, and self-regulation—in shaping online learning outcomes. presents some limitations, notably its reliance on a single research method and a limited sample size.

However, the exclusive use of reflective diaries and interviews restricts the range of data collection methods, which might have been enriched by incorporating additional quantitative or mixed-method approaches. Furthermore, the sample, consisting only of students and teachers from one university, may not adequately represent the diverse experiences and perceptions of online learning across different educational contexts. These limitations suggest the need for a cautious interpretation of the findings and indicate areas for future research expansion. Future research could extend this study by incorporating a larger, more diverse sample to gain a broader understanding of undergraduate students’ retrospections across different contexts and cultures. Furthermore, research could also explore how to better equip students with the skills and strategies necessary to optimize their online learning experiences, especially in terms of the self-regulated learning and motivation aspects.

Data availability

The data supporting this study is available from https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25583664.v1 . The data consists of reflective diaries from 46 Year 1 students from a comprehensive university in China and 18 college teachers. We utilized thematic analysis to interpret the reflective diaries, guided initially by nine factors. The results highlight the critical need for tailored online learning strategies and provide insights into its advantages and challenges for stakeholders in higher education.

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The Corresponding author received the National Social Science Foundation of China for Education General Program (BGA210054) for this work.

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Leveraging Guest Speakers to Increase Student Learning

Guest speakers can share their work experience to show high school students how their studies connect to the world outside school.

Working in a vocational high school, I often see my colleagues bringing in guest speakers to collaborate with students to enhance learning. I also see the students’ excitement when they come to my class sharing their experience with the guest speaker.

When I started to explore how my classroom could leverage guest speakers, I found myself asking, “Where will I find these speakers?” “What is the cost?” and “How will I get them to my classroom?” These questions were some of my biggest challenges, but through research and networking, I was able to build a portfolio of guest speakers.

Guest speakers are fundamental in breaking down the barriers of the classroom walls to deepen learning. The experience gives students the opportunity to connect with professionals and create meaningful learning connections . When I plan for a guest speaker to come into my classroom, I see it as an opportunity for students to practice professionalism and critical thinking.

Each guest expands on the current knowledge of my students to a deeper level. To start, my students spend time researching the speaker and connecting the speaker to the content. Students understand the purpose of the guest speaker and create questions to ask during the session. I also assign students roles during the session, such as the following:

• Moderator: Keeps the discussion going, fills any dead space, and runs our class.
• Note taker: In charge of recording our session with typed notes. Students will often refer back to these when reflecting or working on a project.

As the teacher, I video-record the session for future reference.

When and How to Incorporate Guest Speakers

Carefully selecting the time to host a speaker is key. Based on the goals, incorporate guest speakers at the beginning, middle, or end of a unit or project, as each time frame provides a different benefit. A guest speaker during the introduction of material allows students to jump into the content and skills. For example, professional podcaster Jeffrey Bradbury introduced the topic of what podcasts are and how to make one before my students created a podcast for a project examining how a speaker persuades their audience and presents information.

In the middle of a project, students can use the speaker’s information to enhance the work and use feedback to dive deeper. Hannah Berk from the Pulitzer Center introduced ideas about writing about important topics concerning our local community, offering feedback as students wrote letters for global change.

At the end of a unit, a guest speaker can provide closure and an authentic assessment for students. A children’s book author discussed with my high school students how to build figurative language and helped them reflect on the final drafts of their own children’s books that they sent to an elementary school.

Other speakers have included writers from local newspapers, museum managers from the New Jersey Historical Society, a business professional to discuss writing proposals, and, when we were reading a dystopian novel, a local mayor to discuss how to build community.

Also consider interdisciplinary connections; a topic or unit may lend itself to a deeper connection to another subject. For example, I’ve invited scientists such as Emma Harding, who focuses on the evolution of viruses by studying viral fossils in our DNA, to discuss bioethics and research while students read Frankenstein and wrote a research paper. Harding is from Australia, so the international connection had my students even more engaged.

Although my purpose is for my students to learn more about bioethics and the writing process, students walk away with so much more. As an English teacher, my goal is to make numerous connections to other subjects and the outside world. Connecting with professionals in other fields further demonstrates the need for language arts to my students.

To plan a successful event, connect with the guest speaker to share the expectations, content, and structure of the session. The power of video calls has opened so many doors for speakers. With the different video call services, the number of guest speakers has increased. Video calling also eliminates the need for a speaker to travel, creating endless opportunities to connect throughout the world. When discussing the format with guest speakers, I often use Zoom or Google Meet because of my familiarity with and easy access to both platforms. Other platforms include Skype, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, and Slack.

How to Find and Contact Guest Speakers

Several programs connect with experienced professionals who will volunteer their time for free. The first program is Skype a Scientist , which allows you to choose from a myriad of scientists. Finding authors who will speak for free can be a challenge. Some publishers have a list of authors who will Zoom for free for at least 15 minutes.

Additionally, contacting your school district’s local library can lead you to authors willing to speak for free. I’ve contacted the local library about authors in the area and different programs the libraries present. Another connection you can make is with local museums. I’ve worked with our county’s museum so my students can learn more about our local history in order to nominate someone for the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Other platforms, like Nepris and SpeakerHub , offer guest speakers who range in cost but have a no-cost search option. Networking, however, is also key to finding professionals. Surveying your students’ parents or school community helps build your network. Parents are often more than willing to either volunteer their time or connect you with someone. Additionally, social media can help connect you with possible speakers. A simple post on Facebook can lead to many opportunities.

While the pandemic has been challenging in many ways, it has allowed an easier way for others to connect to our classrooms. Consider how your students can experience the magic of a guest speaker.

How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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In one sense, the national conversation about what it will take to make sure all children become strong readers has been wildly successful: States are passing legislation supporting evidence-based teaching approaches , and school districts are rushing to supply training. Publishers are under pressure to drop older materials . And for the first time in years, an instructional issue—reading—is headlining education media coverage.

In the middle of all that, though, the focus on the “science of reading” has elided its twin component in literacy instruction: writing.

Writing is intrinsically important for all students to learn—after all, it is the primary way beyond speech that humans communicate. But more than that, research suggests that teaching students to write in an integrated fashion with reading is not only efficient, it’s effective.

Yet writing is often underplayed in the elementary grades. Too often, it is separated from schools’ reading block. Writing is not assessed as frequently as reading, and principals, worried about reading-exam scores, direct teachers to focus on one often at the expense of the other. Finally, beyond the English/language arts block, kids often aren’t asked to do much writing in early grades.

“Sometimes, in an early-literacy classroom, you’ll hear a teacher say, ‘It’s time to pick up your pencils,’” said Wiley Blevins, an author and literacy consultant who provides training in schools. “But your pencils should be in your hand almost the entire morning.”

Strikingly, many of the critiques that reading researchers have made against the “balanced literacy” approach that has held sway in schools for decades could equally apply to writing instruction: Foundational writing skills—like phonics and language structure—have not generally been taught systematically or explicitly.

And like the “find the main idea” strategies commonly taught in reading comprehension, writing instruction has tended to focus on content-neutral tasks, rather than deepening students’ connections to the content they learn.

Education Week wants to bring more attention to these connections in the stories that make up this special collection . But first, we want to delve deeper into the case for including writing in every step of the elementary curriculum.

Why has writing been missing from the reading conversation?

Much like the body of knowledge on how children learn to read words, it is also settled science that reading and writing draw on shared knowledge, even though they have traditionally been segmented in instruction.

“The body of research is substantial in both number of studies and quality of studies. There’s no question that reading and writing share a lot of real estate, they depend on a lot of the same knowledge and skills,” said Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Pick your spot: text structure, vocabulary, sound-symbol relationships, ‘world knowledge.’”

The reasons for the bifurcation in reading and writing are legion. One is that the two fields have typically been studied separately. (Researchers studying writing usually didn’t examine whether a writing intervention, for instance, also aided students’ reading abilities—and vice versa.)

Some scholars also finger the dominance of the federally commissioned National Reading Panel report, which in 2000 outlined key instructional components of learning to read. The review didn’t examine the connection of writing to reading.

Looking even further back yields insights, too. Penmanship and spelling were historically the only parts of writing that were taught, and when writing reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, it tended to focus on “process writing,” emphasizing personal experience and story generation over other genres. Only when the Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010 did the emphasis shift to writing about nonfiction texts and across subjects—the idea that students should be writing about what they’ve learned.

And finally, teaching writing is hard. Few studies document what preparation teachers receive to teach writing, but in surveys, many teachers say they received little training in their college education courses. That’s probably why only a little over half of teachers, in one 2016 survey, said that they enjoyed teaching writing.

Writing should begin in the early grades

These factors all work against what is probably the most important conclusion from the research over the last few decades: Students in the early-elementary grades need lots of varied opportunities to write.

“Students need support in their writing,” said Dana Robertson, an associate professor of reading and literacy education at the school of education at Virginia Tech who also studies how instructional change takes root in schools. “They need to be taught explicitly the skills and strategies of writing and they need to see the connections of reading, writing, and knowledge development.”

While research supports some fundamental tenets of writing instruction—that it should be structured, for instance, and involve drafting and revising—it hasn’t yet pointed to a specific teaching recipe that works best.

One of the challenges, the researchers note, is that while reading curricula have improved over the years, they still don’t typically provide many supports for students—or teachers, for that matter—for writing. Teachers often have to supplement with additions that don’t always mesh well with their core, grade-level content instruction.

“We have a lot of activities in writing we know are good,” Shanahan said. “We don’t really have a yearlong elementary-school-level curriculum in writing. That just doesn’t exist the way it does in reading.”

Nevertheless, practitioners like Blevins work writing into every reading lesson, even in the earliest grades. And all the components that make up a solid reading program can be enhanced through writing activities.

4 Key Things to Know About How Reading and Writing Interlock

Want a quick summary of what research tells us about the instructional connections between reading and writing?

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

Research on the connections began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time.

Among the newest and most important additions are three research syntheses conducted by Steve Graham, a professor at the University of Arizona, and his research partners. One of them examined whether writing instruction also led to improvements in students’ reading ability; a second examined the inverse question. Both found significant positive effects for reading and writing.

A third meta-analysis gets one step closer to classroom instruction. Graham and partners examined 47 studies of instructional programs that balanced both reading and writing—no program could feature more than 60 percent of one or the other. The results showed generally positive effects on both reading and writing measures.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

Studies show that the prewriting students do in early education carries meaningful signals about their decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension later on. Reading experts say that students should be supported in writing almost as soon as they begin reading, and evidence suggests that both spelling and handwriting are connected to the ability to connect speech to print and to oral language development.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

Writing is a complex task that demands much of students’ cognitive resources. Researchers generally agree that writing must be explicitly taught—rather than left up to students to “figure out” the rules on their own.

There isn’t as much research about how precisely to do this. One 2019 review, in fact, found significant overlap among the dozen writing programs studied, and concluded that all showed signs of boosting learning. Debates abound about the amount of structure students need and in what sequence, such as whether they need to master sentence construction before moving onto paragraphs and lengthier texts.

But in general, students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise.

A number of different writing frameworks incorporating various degrees of structure and modeling are available, though most of them have not been studied empirically.

4. Writing can help students learn content—and make sense of it.

Much of reading comprehension depends on helping students absorb “world knowledge”—think arts, ancient cultures, literature, and science—so that they can make sense of increasingly sophisticated texts and ideas as their reading improves. Writing can enhance students’ content learning, too, and should be emphasized rather than taking a back seat to the more commonly taught stories and personal reflections.

Graham and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis of nearly 60 studies looking at this idea of “writing to learn” in mathematics, science, and social studies. The studies included a mix of higher-order assignments, like analyses and argumentative writing, and lower-level ones, like summarizing and explaining. The study found that across all three disciplines, writing about the content improved student learning.

If students are doing work on phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize sounds—they shouldn’t merely manipulate sounds orally; they can put them on the page using letters. If students are learning how to decode, they can also encode—record written letters and words while they say the sounds out loud.

And students can write as they begin learning about language structure. When Blevins’ students are mainly working with decodable texts with controlled vocabularies, writing can support their knowledge about how texts and narratives work: how sentences are put together and how they can be pulled apart and reconstructed. Teachers can prompt them in these tasks, asking them to rephrase a sentence as a question, split up two sentences, or combine them.

“Young kids are writing these mile-long sentences that become second nature. We set a higher bar, and they are fully capable of doing it. We can demystify a bit some of that complex text if we develop early on how to talk about sentences—how they’re created, how they’re joined,” Blevins said. “There are all these things you can do that are helpful to develop an understanding of how sentences work and to get lots of practice.”

As students progress through the elementary grades, this structured work grows more sophisticated. They need to be taught both sentence and paragraph structure , and they need to learn how different writing purposes and genres—narrative, persuasive, analytical—demand different approaches. Most of all, the research indicates, students need opportunities to write at length often.

Using writing to support students’ exploration of content

Reading is far more than foundational skills, of course. It means introducing students to rich content and the specialized vocabulary in each discipline and then ensuring that they read, discuss, analyze, and write about those ideas. The work to systematically build students’ knowledge begins in the early grades and progresses throughout their K-12 experience.

Here again, available evidence suggests that writing can be a useful tool to help students explore, deepen, and draw connections in this content. With the proper supports, writing can be a method for students to retell and analyze what they’ve learned in discussions of content and literature throughout the school day —in addition to their creative writing.

This “writing to learn” approach need not wait for students to master foundational skills. In the K-2 grades especially, much content is learned through teacher read-alouds and conversation that include more complex vocabulary and ideas than the texts students are capable of reading. But that should not preclude students from writing about this content, experts say.

“We do a read-aloud or a media piece and we write about what we learned. It’s just a part of how you’re responding, or sharing, what you’ve learned across texts; it’s not a separate thing from reading,” Blevins said. “If I am doing read-alouds on a concept—on animal habitats, for example—my decodable texts will be on animals. And students are able to include some of these more sophisticated ideas and language in their writing, because we’ve elevated the conversations around these texts.”

In this set of stories , Education Week examines the connections between elementary-level reading and writing in three areas— encoding , language and text structure , and content-area learning . But there are so many more examples.

Please write us to share yours when you’ve finished.

Want to read more about the research that informed this story? Here’s a bibliography to start you off.

Berninger V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham S., & Richards T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. J ournal of Learning Disabilities. Special Issue: The Language of Written Language, 35(1), 39–56 Berninger, Virginia, Robert D. Abbott, Janine Jones, Beverly J. Wolf, Laura Gould, Marci Anderson-Younstrom, Shirley Shimada, Kenn Apel. (2006) “Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.” Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), pp. 61-92 Cabell, Sonia Q, Laura S. Tortorelli, and Hope K. Gerde (2013). “How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills.” The Reading Teacher, 66(8), pp. 650-659. Gerde, H.K., Bingham, G.E. & Wasik, B.A. (2012). “Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices.” Early Childhood Education Journal 40, 351–359 (2012) Gilbert, Jennifer, and Steve Graham. (2010). “Teaching Writing to Elementary Students in Grades 4–6: A National Survey.” The Elementary School Journal 110(44) Graham, Steve, et al. (2017). “Effectiveness of Literacy Programs Balancing Reading and Writing Instruction: A Meta-Analysis.” Reading Research Quarterly, 53(3) pp. 279–304 Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. (2011). “Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing and Writing Instruction on Reading.” Harvard Educational Review (2011) 81(4): 710–744. Graham, Steve. (2020). “The Sciences of Reading and Writing Must Become More Fully Integrated.” Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1) pp. S35–S44 Graham, Steve, Sharlene A. Kiuhara, and Meade MacKay. (2020).”The Effects of Writing on Learning in Science, Social Studies, and Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research April 2020, Vol 90, No. 2, pp. 179–226 Shanahan, Timothy. “History of Writing and Reading Connections.” in Shanahan, Timothy. (2016). “Relationships between reading and writing development.” In C. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (2nd ed., pp. 194–207). New York, NY: Guilford. Slavin, Robert, Lake, C., Inns, A., Baye, A., Dachet, D., & Haslam, J. (2019). “A quantitative synthesis of research on writing approaches in grades 2 to 12.” London: Education Endowment Foundation. Troia, Gary. (2014). Evidence-based practices for writing instruction (Document No. IC-5). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator, Development, Accountability, and Reform Center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configuration/ Troia, Gary, and Steve Graham. (2016).“Common Core Writing and Language Standards and Aligned State Assessments: A National Survey of Teacher Beliefs and Attitudes.” Reading and Writing 29(9).

A version of this article appeared in the January 25, 2023 edition of Education Week as How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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Using attentional guidance methods in virtual reality laboratories reduces students’ cognitive load and improves their academic performance

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• Published: 16 May 2024
• Volume 28 , article number  110 , ( 2024 )

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• Pingping Wen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9350-3250 1 ,
• Fei Lu 2 &
• Ahmad Zamzuri Mohamad Ali 3  

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Learning in virtual reality laboratories (VR labs) has become an important method in experimental teaching but can increase individuals’ cognitive load compared with traditional laboratories. This study analysed the effect of introducing an attentional guidance mechanism into a VR lab on students’ cognitive load and academic performance. We designed and developed two VR labs, one with and one without this attentional guidance stimulus (a 3D yellow arrow). A quasi-experimental design was adopted, and the data obtained were analysed using one-way ANOVA and linear regression. The experiment was conducted with 80 students majoring in digital media art at two universities. The results indicated that the students in the VR lab with the attentional guidance mechanism included exhibited lower cognitive load and higher academic performance than the control group. The regression analyses revealed that cognitive load negatively predicted learning outcomes; that is, academic performance improved as cognitive load decreased. In conclusion, as VR labs are increasingly used in education, supplementing them with attentional guidance stimuli can improve students’ academic performance by reducing their cognitive load.

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1 Introduction

Learning invirtual reality laboratories (VR labs) has become an important method in experimental teaching (Achuthan et al. 2020 ; Grivokostopoulou et al. 2020 ). VR labs have a positive impact on the learning experience, while also bringing more entertainment value and engagement to the learning process (Höhner et al. 2020 ; Janonis et al. 2020 ). VR labs are characterised by the three main features of interactivity, immersion, and imagination (Mikropoulos and Natsis 2011 ; Skulmowski and Xu 2022 ; Yang et al. 2022 ). Such virtual environments enable learners to engage at a deeper level (El Kabtane et al. 2020 ). In particular, they develop a sense of immersion owing to the multi-sensory stimuli they experience via VR (Park and Lee 2020 ), while the tracking of their head and hand positions enables them to explore and increase their perception of the virtual environment through body movements (Shin 2017 ; Wenk et al. 2023 ).

Despite these advantages and theoretical support, the three characteristics of VR labs can also increase individuals’ cognitive load compared with traditional laboratories (Juliano et al. 2022 ; Makransky et al. 2019 ; Parong and Mayer 2018 ; Skulmowski et al. 2016 ). For example, the characteristic of immersion, while presenting novel and attractive experiences, raises participants’ cognitive load (Frederiksen et al. 2020 ). Moreover, to make the scene more realistic, VR labs may present details that distract learners from their intended objective (Brucker et al. 2014 ). Simultaneously, the high level of interactivity leads to further distractions, which can quickly drain cognitive resources (Skulmowski and Rey 2018 ).

The design of VR labs is considered to be the main factor influencing users’ cognitive load (Albus et al. 2021 ; Du et al. 2022 ; Kehrwald and Bentley 2020 ; Skulmowski and Xu 2022 ). Therefore, an effective design of VR labs used for teaching is the main way to reduce cognitive load. In particular, attentional guidance mechanisms can be incorporated into the design to reduce the excessive distractions found in VR labs (De Koning et al. 2009 ).

1.1 VR labs and cognitive load

According to cognitive load theory (Paaset al. 2003a , b ; Sweller 2011 ), the main function of teaching is to store information in long-term memory. Knowledge is stored in long-term memory in the form of a schema; however, to construct a schema, information must be processed in working memory, which has a limited capacity (Paas et al. 2004 ; Pollock et al. 2002 ; Sweller 2010 , 2011 ; van Merriënboer and Sweller 2005 ), whereas long-term memory is regarded as infinite (Gathercole et al. 2008 ). In other words, because of its impact on engagement and attention, there is an optimal load for information learning. Therefore, teaching must be designed to present information efficiently to reduce the load on working memory and facilitate the transfer of information from working memory to long-term memory (Guadagnoli and Lee 2004 ; Kirschner 2002 ; Sweller 2016 ). Consequently, the factors influencing cognitive load must be examined when considering the design of VR labs.

When designing a VR lab, realistic graphics are often used to create an authentic digital environment. Since such graphics may contain small distractions (Brucker et al. 2014 ), realistic visualisation can be considered to be the opposite of simplified schematics (Höffler 2010 ). A VR lab’s increased realism is a source of its higher cognitive load (Brucker et al. 2014 ; Skulmowski and Rey 2020a ). Meanwhile, comparative studies on different types of immersion show that stronger immersion increases cognitive load (Frederiksen et al. 2020 ). Therefore, immersion may actually drain learners’ cognitive resources instead of positively contributing to their learning (Frederiksen et al. 2020 ; Makransky et al. 2019 ).Moreover, under high levels of interactivity, cognitive resources are easily exhausted because of excessive distractions (Skulmowski and Rey 2018 ), with some studies finding that moderate interactivity results in the strongest learning effects (Kalet et al. 2012 ). Therefore, the design of the interactivity element should consider users’ cognitive load (Skulmowski and Rey 2020b ).

The above discussion shows that the characteristics of a VR lab both help and hinder learning, with the main obstacle being their effect on individuals’ cognitive load. Therefore, studying the impact of cognitive load on a VR lab’s effectiveness necessitates considering these problems from the perspective of working memory. Working memory, as noted earlier, has a limited capacity to temporarily store and process information (Baddeley and Hitch 1974 ; Baddeley 1992 ) and is paramount in several advanced cognitive activities (e.g. learning, reasoning, and information search) (Baddeley 2003 ). Working memory is also involved in selecting the underlying information, which can influence the information selection of cognitive systems through attentional guidance (Downing 2000 ; Olivers et al. 2006 ; Soto et al. 2005 ). Hence, it plays an important role in the learning process in VR labs. In virtual chemistry labs, using arrow-text assistance can reduce cognitive load and improve students’ performance in terms of completing experiments, reducing time, and generating fewer errors (Ali et al. 2022 ). Hence, cognitive load and learning performance are the focus of research in VR labs. Therefore, the focus of attention can be guided by the design of VR labs to enable the management of cognitive load.

1.2 Attentional guidance

A VR lab’s characteristics of immersion and interactivity mainly affect the storage of information in working memory; thus, they affect cognitive load (Skulmowski and Xu 2022 ). An excessive focus on attention will lead to an excessive storage of information in working memory, ultimately negatively affecting learners’ cognitive load and learning results (Frederiksen et al. 2020 ; Parong and Mayer 2021 ). Thus, guiding learners’ attention in a VR lab may be an effective solution to this issue. Desimone and Duncan’s ( 1995 ) biased competition theory can be used to analyse attentional guidance. This theory states that the neural representations of different objects in visual scenes compete to obtain higher levels of processing while inhibiting each other. The activation of working memory towards specific visual features promotes biased neural activity in the corresponding brain areas, which gives the features matching the memory storage information in the visual scenes a competitive advantage; thus, the phenomenon where memory storage representations guide attention may be observed.

What type of attentional guidance can attract perceptual attention in VR labs? Humans’ visual perception is highly selective. Some studies have indicated that learners can focus their visual attention on only a few visual elements displayed simultaneously and only process a small amount of information in their working memory (Baddeley 1992 ). Therefore, the most prominent characteristics of VR labs conducive to perceiving information on the features of their visual elements must be identified. Previous research on the identification of visual perceptual features in real space can be used as a reference to identify the perceptual features of the elements in a VR lab. Schnotz and Lowe ( 2008 ) proposed two features that affect the perceptibility of different elements: visual/space contrast and dynamic contrast. First, according to visual/space contrast, an element stands out among others because of its unique visual features such as size or colour. Second, dynamic contrast occurs when the movement and temporal changes of an element establish a difference between the graph and background, which attracts learners’ attention.

In research on attentional guidance and visual search and cues, various suggestions on which object features may attract attention and facilitate object or event recognition have been provided. First, objects with unique features show significant differences in the visual/space contrast of their properties (e.g. colour and shape). In various visual search paradigms, the distinct features of an object, which hold greater significance in vision, expedite the identification process by creating a contrast with one or more perceptual attributes (Treisman and Gelade 1980 ; Treisman and Gormican 1988 ). For example, using such features can reduce the time spent on detecting a green number among several red numbers (i.e. the colour of the target distinguishes it from the red distractors). This pattern has been found to be task-related (Yantis and Egeth 1999 ). In particular, unique colours (Nagy and Winterbottom 2000 ; Turatto and Galfano 2000 , 2001 ; Turatto et al. 2004 ) and brightness levels (Enns et al. 2001 ) seem to be effective in attracting learners’ attention. Attentional guidance methods can sift through large amounts of information to select the key portions. Focusing helps process key information faster, which increases processing efficiency.

Lee et al. ( 2021 ) added visual stimuli into a VR lab to guide users to participate in learning and proved that visual stimuli affect learning in VR labs. However, while their results showed that visual attentional guidance does not affect users’ performance, they did not explain its effect on cognitive load. Conversely, Moon and Ryu ( 2021 ) used animation teaching agents to perform immersive VR video teaching and the conversational gestures of animation teaching agents to guide visual attention. Their results showed that learners exhibited lower learning comprehension scores despite easily perceiving information, while cognitive cues helped reduce the external cognitive load.

Wallgrün et al. ( 2020 ) studied the mechanisms of visual attentional guidance (e.g. arrows) and proved that adding these to VR methods improves users’ target-seeking performance. However, whether the application of such mechanisms in education impacts students’ learning outcomes and cognitive load needs more data and empirical support. Harada and Ohyama ( 2022 ) analysed the mechanisms of attentional guidance in VR and compared attentional guidance with cognitive load. They performed a visual search task in an immersive environment, setting the guidance mechanism as a moving window, 3D arrow, radiation, spherical gradation, or 3D radar to measure the search time for the target and time spent identifying the guidance design. In different orientations, the effects of various guiding mechanisms vary. The 3D arrows are positioned at a central level in all orientations, which may not only facilitate attention guidance but also enhance perspective acquisition.

In summary, VR labs not only broaden the field of vision and enhance students’ immersion but also increase their cognitive load, as learners must find useful learning content from among several useless details (Makransky et al. 2021 ). Therefore, it is important to help students find useful learning information in an immersive environment, and this must be considered in the design of VR labs.

1.3 Present study

Previous research has discussed the potential cognitive load of using VR labs in education (Achuthan et al. 2015 ; Mayer 2005 ). Further, studies have proposed that guiding learners’ attention can raise their understanding and problem-solving skills and thus improve their academic performance (Canham and Hegarty 2010 ; Ge et al. 2017 ). However, few experimental studies have investigated the impact of attentional guidance mechanisms on students’ cognitive load and academic performance in digital camera courses. It is thus important to study the functions and effects of the increased use of attentional guidance methods in VR labs. Through attentional guidance, learners can first be guided to pay attention to key information on learning tasks and simplify their visual search process. Second, they can be guided to find important information and make space for their working memory to integrate information and construct psychological representations, thereby improving students’ academic performance.

To extend the extant literature, this study tests whether adding attentional guidance stimuli into a VR lab influences cognitive load and students’ academic performance. Specifically, the research questions (RQs) are as follows:

Is there a significant difference in cognitive load in a VR lab with and in one without attentional guidance?

Is there a significant difference in academic performance in a VR lab with and in one without attentional guidance?

In VR labs, under conditions of attention guidance, is there a significant relationship between cognitive load and learning performance?

2 Methodology

2.1 participants.

The research participants comprised 80 students from the schools of art and design of two universities; they were in the fourth semester and majoring in digital media art. The students were aged between 19 and 22 years. The participants were not randomly assigned to each group; a quasi-experimental design was adopted and each class was considered a group of 40 students. One class was the control group, and the other one was the experimental group. One group of students from each university took part in the study, and each group had an experimental class in a digital camera course using a VR lab in a controlled laboratory environment. In addition, students from the two universities had similar levels of academic achievement tests at the time of admission. Before the research began, the participants were given the application instructions of the VR lab and measurement instruments. Consent was obtained from all the participants.

2.2 Experimental design

We designed and developed two VR labs: one with an attentional guidance mechanism and one without it (Fig.  1 ). We first determined the teaching objectives according to the teaching content in four ways: (i) Master the layout and plan the scene space, (ii) Master the scheduling of the characters, (iii) Master the application and scheduling of the shot sizes of the camera, and (iv) Master the lighting design. The students’ task was to output the split lens and scene scheduling diagrams (e.g. top view), including the character, camera, and lighting equipment). The contents of both labs were the same; the only difference was whether this attentional guidance mechanism was used or not. The design and development of the VR labs strictly followed the principles of multimedia design. Two technical, two teaching, and two educational psychology experts participated in the evaluation and verification of the development process.

VR labs with and without attentional guidance

Previous studies have shown that typical attentional guidance mechanisms in education include arrows and colours. Arrows, as guiding symbols, can play an important role in guidance. Arrows are also suitable for attentional guidance in VR labs. Colour is another important cue in attention research, and many experiments have used colour as a cue to attract attention (Ansorge and Becker 2014 ; Burnham 2020 ; Harris et al. 2015 ). The colours of attentional guidance mechanisms tend to be striking. Since such symbols serve to remind and guide participants, striking colours can attract their attention more easily and lead them to focus their eyes on a target that requires attention more quickly.

Based on the above discussion as well as the background colour of the scene in the VR lab, a 3D yellow arrow was selected as the attentional guidance mechanism in this study. Since using 2D symbols in a VR scene hinders immersion, which is crucial (Liberatore and Wagner 2021 ), and because a 2D arrow cannot be seen on the Z-axis of the 3D space, it was important to use a 3D arrow. The arrow was designed to hang directly above the characters, cameras, and lights during the experiment to allow the participants to easily distinguish them from the props in the scene and serve as a reminder and guide. The arrow was suspended above the object being manipulated. When the object changed, the position of the arrow changed accordingly.

2.3 Measurement instruments

2.3.1 cognitive load.

The NASA-TLX is an important tool for developing new measures and models (Hart 2006 ). It contains six subscales that measure cognitive load: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, frustration, effort, and performance. Each subscale is scored from 1 to 100.Previous studies have analysed the reliability, validity, and sensitivity of the NASA-TLX to measure cognitive load, mainly in the field of education. The NASA-TLX is reliable, with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.73. As this is above the suggested threshold of 0.6, it suggests its inherently good reliability (Longo and Orru 2018 ). In particular, the NASA-TLX has proven to be effective and user-friendly for measuring the effects of cognitive load on learning outcomes in several experimental studies involving VR environments (Papachristos et al. 2018 ; Shin and Park 2019 ; Zhao et al. 2020 ).

2.3.2 Academic performance

The participants rated the effectiveness of the characters, cameras, and lights used in the VR labs. Ten items were measured, each on a scale of 1 to 10 (Table  1 ). A lecturer graded their scores and the total score (out of 100) served as the measure of the students’ academic performance.

2.4 Procedure

Before the experiment, the lecturer explained to all the participants the use of the hardware and operation of the software in the VR labs. This took approximately 5 min. Each student was also provided with an operating manual. Following the lecturer’s explanation, the participants operated the system manually for 10 min. Next, the participants watched a 10-min presentation on how to use the VR lab for the digital camera experiments. This presentation was prepared in advance and played on a VR laptop by each group of participants. They then performed an experiment that lasted for 30 min. After the participants had submitted their tasks, they answered the NASA-TLX questionnaire. The lecturer provided no verbal or physical guidance during the experiment. The total duration was approximately 60 min.

2.5 Data analysis

SPSS was used to analyse the data, including the descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The descriptive statistics mainly analysed the mean and standard deviation of the cognitive load and academic performance of the two groups of participants (the experimental group with the attentional guidance mechanism and the control group with no attentional guidance mechanism). The inferential statistics used one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine whether the VR lab with attentional guidance significantly impacted the cognitive load and academic performance of the students in the experimental group. Furthermore, the relationship between their cognitive load and academic performance was analysed using linear regression.

The results for the equality of error variances (Levene 1960) for cognitive load ( F [1,78] = 0.77, p  > 0.05) and academic performance( F [1,78] = 3.56, p  > 0.05) revealed no significant differences. Thus, the homogeneity hypothesis was not violated, and an ANOVA could be conducted.

As shown in Table  2 , the control group (i.e. without attentional guidance) had higher mean cognitive load (M = 72.16, SD = 2.2, N = 40) than the experimental group (i.e. with attentional guidance; M = 69.08, SD = 2.52, N = 40). Furthermore, the results of the one-way ANOVA showed a significant difference between the two groups ( F [1,78] = 33.73, p  < 0.05, partial eta squared = 0.30, provided that the effect size is large, according to Cohen ( 2013 )). Taken together, these results suggest that the VR lab with attentional guidance had a significant impact on cognitive load.

The one-way ANOVA results in Table  2 show the significant difference between the academic performance of the experimental group ( F [1,78] = 7.31, p  < 0.05, partial eta squared = 0.09), showing a medium effect size (Cohen 2013 ), and the control group. Table 2 also shows that the experimental group had higher mean academic performance (M = 81.03, SD = 4.35) than the control group (M = 78.15, SD = 5.13). Therefore, the attentional guidance stimulus had a significant effect on students’ academic performance.

Finally, linear regression analysis was conducted to predict and analyse the relationship between cognitive load and students’ academic performance. Before the regression analysis, the correlation between cognitive load and academic performance was found to be significantly negative (r = − 0.41, p  < 0.01). The results revealed a significant linear correlation between cognitive load and students’ academic performance. The Pearson correlation analysis demonstrated a moderate correlation between variables. When the absolute value of the correlation coefficient is 0.1–0.3, 0.3–0.5, and > 0.5, it is generally considered that there is a weak, moderate, and strong correlation between the variables, respectively. Therefore, a significant moderately negative correlation was observed between cognitive load and students’ academic performance.

Table 3 shows the relationship between cognitive load and students’ academic performance, and a linear function is used to express the degree of deviation between them. As shown in Table  3 , cognitive load had a significant effect on academic performance ( F [1,78] = 15.38, p  < 0.05). Moreover, the regression coefficient of cognitive load was β = − 0.41 ( p  < 0.05), which was statistically significant, indicating that cognitive load was significantly negatively related to academic performance (Table  4 ). The Durbin–Watson test was applied to assess the independence of the model residuals, and the test statistic was close to 2 ( d  = 2.17), indicating that the model had a tendency not to be auto correlated. In addition, the R 2 value calculated in the analysis was 0.17. In education studies, an R 2 value above 0.1 is considered to be substantial. This suggests that about 17% of the variance in academic performance could be explained by cognitive load.

4 Discussion

Regarding RQ1, it was found that the cognitive load of the experimental group decreased significantly. The capacity and duration of working memory are extremely limited. Working memory can also be short term, with a capacity to store only five to nine basic pieces of data or data blocks simultaneously. Moreover, it can process only two or three pieces of information simultaneously because the interactions between the elements stored in it also require working memory space, thereby reducing the overall amount of information that can be processed. In our study, the intrinsic nature of the materials, their presentation, and the students’ activities influenced the load on the participants’ working memory; hence, introducing the attentional guidance mechanism reduced the mental effort and time that the visual search consumed, allowing the students to use working memory to process other data. The conversion of working memory into long-term memory enables working memory to be retained in the brain. Further, in contrast to that of working memory, the capacity of long-term memory is almost unlimited. Stored information can be small and fragmentary facts or large, complex, interactive, and serialised information. In other words, long-term memory is at the centre of learning. Therefore, learning content is eventually stored in long-term memory through working memory.

Regarding RQ2, we found that the academic performance of the experimental group was better than that of the control group. This is partially consistent with the findings of De Koning et al. ( 2009 ), who showed that attentional guidance can promote the selection of information in animations and sometimes improve learning. Attentional guidance can guide attention to a specific location or element in a VR environment, where a clue is set as a highlighting stimulus that guides the learner’s attention to the area in which important information appears. Colour and shape are the main attentional guidance stimuli in VR lab designs. In this study, attentional guidance was achieved using a yellow arrow—a hue of yellow that does not appear elsewhere in the VR lab and an obvious colour cue that can function as a highlighting stimulus. Along with the shape of the arrow, which also acts as a reminder, colour also accomplishes attentional guidance to record the eye movement process while learning. Ozcelik et al. ( 2010 ) found that the more times subjects gaze at relevant information, the longer the total fixation time. When considering attentional guidance mechanisms, designers should thus highlight those elements of the visual space in a VR lab and clearly differentiate them from other spatial elements to direct learners’ attention to the relevant elements. This result supports the implementation of attentional guidance mechanisms in the design of VR labs, which would especially suit experimental courses for digital media art majors.

Finally, the results for RQ3 are consistent with those of Andersen et al. ( 2016 ), who posited that reducing cognitive load in VR experiments leads to improved performance and learning outcomes. In contrast to those previous studies that have found no correlation between cognitive load and academic performance (Tugtekin and Odabasi 2022 ), this study found a relationship, which may be due to the boundary conditions, including age, gender, and prior knowledge. Mayer ( 2010 ) found that certain boundary conditions or regulating variables in the principles are applicable to multimedia learning or the activation of instructional design techniques. In other words, adopting certain design methods or learning materials for certain learners enables multimedia learning principles to function more effectively. Therefore, discussing the boundary conditions of instructional design in a VR lab would not only ensure a more rational application of these principles but also have great theoretical and applicable value. Specific methods of incorporating interactivity can also serve as boundary conditions in VR labs. The design and control of these boundary conditions can then function as research variables; thus, measuring cognitive load can enable the study of the learning outcomes. Finally, cognitive load is not only highly correlated with the design of teaching materials, but it has also been identified as a key component in the field of usability research (De Jong 2010 ; Mohamad Ali and Hassan 2019 ).

5 Conclusion

This study examined the cognitive load and academic performance of students conducting experiments in two types of VR labs (one with and one without an attentional guidance mechanism) as well as analysed the relationship between cognitive load and academic performance. The findings indicated a significant difference between the two groups, with the students in the attentional guidance group having lower cognitive load and higher academic performance on average. The regression analysis revealed that cognitive load has a negative effect on academic performance. Taken together, these results suggested that introducing an attentional guidance mechanism into the studied digital camera course reduces cognitive load and improves students’ academic performance significantly. Furthermore, the findings also highlighted the importance of cognitive load for academic performance. The empirical findings in this study reinforced the importance of designing a method of attentional guidance in a VR lab that is different from traditional multimedia teaching. Although the study’s findings were based on a small sample size, which is a limitation of the study, they confirmed the effective design of the VR lab in question. Thus, supplementing VR labs, which are increasingly used in education, with attentional guidance mechanisms can improve students’ academic performance.

6 Limitations and future directions

This study has some limitations. First, learners’ previous learning experience and the complexity of learning tasks produce intrinsic cognitive load. Rich learning experience is associated with perceiving learning task as easy and experiencing small intrinsic cognitive loads, and vice versa. Therefore, this study did not consider learning task complexity. Future research on attentional guidance in VR labs should examine the influence of learning task complexity on learners. In addition, owing to the quasi-experimental design, the selection of samples was limited by majors and classes. Future studies could extend the object of experimental research to other majors. This would improve the universality and extensibility of the findings and provide more accurate guidance for education and teaching practice. Furthermore, this study did not test students’ academic performance at the beginning of the experiment, which could have resulted in a significant gap in academic level between students in the two groups. Therefore, future research should use a pre-test to assess the learning performance of both groups of students. Finally, more variables, such as motivation and satisfaction, could be included in future studies to improve the model of attention guidance mechanism.

Data availability

The authors do not have permission to share the data.

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The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Research and Social Service Project of Chongqing City Vocational College (XJSK202301008)、Education and Teaching Reform Research Project of Chongqing City Vocational College(XJJG20231003)、Annual Program of National Social Science Foundation（22BMZ168）、Open Project for Think Tanks in Higher Education Institutions in Heilongjiang Province（ZKKF2022045).

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Wen, P., Lu, F. & Mohamad Ali, A.Z. Using attentional guidance methods in virtual reality laboratories reduces students’ cognitive load and improves their academic performance. Virtual Reality 28 , 110 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-024-01012-0

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70 years after brown v. board of education, new research shows rise in school segregation.

As the nation prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , a new report from researchers at Stanford and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past three decades — an increase that appears to be driven in part by policies favoring school choice over integration.

Analyzing data from U.S. public schools going back to 1967, the researchers found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status has increased by about 50 percent since 1991.

The report also provides new evidence about the forces driving recent trends in school segregation, showing that the expansion of charter schools has played a major role.  

The findings were released on May 6 with the launch of the Segregation Explorer , a new interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. The website provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022. 

“School segregation levels are not at pre- Brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s,” said Sean Reardon , the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project. “In most large districts, school segregation has increased while residential segregation and racial economic inequality have declined, and our findings indicate that policy choices – not demographic changes – are driving the increase.” 

“There’s a tendency to attribute segregation in schools to segregation in neighborhoods,” said Ann Owens , a professor of sociology and public policy at USC. “But we’re finding that the story is more complicated than that.”

Assessing the rise

In the Brown v. Board decision issued on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and established that “separate but equal” schools were not only inherently unequal but unconstitutional. The ruling paved the way for future decisions that led to rapid school desegregation in many school districts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Though segregation in most school districts is much lower than it was 60 years ago, the researchers found that over the past three decades, both racial and economic segregation in large districts increased. Much of the increase in economic segregation since 1991, measured by segregation between students eligible and ineligible for free lunch, occurred in the last 15 years.

White-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation, while lower on average than white-Black segregation, have both more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s. 

Racial-economic segregation – specifically the difference in the proportion of free-lunch-eligible students between the average white and Black or Hispanic student’s schools – has increased by 70 percent since 1991. 

School segregation is strongly associated with achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, especially the rate at which achievement gaps widen during school, the researchers said.  

“Segregation appears to shape educational outcomes because it concentrates Black and Hispanic students in higher-poverty schools, which results in unequal learning opportunities,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . 

Policies shaping recent trends 

The recent rise in school segregation appears to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions, the researchers said. 

Both residential segregation and racial disparities in income declined between 1990 and 2020 in most large school districts. “Had nothing else changed, that trend would have led to lower school segregation,” said Owens. 

But since 1991, roughly two-thirds of districts that were under court-ordered desegregation have been released from court oversight. Meanwhile, since 1998, the charter sector – a form of expanded school choice – has grown.

Expanding school choice could influence segregation levels in different ways: If families sought schools that were more diverse than the ones available in their neighborhood, it could reduce segregation. But the researchers found that in districts where the charter sector expanded most rapidly in the 2000s and 2010s, segregation grew the most. 

The researchers’ analysis also quantified the extent to which the release from court orders accounted for the rise in school segregation. They found that, together, the release from court oversight and the expansion of choice accounted entirely for the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019.

The researchers noted enrollment policies that school districts can implement to mitigate segregation, such as voluntary integration programs, socioeconomic-based student assignment policies, and school choice policies that affirmatively promote integration. 

“School segregation levels are high, troubling, and rising in large districts,” said Reardon. “These findings should sound an alarm for educators and policymakers.”

Additional collaborators on the project include Demetra Kalogrides, Thalia Tom, and Heewon Jang. This research, including the development of the Segregation Explorer data and website, was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   

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Wisconsin's kids need help learning to read, so let's see more cooperation and an end to power maneuvers and partisanship.

Enough. Enough.  

I’m fed up with partisanship, polarization and power maneuvers in the state Capitol that put adults and politics first and kids last. 

There have been many episodes of this unfortunate soap opera over the years. And now we have one of the most aggravating because it involves something that has both urgency and broad agreement, yet is at a standstill.   

Wisconsin has a reading crisis. Milwaukee and some other areas where poverty is high especially have a reading crisis, but the problem goes beyond income, race and where a child lives. There are just too few children who are becoming capable readers by the end of third grade, which a wide range of educators would tell you is an important point in determining whether a kid is on the road to doing well in school and, in many cases, in life beyond school.  

In state standardized tests a year ago (the most recent results available), 37% of all third-graders in Wisconsin were rated as proficient or better in English language arts, which generally means they’re reading well. Another 36% were rated as “basic,” which I interpret as “kind of OK.” And 25% were rated as “below basic,” which I rephrase as “not really on the playing field.” Overall, that means about 60% of the kids are rated below proficient — or, to put it more gently, a quarter are not doing well at all. That is a lot of kids.  

If the future of a community or state is linked to a work force that is well educated (and evidence supports saying that ), Wisconsinites ought to be concerned. Furthermore, reading achievement has not changed for the better in Wisconsin for at least a quarter of a century. Not to mention that the overall reading success of Black kids in Wisconsin has consistently been at or near the bottom of the U.S., and the gap between Black and white kids on reading has consistently been the biggest or close to the biggest in the country .  

One step forward, but now what?

At last! We decided to try to do something about it. Last summer, Republican legislative majorities, a handful of Democrats, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the Democratic-leaning leadership of the state Department of Public Instruction came to agreement on a bill that made Wisconsin one of more than 30 states that has called for shifting away from an approach to teaching called balanced literacy. It’s been popular statewide but hasn’t been associated with improving results. The new state law calls for promoting (and to some degree requiring) approaches that use what supporters call “the science of reading .” This is labeled in many people’s minds as switching to emphasizing phonics, which means teaching kids to read largely by sounding out letters and words. (When done right, the science of reading requires more than that, but “phonics” is the label that has stuck.)  

What emerged from the state Capitol was a law and a budget appropriation that, among other things, puts $50 million over two years into hiring several dozen reading specialists to work with schools statewide where success is low, while providing some school districts with grants for buying new curriculum materials that meet science of reading standards. The law also requires kids in early grades to be screened for reading progress several times a year, with the goal of getting early help for those who are behind where they ought to be.

So the plan is starting to unfold, right?  

Of course not. This is Wisconsin, where no opportunity to engage in political fighting is missed. How about this for state motto: ‘Forward? Forget it if it requires working together.”  

Action on reading has slowed nearly to a stop

So here we are, approaching a year since the agreement over the reading law was reached, and more than $49 million of the $50 million is being held back by the Legislature’s finance committee. No coaches have been hired. No money for textbooks has been provided to schools. A Department of Public Instruction spokesperson said plans are underway to procure an early childhood screener, even as the deadlock over the whole initiative continues. The process of hiring someone to head up the DPI’s work was pretty much halted by threats of legal action, but is now moving forward, the DPI spokesman said. 

Although getting help from the state is close to frozen, and local resources are tight, some schools are making changes locally. The DPI spokesman said, “Schools continue to move forward with implementing science-based early literacy instruction, creating local reading remediation plans, and strengthening local systems related to meeting each learner’s reading needs.”  

One thing that has been accomplished (sort of) is creating a list of recommended curriculums for teaching reading. These would be the materials that the state would help school districts buy. But even that became an unfriendly mess. A committee created to make recommendations came up with one list. The DPI said it wanted a different and longer list. The Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee supported the shorter, Republican-backed list. Not that any money has actually begun to flow.  

There is no guarantee the new initiative will work. But there’s reason to hope they will, and they are the best thing we’ve got going when it comes to aiming for better outcomes.  

Overall, we are heading toward another school year with nothing major launched. Kids only go to first grade or second grade once, so another wave of kids are likely to miss out in the coming year on steps that might give them more of a boost.  

The reading issue has parallels that are also at stake currently. The Legislature approved and the governor signed on to spending millions of dollars to respond to PFAS water pollution and to help struggling hospitals in western Wisconsin. But those also are held up by bickering between the Democratic governor and the Republican-controlled finance committee that could release the funds if it wanted to.   

Is this really the Wisconsin way?

So why is there this deadlock? Because of blah blah blah, some sloganeering and legal claims, a lot of fighting over power, a lot of finger pointing, many claims that this is the other side’s fault, I’ll sue you, no, I’ll sue you, and more blah blah blah. The details seem irrelevant compared to the broad reality of deadlock.  

Compromise? Let’s work this out? Let’s drop some of our demands and get moving?  Let’s talk? Nope, nope, nope, and nope.  

Let’s unite in a broad effort to help kids learn to read? So far, nope.  

I don’t think this is really the Wisconsin way. I bet the large majority of people in the state — especially educators and parents — would like to see less fighting, more cooperation and a forward-moving effort to deal with one of Wisconsin’s most important education problems.    

But it’s the way things are done these days at the top of state government. And we can expect that to continue, unless the people who have power somehow come to say:  

Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. He can be reached at [email protected] .