Schools and policymakers are mandating new anti-bias training for teachers in an attempt to improve racial attitudes. Decades of research have shown that teachers often give racially biased evaluations of student work and that biased evaluations can affect students' future learning and course-taking decisions. However, less is known about what…

In the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector there is a move to reduce oversight costs by reducing the frequency of quality assessments in providers who score highly consistently across time. However, virtually nothing is known about the stability of ECEC quality assessments over time. Using a validated measure of overall classroom…

We investigated the promise of a novel approach to formative writing assessment at scale that involved an automated writing evaluation (AWE) system called MI Write. Specifically, we investigated elementary teachers' perceptions and implementation of MI Write and changes in students' writing performance in three genres from Fall to Spring…

Teacher feedback can be described as a complex interactional pattern between teacher and student. Formative outcomes of assessment are considered to be enhanced when students understand aims and criteria. In order to better understand the processes of teacher feedback and to improve teaching and classroom assessment, there is a need for research…

Despite increased attention to racial disparities in health, wellbeing, and academic outcomes--especially for Black, Latine, and Native American children and children from low-income households--little progress has been made in identifying the root causes of those disparities and, more importantly, identifying equitable policies and strategies to…

Children with disabilities are at an increased risk of being less likely to participate when compared to their typically developing peers. The objective of this study was to determine whether there is a difference in the frequency of participation in the home, preschool and community setting between typically developing children and children with…

Teachers play a critical role in deciding what curricula are used in their classrooms. We examine the factors that teachers describe influencing their sustainment or discontinuation of a literacy curriculum, "Zoology One," following their participation in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) examining the curriculum's efficacy. This study…

This phenomenological qualitative study explores how public school pre-kindergarten teachers in Florida perceive their principals' understanding of early learning standards and developmentally appropriate practices. The problem addressed is that prekindergarten teachers are evaluated by their principals using state-approved evaluation rubrics…

Science and engineering practices (SEPs) and crosscutting concepts (CCs) constitute a significant part of "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (NRC 2012). As teachers, the role of the authors is to highlight the pivotal role that both scientific knowledge and the practices used to generate knowledge play in learning. This article…

Purpose: The goal of this study is to examine how shyness affects a child's performance on language assessments that vary in sociability. We hypothesized that accuracy on language tasks would be driven by shyness such that shyer children would perform better on nonsociable tasks compared to sociable tasks. Method: The procedures followed a…

Background: 'Learning to Learn' (L2L) is considered a key skill for the twenty-first century. It is understood here as a hyper-competence, which mobilises resources of the individual and/or groups in a sense-making effort to improve or update one's own learning. By means of classroom assessment during the teaching-learning cycle, teachers can…

The decades-long and contentious debate over how students are taught to read centers around the role that phonics and alphabetic code-related skills have in reading instruction. Some claim that these skills are not prioritized in most elementary classrooms because teacher education programs do not adequately prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to…

This article illustrates and differentiates the unique role cognitive interviews and think-aloud interviews play in developing and validating assessments. Specifically, we describe the use of (a) cognitive interviews to gather empirical evidence to support claims about the intended construct being measured and (b) think-aloud interviews to gather…

The general education classroom is filled with academic vocabulary, and individuals with developmental disabilities benefit from explicit vocabulary instruction (Browder et al., 2008; Marzano, 2020; Smith et al., 2013). Picture-based alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) can encourage academic skills development (Ahlgrim-Dehzel et al.,…

The Measures for Early Success Initiative aims to reimagine the landscape of early learning assessments for the millions of 3- to 5-year-olds enrolled in Pre-K, so that more equitable data can be applied to meaningfully support and strengthen early learning experiences for all young children. This document outlines design parameters for child…