Classroom observation is an important component of teacher evaluation systems. Most states are implementing systems that assign a composite score to each teacher based on weights assigned to several different measures. Policy discussions often address this weighting, with many states adopting formulas with high weights for the summative scores…

This paper reports findings from a multi-year study of the scale-up of Reading Apprenticeship (RA), an approach to improve academic literacy by helping teachers provide the support students need to be successful readers in the content areas. WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI), began developing the program in 1995 and has since reached…

In October 2010, WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) won an i3 "Validation" grant to scale up and validate the Reading Apprenticeship (RA) model in three core secondary content area classes: U.S. history, biology, and English language arts. SLI's proposal stated two goals. Goal 1: To transform academic literacy teaching and…

When new educational technology is put into actual use, new ways of using the technology and new ways of organizing instruction can emerge. A critical feature of formative research conducted in actual settings is that the organization of instruction can change as the educational environment appropriates the technology to its own goals. Thus, the…

The increasing automation of many occupations leads to jobs that involve understanding and monitoring the operation of complex computer systems. One case is PATRIOT, an air defense surface-to-air missile system deployed by the U.S. Army. Radar information is processed and presented to the operators in highly abstract form. The system identifies…