As the COVID-19 crisis disrupted schooling, recovery efforts in California included the adoption of Senate Bill (SB) 98, which mandated local educational agencies to complete Learning Continuity and ...Attendance Plans (LCPs). These plans act as critical snapshots of sensemaking and local policy implementation during crisis; however, their details have yet to be explored statewide. Through a multiphase, mixed methods approach, this study examines the legislative requirements of a state-level policy that orchestrated large-scale local planning. Results reveal that SB-98 recombined prior educational routines to fit the pandemic context. Moreover, district plans generally adhered to policy guidance and described a range of resources to support students. However, the limited details contained in most plans—particularly about the actions and services for students that may need additional supports—proffer suggestive evidence of local capacity and will during the global pandemic and the implications for those seeking to implement similar policy measures.
Teachers and teacher education are often presented as "problems" to be solved, with policy solutions that focus on ways to make teachers "better" and improve teacher "quality" by introducing ...prescriptive strategies. We investigate the ways Covid-19-related changes to university and school-based facets of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in England influence teacher quality in relation to both student teachers and early career teachers, working in secondary schools. Drawing on 34 interviews with school leaders, school mentors and ITE tutors, we critically explore the ways in which teacher quality was developed through key aspects of teachers' pedagogy and practice during the pandemic crisis when schools were closed and teaching moved online. Our findings show that the pandemic crisis has highlighted the different facets of teacher quality which arguably disrupt narrow and prescriptive understandings of what constitutes "quality" in policy terms. Although there were many instances of challenge in the development of new and student teachers, our data also shows how ITE tutors, school mentors and leaders responded creatively to the crisis. Participants highlighted the opportunities afforded by the pandemic to develop diverse and innovative pedagogies and practice, enhance students' subject knowledge, as well as overcome some of the challenges in other areas of pedagogy and practice. Furthermore, the study shows that teacher quality was not substantially reduced despite the challenges arising from the pandemic and concerns that pre-service teachers would not be ready and prepared for a career in the classroom.
Optimal Foraging in Semantic Memory Hills, Thomas T; Jones, Michael N; Todd, Peter M
Psychological review,
04/2012, Volume:
119, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Do humans search in memory using dynamic local-to-global search strategies similar to those that animals use to forage between patches in space? If so, do their dynamic memory search policies ...correspond to optimal foraging strategies seen for spatial foraging? Results from a number of fields suggest these possibilities, including the shared structure of the search problems--searching in patchy environments--and recent evidence supporting a domain-general cognitive search process. To investigate these questions directly, we asked participants to recover from memory as many animal names as they could in 3 min. Memory search was modeled over a representation of the semantic search space generated from the BEAGLE memory model of Jones and Mewhort (2007), via a search process similar to models of associative memory search (e.g., Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1981). We found evidence for local structure (i.e., patches) in memory search and patch depletion preceding dynamic local-to-global transitions between patches. Dynamic models also significantly outperformed nondynamic models. The timing of dynamic local-to-global transitions was consistent with optimal search policies in space, specifically the marginal value theorem (Charnov, 1976), and participants who were more consistent with this policy recalled more items. (Contains 1 table and 5 figures.)
This open access book analyses intercultural dialogue as a concept, policy and ideal in European education policy documentation. The core European transnational organizatons – the Council of Europe ...and the European Union – have actively promoted policies to engender inclusive societies and respond to challenges that diversification may entail. This book, in turn, offers suggestions for improving education policies in super-diversified Europe and beyond, where there is an increasing need for cultural understanding and constructive dialogue. The authors utilize concept analysis to reveal how these organizations seek to deal with dialogue between cultures, as well as weight given to cultural differences and intercultural encounters. This book will be of interest and value to scholars of intercultural dialogue and European education policies.
Schools are under increasing pressure to reclassify their English learner (EL) students to "fluent English proficient" status as quickly as possible. This article examines timing to reclassification ...among Latino ELs in four distinct linguistic instructional environments: English immersion, transitional bilingual, maintenance bilingual, and dual immersion. Using hazard analysis and 12 years of data from a large school district, the study investigates whether reclassification timing, patterns, or barriers differ by linguistic program. We find that Latino EL students enrolled in two-language programs are reclassified at a slower pace in elementary school but have higher overall reclassification, English proficiency, and academic threshold passage by the end of high school. We discuss the implications of these findings for accountability policies and educational opportunities in EL programs.
There is wide variability in the special education eligibility criteria for deafblindness across the United States. This study was a novel examination of variations in state factors, including ...eligibility criteria for deafblindness, to identify potential relationships between state factors and the number of students who are deafblind during the 2018–2019 school year. No state factors correlated to the OSEP Child Count population data. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed factors primarily relating to sensory disability professionals, which correlated to the National Center on Deaf-Blindness population data. Implications for students, personnel, and professional development offerings are discussed.
In diesem Open-Access-Sammelband setzen sich Autor*innen aus unterschiedlichsten Disziplinen mit der Auswirkung einer digitalisierten Öffentlichkeit für die Politische Bildung auseinander. Sie ...erörtern, wie sich die Formen digitaler politischer Kommunikation auswirken, wie der Politikunterricht mit der veränderten Ausgangslage umgehen könnte und welche Kompetenzen Schüler*innen benötigen, um in der digitalen Öffentlichkeit selbstbestimmt und -ermächtigt politisch teilzuhaben. Die Komplexität und die Interdependenzen digitaler Kommunikation verlangen nach einer multiperspektivischen und transdisziplinären Perspektive, der dieser Band verpflichtet ist.
This study examines a diverse set of nearly 100 private institutions that adopted test-optional undergraduate admissions policies between 2005–2006 and 2015–2016. Using comparative interrupted time ...series analysis and difference-in-differences with matching, I find that test-optional policies were associated with a 3% to 4% increase in Pell Grant recipients, a 10% to 12% increase in first-time students from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds, and a 6% to 8% increase in first-time enrollment of women. Overall, I do not detect clear evidence of changes in application volume or yield rate. Subgroup analyses suggest that these patterns were generally similar for both the more selective and the less selective institutions examined. These findings provide evidence regarding the potential—and the limitations—of using test-optional policies to improve equity in admissions.
Improving teacher evaluation is one of the most pressing but also contested areas of educational policy. Value-added measures have received much of the attention in new evaluation systems, but they ...can only be used to evaluate a fraction of teachers. Classroom observations are almost universally used to assess teachers, yet their statistical properties have received far less empirical scrutiny, in particular in consequential evaluation systems. In this essay, we highlight some conceptual and empirical challenges that are similar across these different measures of teacher quality. Based on a review of empirical research, we argue that we need much more research focused on observations as performance measures. We conclude by sketching out an agenda for future research in this area.
PDF
