•PreK-1st instructional alignment was measured by assessing fidelity to an aligned curriculum.•Four alignment profiles emerged: PreK-1st high fidelity; PreK-1st low fidelity; high fidelity in PreK, ...low in kindergarten, and high in 1st, and high in PreK followed by gradual decline.•PreK-1st high fidelity was associated with a sustained PreK boost in literacy and math through 1st.•Low PreK-1st fidelity and high fidelity in PreK followed by low fidelity in kindergarten predicted faster convergence in literacy skills by the end of kindergarten.
This study uses implementation fidelity data from PreK to 1st grade in the Boston Public Schools (BPS) to identify profiles of instructional alignment and examine whether stronger alignment for PreK attenders is associated with sustained benefits of BPS PreK on children's language, literacy, and math skills through first grade. The study includes N = 498 students (mean age = 5.47, SD = 0.30 in K fall). Children who experienced strong instructional alignment across grades had faster gains in literacy (SD = .47) and math (SD = .28) skills through the spring of first grade compared with non-BPS PreK attenders. Mis-alignment predicted faster convergence in literacy skills. Results highlight that both strong fidelity in PreK and better instructional alignment through elementary school may help to sustain the initial benefits of PreK programs through first grade in a subset of outcome domains. Implications for research measuring alignment in a broader range of settings and implications for practice are discussed.
•The BPS district has developed a curriculum to align instruction from P – 2.•Facilitators of implementation include strong leadership and availability of qualified staff.•Barriers to implementation ...have been funding and creating a culture that supports alignment.•The majority of schools have adopted the model but there is variation in adoption across grades.
As states and districts expand access to publicly funded PreK programs, researchers and policymakers have been grappling with experimental evidence demonstrating that the benefits of PreK on academic skills are not likely to last into early elementary school. A leading hypothesis to explain this phenomenon is that PreK and the elementary grades are not aligned with respect to content and mode of instruction. The Boston Public Schools Department of Early Childhood has begun to implement an aligned curriculum and professional development model called Focus on Early Learning to address this issue. The current study describes the components of this aligned model, identifies the facilitators and barriers to implementation, and examines the extent to which the model has been implemented to date. Findings demonstrate that a critical component of Focus on Early Learning is a combination of aligned structures and rich instructional content. A number of structural and process factors have facilitated implementation, but the district has also faced barriers, including funding and the challenge of creating a culture that supports alignment. Although survey and observational data suggest that PreK and kindergarten teachers are implementing the curriculum at moderate levels, there was significant variation in implementation across the study sample. In addition, teachers were less likely to receive professional development to support implementation. Although teachers generally supported the idea of aligning instruction across grades, they were less likely to engage in specific activities to do so, such as having common planning meetings with teachers across grades. Implications are discussed.
This study examined 69 Chinese preschool teachers’ use of feedback strategies in their math lessons. Guided by the Initiation-Response-Follow-up (IRF) framework, math lessons were coded using quality ...feedback strategies in CLASS (CLASS-PreK; Pianta et al., 2008). Specifically, the frequency of teachers’ feedback strategies as well as their effectiveness of engaging children in higher-order thinking were examined. Results showed that teachers were quite familiar with the use of feedback strategies such as recognition, back-and-forth exchanges, and teacher persistence. Moreover, in terms of promoting children’s critical thinking, teachers were ineffective when scaffolding and querying children’s responses and actions.
•Teachers frequently use recognition and feedback loops in math lessons.•Informative or thinking-elicited feedback are seldomly seen in math lessons.•Quality feedback strategies are associated with children’s critical thinking in math.•Teachers ineffectively use scaffolding, queries in math classes.
•We used long-term suspended sediment data for 25 consecutive years from 1993 to 2018.•Annual sediment in the main Mekong River was found decreasing from 1993 to 2018.•Tonle Sap Lake provided ...0.65 ± 0.6 Mt of sediment annually to the Lower Mekong River.•Tonle Sap Lake has become a sink of sediment of 1.35 ± 0.7 Mt annually since 2001.•Net sediment storage of the lake reduces sediment transport to the Mekong delta.
The Mekong River in Southeast Asia, one of the world’s great rivers, has been facing disruption of its sediment balance and resultant impacts on nutrient fluxes, aquatic ecology, floodplains and the delta. Using monitoring data from 1993 to 2018, we estimated the temporal variability of sediment loads in Tonle Sap and Lower Mekong Rivers in Cambodia, assessing the sediment linkage between the Tonle Sap Lake and the Mekong mainstem, which are connected by a seasonally reversing flow through the Tonle Sap River. We estimated the annual sediment in the Mekong mainstem of 72 ± 38 Mt/year at Kratie (upstream) and 78 ± 22 Mt/year at Chroy Changvar from 1993 to 2018 (just upstream of the Chatumuk confluence). Our sediment load estimation of the Mekong River is consistent with other recent estimates of sediment load on the Lower Mekong. However, the result is lower than reported in some older studies (prior to the 2000s), which is consistent with sediment trapping by dams on Upper Mekong mainstem and major tributaries. Our analysis indicates that Tonle Sap Lake provided 0.65 ± 0.6 Mt/year of sediment annually to the Lower Mekong River from 1995 to 2000. However, since 2001, Tonle Sap Lake has become a sink for sediment, accumulating an average of 1.35 ± 0.7 Mt annually. Net storage of sediment in Tonle Sap Lake reduces the annual sediment transport to the delta, further compounding the effects of reduced sediment delivery to the delta resulting from upstream dam development and instream sand mining.
We assessed whether an adaptation of value-added analysis (VAA) can provide evidence on the relative effectiveness of interventions implemented in a large school district. We analyzed two datasets, ...one documenting interventions received by underperforming students, and one documenting interventions received by students in schools benefiting from discretionary funds to invest in specific programs. Results from the former dataset identified several interventions that appear to be more or less effective than the average intervention. Results from the second dataset were counterintuitive. We conclude that, under specific conditions, program VAA can provide evidence to help guide district decision-makers to identify outlier interventions and inform decisions about scaling up or disinvesting in such interventions, with the caveat that if those conditions are not met, the results could be misleading.
•This study measured and described content-rich instruction and cognitive demand in PreK classrooms.•Classrooms used content-rich and cognitively demanding practices at moderate levels.•Content-rich ...instruction consistently predicted positive gains in mathematics skills across the PreK year.•Benefits of content-rich instruction and cognitive demand were stronger for children who started the PreK year with higher levels of mathematics skills.•Associations between either of these constructs and gains in mathematics and language skills did not vary by children's race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or home language.
Currently available measures of PreK classroom quality inconsistently predict gains in children's outcomes. Extant measures may not capture the full range of instructional practices—including the degree to which children are exposed to rich content and cognitively demanding instruction—that are important for supporting the development of early language and mathematics skills. The current study leverages data from systematic observations of classrooms (N = 51) in public schools and community-based organizations implementing the Boston Public Schools prekindergarten program to create reliable measures of content-rich instruction and cognitive demand and explore associations between these constructs and gains in children's (N = 378) language and mathematics skills during PreK. Findings from descriptive analyses revealed that classrooms used content-rich and cognitively demanding practices at moderate levels, and classrooms with higher levels of intervention fidelity generally used higher-quality practices. Classrooms with higher percentages of Black students scored lower on observed cognitive demand. Results from multi-level models revealed that content-rich instruction consistently predicted gains in mathematics skills. There were stronger, positive associations between both content-rich instruction and cognitive demand and gains in mathematics skills for children who started the year with stronger mathematics skills. Neither of the constructs predicted gains in language skills. There was no consistent evidence that associations between either of these constructs and gains in mathematics and language skills varied by children's race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or home language. Findings demonstrate that further work to measure and provide supports for exposure to rich instructional content in PreK is warranted.
Reforms in K-12 science education and their implications for PreK teaching, make this a critical time for developing a unified vision for early childhood science education. The goal of this essay is ...to provide a vision of what it might look like to leverage the best of both early childhood and K-12 science education reform efforts for meaningful science learning opportunities for young children. The essay suggests to best support young children, PreK science education must implement the holistic approach of early childhood education (i.e., physical, social-emotional, and cognitive development) while at the same time taking up the richer scientific disciplinary practices put forth in recent science reform efforts. Bringing together the strengths of both early childhood and science education will support young children in making sense of natural phenomena in the world around them while valuing them as capable science learners with prior experiences.
The Red Panda Ailurus fulgens (Cuvier, 1825) is recognized as one of the most elusive arboreal carnivores of the eastern Himalaya that is poorly documented. We report the first camera trap record of ...the Red Panda from the Prek catchment of Khangchendzonga Biosphere Reserve (KBR) in Sikkim, India. A total of three independent image captures were recorded during the sampling. All occurrence records were exclusively from the sub-alpine habitat and restricted to an elevation range of 3,000–3,850 m. This study not only accentuates the significance of sub-alpine habitats for the conservation of the Red Panda but also elucidates the importance of camera traps as an efficient sampling tool. Through this study, we propose the requirement of a long-term study on the species within and outside the protected areas of Sikkim.
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