Toward an Understanding of Classroom Context: A Validation Study

Principal Investigators: Drew Gitomer, Ph.D., Educational Testing Services; Courtney Bell, Ph.D., Educational Testing Services
October 2008–June 2012
$581,607

Prevailing models for determining the quality of teaching provide minimal insight into characteristics of teaching that influence student achievement. This research, a collaborative effort between the University of Virginia, RAND, and ETS, will refine and develop a validity argument for a theoretically driven classroom observation model of secondary classrooms. The observation model (CLASS) has strong validity evidence for elementary settings. We propose a validity study of a new CLASS instrument for secondary classrooms. The study will establish relationships between CLASS scores and student learning outcomes, measures of teacher knowledge, and student and teacher views about learning efficacy.

Recasting the Secondary School Classroom as a Context for Positive Youth Development

Principal Investigators: Joseph Allen, Ph.D., University of Virgina; Robert Pianta, Ph.D., University of Virginia
December 2006–April 2012
$1,401,445

This project seeks to enhance the functioning of the single setting in which youth under age eighteen spend the greatest number of their waking hours: The secondary school classroom. Our overarching premise is simple. For all of the attention paid to structural features of schools and to the content of what they teach, perhaps the single greatest determinant of adolescents’ academic outcomes—the extent to which they are motivated and engaged by the interactions that take place between themselves and their teachers within the classroom—has received surprisingly little attention. We propose to implement and assess a novel, validated intervention that integrates principles of adolescent social development and motivation, with a unique, web- and video-conferencing-based system for providing ongoing training to teachers to enhance the motivational qualities of their interactions with students. This proposal targets 80 relatively new teachers within a large, diverse school division, who will be assigned randomly to intervention and control groups. Fifteen students per classroom will also be assessed repeatedly via direct observations and multiple reporters. Analyses will begin by exploring overall intervention effects on classroom processes, student motivation, and student outcomes. Additional analyses, focused upon the specific “active ingredients” of the intervention (e.g., changes in classroom motivational processes), will explore mediating mechanisms by which the intervention influences student-teacher interactions, student motivation, and student achievement. Dissemination is planned via scholarly publications, networks of educational institutions to which the principal investigators belong, and larger-scale implementation of a refined version of the program in several state systems. 

Development of Self-Direction in Youth-Program-Family Interaction Systems: Latino and Non-Latino Adolescents

Principal Investigators: Reed Larson, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Marcella Raffaelli, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
September 2010–August 2013
$640,034

Many afterschool programs aim to foster self-direction. This longitudinal mixed-methods study extends our research on the processes through which critical capacities for self-direction develop within youth’s work on projects, their interactions with staff, and collateral interactions with parents. Youth (ages 13-19, N=240) in 12 programs, program leaders, and youth’s parents will complete questionnaires; subsets will participate in qualitative interviews. The research tests and elaborates prior findings on specific experiences, interactions, supports, and negotiations that facilitate positive feedback cycles through which youth build self-direction capacities. Oversampling Latino youth will allow examination of development of self-direction in this growing and understudied group.

Policy Ideas, Entrepreneurs, and Education Research

Principal Investigators: Lorraine McDonnell, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara; M. Steven Weatherford, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara
July 2010–June 2012
$453,620

The proposed study focuses on how research informs the current movement to establish common K-12 academic standards, and represents a unique opportunity to explore "real time" use of research evidence. It addresses two questions: 1) How is education research used in developing and promoting policy ideas? and 2) What role do policy entrepreneurs play in how research is interpreted, framed, and applied in policy venues? Data will be collected from documentary sources; interviews with researchers, intermediaries acting as policy entrepreneurs, and policymakers; and participant observation. Through process-tracing, case comparisons, and social network analysis, the conditions of research use will be documented.

Student Incorporation and the Sociocultural Contexts of Schools

Principal Investigators: Prudence Carter, Ph.D., Stanford University
December 2006–December 2010
$456,582

Many assume that integrated schools, having improved the overall aggregate educational outcomes of previously disadvantaged social groups, provide better learning environments. Yet, racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in achievement in such schools endure even after accounting for social background factors. Some schools’ sociocultural environments produce an unintentional consequence of wedging the academic divide between social groups. What are the features of educational environments that make the incorporation of certain groups either greater or smaller in schools? Using mixed-methods techniques, the proposed four-school study examines processes and dynamics that reinforce social boundaries and differentially impact the incorporation of different groups.

Promoting Evidence-Based Decision-Making in Youth Mentoring Programs

Principal Investigators: David DuBois, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago
July 2007–June 2010
$196,917

This Distinguished Fellowship focuses on the role of evidence-based decision-making (EBDM) in youth mentoring organizations and agencies (MOA) at both a local and national level. The proposed sites are Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago. The Fellow will directly experience and contribute to strategic planning initiatives at each site, thus enhancing his understanding of internal and external influences on the use of evidence in decision-making within MOAs. Building on these experiences, he will lead an effort at each site to develop and pilot a process for promoting EBDM.