9o98o9879Chapter One Notes (In Class Notes)

♦ Confidence in Every context

o Teachers' sense of efficacy -> a teacher belief that he or she can reach even
difficult students to help them learn
♦ High Expectations for Teacher and Students
o No Child Left Behind Act (2002)
→ required all students take annual standardized achievement test, in grade 3
– 8 and once more in high school, in reading and math
→ Students should also be tested in science once in each school group
(elem., middle, high)
o Every Student Succeeds Act (2015)
→ schools must test the same subject in the same grades, and at least 95% of
students must participate.
→ Schools at the bottom 5% of test scores, schools with less than 2/3 of their
students graduating, and schools where subgroups constantly
underperform will be considered failing.
→ States are allowed to adopt the Common Core Standards but aren't
required to.
→ States must fund “equitable services” for children in private and religious
schools if those students are eligible for special services.
→ Emphasis on increasing access to preschool by including new funding for
early childhood education.
♦ Do teachers make a difference?
o When teachers establish warm. Caring relationships with their students, similar to
those of an extended family, the students are more engaged.
♦ What is Good Teaching?
o Teachers are confident and committed to their students
o Adapt instruction and assessment to students’ needs
o Taking care of the emotional needs of their students
o Teachers are reflective, constantly thinking back over situations to analyze what
they did and why, and to consider how they might improve learning for their
students.
♦ Models of Good Teaching
o Danielson’s Framework for Teaching
→ 4 domains/areas of responsibility
1. Planning and Preparation
2. Classroom Environment
3. Instruction
4. Professional Responsibilities
→ Divided into 5 or 6 components (22 components total)
 → When used to evaluation each component is divided into 76 elements in
total
→ The evaluation system defines four levels of proficiency for each
component: unsatisfactory, basic, proficient, and distinguished.
o TeachingWorks
→ National project dedicated to improving teaching practices.
→ 19 high – leverage teaching practices, defined as actions that are central to
teaching and useful across most grade levels.
o Measures of Teacher Effectiveness
→ Bill and Melinda Gates foundation
→ Identified three measures that are used together as a valid and reliable way
of assessing teaching that leads to student learning
1. Student gains on state tests.
2. Surveys of student perceptions of their teachers based on the Tripod
Students Perception Survey (survey asking to agree or disagree
statements regarding the student's teacher)
3. Classroom observation from the Danielson (2013) Framework for
Teaching.
♦ The Role of Educational Psychology
o Educational Psychology is a distinct discipline with its own theories, research
methods, problems, and techniques.
o Educational Psychologist study what happens when someone teaches something
to someone else in some setting.
o They study child and adolescent development; learning and motivation –
including how people learn different academic subjects; social and cultural
influences on learning; teaching and teachers, and assessment.
♦ Using Research to Understand and Improve Learning
o Descriptive studies are used to describe events in a particular situation
o A correlation is a number that indicates both the strength and the direction of a
relationship between 2 events or measurements.
→ Ranges from +1.00 to –1.00
→ Positive correlation indicates that the two factors increase or decrease
together
→ Negative correlation means that increases in one factor is related to a
decreases in others
o Experimental Studies
→ Experimentation allows educational psychologist to go beyond predictions
and actually study cause and effect
→ Quasi – experimental studies meet most of the criteria for true
experiments, with the important exception that the participants are not
assigned to groups at random. Instead, existing groups participate.
o ABAB experimental designs
→ Used to determine effects of therapy, teaching method, or other
intervention by (a) observing the participants for a baseline period, (b)
assessing the behavior of interest, then adding and intervention, and noting
the results, (a) removing the intervention and returning to baseline
conditions, (b) lastly, reinstating the intervention
o Clinical Interviews and Case Studies
→ Clinical interviews use open minded questioning to probe responses and to
follow up on answers.
→ Case studies investigate one person or situation in depth.
o Ethnography
→ Ethnographic methods involve studying the naturally occurring events in
the life of a group to understand the meaning of these events to the people
involved.
→ Participation observation involves participating in the group to understand
the actions from the perspective of the people in the situation.
o The Role of Time in Research
→ Longitudinal studies are observing their subjects over many years as
changes occur. They are informative but time consuming, expensive, and
not always practical.
→ Cross sectional studies focus on groups of students at different ages.
→ Microgentic studies are used to intensively study cognitive processes
while the change is actually occurring.
→ It has three basic characteristics: (a) observe the entire period of the
change, (b) make many observations, often using videos recordings,
interviews, and transcriptions, and (c) look at the observed behaviors
moment by moment or trial by trail.
o Qualitative Research
→ Case studies, interviews, observations, analysis, and ethnographies
→ Uses words, dialogue, events, themes, and images as data
→ Used to explore specific situations/people in depth to understand the
meaning of events to the people involved in order to tell their story
o Quantitative Reasearch
→ Correlational and experimental studies
→ Measurements are taken and computations are made of relationships
among variables or differences between groups.
o Mixed Methods research
→ There are three ways these are conducted:
• A reseacrher collects both quantitative and qualitative data at the
same time
 • The researcher collects quantitative data first, then follows this by
performing in–depth qualitative interviews of selected participants.
Used to explain and look for causes.
• Researchers conduct interviews or case studies to identify research
questions, and collect quantitative data as guided by the qualitative
findings.
o Action Research is the systematic observations of teaching methods conducted by
teachers or schools to improve teaching and learning for their students.
♦ Theories for Teaching
o A theory in science is an interrelated set of concepts that is used to explain a body
of data and to make predictios about the results of future experiments.