Power of Two: The Impact of 2 Years of High Quality Teacher Child Interactions

The current study focuses on the cumulative effect on children’s early learning outcomes of the quality of teacher–child interactions over multiple years during early childhood. Using propensity score matching to minimize selection bias, we compared the academic outcomes of children who experienced consistently high-quality or consistently low-quality teacher–child interactions, as defined by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, during prekindergarten and kindergarten. Research Findings: Results indicated statistically significant differences in directly assessed language and literacy skills between children who experienced consistently high- and consistently low-quality instructional support. This was true after just 1 year, and gains were even greater for children who experienced high levels of instructional support over 2 years. Emotional support and classroom organization were not associated with children’s academic learning. Practice or Policy: Although children experience cumulative benefits in response to high-quality instructional supports over 2 years, relatively few children have access to such opportunities. We discuss these results in light of limited consistency in children’s experiences over the early school years and the presence of selection bias.     

Closing the Achievement Gap: A Metaphor for Children Left Behind

The No Child Left Behind Act presents an unprecedented challenge to current educational policy matters. While aimed at addressing the needs of disadvantaged children by claiming to promote equity, justice, and social citizenship among all youth, the new accountability seems to be concerned more with the imperatives of the marketplace. The education framework currently in place becomes a vehicle for social mobility for those few privileged citizens who have the resources and power to make their choices matter, but merely a form of social constraint for those who lack such resources. This paper problematizes the current efforts of reform and examines to what extent they actually benefit the children they are designed to serve.     

The assessment of teaching in higher education: A critical retrospect and a proposal

The first part of this paper (published in Higher Education, Vol. 4, No. 3) summarized fundamental defects in three contemporary approaches to the evaluation of teaching in higher education: assessment of learning outcomes, analysis of teacher characteristics and analysis of pedagogical behavior. The absence of a cumulative coherent theoretical framework for analysis obviated use of data from these sources in support of professional development or productive personnel decisions. A normative conception of teaching was argued as a necessity to justifiable evaluation. In this second essay, the required conception is developed in a context of development of a capacity for critical norm-oriented human action as a central goal of higher education. In developing this conception, teaching is distinguished from other activities frequently incorporating the same techniques: conditioning, indoctrinating, brainwashing, training, informing and instructing. Intent is stipulated as the key factor. The stipulated intent is not to produce learning, but to “bring about” a specified sequence of intervening activities necessary to intellectual development required for attainment of desired general educational goals. A “gnometectonic” sequence integrates pedagogical and student activities which are the foundation of the intended intellectual development. The gnometectonic sequence and a model of intellectual development constitute the essential structure of a potential theory of teaching and the basis for a Teacher Assessment Program. This structure is realized in the construction of student and instructor report forms as a first step in the development of such a program. Data derived from these forms are based on minimal assumptions beyond those implied by the normative teaching model. Preliminary results from trial use of forms-in-development indicate the effectiveness of the model in discriminating teachers in terms of intent, course arrangements in support of that intent and student perceptions of consequences of these arrangements as related to instructor expectations. In addition, reports about relevant pedagogical aspects of a course are differentiated from preference-related reports of course “atmosphere”.