Elementary

This study examines the relationship between internal barriers, professional development, and computer integration outcomes among a sample of fourth- and fifth-grade teachers in an urban, low-income school district in the Southeastern United States. Specifically, we examine the impact of teachers’ computer attitudes, computer anxiety, and computer training on the quality of computer integration in their classrooms. Using data from the Integrating Computing Across the Curriculum project, we utilize a mixed-methods approach to explore these relationships. Our results indicate that teacher attitudes and participation in an intensive computer-based training have a positive effect on computer integration practices. Findings from this study support providing teachers with more computer-based training which aims to improve the quality of classroom integration. This may lead to improvements in teacher attitudes toward computing and an increase in levels of computer integration in the elementary school classroom.

This report summarizes the 2013, 2014, and 2015 findings from a longitudinal survey of district professional development coordinators across the state of Florida. The results are presented with six sections: 1) District policy and practice, 2) Leadership, 3) Funding, 4) Lesson study schedule, 5) Professional development programs, and 6) Sustaining lesson study.

The state of Florida has taken an unprecedented approach to teacher professional development in its Race to the Top
(RTTT) Program application by proposing to promote an international innovation that originates in Japan, “lesson study,” as
a statewide teacher professional development model. Since winning the US$700 million RTTT funding in 2010, the Florida
Department of Education and districts have been promoting lesson study as one of the statewide vehicles to implement
the state standards aligned with the Common Core State Standards. This study analyzed the state and districts’ approaches
to promote lesson study using policy documents, statewide district survey data, and interviews. We found that a majority
of districts mandated lesson study implementation without securing or spending sufficient funding. In addition, the existing organizational structures and routines for professional development pose a major challenge in capacity building of district leaders and teachers to engage in lesson study.

On July 15-17, 2012 the United States National Commission on Mathematics Instruction and Seoul National University held a joint Korea-U.S. workshop on Mathematics Teaching and Curriculum. The workshop was organized to address questions and issues related to math teaching and curriculum that were generated by each country. This report summarizes the presentations and discussions at the workshop.

Educational and societal phenomena can converge to draw attention to a new focus, such as ELs and STEM, and then trigger new research interests. A funding program can play a critical role in shaping these new research interests by prioritizing specific research topics and designs or by requiring particular specializations of researchers. The study examined whether funding provided through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Discovery Research K-12 (DR K-12) program has made a unique contribution to the research in the fields of science and mathematics education for ELs.

This brief gives an overview—and by no means a comprehensive one—of several NGSS-aligned projects in the areas of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development.