From the National Center for Education Research (NCER)

Virtual National Parks Field Trips Expand Access to Social Studies and Science Learning for Middle School Students

One Planet Education Network (OPEN), in partnership with Indiana University School of Education's Quest Atlantis Program, is developing a series of 3D virtual environments that are representations of real-world parks and historic sites. These include Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii, and Mkomazi National Park in Tanzania. This 3D virtual reality game series for middle school students is made possible by a 2008 contract for $850,000 from IES' Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

Virtual environments broaden opportunities for experiential learning by providing interactive web-based activities that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Through the web-based intervention, students can explore natural settings by taking on the roles of Native Americans, park rangers, archeologists, or volcanologists. The embedded storyline and narrative are aligned to standards-based curriculum activities. The goal is to enrich middle school students' social studies and science learning. OPEN will complete the project in fall 2010 with a pilot research study testing the intervention in several middle schools in North Carolina and Indiana.

Even as OPEN is completing this SBIR project, it is disseminating the completed Virtual Mesa Verde National Park to over 45,000 students worldwide via the Quest Atlantis program. This summer and next fall the environments will be available in kiosks at visitor centers at Mesa Verde and Hawaii Volcanoes National Parks. The Virtual Mesa Verde world was also featured in an episode of The Learning Channel's Designing Spaces—Kid Spaces. For more information and a demonstration of the virtual world's project, see http://www.oneplaneteducation.com.

NCER Announces 62 New Research Grants

From a total of 433 applications submitted in the first round of FY 2010 grant applications, NCER recently announced funding for 62 grants totaling approximately $96 million. New awards for the second round of FY 2010 grant applications will be announced in June.

The newly funded projects address a wide range of educational issues. For example,

• Researchers at Stanford University seek to determine the attributes, skills, orientations, and behaviors of school leaders that are associated with well-functioning schools.
• Educational Testing Service researchers will develop a software tool and accompanying teacher professional development to improve teachers' ability to adapt English texts to Spanish for English learners.
• Researchers at Vanderbilt University seek to discover the characteristics of elementary school students with different types of late-emerging reading disabilities as a step toward ultimately preventing their development.
• A team of researchers at SEDL will conduct a scale-up evaluation of the Everyday Mathematics curriculum in kindergarten through grade 5 to determine whether the curriculum improves mathematics learning and, if so, for which students and under what conditions.
• Through the Evaluation of State and Local Education Programs and Policies program, NCER is funding the evaluation of two Michigan high school programs—Michigan's Merit Curriculum, which requires students to complete more advanced coursework; and the Promise Scholarship program, which provides financial assistance for postsecondary education. University of Michigan researchers will evaluate the impact of Michigan's Merit Curriculum on students' course-taking, achievement on the state 11th grade examination, high school graduation, and college enrollment. In addition, they will evaluate the effects of the Promise Scholarship program on college entry, college choice, and college completion.

For a list of new awards, visit http://ies.ed.gov/ncer/projects/10awards2.asp.

For links to current Request for Applications, visit http://ies.ed.gov/funding/.

New Work Published from NCER-funded Research

NCER grantees regularly publish research findings in reports, books, and peer-reviewed journals related to pressing topics related to improving education. Several recent examples include studies examining classroom and school-level factors that influence student academic and non-academic outcomes.

• The importance of the school principal in creating effective schools is the subject of a report released in April by Jennifer King Rice at the Urban Institute. Findings from a series of studies by Rice suggest that the quality of the school principal is related to teachers' satisfaction, parents' perceptions of the school, and student learning. Read "Principal Effectiveness and Leadership in an Era of Accountability: What Research Says" at http://www.caldercenter.org/upload/CALDER-Research-and-Policy-Brief-8.pdf.
• An exploratory study published by Elise Pas, Catherine Bradshaw, Patricia Hershfeldt, and Philip Leaf in School Psychology Quarterly in March suggests a complex relationship between teacher perceptions of self-efficacy and use of school-support services. Anticipating that teachers with low self-efficacy would be more likely to rely on school resources because they feel less able to address their students' needs, the findings instead indicate that teachers with low self-efficacy refer fewer students for disciplinary action and services. Read "A multilevel exploration of the influence of teacher efficacy and burnout on response to student problem behavior and school-based service use" at http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=browsePA.volumes&jcode=spq.
• In the January issue of Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Joanne Carlisle and Dan Berebitsky find a positive relationship between providing teachers with support from literacy coaches and improved reading outcomes for first-grade students. Read "Literacy Coaching as a Component of Professional Development" at DOI: 10.1007/s11145-009-9224-4.

For a complete list of publications by NCER grantees, visit http://ies.ed.gov/ncer/projects/.

Teacher Quality and Student Achievement Study Findings

Recruiting and maintaining teachers is an on-going challenge for many schools in poor neighborhoods. Studies find that schools in low-income urban neighborhoods with higher proportions of at-risk students typically employ teachers with lower qualifications and weaker academic credentials in comparison to schools in more affluent neighborhoods with students from middle or upper income homes. But are these the right characteristics for describing "quality"?

In a recently completed IES study, Richard Buddin of the RAND Corporation and his colleagues conducted a series of analyses on the impact of teacher background characteristics on student learning using multi-year (longitudinal) data from the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest district in the United States, with a high proportion of at-risk students. These researchers identified which teachers were high-quality teachers by analyzing which ones contribute most to student learning gains, using a statistical technique known as value-added modeling.

Similar to other recent studies of value-added effects on teacher quality, Buddin and colleagues find that traditional measures of teacher quality like experience and educational degree are weakly related to student achievement, even though these are the main factors that affect teacher recruitment and salary. They also find that teacher licensure scores have no relationship to student achievement. Teacher effectiveness is unrelated to teacher scores on general aptitude, pedagogic skill, or subject-matter knowledge.

Teacher quality varies substantially from teacher to teacher. Some teachers have more success than others in improving student achievement. However, in contrast to conventional thought, Buddin and colleagues find that high quality teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are broadly dispersed across schools in the district. The distribution of high quality teachers, as defined by value-added teacher effects, is similar between low and high performing schools.

These results led Buddin and colleagues to conclude that in order to improve teacher quality, school systems need to stop rewarding teachers for credentials and experience (input characteristics) and focus more on measuring and rewarding student learning (output results).

For more information on these and other related studies visit: http://rand.org/pubs/authors/b/buddin_richard.html.