Leslie Babinski

School leaders are seeking professional learning opportunities to support early literacy for children who are English learners, who represent about 15% of kindergarten and grade 1 students in public schools in the United States today. Through a prior IES award, researchers created BELLA (Bridging English Language Learning and Academics), a professional learning program for educators of EL students. While efficacy research through a subsequent IES award demonstrated that the BELLA is effectiv...

The purpose of this study is to design, develop, and test an online professional development (PD) program called Bridging English Language Learning and Academics (BELLA) for improving teacher and student outcomes for working with English Learners (ELs). Teacher outcomes include: 1) increased collaboration between English as a Second Language (ESL) and classroom teachers; 2) implementation of high-impact instructional strategies; and 3) incorporation of students' cultural wealth into the clas...

The researchers evaluated the efficacy of BELLA using a randomized trial design with randomization at the school level.

The purpose of this project was to develop and test an intervention to support the development of adolescents' self-regulation skills during the middle school years. The need for intervention during this time period can be seen in a decline in achievement and an increase in discipline problems and truancy. Middle school classroom peer cultures also tend to discourage academically engaged and prosocial behaviors, favoring aggression and defiance. As such, there is reason to provide universal ...

Large numbers of children in United States schools struggle with reading, including a disproportionate number of English learners (ELs). The Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI) is an instructional intervention and professional development program for early reading, designed to help classroom teachers acquire key diagnostic strategies for use with young, struggling readers. The purpose of this study was to determine TRI's efficacy for young ELs, specifically. Previous efficacy studies (R305A0...

In this project, research on adolescent brain development and functioning was integrated into an existing ninth-grade health curriculum, the North Carolina Healthful Living course. The new neuroscience-based health course used pedagogical principles based on social cognitive theory and theories of intelligence and promoted the development of a growth mindset in students (i.e., the belief that brain function, or intelligence, can be improved with practice and effort) and eventual adoption of ...