Susan O'Hara

Meeting the needs of English learners (ELs) in U.S. schools is an urgent focal area for education; however few teachers report feeling prepared to meet the needs of ELs. This proposed study aims to test the efficacy of the Academic Language and Literacy in Every Subject (ALLIES) initiative. This intervention was designed to build mentor and teacher capacity across disciplines to promote ELs academic language and literacy development.

In ongoing efforts to improve student learning and the quality of instruction, practitioners and education stakeholders rely on measures of classroom practice. Researchers have been developing classroom observation tools to evaluate teacher performance, such as the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO), which highlights 12 elements of high quality teaching in English language arts (ELA). Although the initial studies demonstrated the power of PLATO as a research tool for ob...