IES Staff
Elizabeth Albro
Commissioner of Education Research
NCER
About
Dr. Elizabeth Albro, Commissioner of Education Research at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), U.S. Department of Education, is committed to building bridges between the basic sciences of learning and education practice. Trained in the behavioral and social sciences, cognition, and communication, she received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Chicago. Since joining IES in 2002, she has served as a program officer for multiple research portfolios and as Associate Commissioner of Teaching and Learning. She has participated on multiple interagency committees focused on open science and the federal research investment in language and communication. She has edited several books in the area of reading comprehension, and has published articles in Discourse Processes, Scientific Studies of Reading, and Educational Psychology Review. Prior to joining IES, Dr. Albro was a faculty member, first at, Whittier College and subsequently at Wheaton College (Norton, MA). All of her research is grounded in her own experience as a preschool teacher in Cochabamba, Bolivia
Associated IES Content
Grant
Effects of Implicit Bias on Children's Early Outcomes
The purpose of this project is to examine the relationship between implicit bias, teacher expectations, teacher–child interactions and child outcomes. There are disparities in child discipline and development that can manifest early for poor and/or minority children and can have lasting consequences. Previous research has shown that teachers demonstrate implicit preferences towards White versus minority students. Self-fulfilling prophecies and teachers' lower expectations of children can s...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A200525
Grant
Enhancing the Quality of Instruction in 4-Year-Old Kindergarten
In Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), achievement gaps between students of different race/ethnicity and social status persist across the primary, middle, and secondary school years. MMSD has made reducing educational inequality a key goal, and will partner with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (WCER) to form the Madison Education Partnership (MEP).The partners will work together to enhance the quality of four-year-old Kindergarten (...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H180053
Grant
A Research Partnership to Improve the Quality of Pre-K Classroom Practices
The purpose of the research partnership is to systematically improve overall pre-kindergarten (pre-K) quality through professional development (PD) Dallas ISD provides to instructional specialists (i.e., coaches) and pre-K classroom teachers. The overall goal of the partnership was to focus on data use and evidence to systematically improve and differentiate PD for instructional specialists and teachers. The partnership focused on differentiatingPD for teachers based on teacher need, focusin...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H180015
Grant
A Longitudinal Study of the Effectiveness of a Pre-K Multisensory Literacy Curriculum
In this study, researchers proposed to examine the efficacy of the Ready, Set, Leap! (RSL) literacy curriculum for with at-risk pre-k children. The RSL curriculum focuses on important literacy skills that are essential to reading success in the first grade. It was an interactive, multi-sensory curriculum that was based upon research in literacy and early childhood education. Preliminary research at the time found that it improved literacy learning outcomes for young children.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J030037
Grant
Features of Early Childhood Education Coaching Interventions that Mediate and Moderate Impacts on Teacher-Child Interactions and Child Outcomes
The purpose of this project is to analyze data from two evaluation studies of the MyTeachingPartner (MTP) coaching model to identify malleable coaching factors that are associated with teacher and child outcomes. Recent evidence from the analysis of Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) indicate that teacher-child interactions are related to children's school readiness and school success. Although coaching is widely used, little is known about the possible effects of coaching feature...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170120
Grant
Efficacy of the TELL Curriculum for Preschool Children who are Economically Disadvantaged
The purpose of this study was to determine whether preschool children from low-income families enrolled in classrooms implementing the Teaching Early Literacy and Language (TELL) curriculum demonstrated higher oral language and pre-reading scores at the end of preschool than their peers enrolled in business-as-usual classrooms. TELL is a universal, Tier 1, whole-class curriculum designed to improve school readiness. Results from development and efficacy studies with children who had developm...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170068
Grant
Efficacy of a Targeted Shared Book Reading Intervention for Children Who Meet Screening Criteria in Pre-K
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a targeted shared book reading intervention for improving the language and literacy skills of prekindergarten (Pre-K) children who meet screening criteria on the Preschool Early Literacy Indicators (PELI). Existing research suggests that shared book reading supports young children's knowledge and skill development in three areas most closely linked to later reading achievement: (1) oral language, (2) print knowledge, and (3) phonologi...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170064
Grant
Expanding Early Language and Literacy Spanish Individual Growth and Development Indicators to Monitor Progress: PM-S-IGDIs
The purpose of this project is develop a preschool early language and literacy progress monitoring tool in Spanish, Progress Monitoring-Spanish-Individual Growth and Development Indicators (PM-S-IGDIs), to complement a progress monitoring tool in English (PM-IGDIs) that will be developed with funding from IES. The development of a Spanish progress monitoring tool will allow for frequent assessment of the phonological awareness, oral language, and alphabet knowledge of 4- 5- year old Spanish-...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160077
Grant
Making Progress with Progress Monitoring: Developing Early Literacy and Language Individual and Growth Development Indicators as Progress Monitoring Tools
The purpose of this project is to develop a progress monitoring tool that can be used to assess young children's language and literacy skills and identify children in need of intervention. The research team will develop and validate the Progress Monitoring Individual Growth and Development Indicators (PM-IGDIs), which will assess phonological awareness, oral language, alphabet knowledge and comprehension for 4- and 5-year-old children. The PM-IGDIs will build on and use items from existing ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160080
Grant
Expanding Individual Growth and Development Indicators of Language and Early Literacy for Universal Screening in Multi-Tiered Systems of Support with Three-Year-Olds
The purpose of this project is to develop an extension of an existing measurement system, Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs), to assess the language and literacy development of three year old children and screen children for supplemental intervention in oral language, phonological awareness, and alphabet knowledge/concepts of print. IGDIs are general outcome measures of early development that have been used for screening and progress monitoring in a Response to Intervention...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160034
Grant
Efficacy of the Core Knowledge Language Arts Read Aloud Program in Kindergarten through Second Grade Classrooms
The purpose of this project is to test the efficacy of the Core Knowledge Language Arts: Listening and Learning (CKLL) read aloud program for children in kindergarten through second grade. Many students struggle with reading comprehension in the United States and research has suggested that teachers may foster the development of comprehension by reading aloud to students in primary grade classrooms. However, many teachers are not strategic in choosing texts to read aloud, or follow curricula...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A170635
Grant
Teaching Together: A Multimedia School-Home Intervention for Young Children At-Risk for Academic Difficulties
The purpose of this project is to develop Teaching Together, a curriculum that will provide targeted (Tier 2) language and literacy instruction to preschoolers who are not responding to universal Tier 1 instruction. The Tier 2 intervention builds on an existing, Tier 1 language and literacy supplementary curriculum, Read It Again-PreK!, which has been evaluated in IES funded studies. Children's language and literacy skills are related to later reading achievement and success in school. Exist...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150319
Grant
Evaluating the Efficacy of Learning Trajectories in Early Mathematics
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of using a learning trajectories approach to mathematics instruction to foster the development of early mathematics skills which are predictive of later school achievement. A learning trajectories approach includes a goal for teaching a mathematics concept, a developmental progression of levels of thinking about the concept, and instructional activities and content for each developmental level. Although research has shown that educational...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150243
Grant
Effects of the Incredible Years Dinosaur Classroom Prevention Program on Preschool Children's Executive Functioning and Academic Achievement
The purpose of this project is to evaluate the combined effects of the Incredible Years Dinosaur Classroom Prevention Program (IY Dina) classroom curriculum and the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (IYT) teacher professional development program on classroom climate and subsequent child social-emotional functioning, executive functioning, and early academic skills. Both cognitive and social-emotional aspects of self-regulation are predictive of school readiness and academic achie...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150431
Grant
An Efficacy Trial of the HighScope Preschool Curriculum (HSPC)
The purpose of this project is to evaluate the impact of the HighScope Preschool Curriculum (HSPC) on child, teacher, and classroom outcomes in preschool programs serving children from low-income backgrounds. High quality early childhood education experiences can have a positive and lasting impact on children's development and school readiness skills, particularly for children from low-income families. It is important to examine questions about the efficacy of preschool curriculum because cu...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150049
Grant
Preschool, Family, and Community among Mexican Immigrants
The purpose of this project is to identify mechanisms that are associated with Mexican immigrant families' selection of preschool programs for their children and examine how enrollment in preschool is related to children's school readiness skills. Children from Mexican immigrant families are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population and, unfortunately, have lower school readiness and subsequent achievement than their U.S.-born peers. Children from Mexican immigrant families are unde...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150027
Grant
Large-Scale Psychometric Assessment of the ECERS-3
The purpose of this project is to analyze the psychometric properties of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-3rd Edition (ECERS-3), the latest version of the widely used observational tool designed to assess global classroom quality in preschool classrooms. Classroom quality is associated with young children's pre-academic and social behavioral skills in preschool and later school achievement. Several state and national initiatives have been developed to increase overall quality in...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150109
Grant
Development and Feasibility of the Improving Writing Resources and Interactions in Teaching Environments through Professional Development (IWRITE-PD) for Teachers of Economically Disadvantaged Children
The purpose of this project is to develop and test a professional development program, the Improving Writing Resources and Interactions for Teaching Environments through Professional Development (IWRITE PD), to support preschool teachers' use of writing during instructional activities with the goal of improving children's writing, literacy, and oral language skills. Young children's writing skills are related to their letter knowledge, word recognition, and phonological awareness skills, and...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150210
Grant
Red Light, Purple Light! Developing a Self-Regulation Intervention for Children at Risk for School Difficulty
The purpose of this project is to develop and evaluate the promise of a self-regulation intervention designed for use with children from low-income backgrounds with the goal of promoting the development of school readiness skills. Self-regulation has been identified as a key predictor of school readiness and both short- and long-term academic achievement. Many children, especially those experiencing socio-demographic risks, enter school without adequate self-regulation skills and with few op...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150196
Grant
An Experimental Study of the Effectiveness of Instructional Consultation Teams
At the time of this project, a growing number of K-12 students, including a disproportionate share of minority students, were referred for and received special education services which may have included the use of team-based services. In this project, the researchers aimed to assess instructional consultation (IC) teams, a team-based service delivered to all elementary children. IC teams were problem-solving teams with special training who consult with teachers on instructional content and d...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F050051
Grant
Efficacy of Conversational Responsiveness Preschool Intervention
In this study, the researchers proposed to evaluate the Hanen approach, a research-based technique for improving preschool teachers' interactions with children. The intervention was designed to improved instructional quality, thereby fostering children's language, literacy, and social skills in both the short and long term. In the early 2000s, research indicated that the academic and social problems of disadvantaged students begin well before they enter elementary school, so a strategy for a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F050006
Grant
Evaluating the Efficacy of Read Well Kindergarten
At the time of this study, research suggested that learning to read in the first grade was the best predictor of a child's ultimate success in school but that first-grade reading achievement depends on how much children know about reading before they start the grade. The purpose of this study was to determine if Read Well Kindergarten®, a beginning reading program that uses small group mastery-based reading instruction, enhanced language and literacy skills in 30 schools through the end of ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F050080
Grant
Effects of Enhanced After-School Programs on Educational Outcomes: A Randomized Trial
 In this study, researchers proposed to learn if an enhanced middle school after-school program improved academic performance and the behavior of students in grades 6 to 8 relative to a treatment-as-usual control group. In addition to providing supervision of children while parents are working, after-school programs are often intended to improve academic performance and to alter related student behavior such as attendance, drug use, and conduct. Yet, as of 2005, rigorous research on the eff...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F050069
Grant
Internet Implementation of Empirically Supported Interventions That Can Be Remotely Delivered in Authentic Preschool Programs for Mothers and Teachers: Evaluation of Direct Child and Teacher Outcomes
Many states estimate that half of their students arrive at kindergarten already far behind where they need to be in order to succeed. There is growing consensus that high quality preschool experiences can lay a strong foundation for school readiness even among economically disadvantaged children. However, there is a mismatch between the preparation of most early childhood educators and the preparation needed to optimize classroom practices. Support from parents in the home environment can al...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140386
Grant
Spatial Training in Preschool: Identifying the Malleable Factors
A growing body of literature reveals the importance of early spatial abilities to later success in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Yet by the time American children have entered school, they are already lagging behind their peers in other countries. Preschool children can learn important spatial and mathematical concepts but our current instructional approaches do not foster or support their understanding of STEM concepts. The purpose of this project is to underst...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140385
Grant
Development and Validation of the Systematic Assessment of Book Reading
The purpose of this project is to expand and validate a new version of an observational measure called the Systematic Assessment of Book Reading (SABR), developed with funding from previous studies funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. Measuring the quality of interactive shared book reading within the early childhood classroom represents a specific dimension of teacher-child interactions that is of great interest to researchers and practitioners. However, there are very few standar...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150587
Grant
Building State-wide Quality Rating Strategies for Early Childhood System Reform: Lessons From the Development of Louisiana's Kindergarten Readiness System
The purpose of this project is to validate a new outcomes-based approach to Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) and explore assumptions about the role of parental selection in early childhood programs. High quality early childhood education (ECE) programs can narrow school-readiness gaps, alter children’s life trajectories and yield substantial social returns. However, there is substantial variation in quality, both across and within early childhood sectors (e.g., licensed ch...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140069
Grant
Scalable Approaches for Preparing Early Childhood Teachers: Identifying Costs and Effectiveness of Evidence Based Approaches to Coaching
The purpose of this project is to compare the efficacy of two distinct approaches for providing professional development support to child care teachers: remote, video-based coaching and in-classroom coaching. Both approaches seek to increase the quality of child care teachers’ language and literacy instruction and positive responsiveness to children in order to improve children’s school readiness skills. While support has been found for both coaching approaches, each method has i...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140378
Grant
The CLAVES Intervention Project: Developing a Supplemental Intervention for Comprehension, Linguistic Awareness, and Vocabulary in English for Spanish Speakers
In a prior NCER funded grant (R305A090152, Investigating Vocabulary Breadth and Depth and Comprehension in English Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Elementary School Students), researchers explored the relationships between linguistic and component reading skills and reading comprehension in English monolingual students and Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (ELLs). Findings from this study suggest that skills in linguistic awareness are related to reading skills. Linguisti...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140114
Grant
Multiple-choice Online Cloze Comprehension Assessment (MOCCA): Refining and Validating a Measure of Individual Differences in Reading Comprehension Processes During Reading
Numerous children struggle with reading comprehension and previous research shows that a subset of these children struggle with higher level reading skills, such as maintaining causal coherence while reading. Causal coherence is created through inferences that require the reader to synthesize why an event occurs based on relevant goals previously identified in the text and to generate missing information from background knowledge. Students who struggle with causal coherence typically fall in...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140185
Grant
Teaching the Vocabulary of Comprehension: A Technology-Enhanced System to Enhance At-Risk 3rd Graders' Acquisition and Application of Essential Vocabulary
Results from the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate that more than 60% of fourth graders do not read proficiently. While comprehension difficulties may be influenced by many factors, one compelling reason is that students may not have a deep and flexible understanding and ability to use vocabulary of comprehension. Vocabulary of comprehension is defined as the vocabulary associated with narrative and informational text, text structure, and text processing (e.g. vocabul...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140090
Grant
Enfoque en Ciencia: Extending the Cultural and Linguistic Validity of a Computer Adaptive Assessment of Science Readiness for Use with Young Latino Children
The purpose of this project is to develop and validate an Item Response Theory (IRT) - based, computer adaptive test (CAT) to assess Latino preschoolers’ science knowledge and skills. The research team will extend current IES-funded work (Lens on Science: Development and Validation of a Computer-Administered, Adaptive, IRT-Based Science Assessment for Preschool Children) that is in the final stages of developing and validating a touch screen computer-adaptive child assessment of scienc...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130612
Grant
A Comprehensive Research-Based Computer Assessment and Accommodation System for ELL Students
The lack of research-based evidence on how best to provide appropriate testing accommodations for English language learners (ELLs) creates challenges for policymakers and practitioners in ensuring that results provide valid results for ELL students. This project will examine the effectiveness and validity of the language-based accommodations that are most commonly used for Spanish-speaking ELL students. Studies will focus on the validity of assessments under the different accommodations and ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130223
Grant
Measuring Preschool Program Quality: Multiple Aspects of the Validity of Two Widely-Used Measures
The ability to measure the quality of preschool settings is of central importance in supporting a number of policy initiatives, such as state Quality Rating and Information systems, Head Start recompetition regulations, and the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge. This project will study aspects of validity of two widely used measures of preschool classroom quality: the Early Childhood Environment System Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R) and the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS)....
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130118
Grant
Developing an Early Literacy Assessment for Spanish-Speaking Children in Preschool: PALS español PreK
The Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening in Spanish (PALS español) is an assessment administered in Spanish each fall and spring to Spanish-speaking students in grades K-3 to determine whether they are making adequate progress in learning to read and also to provide instructionally useful diagnostic information to teachers. This assessment, developed through another IES grant (Designing Assessment to Enhance English Literacy Development Among Spanish-Speaking Children in Grades K...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130469
Grant
Kidsteps II: Promoting School Readiness Through Social-Emotional Skill Building in Preschool
The purpose of this project is to evaluate the impact of the Second Step Early Learning (SSEL) curriculum on young children's end of preschool social skills, emotional regulation, executive functioning, and academic readiness skills, and to explore how improved skills at the end of preschool may affect kindergarten readiness screening and kindergarten performance. This will be the first large-scale trial of the SSEL, which incorporates a dual emphasis on social/emotional and executive funct...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130336
Grant
Development of a Web-Based Writing Partner (Strategic Writing Assisted by intelligent tutoring for 5th grade Youth (SWAY)) to Improve Writing Persuasive Essays for 5th Grade Students
Writing is an important skill for learning, communication, and self-expression. However, national assessments indicate many students in the United States do not write proficiently. Persuasive writing is an especially important tool for communication, and the Common Core State Standards indicate that students need to be able to write persuasive essays by the end of fifth grade. The goal of this project was to develop and test a fifth-grade writing intervention, called Strategic Writing Assist...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130705
Grant
Academic Language and Writing for Children in Kindergarten to Fourth Grade—A Longitudinal Study
Writing is an important skill for communication and self-expression in school and in the workforce, but the majority of students in the United States do not write at a proficient level. Some research has suggested that early precursors to writing may be identifiable, and theory suggests oral language may be one such precursor. However, there has been very little systematic examination of association between oral language and writing development. Further, academic (or decontextualized) langua...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160408
Grant
Evaluation of the Language-Focused Curriculum
In this project, the researchers evaluated the efficacy of the Language-Focused Curriculum on preschool children's learning. The Language-Focused Curriculum was designed to improve at-risk children's language development. At the time of this project, evidence suggested that early language delays could lead to later problems in literacy skills and social relations. This research team investigated whether The Language-Focused Curriculum fostered children's oral language development, thereby re...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J030084
Grant
Research and Development of Spanish Individual Growth and Development Indicators (S-IGDIs): Early Literacy Identification Measures for Spanish-English Bilingual Children
The need to understand and prevent low academic achievement in the growing student population of English language learners is one the greatest challenges facing educators today. Existing research provides limited information regarding how trajectories of early literacy and language development in Spanish-English bilingual children predict later literacy achievement. In addition, early childhood programs that seek to promote children's later literacy performance have few tools available to he...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120449
Grant
Getting Ready for School: An Integrated Curriculum to Help Teachers and Parents Support Preschool Children's Early Literacy, Math, and Self-Regulation Skills
Preschool children need language and literacy, mathematics, and self-regulation skills in order to be ready for school. While many curricula focus on one or two of these skills, none takes a fully integrated approach to supporting parents and early childhood teachers in fostering these skills in young children. The purpose of this project is to further develop and expand an existing school readiness curriculum, Getting Ready for School (GRS). The current version of the curriculum targets par...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120783
Grant
Using Validated Measures of Children's Engagement with Teachers, Peers, and Tasks to Guide Teachers' Response Toward Children with Emotional and Behavioral Challenges
Early self-regulation difficulties, particularly evident in children from low-income families, often result in patterns of challenging behaviors (e.g., impulsivity) that negatively impact academic achievement and are demanding for teachers to manage. Evidence-based practices exist for preschool teachers to apply in their work with children with challenging behaviors, but the promise of such practices has gone unrealized as teachers either do not use them or apply them ineffectively. The purp...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120323
Grant
Efficacy Trial of MyTeaching Partner-Mathematics and Science Curricula and Implementation Support System
There are few opportunities for young children, especially children from low-income backgrounds, to be exposed to mathematics and science content in the home environment or prekindergarten classrooms. At the same time, early childhood educators often lack mathematics and science content knowledge and the confidence needed to provide developmentally appropriate instruction to young children. The MyTeachingPartner-Mathematics and Science (MTP-Mathematics and Science) curricula, previously dev...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120631
Grant
A Randomized Efficacy Trial of the Kids in Transition to School (KITS) Program to Improve the School Readiness of Children in Disadvantaged Communities
The purpose of this project is to conduct a randomized control trial of the Kids in Transition to School (KITS) program, an intervention to improve the early literacy, prosocial, emotional, and behavior regulation skills of at-risk children. Designed to support at-risk children and their families during the transition period between prekindergarten and kindergarten, the KITS program was developed to provide a high-intensity, short-term intervention that can be delivered to children before a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120391
Grant
Improving Reading Comprehension of Middle Grades English Language Learners by Combining Structure Strategy with Web-Based Adaptive Tutoring for EL Learners (SWELL)
English language learners (ELLs) are at particularly high risk for poor education outcomes due to poor reading performance. This risk becomes more apparent as ELLs progress through school and knowledge of academic language becomes increasingly important for learning. This project will extend a web-based intelligent tutoring system, Intelligent Tutoring using Structure Strategy (ITSS), designed to teach students explicit strategies for using knowledge of the structure of informational text to...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130704
Grant
Peer Assisted Writing Strategies (PAWS)
While both reading and writing are necessary for success in school and the workplace, the vast majority of research and intervention development has focused on reading skills. Most of this research suggests that early intervention is important to improving reading achievement. However, less is known about writing, and fewer interventions have been developed to help students learn to write. Still, research in writing that has been completed to date suggests that early intervention may be imp...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140701
Grant
Exploring the Contribution of Social, Cognitive, and Linguistic Factors on the Development of Style Shifting by Young African-American English-speaking Students Learning to Read
On average, African-American students significantly underperform academically in comparison to their non-African American peers, especially in the foundational area of reading achievement. Part of the reason for this underperformance may be that many young African-American students, especially in urban areas, are speakers of African-American English (AAE), a rule-governed variety of English that contributes to the culture of African-American communities. New research has shown that there is ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120320
Grant
The Roles of Instruction and Component Skills in Reading Achievement
Understanding why some schools are more successful at teaching reading than others requires examination of three key components: student characteristics, school practices such as instruction, and school context effects. Using the Texas Reading First dataset, the research team will complete a secondary data analysis of student reading performance in over 200,000 students in 809 schools in 222 districts over six years. The researchers will examine the nature and growth of student literacy skil...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120785
Grant
Improving School Readiness with Emotional Literacy: Developing the RULER Preschool Program
The goal of this project is to create a developmentally appropriate intervention to promote emotional literacy for preschool-aged children. Emotional literacy refers to the knowledge and skills related to handling emotions that are related to children's school readiness and academic success. By teaching young children to recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate emotion, the intervention is expected to support the development of strong self-regulatory and social skills in preschool...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120172
Grant
Development of Oral and Silent Reading Fluency and Their Relation with Reading Comprehension in First Through Third Grade Students
Despite the recognized importance of reading fluency for reading comprehension development, research has tended to focus on oral reading fluency with little knowledge of how silent reading fluency develops over time and how to best support children during the transition from oral to silent reading. The goals of this study were to: (1) explore development of oral and silent reading fluency (including reading prosody) and their relation with reading comprehension for first through third grade ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150589
Grant
Cultivating Young Scientists: Expanding Foundations of Science Literacy
Teaching children how to think scientifically in the preschool years has the potential to address an existing achievement gap in early science and provide all children with the skills necessary to continue learning and thinking critically throughout the school years. Unfortunately, early childhood teachers typically lack content and pedagogical knowledge in science, and are not prepared to provide developmentally appropriate experiences that support children's early science learning and read...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120193
Grant
Computer Based Assessment System for Reading (CBAS-R): Skills Analysis and Progress Monitoring
Despite the recent increase in the number of reading assessments created for use in classrooms, very few assessments are designed to provide ongoing instructionally-relevant information to teachers. Useful reading assessments may be those that help teachers to identify students who are at risk for reading problems. In this study, researchers intend to further develop and validate the Computer-Based Assessment System for Reading (CBAS-R), which is designed to be a highly-efficient tool to mon...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120086
Grant
Improving Classroom Learning Environments by Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE): A Cluster Randomized Controlled Efficacy Trial
This study was a test of the Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) professional development program that was developed with funding from a previous IES Development award. CARE is designed to enhance teachers' capacity to provide a supportive and engaging context for social-emotional and academic learning. CARE provides emotion skills instruction, mindfulness/stress reduction practices, and caring and listening practices through group sessions and distance coaching. The pur...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140692
Grant
Developing Consultation and Collaboration Skills: ESL and Classroom Teachers Working Together with Students and Families
This project will develop a new professional development program designed to improve English language learners (ELLs) language and literacy skills by building stronger home-school connections, leveraging the expertise of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers, and increasing elementary school teachers' skills in meeting the instructional needs of ELLs. The Developing Consultation and Collaboration Skills (DCCS) program will include training for ESL specialists in how to help teachers as...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120290
Grant
WORLD Efficacy Study
The Words of Oral Reading and Language Development (WORLD) is a shared book reading intervention previously developed, piloted, and refined through an IES Development grant. This intervention is designed to develop and accelerate science and social studies content-related vocabulary and background knowledge in preschool-aged children for later reading with comprehension. WORLD incorporates explicit and implicit shared book-reading strategies (e.g., prompting, elaborating, inferencing) in ric...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140698
Grant
Efficacy of Supplemental Early Vocabulary Connections Instruction for English Language Learners
The goal of this project is to study the efficacy of a supplemental reading intervention for English language learners (ELLs) in kindergarten called Early Vocabulary Connections (Connections). This intervention is designed to coordinate the development of beginning decoding skills, spelling, and vocabulary knowledge in English. In addition to immediate effects on word reading and vocabulary, participation in Connections is hypothesized to improve learning of new vocabulary and general compre...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130700
Grant
Fostering Reading Engagement in English-Monolingual Students and English Language Learners Through a History Curriculum
National statistics point to a crisis in adolescent reading. According to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 70% of 8th graders are at or below the basic level in reading, leaving them unable to make inferences or connections within and across texts, explain causal relations, or analyze text features. Further, only 22% of 8th graders agree that reading is their favorite activity and only 13% agree that they learn a lot from reading books. In this project, the research team...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120814
Grant
Focus in Early Childhood Curricula: Helping Children Transition to School
In this project, the research team planned to evaluate the effects of a developmental model curriculum (Creative Curriculum 3rd ed.) and an educational model curriculum (Bright Beginnings) with children ages 4 and 5 who are predominately poor, rural, and Caucasian. Also, the researchers planned to complete complementary research focused on the level of children's engagement in literacy-based classroom activities, language development, self-regulation, narrative comprehension, and concepts ab...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J020020
Grant
Evaluation of the Early Literacy and Learning Model (ELLM): a Curriculum and Instructional Support System
In this project, the researchers evaluated the effectiveness of the preschool intervention, Early Literacy and Learning Model (ELLM), on literacy achievement of children from low-income families during preschool and their subsequent achievement in kindergarten and first grade. This research aimed to explore the relationship between child, teacher, and instructional environment characteristics and the impact of ELLM teacher support infrastructure on preschool teachers' classroom practices, ef...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J020040
Grant
Evaluation of the Effects of Creative Curriculum on Classroom Quality and Child Outcomes in Head Start
In this project, the researchers examined the effectiveness of Creative Curriculum (4th ed.) as an intervention with low-income children enrolled in Head Start. Additionally, the researchers planned to investigate the impact of Creative Curriculum on the developmental outcomes of children with special needs through complementary research.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J020039
Grant
Evaluation of Pre-Kindergarten Curricula in Head Start and Public School Settings
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J020014
Grant
Impact of the Project Approach on Children's School Readiness and School Achievement
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J020027
Grant
Granite Ladders: An Experimental Evaluation of an Early Literacy Curriculum for New Hampshire's Preschoolers
In this project, the research team examined the effects of an early literacy preschool curriculum, Ladders to Literacy, used as a supplement to Creative Curriculum on the pre-reading skills of young children living in poverty in New Hampshire. Additionally, the researchers examined differences in outcomes for children in urban and rural classrooms, half-day and full-day classes, English language learners and English-fluent learners, and children with disabilities.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J020051
Grant
Randomized Evaluation of Curiosity Corner With Follow-Up Into SFA and Control Elementary Programs
In this project, the researchers aimed to determine the efficacy of combining Curiosity Corner, a comprehensive preschool program, and a subsequent comprehensive school reform program called Success for All for students in kindergarten and first grade. Curiosity Corner was a program that provided an integrated curriculum, professional development, and materials for serving at-risk preschool children. Success for All was an extensively evaluated program for older children that used systematic...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J030138
Grant
Project Construct: A Catalyst for Early Achievement
In this project, the research team proposed to assess the efficacy of Project Construct, a curriculum shaped by research about children's thinking. Project Construct was based on the idea that children actively construct their own knowledge through "hands-on, minds-on" learning experiences. In this study, the investigators intended to examine the impact of Project Construct on students' general knowledge, language, mathematical, and socio-emotional development.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J030103
Grant
Positive Action for Social and Character Development
In this project, the researchers aimed to evaluate Positive Action, a program intended to promote students' social skills and self-concept and reduce anti-social behavior by providing a comprehensive approach that includes grade-specific curricula, school-wide climate change, and parental involvement. Positive Action included content to help with social and emotional learning and school climate. The researchers proposed to determine whether Positive Action impacted such factors and student a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305L030004
Grant
Assessing the Efficacy of a Comprehensive Intervention in Physical Science on Head Start Teachers and Children
The purpose of this project is to test the efficacy of the Foundations of Science Literacy (FSL) intervention, a professional development program that was developed for use with Head Start teachers. By focusing on the Head Start community, FSL directly addresses the achievement gap in early science education by providing a framework for teachers to learn and implement preschool science instructional practices in classrooms serving children from low-income backgrounds. This study will exam...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090114
Grant
Implementation & Impact of Reading, Mathematics & Science Interventions for Middle & High School Students in the Context of Talent Development reforms
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305W020003
Grant
Scaling-up Effective Intervention for Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children
In this project, researchers intended to study the implementation of two first grade reading interventions, Proactive Reading and Responsive Reading, both of which differ greatly in theory and instructional design. The expected outcomes of this project included an evaluation of the two reading interventions for young children from a large number of schools.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305W030257
Grant
Scaling Up an Assessment-Driven Intervention Using the Internet and Hand-held Computers
In this project, the researchers proposed to scale up quality assessment-driven intervention using the Internet and handheld computers. The assessment instruments that are the focus of this project are the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI) and the Spanish Tejas Lee. This project team aimed to develop electronic tools for supporting teachers in administering and interpreting the TPRI and Tejas LEE so that they could become expert in linking results to instruction. The system was to enabl...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305W020005
Grant
The New 3R's – Reading, Resilience, and Relationships in After-School Programs
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305W030036
Grant
Society for the Advancement of Education Sciences: A proposal for a new scientific organization
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U040006
Grant
Love in a Big World
In this project, the researchers evaluated Love in a Big World (LBW), a character education program designed to promote children's positive relationships with their teachers and peers and enhance the classroom and school environment. The LBW curriculum uses stories to teach students about positive character traits and their use, staff and principal training, a peer-recognition program, school assemblies, service projects, motivational morning announcements, and newsletters.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305L030173
Grant
Social and Character Development in Rural Youth: The Competence Support Program
In this project, the researchers aimed to evaluate the Competence Support Program, a multi-level program that includes social skills training, school-wide behavior management, and school-wide training in classroom social dynamics management. They intend to test the ways in which the program trains teachers to identify student peer groups, the leaders of those groups, and the socially aggressive students. Researchers also examined how students' personal characteristics (such as risk status), ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305L030162
Grant
Second Step
In this project, the researchers proposed to evaluate the effects of Second Step, a curriculum designed to develop students' social-emotional skills. They tested the curriculum in schools in which character development planning teams were used to plan specific strategies or activities in the school, set implementation standards, review feedback on program implementation, and engage in group planning.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305L030002
Grant
Academic and Behavioral Competencies Model
In this project, researchers aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the Academic and Behavioral Competencies (ABC) model, a school-wide program designed to enhance students' social competencies and behavior. The ABC model included strategies such as school-wide discipline rules, social skills training, peer tutoring, peer mediation, and parent training, and include methods of working with children with impaired behavioral or social functioning (such as ADHD).
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305L030065
Grant
Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies
In this study, the researchers evaluated the impact of the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) program, which was designed to strengthen all kindergarten through fifth grade students' emotional literacy, positive peer relations, and social problem-solving. The researchers evaluated the effects of PATHS in New York and Minnesota.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305L030165
Grant
Scaling Up a Language and Literacy Development Program at the Pre-Kindergarten Level
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305W020002
Grant
Word Learning and Comprehension: New Laboratory Approaches and Classroom Studies
In this project, the researchers explored how vocabulary-related instruction in schools might reduce the differences in reading achievement between students who enter school with large vocabularies and those who enter school with substantially smaller vocabularies.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G020006
Grant
Coh-Metrix: Automated Cohesion and Coherence Scores to Predict Text Readability and Facilitate Comprehension
In the early 2000s, the tools used to determine the readability of texts were severely limited, may not have helped schools or researchers appropriately identify texts that are well-matched to readers, and may have been paradoxically aggravating comprehension difficulties. To address this issue, the research team proposed to develop two automated tools: Coh-Metrix and Coh-GIT. These tools aimed to enable writers, editors, and educators to more accurately estimate the appropriateness of a tex...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G020018
Grant
Research on and With Novel Educational Technologies for Comprehension
In this project, the researchers proposed to develop a series of computer-managed instructional activities to help students who enter the learning environment with small vocabularies acquire the larger vocabularies necessary for high-level comprehension. These new automated assessment tools can be embedded in ongoing reading and writing activities within an automated literacy tutor.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G020027
Grant
The Story Read Aloud Project: The Development of an Innovative Instructional Approach to Promote Comprehension and Vocabulary in First Grade Classrooms
In this project, the researchers proposed to design a read-aloud intervention to enhance first-grade children's vocabulary, use of comprehension strategies, and complex thinking about text. The researchers on the project contended that explicit teaching of these skills was necessary to develop reading proficiency. However, in the early 2000s, most first-grade teachers spend substantial time reading aloud to their classrooms but not explicitly teaching comprehension skills (retelling a story,...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G020057
Grant
Group Discussions as a Mechanism for Promoting High-Level Comprehension of Text
In this project, the researchers proposed to identify which types of communication during group discussion enhance grade 4 and 6 students' high-level comprehension and develop instructional approaches and necessary supporting materials to facilitate the use of group discussion to improve such comprehension and, ultimately, reading comprehension.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G020075
Grant
Reading to learn: Investigating general and domain specific supports in a technology-rich environment with diverse readers learning from informational text
In this project, this research team proposed to develop a computer-based instructional approach to support struggling readers and accelerate their development of reading comprehension, especially for informational text. In addition, the researchers wanted to determine how the genre of the text (narrative vs. science), the way in which the text was presented (multi-media website vs. digital text only), and how varied computer-based supports affected text comprehension by both strugg...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G020041
Grant
Instruction Of Reading Comprehension: Cognitive Strategies Or Cognitive Engagement
Levels of student proficiency in reading comprehension in the United States remain low, and there is little evidence to suggest any increase is occurring in the use of effective instruction in reading comprehension. Research has established the efficacy of several approaches to teaching reading comprehension, but little is known about why these approaches work, and teachers find it difficult to actually implement effective approaches in their teaching. The purpose of this study is to develop...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G030140
Grant
Improving Comprehension And Writing Through Reasoned Argumentation
In this project, the researchers developed two integrated environmental and public policy units for use with Collaborative Reasoning, an education intervention using intellectually engaging classroom discussion to improve students’ ability to comprehend, evaluate, and produce arguments. These units were developed to help teachers integrate Collaborative Reasoning into their content-based courses. After completing the development of the units, the researchers carried out a pilot study t...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G030070
Grant
Project VITAL: Vocabulary Intervention Targeting At-risk Learners
At the time of this study, research indicated that vocabulary knowledge played an important role in the reading process and reading comprehension, but little was known about how to teach vocabulary effectively. Further, the evidence showed that a gap in vocabulary knowledge emerged between at-risk students and their peers before they enter kindergarten and grew larger in the early grades. In this project, the researchers proposed to develop and evaluate strategies designed to improve vocabul...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G030250
Grant
Teaching Elementary Students To Comprehend Expository Text
In the early 2000s, research suggested that students' lack of exposure to and instruction in such expository texts slowed their progress in reading as they moved into fourth grade and beyond and that a lack of understanding of the structures of such texts frequently contributed to their difficulties. The researchers hoped that improved instructional practice would better prepare young students to comprehend expository text in the content textbooks they would encounter as they progressed thro...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G030283
Grant
Intelligent Tutoring Using The Structure Strategy To Improve Reading Comprehension Of Middle School Students
Learning to read is fundamental to learning and life-time success. Some students have difficulties understanding what they read, not because they can't read at all, but because of how they read. The purpose of this project is to develop and test the efficacy of various features of a web-based intelligent tutor designed to teach middle school students who are struggling readers how to use the structure of the text to help them understand what they are reading. Students are taught to recognize...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G030072
Grant
Origins Of Individual And Developmental Differences In Reading Comprehension
In this project, the researchers aimed to explore reading comprehension processes in order to develop a model of reading that could eventually inform the development of instructional practices and measurement.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G030104
Grant
Reader-Specific Lexical Practice For Improved Reading Comprehension
In this project, researchers proposed to iteratively develop and test an intervention to support  reading comprehension for university students and students in third through sixth grade. This intervention was to include a web-based search engine and intelligent tutoring system. The students were to use the search engine to select passages on the Internet on topics of interest that also met specific standards of reading difficulty. As students used the search engine, the search engine would ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G030123
Grant
Quick Reads Supplementary Tutoring Efficacy and Replication Trials
In this project, the researchers proposed to test the efficacy of the Quick Reads fluency program as a supplementary or remedial intervention to improve student outcomes. The researchers aimed to provide evidence on whether Quick Reads could be used effectively by paraprofessionals with groups of two or four students. At the time of this project, paraprofessional tutors were often assigned to work with students with poor reading comprehension, but they often lack access to research-based pro...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040103
Grant
Toward More Meaningful Decisions about Comprehension Instruction
In this project, the researchers proposed to develop standardized lessons using common texts and two major approaches to comprehension instruction. The researchers would then implement the approaches and pilot test their promise for improving education outcomes. In the early 2000s, research suggested that the field needed a deeper understanding of the kind of instructional practices that affect students' comprehension. Two approaches emerged: a strategies approach, in which students are expl...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040049
Grant
iSTART: Interactive Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking
In this project, the researchers aimed to further develop and evaluate an automated reading strategy intervention called iSTART. This interactive strategy training system helps students understand and learn from difficult text by teaching them to use active, effective reading strategies. The researchers proposed to expand the existing iSTART such that it could be easily integrated into classrooms by increasing the number of texts and the range of domains available for reading strategy practi...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040046
Grant
Improving Adolescent Reading Comprehension: A Multi-Strategy Reading Intervention
At the time of this study, 26 percent of adolescents read below basic level, which was a topic of concern in the media, professional conferences, and political venues. Adolescents from minority groups, those who lived in poverty, and those with disabilities were even more disadvantaged in terms of literacy attainment. Hence, the researchers proposed to develop and pilot test strategies to assist on high school adolescents with limited reading proficiency.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040011
Grant
ICARE: Independent Comprehensive Adaptive Reading Evaluation System
In this project, the researchers planned to develop and validate a system called ICARE to address the problem of providing effective, inexpensive, and comprehensive reading assessment to any student in need. The researchers’ goal in creating ICARE was to quickly separate readers who do not have reading problems from those who do. For students with problems, it would identify the nature of underlying problems with engaging and non-threatening testing. Additionally, ICARE would recommend...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040097
Grant
Assessing Reading Comprehension with Verbal Protocols and Latent Semantic Analysis
In this project, the researchers proposed to develop and test a new automated on-line reading strategy assessment tool called the Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (R-SAT). In the early 2000s, research suggested that students' difficulty with reading does not arise from a deficient in component language skills, such as word decoding, but from not being able to form coherent representations of the text. Readers who adopt a low standard of coherence read passively, creating a sparse and perhaps...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040055
Grant
Embedding Knowledge-Focused Reading Comprehension Strategies in Cumulative Content-Area Instruction in Grades 3-4-5: An Assessment of Immediate, Transfer, and Long-Term Impact on Reading Achievement
In this project, researchers planned to study the impact of embedding a knowledge-focused, three-part reading comprehension strategy complemented by oral activities on student ontological knowledge. At the time of the study, research suggested that student comprehension of subject-matter texts in grades 4 through 12 was a significant educational problem. In this study, the researchers aimed to evaluate approaches to help students in grades 3 to 5. They proposed to evaluate classrooms that us...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040089
Grant
Developing Reading Comprehension Assessments Targeting Struggling Readers
In the early 2000s, an estimated 26 percent of the 4.5 million 8th graders were below basic literacy. Among adults, about 40-44 million Americans had minimal or no proficiency in prose literacy. This project team addressed the pressing need for comprehension assessments for adolescent and adult struggling readers by developing a series of diagnostic assessments aimed at identifying struggling readers and then providing information about the specific skills or combinations of skills the reade...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040065
Grant
Evaluating a Multicomponent Reading Intervention Designed to Address the Diverse Needs of Struggling Readers in Late Elementary School
In this project, the researchers developed a multi-component reading program to address the diverse needs of late elementary school students who are struggling readers. The researchers proposed that any intervention designed to work with these children must be multi-pronged, citing that national evaluations consistently demonstrate that approximately one-third of fourth graders do not easily make sense of what they read. The research team developed instructional dialogues, strategies, and ma...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050101
Grant
Print Referencing Efficacy
In the early 2000s, research showed that there were substantial early differences in children's emergent literacy skills and that those skills contribute to long-term outcomes in children's reading achievement. Additionally, research showed that intervening before children reached elementary school significantly decreased the likelihood of their developing reading difficulties. This research team implemented and rigorously evaluated a preschool literacy intervention designed to facilitate ch...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050005
Grant
Diagnostic Assessment of Reading Comprehension: Development and Validation
At the time of this study, available tools for the assessment of reading comprehension had limited use in profiling students' strengths and weaknesses in the components of reading comprehension. Also, these tools were affected by students' ability to decode the words in texts, were non-informative for teachers in guiding instruction, and were limited in assisting teachers of language minority students. In this project, researchers purposed to develop a diagnostic assessment of reading compre...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050201
Grant
Variations in Procedures to Improve Reading Fluency and Comprehension
Many poor readers struggle with word reading and often exhibit slow, halting, error-laced reading or reading that lacks fluency. Phonemic awareness, decoding, vocabulary, language skill, knowledge, and reading fluency all directly or indirectly contribute to reading comprehension. In this 3-year research project, the researchers intended to implement and evaluate approaches to improving the reading fluency and, by extension, the reading comprehension of struggling readers in grades 2 and 4. ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050122
Grant
Project Words of Oral Reading and Language Development (Project WORLD)
At the time of this study, there were few interventions that specifically targeted developing comprehension skills among preschool children. In this project, the researchers examined the effectiveness of a preschool curriculum designed to bridge the vocabulary and comprehension gap that existed for many disadvantaged children. The curriculum integrated preschool and home learning, narrative and informational text, and word and world knowledge. At the conclusion of this project, the investiga...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050121
Grant
The Read Aloud Curriculum in First Grade Classrooms: Furthering Our Understanding of Immediate and Long-Term Impacts and Causal Influences
In this project, the researchers proposed to test the effectiveness of the Read Aloud Curriculum, which they had developed under a previous IES grant (R305G020057), and to investigate factors that count for its impact. This first-grade read-aloud curriculum was designed to expose children to narrative and expository text and to provide instruction about the structural elements of text, key vocabulary, and how to make connections across related texts. Although much reading instruction in firs...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050216
Grant
Improving Reading Comprehension for Struggling Readers: Understanding the Roles of Vocabulary Development, Guided Strategy Use, and Spanish Language Supports in a Digital Reading Environment
The purpose of this project was to develop and test a technology-based instructional approach to improving reading comprehension among diverse struggling fifth-grade readers, including English language learners (ELLs). Over 3 years, the researchers planned to conduct 3 studies that developed and refined a digital reading environment called a universal learning edition (ULE), which has strong, embedded supports for reading strategies and active vocabulary learning. At the end of this project,...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050029
Grant
Assessment of Comprehension Skills in Older Struggling Readers
In this project, the researchers aimed to develop a new comprehensive, computerized language assessment battery, called the Comprehensive Assessment of Reading and Listening (CARL) test. CARL was organized according to psycholinguistic principles and used to assess the comprehension problems of older readers (students in grades 7 to 10). Informing this measure was the observation that older struggling readers fail to read well for variety of reasons including difficulties at the word, senten...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050083
Grant
Vocabulary and Abstract Language Enhancement (VALE) to Improve Reading Comprehension in English Language Learners
In 2003, 56 percent of Latino 4th graders scored at or below the basic level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessment. Low vocabulary levels were found to be one of the primary correlates of reading comprehension difficulties among Latino children. In this project, the researchers aimed to develop and pilot test a curriculum designed to improve the vocabulary and understanding of abstract language of these at-risk students during their kindergarten year. A...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050025
Grant
Building Language for Literacy and Core Knowledge
In this project, the researchers proposed to evaluate the efficacy of two widely used prekindergarten-Building Language for Literacy and Core Knowledge-against business-as-usual. Through their evaluation, the researchers aimed to produce findings about the curricula and the different levels of implementation necessary for student learning. They were also to provide data about how well specific kinds of students learn in the various conditions.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J030120
Grant
Scaling Up the Implementation of a Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics Curriculum in Public Preschool Programs
The primary purpose is to improve school readiness and subsequent achievement in math of students from low-income families. Low-income children enter kindergarten behind their middle-class peers in math knowledge. This gap in knowledge persists through high school. To work on addressing this issue, the investigators plan to examine the effectiveness of a pre-kindergarten mathematics intervention implemented at scale across two types of public preschool programs serving low-income children...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305K050004
Grant
Understanding and Facilitating Symbolic Learning
In this project, researchers developed and tested interventions designed to help parents and teachers use symbolic objects, such as manipulatives, more effectively. The ability to understand letters, numbers, and mathematical symbols is critically important to learning in school and teachers often use such objects, commonly called manipulatives, to facilitate children's learning of mathematics. However, the underlying assumption that interacting with manipulatives would improve mathematics l...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050059
2024 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting
Welcome to the 2025 IES Principal Investigators (PI) Meeting—our first in-person meeting in five years! The PI Meeting provides a unique occasion to bring together the IES community to learn from other researchers and IES staff about common challenges and opportunities facing the field. We hope that you use this meeting as a place to reconnect with existing colleagues, as well as to build new cross-disciplinary relationships.
Reading for Understanding Research Initiative
The Reading for Understanding Research Initiative (Reading for Understanding) was created to develop effective approaches for improving reading comprehension for all students.
Program Information
2019 Program Information includes Agenda, Speakers and Posters
Program Information
Welcome to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Annual Principal Investigators Meeting! This year’s theme, Relevance & Rigor: Creating the Future of Education Research, was selected to underscore IES’ commitment to supporting high-quality scientific research that will advance education practice and policy by sharing information in formats that are useful and accessible to educators, parents, policymakers, researchers, and the public.
Program Information
Welcome to the 2022 IES Principal Investigators Meeting! Our theme this year is Advancing Equity and Inclusion in the Education Sciences. Over the past 20 years, IES has supported rigorous and relevant research to help identify, measure, and address disparities in education access and outcomes. However, disparities persist and have been further exacerbated by COVID-19, underscoring the importance of advancing equity and inclusion in the education sciences.
Program Information
Welcome to the 2020 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting! Our theme this year, Closing the Gaps for All Learners, underscores IES’s objective to support research that improves equity in access to education and education outcomes.
Program Information
2023 Program Information includes Agenda, Keynote Speakers and Session Materials
Minutes of Meeting: May 8-9, 2006
NBES meeting minutes on May 8-9, 2006
Minutes of Meeting: April 7-8, 2010
NBES meeting minutes on April 7-8, 2009
Minutes of Meeting: October 5, 2012
NBES meeting minutes on October 5, 2012
Minutes of Meeting: December 4-5, 2023
NBES meeting minutes on December 4-5, 2023
Minutes of Meeting: February 24, 2012
NBES meeting minutes on February 24, 2012
Minutes of Meeting: September 11, 2023
NBES meeting minutes on September 11, 2023
Minutes of Meeting: November 16, 2015
NBES meeting minutes on November 16, 2015
Minutes of Meeting: February 22, 2013
NBES meeting minutes on February 22, 2013
Minutes of Meeting: October 14, 2011
NBES meeting minutes on October 14, 2011
Minutes of Meeting: June 29, 2011
NBES meeting minutes on June 29, 2011
Minutes of Meeting: June 20, 2012
NBES meeting minutes on June 20, 2012
Minutes of Meeting: June 16, 2014
NBES meeting minutes on June 16, 2014
Minutes of Meeting: November 9, 2009
NBES meeting minutes on November 9, 2009
Minutes of Meeting: June 03, 2013
NBES meeting minutes on June 03, 2013
Minutes of Meeting: January 31, 2014
NBES meeting minutes on January 31, 2014
Minutes of Meeting: September 29, 2010
"NBES meeting minutes on September 29, 2010
2022 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting
Welcome to the 2022 IES Principal Investigators Meeting! Our theme this year is Advancing Equity and Inclusion in the Education Sciences. Over the past 20 years, IES has supported rigorous and relevant research to help identify, measure, and address disparities in education access and outcomes. However, disparities persist and have been further exacerbated by COVID-19, underscoring the importance of advancing equity and inclusion in the education sciences.
2019 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting
Welcome to the 2019 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting! Our theme this year, Critical Questions and Practical Solutions: Improving the Practice and Usefulness of Education Research, highlights the importance of the connections between research and practice, and serves as an invitation for candid discussions of the challenges in conducting education research.
2020 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting
Welcome to the 2020 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting! Our theme this year, Closing the Gaps for All Learners, underscores IES's objective to support research that improves equity in access to education and education outcomes. Rigorous research can help identify, measure, and address persistent disparities in education.
2023 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting
Welcome to the 2023 IES Principal Investigators Meeting! Our theme this year is Building on 20 years of IES Research to Accelerate the Education Sciences. Our Co-Chairs for this year’s PI Meeting are Eunsoo Cho (Michigan State University) and Roddy Theobald (American Institutes for Research).
Blog
Letter from the Commissioner: Providing Clarity on NCER Funding and Fiscal Year 2023 Competitions
On May 26th, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) posted a Federal Register notice, which shared details about the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 funding opportunities for the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and National Center for Special Education
Date published:
Jul 28, 2023
Blog
Letter from the Commissioner: Emerging Themes from NCER FY 2022 Awards
On May 26th, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) posted a Federal Register notice, which shared details about the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 funding opportunities for the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER).
Date published:
Jul 28, 2022
Blog
Letter from the Commissioner: NCER by the Numbers (FY 2021) November 2021
As I think about all we have accomplished this year, I wanted to acknowledge all the work that NCER and our team has been doing related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA).
Date published:
Nov 20, 2021
Blog
Letter from the Commissioner: NCER by the Numbers (FY 2020) December 2020
All the normal ways that we interact are taking place virtually, and those changes are impacting the delivery and experience of learning opportunities for everyone—from our youngest children to the adults in postsecondary and adult education, and their teachers and faculty.
Date published:
Dec 15, 2020
Grant
What We Have Learned in 20 Years of IES Randomized Trials
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) was established by the Education Sciences Reform Act in 2002 to "provide national leadership in expanding fundamental knowledge and understanding of education from early childhood through postsecondary study." As IES approaches its twentieth anniversary in 2022, it is appropriate to ask how well it has met this mandate. One important component of the work that IES has undertaken to achieve its mission has been the funding of randomized trials of ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U200005
Grant
Develop and Improve the Edlnstruments Library
The purpose of this project was to develop, expand, refine, critique, improve, and disseminate EdInstruments, an open-source library of education-relevant measurement tools launched by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. EdInstruments provides information on instruments used to measure students' academic content knowledge, as well as a range of additional capabilities (knowledge, skills, attitudes, and dispositions) that help students thrive. In addition, EdInstruments provides info...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U200008
Grant
Moving Beyond the Average: Building a Comprehensive Model of Classroom Quality That Incorporates Children's Individual Experiences
This project explored how individual children's engagement varied within classrooms and the degree to which variation in child engagement was associated with children's outcomes. Specifically, the research team (i) evaluated the degree to which the quality of children's engagement with teachers and academic content varied within individual children and within classrooms; (ii) related average quality of engagement at the child and classroom levels with child outcomes; and (iii) explored varia...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A200308
Grant
The New Orleans Early Education Research Alliance
School choice policies have become increasingly popular in urban districts over the past two decades, and in theory should increase low-income families' access to high-quality schools. However, research is limited on how families engage in school choice application and enrollment processes for early education and elementary school, and on how to design application systems and outreach efforts to support families in achieving the best outcomes for their children. The partnership team will use...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H190041
Grant
Exploring the Role of Access to School-based Pre-kindergarten: Enrollment and Academic Outcomes under Decentralized and Centralized Enrollment Policies
The research team will explore how access to school-based pre-K is related to enrollment and academic outcomes under decentralized and centralized enrollment policy contexts. There has been substantial expansion of school-based pre-K across the country in recent years, but there is little evidence on the extent to which the students who are most likely to benefit from pre-K actually enroll in school-based programs, and thus whether these expansion efforts are related to the reduction of earl...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A180510
Grant
Addressing the Growing Diversity of Preschool Populations through Low Incidence Language Barriers: Hmong Language Development to Improve Assessment Approaches
In an age of growing early childhood accountability, research has focused on improving instruction, measurement, curricula, and professional development in early childhood education settings for most teachers and the children they serve. However, within these advances, little attention has focused on low incidence populations, including ethnically and linguistically diverse students. Current data from St. Paul Public Schools indicate that preschool Hmong students are significantly more at ri...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H170073
Grant
A Partnership to Develop a Meaningful, Reliable, and Valid Measure of Parent Engagement in Early Childhood Education
Parent engagement in children's early education is important for children's early school success and long-term academic achievement. Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS), a large urban district serving a high percentage of disadvantaged students, has identified parent engagement as one of its three pillars of excellence and has invested its limited resources in an office dedicated to promoting parent engagement. Despite investments to promote parent engagement, there is lack of agreement abo...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H170027
Grant
Atlanta 323: Partnership for School Readiness and Achievement from Age 3 to Grade 3
Children from low-income backgrounds, especially children of color, are at greater risk for poor academic achievement and school failure. The academic achievement gap is present before school entry and often widens during the school years. Atlanta 323: The Partnership for School Readiness and Achievement from Age 3 to Grade 3 (Atlanta 323 for short) will address early learning achievement gaps and improve Atlanta Public School's (APS) capacity to implement an effective preschool through 3rd ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H180062
Grant
Development of the Bilingual Assessment of Phonological Sensitivity
In order to address the early literacy needs of young dual language learners (DLL), this research team will develop a comprehensive, reliable, and valid Spanish-English assessment of phonological sensitivity (PS) that can be used with 3- to 5-year old DLLs. Phonological sensitivity (PS), or the awareness that words are comprised of syllables and sounds, begins to develop during the preschool years and has been shown to be one of the best predictors of reading outcomes in both English speakin...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160081
Grant
How People Learn II: The Science and Practice of Learning
In 2000, the National Research Council published a synthesis of current knowledge about the science of learning (How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School) and described links between these findings from cognitive science and actual practice in the classroom.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U150005
Grant
Developing a Measure of Self-Regulation for Children at Risk for School Difficulty
This study will revise an existing measure of self-regulation and executive function skills for use as a school readiness screening tool for children from at-risk backgrounds. The existing Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (HTKS) measure is a predictor of school achievement for diverse groups of children. However, English language learners (ELLs) and children from low-income backgrounds have not performed well on this measure. The research team will develop and validate a revised version of the meas...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A150192
Grant
Miami-Dade County Partnership for School Readiness and Early School Success
The goal of this project was to create a partnership to address the school readiness skills and early school achievement of children who attend M-DCPS. The project unfolded in three major phases. First, the partners created an infrastructure and carried out joint needs assessments. The goal was to build a sustainable researcher-practitioner partnership that uses available data to conduct descriptive analyses to inform M-DCPS practice and policy needs in the short-term. Second, the partners c...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H140140
Grant
A Partnership to Improve the Use of a Developmental Assessment Framework in Kindergarten
The purpose of this partnership was to bring together Washington State University and Washington State Education Services District (ESD) 105 to conduct preliminary research on the adequacy of Teaching Strategies Gold (TSGold) for assessing literacy skills and on the potential of the WaKIDS enhanced condition to improve literacy outcomes when compared to the non-enhanced condition. The partnership also examined teacher responses to the use of WaKIDS and TSGold.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H140135
Grant
Development of a Dual Language Narrative Curriculum
Oral language skills are essential for reading comprehension and academic success. Young Spanish-speaking English learners may have greater school success through early and intensive language promotion that fosters English language development while building upon a Spanish language foundation. The purpose of this study is to develop a Spanish-English dual language narrative intervention program, complete with training materials, extension vocabulary activities, and progress monitoring tools ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A160407
Grant
Sustaining the Boost: Longitudinal Impacts of the Boston Prekindergarten Program and Variation in Impacts
Rigorous evaluations of public prekindergarten programs have confirmed that children enrolled in these programs have higher language, literacy, and mathematics outcomes at kindergarten entry, on average. A prior IES-funded study of the Boston Public Schools (BPS) prekindergarten program extended this evidence base. In a regression discontinuity (RD) study of over 2,000 children, the researchers found that the BPS program had moderate-to-large impacts on children's language, literacy, and mat...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A140059
Grant
Creating a Connecticut Early Childhood Education Research Alliance
The main research goals of this partnership/alliance included understanding how children performed on state-developed preschool measures; how preschool child outcomes predicted kindergarten outcomes; and what teacher and school-level factors contributed to preschool and kindergarten performance. This served as a starting point for approaching the larger question of what kinds of school climate and teaching practices impacted preschool performance. A series of research agenda-setting work ses...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H140142
Grant
Exploring Early Childhood Education Experiences and School Adjustment in Rural Elementary School Students
The partnership focused on the following project objectives:
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H140081
Grant
Providence Public Schools District and Education Development Center: Developing a Researcher-Practitioner Partnership to Improve Achievement among Minority Students
The existing EDC-PPSD partnership utilized the grant to develop a broader consortium known as the Providence Education Research Consortium (PERC). Institutions of higher education, foundations, and community organizations located in Rhode Island were recruited to serve as members of PERC. The goal of establishing PERC was to (1) facilitate collaborative research between PPSD and education researchers who investigate student learning outcomes; (2) ensure that research conducted in PPSD is ali...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H140118
Grant
Impact of the WRITE Program on English Learner Achievement and Teacher Instructional Practice
English language learners (ELL) consistently score below grade-level on state standardized tests in all content areas, and much below non-ELL students. The persistent performance gap between ELLs and non-ELLs increases as the level of language demand increases. Even ELL students who have progressed beyond basic levels of English proficiency continue to struggle with academic demands. The Writing Reform Institute for Teaching Excellence (WRITE) Tier 2 program is designed to transition ELL stu...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110176
Grant
Developing an Online Tutor to Accelerate High School Vocabulary Learning
Vocabulary knowledge is an important component of academic success and impacts skills across academic disciplines. It is a critical component of literacy development. However, the vocabulary skills of high school students in the U.S. are insufficient to meet the demands of college and career. Furthermore, there is very little vocabulary instruction taught in U.S. high schools. The current project will develop a high school vocabulary intervention that builds on the fully developed Dictionary...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130467
Grant
Creating a Monitoring System for School Districts to Promote Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning: A Researcher-Practitioner Partnership
In 2013, when the grant was awarded, school-based student monitoring systems tended to be focused on factors that put students at risk for failure in school. The purpose of this researcher-practitioner partnership was to integrate information about students' social-emotional learning (SEL) skills that support academic achievement into an existing risk-focused student monitoring system to create one that it is more balanced, reflecting students' strengths as well as vulnerabilities. Such a mo...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H130012
Grant
Quality Talk: Developing Students' Discourse to Promote Critical-Analytic Thinking, Epistemic Cognition, and High-Level Comprehension
Comprehension and critical analysis of text are important skills for success both in and out of school. However, many students struggle to understand and analyze text from print and digital media. While research has shown that classroom discussions can enhance basic cognition and critical thinking, few current models for text-based classroom discussion have been shown to be effective at increasing students' high-level comprehension. In the current project, the researchers will develop a mode...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130031
Grant
BLOOM: Facilitating Language and Literacy Outcomes for English Language Leaners
Vocabulary knowledge serves a critical role in reading comprehension and academic achievement, and poses a particular challenge for English language learners (ELLs). Research suggests that the use of bridging to the child's first language for vocabulary definitions of novel English words during reading tasks accelerate English word learning in young ELLs. The primary objective of Bridging for Language Outcomes in the Classroom (BLOOM) was to develop and refine an adaptive tiered vocabulary i...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A130460
Grant
Developing a Formative Assessment of Academic Reading Comprehension for English Language Learners: A Tool to Improve Teaching and Learning
While states annually implement English language proficiency assessments to measure the progress of English language learners (ELLs) English language development, there is a paucity of appropriate classroom-based assessments available to inform teaching and learning on an ongoing basis. ELL students deal with the dual challenges of acquiring English proficiency to handle academic materials and learning curriculum content. As children progress through the grade levels, course materials become...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100724
Grant
An Efficacy Study of Project GLAD
In U.S. schools, English language learners (ELLs) receive most of their instruction in mainstream classrooms. Their teachers need to be able to help them access grade-level content and meet state standards while also developing their English language proficiency. This study will test the efficacy of Project GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design), an instructional model specifically designed to help classroom teachers integrate the development of academic English with content area instruct...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100583
Grant
Validating Universal Screening and Progress Monitoring Instruments for Use with ELLs in Response-to-Intervention Models
Current demands for early identification and intervention, coupled with accountability demands, have increased the need for good measures to identify English Language Learners (ELLs) at risk for academic difficulties. This project will examine universal screening and progress monitoring literacy procedures necessary for the appropriate use of Response-to-Intervention (RTI) models with ELL students. Researchers will establish the reliability, validity, and predictive accuracy of existing univ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100585
Grant
Touch Your Toes! Developing a New Measure of Behavioral Regulation
Children's social skills at the beginning of kindergarten are related to their academic achievement and the quality of their peer relationships. Educators need tools to help identify potential problems and support children's behavior during the early school years. There are few direct assessments of young children's social and emotional skills available for researchers and practitioners to use. The goal of this project is to develop a reliable and valid screening measure of children's behav...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100566
Grant
Extending the Cultural and Linguistic Validity of the Adjustment Scales for Preschool Intervention (ASPI) for Low-Income, Latino Children
Latino children, many of whom are Spanish-speaking English language learners, are a growing segment of the preschool population. It is important for preschool educators and researchers to have access to valid and reliable measures of the school readiness skills of Latino preschool children. This includes measures of academic skills and assessments of emotional and behavioral adjustment. Although there are some available measures of children's early academic skills, few reliable and valid a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100233
Grant
Developing a Cross-Age Peer Tutoring Program to Promote the Vocabulary and Comprehension of English Learners
English language learners (ELLs) are especially at risk for reading difficulties due to limited vocabulary and comprehension skills. Innovative curricula are needed to meet their needs. Two critical periods for supporting ELLs are upon school entry (i.e., kindergarten) and upon transition from learning to read to reading to learn (i.e., fourth grade). Cross-age peer tutoring has been shown to be an effective instructional context. Given the social nature of language learning, cross-age tutor...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110142
Grant
Assessment of Comprehension in Older Struggling Readers
Too many students fail to develop essential comprehension skills necessary to be successful in school and in their future endeavors. Improving literacy skills relies on the availability of good assessments that can be used to target instruction. The goal of this project is to further develop a comprehensive computerized test battery that assesses the ability of middle and high school students in processing all levels of written and spoken language. Development of the battery for high school...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100261
Grant
Mathematics Coaching Supporting English Language Learners
Many English learners in middle and high schools are taught mathematics by teachers who are not prepared and often reluctant to integrate language supports into teaching and learning mathematics. This project will develop and study the utility of integrating mathematics coaching and professional development for middle-grade teachers whose classrooms include English language learners (ELLs). Researchers will base their development of coaching and professional development (PD) materials on em...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110076
Grant
ECHOS: Early Childhood Hands on Science
In recent years, early childhood education has emphasized children's school readiness in the domains of language, literacy, and mathematics. To date, there has been limited systematic focus on science education in preschool. There is a need for the development, implementation, and evaluation of preschool science curricula that will promote young children's understanding of basic science concepts. The purpose of this project is to conduct an efficacy study of a comprehensive early childhood ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100275
Grant
Increasing the Efficacy of An Early Mathematics Curriculum with Scaffolding Designed to Promote Self-Regulation
Preschoolers who live in poverty typically show lower math achievement and often are identified as having greater problems with self-regulation than their middle-class peers. Focused prekindergarten interventions can result in dramatic increases in both mathematics achievement and self-regulation. Unfortunately, there is little research regarding whether such approaches can be combined effectively in the classroom. The purpose of this project is to examine the efficacy of a preschool inte...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080700
Grant
Development of Integrated Text Level Curricula for Kindergarten Through Second Grade Students
Learning to read requires the integration of several critical oral language and written language skills, yet there is little known about the types of instruction that would adequately support growth across these domains. In this project, researchers are building on a kindergarten and first grade vocabulary curriculum developed with IES support (the Building Vocabulary for Emerging Readers [BVER] curriculum) by integrating comprehension instruction into the existing vocabulary lessons, expand...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100993
Grant
Comprehension SEEDING: Comprehension Through Self-Explanation, Enhanced Discussion and Inquiry Generation
Self-explanation has been shown repeatedly to be a key, contributing factor in deep learning of curriculum material. Research on tutoring benefits suggests that modeling good question asking and reasoning skills encourages deeper student comprehension, yet much of classroom instruction continues to use a teacher-led, didactic approach. This project will develop and pilot test a computer-based system and instructional method for simultaneously engaging all classroom students in self-explanati...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120808
Grant
Language in Math
In 2009, 43 percent of English language learners (ELLs) in 4th grade scored below basic proficiency on the NAEP mathematics test, and this percentage increased to 72 percent among 8th graders and 80 percent among 12th graders. Many schools lack wide-spread expertise in how to address the instructional and language learning needs of ELLs. In particular, little attention has been devoted to understanding how ELLs learn the conventions and expectations for language use in mathematics in order ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100862
Grant
Developing a Teacher-Based Intervention Involving Memory-Relevant Language During Instruction
With increases in age, children become more proficient in the use of strategies or plans for the storage and retrieval of information. Given the importance of remembering for success in school, it is essential that children develop strategies for remembering. Longitudinal findings by this research team reveal clear differences in the use of "memory talk" across teachers, as well as linkages between teachers' mnemonic style and children's memory and academic performance. Children taught by te...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120402
Grant
Improving Academic Achievement by Teaching Growth Mindsets about Emotion
Middle school represents a critical transition for students, and many students show a decline in academic achievement and emotional well-being during this time. At the same time, research suggests that students' beliefs about their ability to change their personal attributes play a key role in their academic achievement. While some students believe that personal attributes are fixed, those who believe their personal attributes are more malleable-students with a "growth mindset"-demonstrate s...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120671
Grant
Malleable Factors that Influence Outcomes of English Language Learners
Helping students attain English proficiency and ensuring mastery of academic material is a pressing educational concern. ELLs (English language learners) must simultaneously learn English and academic content in order to progress in school, graduate, and enter the labor market. The purpose of this project is to explore the relationship between instructional programs and academic achievement from kindergarten through entry to postsecondary education in four different types of ELL programs tha...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110670
Grant
The Iterative Development of Modules to Support Teachers' Engagement in Exploring Language and Meaning in Text with English Language Learners
This study will develop, test, and refine a set of five professional development modules called Exploring Language and Meaning in Text, intended to support reading comprehension and writing development for English language learners (ELLs). The modules will be informed by systemic functional linguistics, a theory of language that links form and meaning, and will be designed to prepare teachers to develop activities that help their students focus on an author's language choices and what they m...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100482
Grant
Robust Instruction of Academic Vocabulary for Middle School Students
As evidence by recent reports and test results suggesting that too few students are reading at grade level, problems in adolescent reading seem to be universally acknowledged. Middle school texts contain challenging vocabulary words that are considered to be a major contributor to reading problems, yet there is very little explicit vocabulary instruction in middle school. The purpose of this project is to develop and document the feasibility and promise of an intervention designed to teach a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100440
Grant
Efficacy of Rich Vocabulary (RVOC) Instruction for Classrooms
The ability to understand written text is highly dependent on knowing the meaning of individual words. The well-established positive relation between vocabulary and comprehension suggests that high quality vocabulary instruction should benefit comprehension. In this efficacy study, the research team will test the efficacy of rich vocabulary (RVOC) instruction compared to typical (i.e., business-as-usual) vocabulary instruction for students in fourth and fifth grade. RVOC instruction is i...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100568
Grant
Measuring Vocabulary with Testlets: A New Tool for Assessment
Vocabulary knowledge is recognized by reading and education experts as an influential component of reading comprehension. Traditional assessments of vocabulary yield scores indicating choice of correct versus incorrect answers, but do not provide more nuanced information about the student's level of understanding. The VINE (Vocabulary Innovations in Education) assessments were developed with support from an IES grant in 2006 to assess growth of fourth graders' vocabulary knowledge. The curr...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090550
Grant
Responding to the National Crisis in Writing: An Efficacy Study of an Elementary Grades Writing Program
The ability to write effectively is critical for success in school, college and the workplace. Yet, results of the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress to assess writing (NAEP 2007) indicate that only about one-quarter of 4th and 12th grade students are proficient writers. More research is needed to determine the type of instruction that is needed to support strong writing skills. This efficacy project will address the gap in our understanding of effective writing instr...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090479
Grant
Applications of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) to Improve the Skill Levels of Students with Deficiencies in Mathematics
The proposed study examines the efficacy of using the Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS®) system in after-school settings to improve the mathematical skills of struggling 6th grade students. ALEKS® is a web-based, artificial intelligent assessment and learning system that uses adaptive questioning to quickly and accurately determine exactly what a student knows and does not know in a math course. Previous research with ALEKS®, implemented within the classroom...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090528
Grant
Word Generation: An Efficacy Trial
Word Generation is a curricular intervention designed to promote adolescents' knowledge and use of academic vocabulary by providing opportunities for students to read and comprehend brief academic texts on compelling and controversial topics, to discuss those texts, to hear the academic words highlighted in those texts in a variety of settings, and to write brief persuasive essays about the controversial topics focused on. Word Generation materials have been developed for use in 6th, 7th, an...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090555
Grant
Assessing Online Reading Comprehension: The ORCA Project
During the twenty-first century, the internet has become a major force in transmitting information and has, hence, become an important learning environment, especially for reading comprehension. However, the reading comprehension skills that the internet requires are not necessarily the same as are required by more traditional, printed texts, and the American school system is not yet in a position to effectively teach these skill. Part of the reason for this is that we lack valid, reliable, ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090608
Grant
Lens on Science: Development and Validation of a Computer-Administered, Adaptive, IRT-Based Science Assessment for Preschool Children
Recent emphasis has been placed on science as a school readiness domain. However, an obstacle to conducting research and evaluation on early childhood science programs is the lack of appropriate, reliable, and valid direct assessments of children's science knowledge and process skills. This measurement project will fill the need for a reliable and valid direct assessment of preschool children's science. A collaborative team from the University of Miami, the Miami-Dade County Head Start/Early...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090502
Grant
Experimental Validation of the Tools of the Mind Prekindergarten Curriculum
The purpose of this efficacy study is to conduct an experimental evaluation of the Tools of the Mind prekindergarten curriculum. This curriculum focuses on developing learning skills that enable children to engage in and benefit from all kinds of learning tasks and activities that occur in the classroom. The Tools of the Mind curriculum is intended to promote the basic academic and social skills that will prepare children for school success in kindergarten and beyond.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090533
Grant
Development of an Online Course to Improve Teachers' Use of Effective Teacher-Child Interactions During Delivery of Early Literacy and Language Instruction
Research has shown that the quality of preschool teachers' interactions with their students contributes to children's school readiness. Teacher professional development interventions that support teachers' use of effective instructional practices may be one way to promote children's development of preacademic skills that are related to later school success .Few studies have systematically tested the effects of coursework on teacher-child interactions or child outcomes. The purpose of this...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100154
Grant
Impact of Teacher Study Groups as Observed Teaching Practice and Student Vocabulary Knowledge: A Multi-Site Randomized Control Trial in First Grade
The purpose of this efficacy study is to examine the impact of the Teacher Study Group (TSG) professional development program in vocabulary on teacher knowledge, observed teaching practice, and student vocabulary achievement, when implemented with first-grade teachers in Title 1 schools. Most professional development programs only involve one- or two-day trainings, but teachers value continuous training over the course of the school year and appreciate the opportunity to develop collegial re...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090294
Grant
Designing Assessment to Enhance English Literacy Development Among Spanish-Speaking Children in Grades K–3
On the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 49% of Hispanic fourth-graders (compared to 77% of non-Hispanic White fourth-graders) and only 57% of Hispanic eighth-graders (compared to 83% of non-Hispanic White eighth-graders) scored at or above the basic level in reading. In order to support the development of good reading skills, accurate assessment and identification of strengths and weaknesses early in development is of critical importance. Reading assessments administe...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090015
Grant
Developing Contrastive Analysis Techniques for Teaching Academic Classroom English to Young African American English-Speaking Students
Failure to achieve basic literacy levels is particularly pronounced for African-American students, as seen in national assessments of reading and writing at all grade levels. Oral language skills are critical to early literacy skills, leading many researchers to consider whether oral language could be leveraged to reduce the achievement gap in literacy for African-American students. Many of these students, particularly those living in large urban centers, are speakers of African-American E...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100284
Grant
Development of a Comprehensive Assessment System for Spanish-Speaking English Language Learner's Early Literacy Skills
In the United States, Spanish-speaking children both constitute the largest English language learner (ELL) subgroup and are the fastest growing school-age population. Findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP 2007) suggest that English language learners are at risk for academic failure throughout their school experience. For example, in fourth grade, only 30% of English language learners scored at or above the basic level in reading, compared to 71% of other fourt...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090169
Grant
Learning-Related Cognitive Self-Regulation School Readiness Measures for Preschool Children: Optimizing Predictive Validity for Achievement
The purpose of this study is to construct and cross-validate a teacher rating measure and a parallel direct child assessment measure of learning-related cognitive self-regulation (LRCSR) for preschool children. LRCSR skills are conceptualized as cognitive skills that fall into five major categories: (1) attention focus and concentration (e.g, being able to pay attention to a teacher's instruction and focus on an in-class assignment); (2) inhibitory control (e.g., being able to suppress inapp...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090079
Grant
Written Language Problems in Middle School Students: A Randomized Trial of the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) Model Using a Tier 2 Intervention
Writing may be considered a problem solving process because it requires the higher-order cognitive activities of planning and knowledge transfer. Success at writing may require explicit writing instruction, explicit self-regulation instruction (including the development of strategies such as goal setting and self-monitoring), and the development of positive self-efficacy about writing. The Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model encompasses each of these major areas of learning to w...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120145
Grant
A Narrative Comprehension Intervention for Elementary School Children At-Risk for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often have cognitive processing deficits which may partially contribute to their well-documented academic difficulties. Additionally, traditional treatments for ADHD have not been shown to have a sustained positive impact on children's academic outcomes. One specific deficit that has been shown to be common among children with ADHD relates to difficulties with narrative/story comprehension. There are four specific areas of impaire...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A120171
Grant
Effective Early Childhood Education Programs: Meta-Analytic Lessons from High Quality Program Evaluations
The goal of this project is to identify malleable early childhood education program characteristics associated with child achievement, cognition, antisocial behavior, and positive behavior. Researchers propose to use meta-analytic and regression-based methods to answer three key questions: (1) What structural characteristics of early education programs are associated with larger program impacts on achievement, cognition, antisocial behavior and positive behavior? (2) Is the addition of paren...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110035
Grant
Measuring Reading Progress in Struggling Adolescents
Similar to national results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), forty percent of Florida's students in grades 3-12 are not proficient readers on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). By Florida law, these non-proficient readers must be provided with intensive reading intervention. In an effort to provide schools with formative assessment to guide instruction, the Florida Department of Education contracted with the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100301
Grant
Improving School Readiness of High-Risk Preschoolers: Combining High-Quality Instructional Strategies with Responsive Training for Teachers and Parents
The purpose of this study is to determine if the combination of two proven interventions-one delivered in the classroom (The Early Education Model-TEEM) and one delivered in the home (Play & Learning Strategies-PALS)-results in a synergistic versus additive effect on children's school readiness skills (i.e., social, language, early literacy) and early kindergarten reading and social competence. This study bridges the gap between the school and home environments for pre-kindergarten children...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090212
Grant
Testing the Effectiveness of CALM for High School Chemistry Students
To address the poor science achievement of high school students and to help reduce the achievement gap, high school science teachers need interventions that improve student learning in science. Unfortunately, there are few science interventions currently available to high school science teachers that have rigorous, scientifically based evidence of their impact on student's science achievement. Therefore, this study seeks to assess the efficacy of the Computer Assisted Learning Method (CALM),...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090195
Grant
Early Childhood Teachers as Socializers of Young Children's Emotional Competence
Young children's emotional competence-expression of useful emotions, regulation of emotional expressiveness when necessary, and knowledge of internal emotions and emotions of others-contributes to their social and pre-academic competence, both concurrently and across time. Emotional competence is socially constructed and maintained. In the social world of preschoolers, both parents and teachers/caregivers loom large. Researchers have explored the contribution of parental socialization of emo...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110730
Grant
Efficacy of the WINGS After-School Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Program
The goal of this project is to evaluate the efficacy of the WINGS for Kids (WINGS) after-school social and emotional learning (SEL) program. WINGS is a fully developed and highly structured after-school SEL program that has been serving children who experience extraordinarily high levels of social and economic risks for the past 10 years. The program currently operates in four elementary schools, serves 24 children in each grade (K to 5) at each school, is offered for 3 hours per day and 5 d...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110703
Grant
Developing Guidelines for Optimizing Levels of Students' Overt Engagement Activities
"Active learning" is often defined as engaging students in more meaningful learning. A variety of concrete activities are offered in the literature for ways that students can be more cognitively engaged while learning in a variety of instructional contexts, such as asking questions and taking notes. However, there are no criteria for determining what constitutes a cognitively engaging activity. Also, there are no recommendations for which student activities are more engaging than others no...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110090
Grant
Increasing Vocabulary in Preschoolers: Using Cognitive Science to Guide Pedagogy
The purpose of this project is to create and test a novel approach to building preschool teachers' abilities to foster vocabulary and therefore, broader language skills among preschool children from low-income homes. In years 1 and 2, researchers will identify instructional methods that can be used to teach vocabulary and foster language learning through book reading followed by guided play (i.e., play in which an adult subtly offers input to children's play activities). Researchers will the...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110128
Grant
Scale-up Evaluation of Reading Intervention for First Grade English Learners
The purpose of this project was to determine the effectiveness of a fully developed first grade literacy and oracy intervention in Spanish and English when implemented directly by school personnel across various settings and populations. Researchers assessed the factors at the student and school levels which moderate intervention effectiveness. The research team completed a one-year follow-up of participants to determine maintenance of effects. Researchers generalized findings from prior eff...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110297
Grant
Training Attention in At-risk Preschoolers: Expansion of our Successful Program to a Wider Population within Head Start
Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds often begin formal schooling at greater risk for negative social and academic outcomes. In recent years, researchers have identified children's early development of attention skills as an important indicator of later school success. For example, recent research has shown that attention skills such as working memory and selective attention are related to children's language and literacy skills. This research team developed an evidence-based interven...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110398
Grant
Classroom Environment, Allocation of Attention, and Learning Outcomes in K–4 Students
There is a paradox in the relationship between current knowledge about cognitive development and current practice in the design of classroom visual environments. It is well-documented that distractibility decreases markedly with age; however, younger learners (i.e., K-4 students) frequently learn in classrooms containing large amounts of potentially distracting visual materials not relevant to the on-going instruction (e.g., colorful posters, alphabet charts, maps, etc.). Loss of instruction...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110444
Grant
Reclassifying and Not Reclassifying English Learners as Fluent English Proficient: Access and Achievement
Schools provide additional instructional services to support learning by English language learners (ELLs) at entry to school, and set criteria for mastery of English to indicate that they no longer require special services. Reclassification out of ELL status can be a gateway to full participation in core curricula and provide a greater opportunity to learn, which in turn, can promote greater academic achievement. Either premature or delayed entry into the mainstream classroom is potentially ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110512
Grant
Development of the School Readiness Curriculum Based Measurement System
A substantial number of children arrive at elementary school without the skills essential for academic success. Early identification and regular monitoring of children's learning in critical school readiness domains are important features of programs that help close the achievement gap. Unfortunately, many existing language literacy measures designed for use with preschoolers have limited reliability and validity, as well as floor and ceiling effects. Most of the existing measures do not cov...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110549
Grant
Longitudinal Follow-up of Successful Parent/Child Intervention in Pre-school Children At Risk for School Failure
Children in poverty are at risk for school failure, which leads to negative long-term consequences both for them and for society. There is a strong need for evidence-based educational programs to ameliorate socioeconomic status disparities in academic achievement. Researchers have developed an intervention, Parents and Children Making Connections-Attention (PCMC-A), based on research on the development and neuroplasticity of attention as well as parenting and family dynamics. Research has sh...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110397
Grant
Numbers Plus Efficacy Study
Improving the math proficiency of children, especially those from low-income backgrounds, depends upon two factors. One is an appropriate curriculum that sequences early learning in key content areas. The second critical variable in improving math ability is the instructional competence of teachers. Unfortunately, the ability of teachers to deliver appropriate math instruction is hampered by their anxiety about teaching math, attitudes about math's importance in the curriculum, lack of knowl...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110483
Grant
Investigating the Impact of Classroom Instruction and Literacy Skills on Writing Achievement in First Grade
Elementary schools generally, and first grade in particular, provide students with critical instruction in early literacy skills. This project is designed to explore how various types and amounts of reading and writing instruction are related to student writing outcomes in first grade and to examine whether the effects of instruction are moderated by students' incoming reading and writing skills and demographic characteristics (socioeconomic status). Research on early writing development an...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110484
Grant
A Toolkit for Identifying and Assessing Socially Rejected Children
In this project, researchers developed a suite of scientifically sound, usable tools for screening social rejection and assessing social and emotional learning (SEL) in children in grades K-3 called SELweb. Elementary school-aged children who are rejected by their peers are at elevated risk for academic, behavioral, and emotional problems, yet few tools are available for school professionals to identify socially rejected children and to pinpoint SEL deficits that contribute to their re...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110143
Grant
Development and Validation of the Narrative Assessment Protocol (NAP)
Professionals who work with young children have access to very few standardized and validated tools for assessing young children's narrative abilities. This is true despite the fact that a strong consensus among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers has emerged that affirms that narratives are an important aspect of early language development that can be reliably measured and improved through intervention. The purpose of this project is to develop and validate a useable, standardized,...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110293
Grant
Cognitively Challenging Child-Directed Language as a Mechanism for Literacy Development in Kindergarten
This project seeks to explore the mechanisms influencing children's vocabulary knowledge and literacy development. In particular, the researchers will explore how children's development is influenced by their experiences with naturally occurring language. This research is designed to address how the cognitively challenging conceptual features of child-directed speech impact children's language development, the interactive effects of parents' and teachers' speech on children's vocabulary know...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110038
Grant
The Availability of Early Childhood Education and Care in the United States: Exploring Links Between Policy, Availability and Effects, 1990-2005
The purpose of this study is to examine the availability of early childhood education and care (ECEC), explore the extent to which policies and regulations impact supply, and examine the link between supply and child outcomes. This study will explore the impact of childcare regulations across all types of early childhood education and care settings including family day care homes, private child care, Head Start, and state-funded preschool programs. The research team will address the policy a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100574
Grant
Fostering Comprehension and Knowledge-Building in Middle-School Struggling Readers
This project will develop and refine an intervention designed to improve reading for struggling readers through explicit comprehension instruction in a content-area context. The intervention, called Literacy Navigator, will teach readers how to build a coherent representation of the informational text they are reading and how to integrate the new content with their existing knowledge. The intervention will be designed for use in remedial classes to help students who have adequate decoding sk...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110467
Grant
Using Developmental Science to Create a Computerized Preschool Language Assessment
Language is a core ability that children need for success in school. Understanding teachers and peers, following narratives, telling stories, participating in conversation, learning to read, and doing math all rest on linguistic skill. The purpose of this project is to develop a reliable, valid, norm-ready, research-driven, and culturally sensitive computer-based language assessment for children 3- to 5-years-old that can be administered in 20 minutes. The preschool language assessment tool...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110284
Grant
Development of a Multifaceted, Comprehensive Vocabulary Instructional Program for the Upper Elementary Grades
The National Reading Panel Report of 2000 concluded that vocabulary is a critical component of reading comprehension; however, the process of implementing effective vocabulary instruction in authentic classroom settings is less well understood. In particular, teachers need a comprehensive, explicit, and practical approach for instructing all of their students, including English language learners, on vocabulary knowledge. This is particularly important in the upper elementary grades when con...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100994
Grant
Reading Intervention with Spanish-Speaking Students: Maximizing Instructional Effectiveness in English and Spanish
Providing high quality reading instruction to English language learners in the early grades is one of the most challenging and increasingly demanding instructional issues facing schools. Often, schools are turning to the use of comprehensive reading programs to support students, including English language learners who are at-risk for reading failure. However, the use of core reading programs typically requires substantial, and sometimes time-consuming, modifications to support the reading ac...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B077307
Grant
English Learners and Science Tests
The use of students' scores on science achievement tests to make consequential decisions, such as grade promotion, rests on the assumption that a student's score is an accurate reflection of his or her knowledge of science. However, if a student is learning English and the test includes complex uses of English, it is difficult to distinguish whether the ELL (English language learner) student's score is low because she does not know the language or the science being tested. This project will ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110122
Grant
Development and Validation of Online Adaptive Reading Motivation Measures
Because reading motivation has the potential to impact literacy achievement, learning about and measuring reading motivation is crucial to designing interventions and measuring student response to those interventions. Unfortunately, there are few valid, reliable measures of reading motivation that can inform instructional decisions. Currently, measures of reading motivation are targeted to young children or lack good psychometric properties. Researchers propose to develop and validate a new ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110148
Grant
Mind Wandering During Reading
Good reading comprehension requires that the readers attend to the material in front of them. However, despite readers' best intentions, there are times when their minds wander, and they find that although they have "read" a span of text, they did not actually process the content. This "mind wandering" is common and can affect all levels of language processing, including understanding words and parsing sentences. The current project will explore mind wandering in the context of reading to de...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110277
Grant
Language and Literacy Abilities in Spanish Language Speaking Children
Spanish-speaking students represent the largest and fastest growing language minority group in the United States. Unfortunately, their educational outcomes and future economic prospects lag behind those of their English-speaking peers. While much has been learned about the educational needs of Spanish speaking students in the United States, much more remains to be learned about the specific nature and development of their language and literacy abilities. The purpose of this project is to app...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100272
Grant
Exploring the Predictors of School Readiness: Meta-analysis of Longitudinal Research
Children's achievement trajectories appear to be established very early in schooling, with early successes promoting later achievement and early difficulties becoming entrenched. Given this, it is especially important to identify and understand the developmental precursors of school outcomes that are present in the early childhood period. Knowledge of these factors can be used to identify the children most in need of remedial services and to guide the design of prevention programs aimed at o...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A110074
Grant
The Diagnostic Geometry Assessment Project
Student assessment is a central component of instruction. Learning is affected by students' current knowledge and is facilitated when new knowledge and skills are consistent with and build upon current knowledge. The purpose of this project was to develop and validate a computer-delivered diagnostic formative assessment of geometric conceptions in the middle grades and to develop instructional resources to assist teachers in addressing flawed or underdeveloped conceptions identified by the a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080698
Grant
Continued Support of SREE
The Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) was established to support rigorous research in education by increasing the field's capacity to design and conduct rigorous investigations, creating a community of rigorous education researchers, and promoting the understanding and use of evidence to improve education decisions and outcomes. IES has supported SREE via two unsolicited grants in the past (in 2005 and in 2008).
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U100002
Grant
Improving the Teaching and Learning of English Language Learners: The Instructional Conversational Model
This study will examine the effects of the Instructional Conversation (IC) model for improving the academic development and achievement of upper elementary English language learners (ELLs) from high poverty schools. In the IC model, the teacher structures small-group instruction to stimulate and guide a conversation with students on a current topic from the curriculum. The teacher listens carefully to student views and judgments and provides guidance through questioning and restating of stud...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100670
Grant
Predictors and Subtypes of Reading Disabilities: Implications for Instruction of 'Late Emergers'
Comprehension of text requires the coordination of a complex set of skills. At a minimum, children need to be able to decode printed words on a page and comprehend spoken language in order to read with understanding. One goal of this exploratory research is to determine whether these two skill sets - word-level skills and linguistic comprehension - are independent of each other. A second goal is to understand how development in these two skill domains may be related to reading problems.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100034
Grant
Adapterrex: Exploring the Learning Benefits of Erroneous Examples and Their Dynamic Adaptations Within the Context of Middle School Mathematics
The purpose of this project is to develop an intelligent tutoring system that helps middle school students learn mathematics. The specific focus is decimals, a subdomain of mathematical knowledge about which students often have common and persistent misconceptions. The system, called AdaptErrEx, will present students with worked examples of problems, in which each step of a problem solution path is presented for the students, along with feedback and instruction. Additionally, a unique fea...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090460
Grant
STEPS to Literacy: An Integrated Digital Writing Space for English Language Learners
The goal of this project is to develop an intervention program with a curricular approach to support and increase English Language Learners' (Ells) academic writing attainment in English. Researchers will develop a multimodal, web-based software based on an anchored instruction/situated model that incorporates the best knowledge about teaching writing and the ELL adolescent population. This intervention program is called STEPS to Literacy. The STEPS to Literacy approach guides students in a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090476
Grant
Closing the Achievement Gap in Middle School Mathematics Utilizing Stanford University's Education Program for Gifted Youth Differentiated Mathematics Program
The failure to meet the educational needs of low socioeconomic status students continues to be a problem of national significance. The Stanford University's Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) can help meet the educational needs of low socioeconomic status students. Results from an evaluation of the EPGY program in Title I elementary schools in California showed that students who used the program improved their mathematics performance on the California Standards Test. Following the sam...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080464
Grant
Exploring Reading Fluency and Its Underlying Behaviors
Extensive evidence exists demonstrating the benefit of repeated reading for increasing the oral reading rates of elementary students. As a result of the research base and an increased interest in promoting students' reading rate with accuracy, schools are increasingly using repeated reading instructional procedures as a means of increasing students' reading fluency. Extant research has primarily focused on the impact of repeated reading on the oral reading rate, accuracy and comprehension of...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100496
Grant
Promoting Transfer of the Control of Variables Strategy in Elementary and Middle School Children via Contextual Framing and Abstraction
Students from third to seventh grade have a surprisingly poor understanding of the basic procedural and conceptual aspects of experimental design (simply labeled here as "CVS," for the Control of Variables Strategy). Although students' understanding of CVS does improve as a result of direct instruction, students' performance is typically low, even when a repeated tutoring cycle of instruction is used. The purpose of this project is to determine which elements are critical to support the teac...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100404
Grant
The Assess-as-You-Go Writing Assistant: A Student Work Environment that Brings Together Formative and Summative Assessment
In the early 2000s, a key educational priority was to use summative assessment both as a measure of learner progress and as an incentive for school improvement. At the same time, many educators and researchers supported also using formative assessment, or assessment for screening, monitoring and diagnosis to aid ongoing learning throughout the academic year. In this project, the research team created a new educational technology tool intended to improve student writing performance and writi...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090394
Grant
Molecules & Minds: Developing Bridging Scaffolds to Improve Chemistry Learning
In high school chemistry classes, the ability to visualize dynamic sub-microscopic particles (atoms and molecules) is especially important because the behavior of such particles is used to explain macroscopic phenomena (e.g., ice melting). Under a previous IES Goal 2 Development grant (R305K050140), the researchers developed six simulations in four high school chemistry topics: kinetic molecular theory, diffusion, the behavior of ideal gases, and phase change. In the process of designing, de...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090203
Grant
National Research & Development Center on Cognition and Mathematics Instruction
The National Center for Cognition and Mathematics Instruction has a core goal of redesigning components of a widely-used middle school mathematics curriculum-Connected Mathematics Project (CMP), and evaluating the efficacy of the redesigned curriculum materials.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305C100024
Grant
Understanding Malleable Cognitive Processes and Integrated Comprehension Interventions for Grades 7–12
The goals of this project are to (a) improve our knowledge of cognitive processes that underlie reading for understanding to identify malleable processes that may be targets of intervention, and (b) provide knowledge about the role of engagement and motivation in enhancing reading comprehension outcomes, and integrate and apply the findings from these studies to develop and test the efficacy of interventions for students with reading comprehension difficulties in grades 7-12. This work is gr...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F100013
Grant
Reading for Understanding Across Grades 6 through 12: Evidence-Based Argumentation for Disciplinary Learning
Project READI (Reading, Evidence, and Argumentation in Disciplinary Instruction) defines reading for understanding in adolescence as the ability to engage in evidence-based argumentation across multiple texts and supports its learning in three disciplines: history, science, and English literature. Disciplinary literacy involves complex critical analysis processes as well as close attention to text. The research team proposes a model that captures these processes while attending to the psycho...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F100007
Grant
Catalyzing Comprehension Through Discussion and Debate
The purpose of this grant was to explore the contributions of perspective taking, complex reasoning, and academic language skills to reading for understanding for upper elementary and middle school students; to develop, refine, and test the efficacy of two literacy programs that target the development of these skills for a general population of students and for struggling readers; and to develop professional learning opportunities for science teachers that could serve as a model for other conten
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F100026
Grant
The Language Bases of Reading Comprehension
The primary purpose of this project is to increase fundamental understanding of the role of lower and higher level language skills in listening and reading comprehension, and develop effective classroom-based approaches to increase language, general knowledge, and comprehension skills in prekindergarten through grade three. Researchers will begin by conducting basic studies to identify promising targets for intervention. Interventions will be developed and refined through an iterative proce...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F100002
Grant
Examining Effective Intervention Targets, Longitudinal Intensity, and Scaling Factors for Pre-K to 5th Grade Student Comprehension
The goals of this project are to investigate the underlying cognitive and linguistic components that contribute to or that prevent the acquisition of well-developed comprehension skills, and to create and evaluate coherent, integrated multi-component instructional interventions intended to build and integrate key component skills that support students' proficient oral and text comprehension and reading for understanding. Researchers will identify, develop, and evaluate interventions that w...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F100027
Grant
Assessing Reading for Understanding: A Theory-based, Developmental Approach
This team developed and evaluated a new system of assessments aligned with current theoretical constructs and empirical findings pertaining to both reading comprehension and performance moderators; sensitive to changes in development in reading comprehension; emphasize strategic reading processes empirically supported in the literature; provide greater information for guiding instruction (especially for students struggling to reach proficiency); and are comprised of texts and tasks that repr...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F100005
Grant
Improving Students' Skill at Solving Equations Through Better Encoding of Algebraic Concepts
Students and teachers have considerable trouble overcoming misconceptions in algebra. These misconceptions, if not addressed, will have long-term negative consequences for students' mathematics achievement. There is a growing body of research showing that students benefit from instruction that includes incorrect examples. The proposed study will develop a computer program designed to overcome misconceptions through the use of incorrect examples, which will be compared to the use of correct e...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100074
Grant
A Multi-Part Intervention for Accelerating Vocabulary Acquisition through Inductive Transfer
Research consistently shows that vocabulary knowledge is an important component of reading comprehension. Simply put, the more words a child knows, the better able that child is to understand what is being read. This research also indicates that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to know fewer words compared to their more advantaged peers, and thus are at greater risk for reading failure. How to enhance vocabulary knowledge for these at-risk children is a challenge because th...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090523
Grant
Reclassification of English Language Learners as Fully English Proficient
The proposed research project examined the validity of existing English Language Learner (ELL) reclassification systems (the process by which ELL students are reclassified as fully English proficient and ready to function without special services). Current state and district reclassification criteria and procedures have been found to be inconsistent and lacking in an empirical base. The project examined demographic, programmatic, and reclassification factors that relate to subsequent E...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090581
Grant
Teacher Quality: The Role of Teacher Study Groups as a Model of Professional Development in Early Literacy for Preschool Teachers
The purpose of this study is to develop a professional development intervention for preschool teachers using the Teacher Study Group (TSG) approach as the basis for enhancing teacher knowledge, beliefs, and practices in the areas known to be most critical to children's early literacy success.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090183
Grant
Increasing Opportunities-to-Learn in Urban Middle Schools
Increasing opportunities-to-learn for all students in urban, public schools is imperative, especially for students who are English Language Learners (ELLs). ELLs are almost twice as likely as their native English-speaking peers to be retained a grade and/or to dropout of school. This study will evaluate the efficacy of the Academic Language Instruction for all Students (ALIAS) program in urban middle schools. ALIAS is an instructional intervention designed to improve the reading comprehensio...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080631
Grant
Teaching Every Student: Using Intelligent Tutoring and Universal Design to Customize the Mathematics Curriculum
Computer tutors have been successful in improving learning by employing "intelligent" techniques to guide online, tailored interaction appropriate for a particular user. Although such tutors are responsive to the user's on-going performance, they do not attend to the user's affective state (e.g., levels of frustration, self-confidence). The purpose of this project is to extend the capabilities of two web-based mathematics tutors to assess online the user's affect and respond in ways to minim...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080664
Grant
Explicit Scaffolding for Word Learning in Context through Multimedia Word Annotation
The purpose of this project is to improve student word learning by developing an intelligent computer system that annotates text and provides related pictorial information (i.e., pictures, diagrams). This may benefit all students, but especially those who are struggling, by providing explicit scaffolding for word learning in context through multimedia, multilingual, "in the moment," vocabulary assistance. The system will focus on content areas such as science and social science, which are ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080596
Grant
Project Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR): Interventions for Struggling Adolescent and Adult Readers and Writers
Less than 20 percent of students have reading comprehension skills at or above grade-appropriate proficiency levels. Minority students and English language learners are more likely to perform below proficiency levels. For example, 41 states reported that only 18.7% of English language learners scored above state-established norms for reading comprehension. A number of factors contribute to students not being able to comprehend text including: (a) inadequate decoding skills; (b) reading text...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080608
Grant
Test of Emergent Writing Skills
Writing is a challenging activity for most school-age children as noted from children's performance on national assessments. Hence, early identification of children who may be at risk for writing difficulties could be just as imperative as the early identification of children at risk for reading difficulties. The purpose of this project is to design, develop, and validate an assessment instrument designed to examine emergent writing in preschool children, with the ultimate goal of producing ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090622
Grant
Efficacy of Read It Again! In Rural Preschool Settings
The purpose of this project is to test the efficacy of a fully developed language and literacy curricular supplement for preschoolers participating in need-based programs in rural communities. Read It Again! targets a systematic and explicit progression of high-priority skills in four language/literacy domains (narrative ability, vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, and print knowledge). These learning domains represent high-priority instructional targets as they are consistently ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080459
Grant
Using Educational Television to Enhance Young Children's Language and Vocabulary Skills
The purpose of this project is to develop an intervention designed to enhance and accelerate the vocabulary and language acquisition of preschool children from backgrounds of poverty and risk for school difficulties. This modular intervention will be developed around a core of specifically selected themes and video segments from new and archival educational television programming from productions including Sesame Street, Martha Speaks, and Between the Lions. The ultimate goal of the projec...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080476
Grant
Agent and Library Augmented Shared Knowledge Areas (ALASKA)
The purpose of this project was to develop and pilot test an instructional support platform, Agent and Library Augmented Shared Knowledge Areas (ALASKA), to promote student learning and achievement in algebra by. This platform integrated multiple promising technologies to customize the learning and instructional needs of students in Algebra I classrooms. In addition, the researchers developed and tested a teacher professional development component to the platform, Preparing Digital Libraries...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080667
Grant
Learning by Teaching Synthetic Student: Using SimStudent to Study the Effect of Tutor Learning
The purpose of this project is to develop an intelligent tutoring system designed to help students master algebra concepts related to solving linear equations. In this intelligent tutoring system, students teach a computer learner, SimStudent, how to solve linear equations. The students select linear equations for SimStudent to solve and monitor SimStudent's performance, providing hints and feedback. The goal of the tutoring is for students to improve their understanding of algebraic conc...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090519
Grant
Investigating Vocabulary Breadth and Depth and Comprehension in English Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Elementary School Students
Vocabulary knowledge is critical to effective reading comprehension. Most research to date has focused on the importance of vocabulary breadth (the quantity of known words) and its relationship to reading comprehension. Vocabulary depth (the quality of vocabulary knowledge), including morphological, semantic, and syntactical awareness, may be equally important to reading comprehension but there is limited research in this area. Explicit vocabulary instruction has the potential to increase ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090152
Grant
Specific Aspects of Quality that Support Children's School Readiness in Community-Based and School-Based Early Childhood Programs
This research study will examine the association between aspects of preschool quality and child health, behavioral and cognitive outcomes in community-based and school-based early care and education programs. The purpose of the study is to identify, construct, and examine measures of preschool quality that can be used to inform the development of specific preschool-based interventions and policies that may support school readiness outcomes.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090065
Grant
Tools of the Mind: Promoting Self-Regulation and Academic Ability in Kindergarten
Appreciable numbers of children are entering school without the necessary self-regulation needed to support learning and academic achievement in the early grades of schooling. The purpose of this project is to experimentally evaluate the efficacy of an early childhood curriculum, Tools of the Mind, in improving the self-regulation abilities, academic achievement, and social-emotional development of young children. The goal is to determine if the Tools of Mind curriculum leads to improved aca...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100058
Grant
A Technology-Rich Teacher Professional Development Intervention that Supports Content-Based Curriculum Development for English Language Learners
English language learners (ELLs) are taught both by specialists and by regular classroom teachers. Many states acknowledge that all teachers need to know how to support the unique needs of ELLs. The purpose of this project is to develop a teacher professional development curriculum and software package that will improve teachers' ability to instruct their ELL students and prepare materials designed to support students learning English.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100105
Grant
Interactions Between Visual and Auditory Interventions for Reading
Approximately a third of fourth grade students across the nation read at the below basic level and reading problems are even more pervasive for students with dyslexia. Given the large number of students who have reading problems, including dyslexia, interventions to reduce these problems can have substantial benefits on the education system. In this project, the researchers will use a randomized control trial to evaluate two reading interventions for students with dyslexia that target defici...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A100389
Grant
The World of Words: An Embedded Multimedia Vocabulary Intervention for Economically Disadvantaged Pre-K Children
The purpose of this project is to develop an intervention that teaches word meanings in categorically related concepts essential for reading comprehension and content learning. The intervention is designed to address the gap in vocabulary knowledge between children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and their middle-class peers. The World of Words (WOW) intervention specifically targets high-risk preschoolers. The WOW curriculum is intended to increase vocabulary and conceptual k...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090013
Grant
ASSISTment Meets Science Learning (AMSL)
The purpose of this study was to develop a computer-based intelligent tutoring system designed to support middle school students in the acquisition of flexible science inquiry and process skills in the 21st century workplace, students need to understand science more deeply and possess well-honed learning strategies that will allow them to apply their science knowledge in more flexible ways. By providing students with frequent, fine-grained performance assessments of science process skills, t...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090170
Grant
Closing the SES Related Gap in Young Children's Mathematical Knowledge
There is a national need for effective interventions to improve school readiness and subsequent achievement in mathematics for students from low-income families. A socioeconomic gap in mathematical knowledge is present in U.S. children by three years of age. This gap widens over the preschool years. Recent intervention research has found that early mathematics enrichment can significantly enhance low-income children's mathematical knowledge. However, providing a math intervention for 4-ye...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080697
Grant
Cosmic Chemistry: Engaging Summer Learning for High School Students
The purpose of this project is to iteratively develop and evaluate a summer science curriculum - Cosmic Chemistry. Partnering with Union Public Schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this three-year Goal 2 project work with disadvantaged students who are at risk of low achievement in science and who wish to take chemistry in high school. The program will use the real-world context of space science to set high expectations, build background knowledge, and motivate students, with the ultimate goal of inc...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090344
Grant
Promoting Robust Understanding of Genetics with a Cognitive Tutor that Integrates Conceptual Learning with Problem Solving
Genetics is a fundamental and unifying theme of biology, but genetics problem solving is very challenging for high school students. The goal of this project is to develop educational technology for Conceptually-Grounded Problem Solving, scaffolded by intelligent learning support. Abductive problem solving is a form of logical inference that goes from an observation to a hypothesis that accounts for the observation, seeking to find the simplest and most likely explanation. A progression of ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090549
Grant
Preschool Program Impacts on School Readiness; Variation by Prior Child Language and Attention Skills, and the Quality of Infant/Toddler Care
The purpose of the study is to learn whether the achievement gap separating children of low-income and higher income families can be substantially reduced by high quality preschool care alone, or whether preschool participation must be combined with high-quality infant/toddler care to reduce the gap. This research project will examine whether the advantages of preschool for school readiness differ depending on children's initial language and attention skills, and whether infant care followe...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090467
Grant
Focusing on the Efficacy of Teaching Advanced Forms of Patterning on First Graders' Improvements in Reading, Mathematics, and Reasoning Ability
"Patterning" is the ability to recognize an ordering of numbers, letters, shapes, symbols, objects, or events according to some rule of progression. Understanding the place of an item in a pattern depends on understanding how it is related to items just preceding or following it. By first grade, children are expected to be developing the ability to understand patterns involving orientation or rotation, temporal and causal patterns of activities or events, and repetitive arbitrary patterns of...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090353
Grant
Disciplinary Writing Instruction for the Social Studies Classroom: A Path to Adolescent Literacy
Academic literacy is critical to success in American schools and professional life. However, data from the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress in writing found that fewer than 35 percent of eighth graders wrote essays at or above the proficient level. In addition, the gap between low and middle-income students' performance in 2007 remained great. In both the eighth- and twelfth-grades, students' difficulties were most pronounced on writing tasks that required structured response...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090153
Grant
Preparing to Succeed: An Efficacy Trial of Two Early Childhood Curricula
Given the current interest in national and state initiatives to expand early childhood programming, questions of under what conditions impacts can be sustained, and for whom, are of great practical importance. Among the unanswered questions in the literature are the effects of a uniform curriculum across a large-scale program and how such impacts vary depending on the specific curricula used. The proposed regression discontinuity study addresses this gap in the literature by examining the i...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090209
Grant
Creating Scalable Interventions for Enhancing Student Learning and Performance
Intensive interventions that lead students to adopt the "theory of intelligence" that people get smarter in response to intellectual effort produce large improvements in student learning, engagement, test scores, and grades. Yet scaleable versions of the interventions are needed that any teacher can employ, and the process of how the interventions work needs to be better understood. This project will develop and refine two unique intervention narrative approaches for 8th and 9th grade studen...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090324
Grant
The ESTRELLAS Project: Electronic Supported Text Research for English Language Learner Academic Success
Struggling adolescent readers must overcome substantial barriers imposed by the printed materials they are asked to read if they are to gain meaningful access to text. Technology can assist students to overcome these challenges. Although implementations of supported electronic-text (e-text) are potentially appropriate for any learner at any reading level, most applications focus on the needs of students with language or learning difficulties that make it difficult for them to access or com...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090227
Grant
Strengthening Content Literacy for Struggling High School Readers: Coordinated Lessons and Support Systems for Subject Matter Teachers
Studies show that many students enter high school as struggling readers without the skills and strategies needed to be successful with a high-school standards curriculum. In high-poverty urban schools, roughly half of incoming ninth-grade students read at a sixth- or seventh-grade level and many often struggle most with reading subject-specific texts (e.g. science or history texts). Students' success in learning the core content of high school subjects (e.g., mathematics, science, history an...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090187
Grant
An Efficacy Study of Two Computer-Based Attention Training Systems in Schools
Clinically significant attention problems in children can present a considerable obstacle to learning in school. Because of concerns over medication, many parents and school systems are increasingly turning to alternative forms of treatment for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), including computer-based attention training systems. The aim of this project is to evaluate the efficacy of two computer-based attention training systems in schools. One program uses EEG biofeedback to ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A090100
Grant
Extension of an Argument Curriculum to an Academically Disadvantaged Middle-School Population
The purpose of this project is to develop and test an intervention intended to support the acquisition of higher order cognitive skills, specifically the generation and critique of arguments. The intervention will provide explicit practice for middle school students in the process of generating arguments and rebuttals, assessing critiques, and responding with counterarguments. These activities are expected to lead to improvements in analytical thinking and writing skills.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080421
Grant
Scaffolding Students' Use of Multiple Representations for Science Learning
In this project, the researchers will develop and evaluate a novel approach to science instruction that engages multiple representations-text, hands-on experimentation and interactive computer simulations-which incorporates scaffolding both by the teacher and the computer, in order to immerse middle school students in these practices of science. Prior research has found that students benefit from using multiple representations when: (i) the representations are integrated into instructional a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080507
Grant
Developing the Retrieval-Monitoring-Feedback (RMF) Method for Improving the Durability and Efficiency of Student Learning
A primary goal of education is to acquire knowledge that lasts over time, knowledge that is durable, not just to increase familiarity of information over the short term. As a result, a major responsibility facing teachers is to provide instruction that supports long-term retention of what students learn when in school. This responsibility can become overwhelming given the amount of information that students are expected to learn. Thus, to learn all that is expected in the time allotted to in...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080316
Grant
Measuring the Development of Vocabulary and Word Learning to Support Content Area Reading and Learning
Vocabulary development is a critical part of learning to read well, and appears to be a significant aspect of the gap between competent and struggling readers. Teaching vocabulary directly can help enhance vocabulary learning and reading comprehension. While the importance of vocabulary development may be apparent to researchers and practitioners, the state of the art in vocabulary assessment is still rather limited. The purpose of this project is to develop improved methods for measuring vo...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080647
Grant
Mindful Instruction of Nonmainstream Children
This project will test the efficacy of a fully developed intervention, Collaborative Reasoning, that is designed to boost the conceptual understanding, thinking skills, language, and motivation of learners, particularly African American and Latino/a students. Collaborative Reasoning activities include both discussions and group work and are designed to promote open, free-flowing, peer-managed discussions that are intended to help develop critical and reflective thinking. By participating i...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080347
Grant
Making Sense of Concrete Models for Mathematics
To help children connect their intuitive understanding of mathematics to related symbolic procedures, some educational theorists have advocated for the use of concrete models during instruction. Current theories identify several mechanisms that might be engaged by concrete models for mathematics. These models are meant to embody mathematical relationships more transparently than everyday objects. For example, to teach place value concepts, a set of beads may be used to illustrate the relatio...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080287
Grant
Content-Rich Vocabulary Development to Improve Reading Achievement of Struggling Adolescent Readers
In this project, the researchers proposed to develop a content-rich vocabulary program for adolescent struggling in reading. The premise of this project was that limited vocabulary, and the limited background knowledge that accompanies it, severely limits the reading comprehension of struggling adolescent readers. Clearly, other issues can contribute to poor adolescent reading, such as inadequate reading fluency or lack of skill in using reading strategies. However, there is growing evidence...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070016
Grant
The Continued Development of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE)
The Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) was founded in 2005 as a scientific organization that could support the growing community of researchers interested in the development and application of scientific methods to produce estimates of the causal effects of education interventions.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U080004
Grant
Value-Added Models and the Measurement of Teacher Quality: Tracking or Causal Effects?
Teacher quality is increasingly recognized as a crucial component of the educational process. If schools are to hire, promote, or compensate on the basis of quality, they need accurate measures of teacher quality. One measure of a high-quality teacher is one who improves his or her students' achievement. However, this assertion presumes that we know how to measure a teacher's effect on student achievement. What is needed is a measure of the causal effect, distinct from the potentially co...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080560
Grant
A Cognitive Approach to Implementing Tree Thinking in High School and College Biology Curricula
In biology, a type of hierarchical diagram called a cladogram is used to depict evolutionary histories among species or groups of species. These diagrams are the most important tool that contemporary scientists use to reason about evolutionary relationships. Such understanding has been termed "tree thinking." Recently, a number of researchers have argued that this approach must be incorporated into the biology curriculum if any progress toward meaningful science literacy in this domain is to...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080621
Grant
The Organization of Mathematical Knowledge
The purpose of this project is to compare different ways of organizing mathematical information and empirically test which one will lead to better understanding of and memory for the text. Competing theories suggest the benefit of employing either an object-based or deduction-based format. Pilot testing revealed equivalent overall memory for statements with either format but differential benefits when the level of a statement's importance is considered. The deduction-based format led to be...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080341
Grant
Efficacy and Replication Research on the Intelligent Tutoring System for the Structure Strategy—Rural and Suburban Schools Grades 4, 5, 7, and 8
Understanding and remembering what you read is a very important skill, but one that troubles both young and old. The structure strategy is a way of studying a wide variety of reading materials, including textbooks, newspaper articles, and magazine stories. Many careful studies have shown that this strategy helps readers of all ages improve their reading comprehension. The web-based Intelligent Tutoring System for the Structure Strategy (ITSS) has shown positive outcomes in experimental studi...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080133
Grant
Guided Cognition for Unsupervised Learning of Mathematics
Classroom interactions among students and teachers include many activities intended to help students clarify, organize, and remember material. In contrast to classroom learning, learning during homework, for example, may be impoverished. Such learning is generally unsupervised, self-paced, and self-monitored. These characteristics may be disadvantages if the learning activities fail to evoke the effective cognitive events that occur in the supervised learning environment of the classroom....
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080134
Grant
Efficacy of Earobics Step I in English Language Learners and Low SES Minority Children
Research demonstrates that high quality classroom instruction and supplemental interventions can help close the achievement gaps between typically developing children and those at risk for reading failure because of low levels of initial literacy, socioeconomic disadvantage, and learning English as a second language. Significantly, the best predictors of children's responses to classroom instruction and compensatory intervention tend to be the extent of their literacy and preliteracy skills...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080196
Grant
Improving Children's Numerical Understanding
The ability to estimate numerical magnitude is important, not only because of its role in mathematical thinking but also because it is a part of daily life. Estimation is also related to other aspects of mathematical ability, including arithmetic skill, conceptual understanding of computational procedures, and math achievement test scores. Preliminary evidence suggests that increasing young children's use of appropriate representations of numerical magnitudes can improve their estimation a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080013
Grant
The Iterative Design of Modules to Support Reading Comprehension Instruction
There is a significant knowledge base that the reading community has developed regarding what successful students know about reading, what instructional opportunities are necessary to support the development of successful readers, and what teachers need to know in order to teach reading. However, there is a much less well-established knowledge base informing efforts to translate knowledge about reading into knowledge designed for use by teacher-educators. Furthermore, the preponderance of re...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080005
Grant
Multilevel Assessments of Science Standards (MASS)
Large-scale state-level tests and classroom assessments are often not well aligned, and often do not support good instructional decisions. In addition, the technical quality of classroom assessments developed by teachers or those that are embedded in published curriculum materials is often unknown or inadequate. The purpose of the Multilevel Assessment of Science Standards (MASS) project is to create a new generation of technology-enhanced formative assessments that bring best formative as...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080225
Grant
A Randomized Controlled Study of the Effects of Intelligent Online Chemistry Tutors in Urban California School Districts
Student knowledge and skills in science in the U.S. needs to be improved. A National Science Board report in 2006 indicates that while science achievement has improved slightly on some measures over the last few years, it is far below goals set by the National Science Board's Commission on Precollege Education in Mathematics, Science, and Technology almost three decades ago. Moreover, the performance of students in the U.S. is lagging when compared to other countries. The purpose of this pro...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080063
Grant
Bringing Cognitive Tutors to the Internet: A Website that Helps Middle-School Students Learn Math
Students in American schools consistently perform lower in mathematics than their counterparts in many other countries. One possible way to improve math achievement is to augment in-school mathematics learning with after-school activities. However, after-school tutoring is limited and, of the many websites available for math instruction, few are free and few offer guided learning by doing. The researchers propose to develop a website for middle-school mathematics (grades 6-8) where students ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A080093
Grant
Improving Science Learning Through Tutorial Dialogs
In the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 2 percent of U.S. students attained advanced levels of mathematics or science achievement by grade 12 (EdWeb, 2005). A significant factor contributing to this poor performance is the inability of students to understand and learn from science text. While many students may appear to learn to read and understand text by third grade, evidence shows that as texts become more challenging in fourth grade, many students cannot rea...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070008
Grant
Classroom Links to Vocabulary and Phonological Sensitivity Skills
The press for improved early literacy outcomes has increased exponentially for preschool education programs targeted to at-risk children in the United States. Recent federal and state policies aimed at eliminating student achievement gaps in elementary schools have bolstered the expectation that a primary purpose of pre-kindergarten education is to promote the acquisition of knowledge and skills linked to later reading success. The policies are supported by a growing research literature on t...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070605
Grant
The Role of External Representations in Learning and Transfer of Mathematical Knowledge
Abstract mathematical concepts pose challenges for learners, especially when learners are young. One way that classroom teachers address this challenge is to introduce abstract concepts through concrete representations or instantiations. For example, manipulatives such as differently colored blocks representing ones, tens, and hundreds could aid the learning of arithmetic. However, extraneous information in concrete representations may distract the learner from the relevant mathematical stru...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070407
Grant
Awards for Research in Cognition and Student Learning
There is currently a great need but limited supply of high quality research at the intersection of the cognitive science and education research communities.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U070001
Grant
Acquiring Research Investigative and Evaluative Skills (ARIES) for Scientific Inquiry
This study is a response to the many calls from across the nation for implementing "an effective, realistic, affordable, and politically acceptable long-term approach to the well-known problems and opportunities of U.S. pre-K-16 STEM education" (National Science Board, May 2006). As an initial step to developing an intelligent computerized tutor for teaching scientific inquiry skills, the researchers will build an intelligent computerized tutor and information delivery system (Acquiring Rese...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070349
Grant
Improving Metacomprehension and Self-Regulated Learning From Scientific Texts
A great deal of student learning occurs in self-regulated activities such as reading or studying outside of a structured classroom context. For these activities, accurate metacognitive (self) monitoring is critical to effective study. If a student does not accurately differentiate well-learned material from less-learned material, he or she could waste time studying material that is already well learned, or worse, fail to restudy material that has not yet been adequately learned. However, st...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070460
Grant
Efficacy of Sound Partners Supplemental Tutoring for ELL Students, Grades K-1
One of the greatest challenges facing U.S. public schools today is to ensure that increasingly large numbers of English language learners become proficient readers. English language learners are the fastest growing population in U.S. schools, increasing 65 percent since 1994. In urban schools, English language learners account for 21 percent of students. To date, little research has been conducted to rigorously evaluate the effects of curricula intended to improve reading instruction for stu...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A070324
Grant
The Reading Edge: Development and Evaluation of a High School Cooperative
Students who enter high school with poor literacy skills face long odds against graduating and going on to postsecondary education or satisfying careers. The Alliance for Excellent Education reports that roughly 6 million secondary students read well below grade level. High school provides a last chance for many at-risk students, who must quickly improve their reading skills to be able to succeed in their secondary-level courses. Although the poor reading skills of students in high-povert...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070324
Grant
Child-Instruction Interactions in Reading: Examining Causal Effects of Individualized Instruction in Second and Third Grade
In this project, the researchers evaluated the impact of a web-based software system, Assessment-to-instruction (A2i), which was developed through a previous IES-funded project. A2i was designed to enables teachers to individualize reading instruction according to students' language and literacy skills by using algorithms to compute recommended amounts and types of instruction for each student. A2i also prepared instructional profiles for each child and provided teachers with suggestions for...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070074
Grant
Making Longitudinal Web-Based Assessments Give Cognitively Diagnostic Reports to Teachers, Parents, and Students While Employing Mastery Learning
Helping students achieve proficiency in mathematics, as measured by state standardized tests, is a priority for mathematics teachers. To help meet this goal, teachers need to know how well their students are performing throughout the school year, so that instruction can be tailored to better fit the needs of students. In addition, students and parents should be able to keep track of mathematical concepts or skills that students have not mastered to know which areas need extra practice and at...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A070440
Grant
Evaluation of the First In Math Online Mathematics Program in New York City: A Randomized Control Trial
According to the 2005 National Assessment of Education Progress mathematics assessments, only 35 percent of students in grade 4 perform at or above the proficient level of mathematics achievement. In order to identify effective programs that can help improve students' mathematics proficiency, rigorous research is needed. The purpose of this project is to examine the impact of the First in Math online mathematics program on fourth- and fifth-grade student achievement in the New York City Pub...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070048
Grant
Democratizing Access to Core Mathematics Grades 9-12
On the 2005 National Assessment of Education Progress mathematics assessment, 22 percent of students in grade 12 scored at or above "proficient." The importance of algebra is stressed on this assessment with the majority of the items (35 percent) being devoted to algebra. In addition, analysis of data from the National Assessment of Education Progress mathematics assessment showed that taking higher level mathematics courses beyond algebra (e.g., pre-calculus, calculus) was associated with s...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070430
Grant
Improving Adults' Reading Outcomes with Strategic Tutoring and Content Enhancement Routines
In this study, the researchers proposed to develop and conduct a pilot study of two interventions for adults in Job Corps programs designed to improve their reading and content-based curricular outcomes. In 2007, at the time of this study, Job Corps provided an educational and training program designed to help economically disadvantaged young adults achieve successful outcomes in academic and trades programs (e.g., carpentry, health care, welding, and culinary arts). Job Corps enrollees ofte...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070129
Grant
Training Attention in Preschool: Effects on Neurocognitive Functions and School Performance
Over the past several decades, cognitive science researchers have made considerable progress in understanding how people learn. However, this research has very rarely guided development of educational curricula or interventions. This project, based on research regarding what affects young children's ability to maintain attention despite distractions, aims to develop and assess methods to improve attentional focus in preschoolers who are at high risk for school failure. Initial studies sugg...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070018
Grant
Conceptual Analysis and Student Learning in Physics
Cognitive psychologists have discovered that experts in a field and novices understand content and approach problem solving in that field in different ways. For example, expert physicists and physics students view the organizational structure of physics content in very different ways. To physicists, the beauty of physics lies in its hierarchical nature-a few general principles that can be applied to solve problems across a variety of contexts. Students, however, generally focus on learning ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070085
Grant
Harnessing Retrieval Practice to Enhance Learning in Diverse Domains
Most students and instructors tend to think of testing only as a method of evaluating students' performance. However, a growing body of research demonstrates that the process of actively recalling information (e.g., by answering fill-in-the-blank questions on a test) can facilitate learning more effectively than other kinds of review. Moreover, several recent studies have shown that strategic use of testing can help students remember information longer. In this project, the research team ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070537
Grant
Bridging the Bridge to Algebra: Measuring and Optimizing the Influence of Prerequisite Skills on a Pre-Algebra Curriculum
Relatively little research has focused on the development of curricula and instructional methods designed to improve skills that are required for learning and doing algebra. The purpose of this project is to develop an automated tutorial intervention that is intended to improve learning in a pre-algebra curriculum. In particular, the goal of this intervention is to help children learn new complex math skills by attending to prerequisite math skills. In many theories of learning, complex s...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070487
Grant
An Economical Improvement In Literacy and Numeracy
Differences in student learning in reading and mathematics between children living in poverty and those who are not are apparent in kindergarten and persist as children progress through school. To address the challenge of improving learning outcomes for young children, in a previously funded IES project, Pasnak and Kidd developed a cognitive intervention for children who had difficulty mastering knowledge and skills appropriate for kindergarten. The cognitive intervention consists of small...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305B070542
Grant
Content-Based Vocabulary Instruction: Using Cognates to Promote the Vocabulary Development and Reading Comprehension of Native Spanish Speakers
On the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress, among students who are English language learners, 4% of Grade 8 students and 5% of Grade 12 students read at or above the proficient level. In contrast, among students who are not English language learners, 32% of Grade 8 students and 37% of Grade 12 students read at or above the proficient level. Despite the evident need, very little is known about how English language learners become fluent readers at advanced levels. Although some r...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A070438
Grant
Assessing Reading in the 21st Century Conference: Aligning and Applying Advances in the Reading and Measurement Sciences
Assessing Reading in the 21st Century Conference: Aligning and Applying Advances in the Reading and Measurement Sciences
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U070002
Grant
Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics and Science for At-Risk Children: Outcomes-Focused Curricula and Support for Teaching Quality
There are significant differences in students' mathematical knowledge and performance from prekindergarten through high school across socioeconomic groups, with students who live in poverty exhibiting lower levels of achievement and being at risk for later school failure. These disparities increase as students advance through school. In addition, achievement gaps in science also persist from elementary school through high school across socioeconomic groups. Currently, there is a lack of i...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A070068
Grant
The Effects of Disadvantaged Schools and Neighborhoods on the Education of Low-Income Youth
This research team seeks to address the substantial variation across neighborhoods of different socio-economic compositions in graduation rates, achievement test scores, and other education outcomes. The researchers will try to find out how neighborhood contexts affect youth education outcomes over the long term, and what the primary mechanisms are through which neighborhoods influence youth education outcomes. The objective is to produce evidence that will help guide the development of educ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U070006
Grant
Making Meaning: Morphological Processing and Its Contribution to Adolescent and Pre-Adolescent Literacy
In this project, the researchers' goal was to further understand the mechanisms used by students to increase their vocabulary and comprehension through the use of morphological insights and develop instructional practices to support their learning. At the time of this study, although many vocabulary researchers had theorized that morphological awareness was involved in the observed explosion of students' reading vocabulary over the elementary years, competing explanations existed. Even among...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H060073
Grant
Does Visual Scaffolding Facilitate Students' Mathematics Learning? Evidence From Early Algebra
What factors influence whether students comprehend and learn from instructional language? One potential factor is the nonverbal support for language comprehension provided by teachers' use of visual scaffolding, including pointing, representational gestures, diagrams, and other methods of highlighting visual information. Previous studies in noneducational settings have shown that visual scaffolding may facilitate listeners' comprehension of speech, particularly when the verbal message is am...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H060097
Grant
Enhancing Self-Reflection and Mathematics Achievement of At-Risk Students at an Urban Technical College: A Self-Regulated Learning Intervention
The purpose of this project was to pilot test instructional practices intended to improve math outcomes for postsecondary students. The instructional practices focused on self-regulated learning practices, which involved teacher demonstrations of coping techniques and exercises designed to encourage self-efficacy, self-evaluation, and self-reflection processes. The researchers proposed to randomly assign 120 at-risk students across 4 semesters to either a self-regulated learning section or a...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H060018
Grant
Postsecondary Content-Area Reading-Writing Intervention: Development and Determination of Potential Efficacy
The researchers in this study intended to develop and test the Content Comprehension Strategy Intervention, an approach that provides guided practice and transfer instruction in several reading and writing skills while contextualizing instruction in science content. In the early 2000s, it was thought that poor outcomes of community college developmental education may stem from inappropriate instructional approaches, including lack of direct instruction in reading and writing skills, lack of ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G060106
Grant
Test-Enhanced Learning in the Classroom
Achievement of American students falls behind that of students in many other industrialized countries, especially in science and mathematics. This project builds on earlier work on test-enhanced learning, or the use of frequent quizzes as learning events. Test-enhanced learning has been shown to be highly effective in promoting student learning in laboratory situations. The purpose of this project is to import the Test-Enhanced Learning Program into school settings to examine its efficacy at...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H060080
Grant
Training in Experimental Design: Developing Scalable and Adaptive Computer-based Science Instruction
In this project, the researchers proposed to develop a computer-based intelligent tutoring system that would provide instruction to help students learn about experimental design. This intelligent tutoring system, called Intelligent TED Tutor, would provide feedback based on individual learners' knowledge and mastery in real time across a variety of tasks and science content areas. The research team argued that it was important for students to master two aspects of the scientific method: (a) ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H060034
Grant
Numbers Plus: A Comprehensive Approach to Early Mathematics Education
The High/Scope educational approach is implemented in many early childhood programs serving children from low-income and minority backgrounds. For example, the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey data indicate that one in four Head Start programs report using the High/Scope curriculum. Although the overall positive impact of the High/Scope approach has been demonstrated in past research, its mathematics component needs to be made compatible with current research and standards. The...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305K060089
Grant
Effects of a Supplementary Vocabulary Intervention for Students With Limited English Proficiency
Since 1979 the number of students from homes where English is not the primary language has more than doubled from 6 million to 14 million, and children of immigrant parents now make up 22 percent of children under age six in the United States. Furthermore, this pattern is not restricted to a few geographic locations-the number of students from homes where English is not the primary language is growing rapidly in all states. Very little rigorous research exists on the effects of intervention...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A070045
Grant
Early Childhood Hands-On Science Curriculum Development and Demonstration
In the early 2000s, science education was a marginal component of most preschool curricula. In this study, the researchers aimed to develop and obtain preliminary evidence of the potential impact of a comprehensive early science readiness curriculum and related teacher professional development.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305K060036
Grant
A Learning by Teaching Approach to Help Students Develop Self-Regulatory Skills in Middle School Science Classrooms
The purpose of this project was to develop and test the use of teachable agents to improve students' metacognition, and to examine whether improving middle school students' metacognitive skills leads to improved science learning. Teachable agents are software programs in which students teach a computer agent to understand a concept and may be well suited to improving students' metacognitive skills. Metacognition involves two component processes: (a) the ability to monitor one's cognitive act...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H060089
Grant
Attention, Memory, and Executive Functions in Written Language Expression in Elementary School Children
At the time of this study, the researchers aimed to establish a stronger scientific foundation for educational practice within the writing domain by using the current advances in cognitive science and neuroscience. Through this study, they planned to examine
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H060042
Grant
Teaching the Logic of the Scientific Method in the Fourth Grade
In this study, the researchers planned to develop instructional practices and pilot test them to help grade 4 students learn the concept of "control of variables". The control of variables refers to the strategy of manipulating only one variable while the others are held constant or controlled, allowing experimenters to conclude that any changes that occur are due to changes in the one variable. To develop the instructional practices, they will compare two practices they aimed to refine: dir...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H060150
Grant
The Effect of Metacognition on Children's Control of Their Study and of Their Cognitive Processes
This project will examine children's metacognitive skills, or the ability to assess one's own thought and learning processes. By examining children's use of these skills and strategies, the researchers will then be able to devise interventions addressing weaknesses in this area and remediate them in order to improve learning. By building metacognitive skills and control strategies, children could be better positioned to assess their own knowledge so that they can more effectively allocate ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H060161
Grant
Development of an Empirically Based Vocabulary Curriculum for Kindergarten and First Grade Students
In this project, researchers aimed to develop an empirically based vocabulary curriculum embedded with writing instruction and determine the role of vocabulary instruction in the development of language arts proficiencies in young students called Vocabulary Enrichment Project. These goals stemmed from national concerns regarding school readiness among young students and the vocabulary demands of comprehending written language that were present at the time of this study. The researchers focus...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G060008
Grant
Integrating Conceptual Foundations in Mathematics through the Application of Principles of Perceptual Learning
The objective of this project is to help students in Grades 3-8 develop an integrated mathematical knowledge base in which the domains of measurement and fractions are meaningfully connected to each other and to core concepts of multiplication, division, ratio, and proportion. This interrelated set of mathematical concepts has been selected because it is central to the mathematical standards identified for these grades (NCTM, 2000); it provides essential foundations for higher math learning...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H060070
Grant
Vocabulary Development Through Writing: A Key to Academic Success
In this project, the researchers aimed to develop and obtain evidence of the potential impact of a vocabulary intervention focused on academic register to improve the reading and writing achievement of fourth graders. The researchers theorized that, although many factors contribute to the underperformance of low-income students and English language learners, differences in students' knowledge of academic language is a key element in academic achievement.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G060140
Grant
Using Growth Mixture Modeling to Identify Patterns of Early Reading Development and Teacher and Program Correlates for English Learners
In this project, the research team proposed to use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to examine the development of English reading proficiency among English language learners (ELs). In this project, the researchers planned to
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G060108
Grant
Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER)
Supported by a five-year, $10 million grant from the Institute for Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education, CALDER is a federally funded National Research and Development Center. The center will harvest state and district administrative data on individual teachers and students for insights into how state and local policies, especially teacher policies, governance policies, and accountability policies affect teachers (e.g., who teaches what students) and students (e.g., academic a
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A060067
Grant
Scientific Misconceptions: From Cognitive Underpinning to Educational Treatment
In this project, the research team studied the cognitive origins of scientific misconceptions and designed interventions to correct misconceptions. In the early 2000s, one assumed barrier to successful science learning was scientific "pre-conceptions" or "misconceptions," which were found to be resistant to change. A scientific misconception is often defined as everyday beliefs about a natural phenomenon, and these beliefs are different from an expert scientist's view of the same phenomenon....
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050125
Grant
Using Contrasting Examples to Support Procedural Flexibility and Conceptual Understanding in Mathematics
In this project, researchers proposed to develop and evaluate an instructional approach that uses contrasting examples in order to foster flexible mathematical problem solving. Flexible problem solving requires that students integrate the procedural knowledge that they have gained of specific actions for solving problems with conceptual knowledge of general mathematical principles. The instructional approach asks students to compare solution procedures in the context both of algebra problem ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050005
Grant
A One-Year Follow-up of Evidence-Based Early Reading Intervention Provided by Kindergarten and First Grade Teachers
For this project, the researchers built on a previous project that was designed to address the gap that exists between research and practice in early reading interventions. Through this study the researchers planned to address unanswered questions regarding the timing and duration of early intervention needed for maximum benefit. They also aimed to investigate whether responsiveness to treatment was influenced by different beginning skill levels and classroom behavior. Additionally, the rese...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305U050002
Grant
Creating a Usable Environment to Teach Argument Comprehension and Production Skills
In earlier work, this research team found significant deficits in college students' ability to comprehend, evaluate, and produce arguments. Argumentation is a central component of social and personal decision-making, as well as a fundamental skill required by many postsecondary class assignments and by entrance exams to graduate-level education (e.g., SAT, LSAT, and GRE). However, many postsecondary students leave high school unable to comprehend or write arguments. The researchers' previous...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050133
Grant
Grounded and Transferable Knowledge of Complex Systems Using Computer Simulations
At the time of this project, considerable research suggested that students often did not spontaneously transfer what they learned when there were even superficial differences in learning situations. This research team believed that students could be taught in such a way as to allow them to transfer scientific principles across different areas. To determine how best to support this transfer of knowledge, this research team examined the relation between specific facts and details through which...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050116
Grant
Evaluation of Writing Wings: Writing Instruction for Disadvantaged Elementary School Children
: In this project, researchers proposed to evaluate the effect of Writing Wings, a writing instruction program developed by the Success for All Foundation that targets disadvantaged children in grades 3 to 5, a critical period for the acquisition of good writing skills. At the end of the project, the researchers intended to show whether implementing Writing Wings in 20 elementary schools improved the writing of their disadvantaged students.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F050117
Grant
Developing Internet Comprehension Strategies Among Adolescent Students At Risk to Become Dropouts
In this project, the researchers developed a research-based adaptation of reciprocal teaching to support poor, minority adolescent youth in acquiring reading comprehension skills. In the early 2000s, the Internet was becoming an increasingly important source of information for students and researchers noted that it may pose new challenges for students because reading information on the Internet demands new, higher-level comprehension skills. At the same time, the Internet was seen as having ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050154
Grant
Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE)
In 2003-2004, English language learner services were provided to 3.8 million students in the U.S., or 11 percent of all students. Most English language learners confront an educational landscape where they must study and be tested on grade-level curricula in a new language at the same time they are learning that language.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A050056
Grant
National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education
The National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education (NCRECE) focuses on conducting research, disseminating research findings, and carrying out leadership activities aimed at improving the quality of early childhood education across the United States. The Center is based at the University of Virginia and is directed by Robert Pianta. Major activities include:
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A060021
Grant
Dynamically Modifying the Learning Trajectories of Novices with Pedagogical Agents
 In this project, the researchers developed an intervention designed to help novice chemistry learners revise their strategy while solving chemistry problems. This intervention built on "learning trajectories", a concept based on the observation that novices and experts think and perform differently. Learning trajectories aim to capture the stages of understanding as experience is developed, namely that initially knowledge is limited and fragmented, making it difficult for students to under...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050052
Grant
A Randomized Trial of Two Promising Interventions for Students with Attention Problems
Attention problems, even when not severe enough to warrant a formal diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, are strongly associated with academic achievement difficulties and have an adverse impact on school success for thousands of students each year. At the time of this study, there were no interventions that had been clearly established to enhance attention and achievement among students with attention difficulties. The researchers' goal in this project was to conduct a rig...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050036
Grant
Promoting School Success in Children Attending Pre-K Programs in Poor, Urban Schools
The purpose of this project was to test ParentCorps, a universal, preventive school- and family-based mental health program for pre-kindergarten children from poor, urban communities. The program aims to prevent conduct problems and improve academic achievement among children by promoting effective parenting and teaching strategies and parent-school involvement at the transition to kindergarten.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305F050245
Grant
Scaling Up TRIAD: Teaching Early Mathematics for Understanding with Trajectories and Technologies
In this project, the research team evaluated a large-scale implementation of the TRIAD mathematics intervention in both diverse geographical areas and student populations. Prior research showed that focused pre-K math interventions improved student learning in math under limited conditions, but no large-scale research had been done at the time of the project.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305K050157
Grant
Supporting Efficient and Durable Student Learning
The research team developed and evaluated the promise of a new method of learning and study, called retrieval-feedback-monitoring. The goal of this new method was to support students' learning for long-term retention of key concepts in academic content areas. Researchers based this method on two cognitive theories. First, research demonstrates that the durability of learning can be improved by requiring learners to study concepts systematically spaced over time instead of trying to master ma...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050038
Grant
Assessing Readers Struggling to Comprehend Multiple Sources of Information
In this project, the researchers proposed to develop a set of assessments that could diagnose the strategies and skills required for comprehension of multiple texts. The purpose of this assessment was to identify what causes readers to struggle with this complex but important task. In the early 2000s, most comprehension research examined how students derive meaning from a single text, so there was a need to better understand how students make meaning as they read across multiple texts and fo...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G050091
Grant
An Implementation of Vicarious Learning with Deep-Level Reasoning Questions in Middle School and High School Classrooms
In this project, the researchers compared different versions of AutoTutor, an intelligent tutoring system that was developed by the research team in prior work, to examine how best to support learning of course content in computer literacy and Newtonian physics. The research team compared the use of AutoTutor in its typical interactive version to a condition where students listened to and observed the AutoTutor agent presenting the same course content without any physical interaction with th...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050169
Grant
Improving the Assessment Capability of Standardized Tests: How High-Stakes Testing Environments Compromise Performance
In this project, the researchers proposed to first examine how stereotype threat affects women's performance in math testing situations and then develop and pilot test new assessment tools that aim to reduce the negative effects of stereotype threat. Stereotype threat arises when members of a marginalized group feel there is a negative stereotype about them and perform worse or demonstrate apprehension in circumstances when the stereotype is salient. For example, there is a stereotype that w...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050004
Grant
Guided Cognition for Unsupervised Learning
In this project, the researchers proposed to test specific strategies for structuring homework assignments in ways that would increase the likelihood that students would study productively. From the perspective of cognitive scientists in the early 2000s, the value of homework assignments for improving student learning depends on how the assignments are structured. If the homework can lead a student to have cognitive experiences that common in supervised group-learning environments (such as c...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050062
Grant
Improving Children's Pure Numerical Estimation
In this project, the researchers further refined and tested mathematic interventions that were developed in their prior research. These interventions aimed to increase children's abilities to discriminate between the magnitudes of numbers decreases sharply as these magnitudes increase. The researchers' preliminary evidence suggested that increasing young children's use of appropriate representations of numerical magnitudes would improve their estimation and, by extension, their math achievem...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H050035
Grant
Optimizing Resistance to Forgetting
In this study, the researchers proposed to explore how instructional procedures foster students' long-term retention of information and skills. The researchers aimed to focus particularly on factors that can be readily manipulated in almost every learning context, be it a classroom or a computer-aided instruction or distance-learning program.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H040108
Grant
Writing Intensive Reading Comprehension: Effects of Comprehension Instruction With and Without Integrated Writing Instruction on Fourth and Fifth Grade Students' Reading Comprehension and Writing Performance
In this study, researchers proposed to develop a curriculum called Writing Intensive Reading Comprehension (WIRC). WIRC was to support students in grades 4 and 5 by integrating reading comprehension instruction with writing instruction in collaborative, theme-based reading/writing workshops. At the time of this project, research on reading and writing suggested assumed that students with high reading comprehension skills could use writing to understand reading, whereas those with low reading...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040153
Grant
Scaling Up Peer Assisted Learning Strategies to Strengthen Reading Achievement
At the time of this study, conventional early childhood reading instruction targeted the skills of the students near the middle of the class performance level. However, students' actual reading performance varied greatly within classrooms. In randomized controlled field trials, Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies, or PALS, showed an increase in instructional differentiation and reading achievement. In this project, the researchers aimed to study how PALS could be scaled up and what variables w...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040104
Grant
Improving Comprehension of Struggling Readers: Connecting Cognitive Science and Educational Practice
In this study, the researchers proposed to develop and pilot test a set of interventions to improve students' reading comprehension. These interventions were to be based on rigorous theoretical and empirical work that had direct relevance for educational practice and that would improve the underlying reading comprehension processes of struggling readers. The researchers contended that prior research was limited because it did not focus on both online processes and offline products of strug...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040021
Grant
Child Instruction Interactions in Early Reading: Examining Causal Effects of Individualized Instruction
Research in the early 2000s indicated that the effects of instruction on reading depended on the specific early language and literacy skills that children brought to school. This research supported the idea that reading instruction should be tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of the individual student. In this project, the researchers aimed to develop and evaluate an approach to professional development and technology use designed to enable teachers to provide effective individualized ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H040013
Grant
Bridging the Gap: Applying Algebra Cognition Research to Develop and Validate Diagnostic Classroom Algebra Testlet
In this project, the researchers proposed to develop a set of computer-based algebra short tests, called testlets, that can provide teachers with information that they can use to guide instruction for individual students and groups of students who share similar problems with algebraic concepts. The researchers proposed that this tool would make classroom assessment a more instructionally useful component of teaching and learning. During the early 2000s, the tests used for mathematics achieve...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H040099
Grant
A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of a Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics Curriculum on Low-Income Children's Mathematical Knowledge
In this project, the researchers  evaluated the short-term and long-term effects of the prekindergarten mathematics curriculum on low-income children in California and New York.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J020026
Grant
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Preschool Literacy Curriculum for Children At-Risk
In this project, the researchers aimed to evaluate the efficacy of two preschool curricula that emphasize building beginning reading skills-Open Court Pre-K/DLM Express and Literacy Express-against business-as-usual. In addition, the investigators proposed to evaluate the effects of using standard workshops as the method of teacher training with the curricula and business-as-usual compared to workshops with follow-up in-class coaching. The researchers' goal was to determine whether the curri...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305J030093
Grant
Advancing the Math Skills of Low-Achieving Adolescents in Technology-Rich Learning Environments
In this project, researchers planned to implement, test, and refine the most effective way to teach both problem-solving and basic skills to low-achieving adolescents using a teaching method called Enhanced Anchored Instruction (EAI). At the time of this study, research showed that students with learning disabilities (LD) gain, on average, only 1 year of achievement in math for every 2 years they are in school. Â The researchers believed they could help address this gap by providing informat...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H040032
Grant
Breakthrough to Literacy in the Chicago Public Schools: A Large Scale Evaluation of the Effectiveness of a Reading Comprehension Intervention
Breakthrough to Literacy in the Chicago Public Schools: A Large Scale Evaluation of the Effectiveness of a Reading Comprehension Intervention
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305G040145
Grant
A Multidisciplinary Study of Analogical Transfer in Children's Mathematical Learning
In the early 2000s, research suggested that analogical reasoning played an important yet little understood role in teaching mathematical thinking and learning. In this project, the researchers proposed to explore ways to improve children's learning of mathematics through teachers' use of analogy in instruction by examining previous studies of typical U.S. classroom activities and laboratory experiments.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030141
Grant
Reading, Writing, Respect and Resolution: The Impact of a Social and Character Development and Literacy Program on Teachers and Children
Reading, Writing, Respect and Resolution: The Impact of a Social and Character Development and Literacy Program on Teachers and Children
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305L030003
Grant
Increasing Learning By Promoting Early Abstract Thought
In this project, the researchers purposed to measure the impact of using an education intervention designed to enhance two particular forms of abstract thinking in young children's learning and achievement. The two particular abstract principles-learning to figure out which object in a group is unlike the others (the oddity principle) and knowing how to insert an appropriate object into a pre-given series of objects (seriation)-are forms of abstract thinking that are especially important in ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030031
Grant
The Neural Markers of Effective Learning
In this project, the researchers proposed to use various experimental approaches to build theory that could guide the development of improved computer-based algebra tutors. The approaches they proposed using included both behavioral and brain imaging techniques. At the time of this study, research was indicating that computer-based tutoring programs were having some success in helping students learn algebraic procedures but were having less success in teaching students how to solve algebra w...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030016
Grant
Test-enhanced Learning
In the early 2000s, prior laboratory research had shown the power of retrieval of material during tests in enhancing later retention. The Test Enhanced Learning (TEL) built off of this finding. At the end of the project, the researchers hoped to have moved toward a systematic application of this approach to education practice by investigating the power of tests to enhance learning of text material.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030339
Grant
Training Indexing To Enhance Meaning Extraction In Young Readers
At the time of this project, 38 percent of U.S. 4th graders could not read and understand a paragraph in a children's book, and the percentages for struggling minority students and students from low-income families were even higher. In this project, the researchers aimed to use advances in cognitive science and the study of language development to create and pilot test an intervention to enhance young children's reading comprehension. They proposed a series of cognitive studies to build the ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030266
Grant
Lapses In Meta-Cognition During Reading: Understanding Comprehension Failure
In this project, the researchers intended to refine and approve a recently developed theoretical perspective for investigating the experience of "zoning out" while reading, also known as "mind wandering", and study the pedagogical implications of these occurrences. In the early 2000s, there was little research that directly examined the role that such experiences play in reading comprehension and whether any negative consequences mind wandering might lead to could be addressed by some sort o...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030235
Grant
Computer-Assisted Instruction For Learning and Long-Term Retention Based On Recent Cognitive and Metacognitive Findings
In this project, researchers focused on developing a new model computer tutor to support learning and long-term retention of second-language vocabulary for students of various ages and grade levels. The researchers aimed to improve an existing computer tutor model for second-language vocabulary in several ways. The proposed model built upon prior research about various factors that influence learning and was to individualize instruction and testing based on the user's successes and failures ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030283
Grant
Improving Monitoring Accuracy Improves Learning From Text
The intended purposes of this project were (a) to study factors that influence the accuracy of readers' ability to monitor their own comprehension and (b) to develop interventions to strengthen this ability by improving that accuracy. In the early 2000s, research had indicated that accuracy increases when individuals reread texts, write summaries, or generate a list of keywords for texts before rating their comprehension of texts. In the project, the research team was to carry out five studi...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030170
Grant
Study Enhancement Based on Principles of Cognitive Science
In this project, the goal was to incorporate the results of their experiments into a computer-assisted program that would support the learning of science, social science, and advanced English vocabulary terms for at-risk middle school children. The research team proposed experiments designed to determine whether making errors during learning helps or hinders mastery of vocabulary words and to identify the most effective use of study time in order to ensure that students master an entir...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030175
Grant
From Cognitive Models of Reasoning to Lesson Plans for Inquiry
In this project, researchers intended to develop, implement, and assess cognitively grounded lesson planning methods to improve science achievement of middle-school students.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030229
Grant
Introducing Desirable Difficulties for Educational Applications in Science
At the time of this study, laboratory research indicated that interventions that appeared to make learning more difficult and slowed the rate of learning were often effective in enhancing long-term retention of information. This research team planned to determine whether the benefits of these "desirable difficulties" demonstrated in laboratory tasks could be generalized to realistic educational materials and contexts. The subjects of this study were middle school and college students using t...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H020113
Grant
The Influence of Students' Intelligence Beliefs On Attention, Information Processing, and Learning: A Neurophysiological Analysis
he researchers proposed to use electrophysiological techniques to examine (a) how students with different beliefs about intelligence attend to and process information in difficult learning tasks and (b) whether modifying these beliefs supports learning despite task difficulty and stereotypes about intelligence.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H020031
Grant
Improving Students' Comprehension and Construction of Arguments
In this study, the researchers aimed to understand how undergraduate students identify, represent, and construct both simple and complex arguments.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H020039
Grant
Optimizing Resistance to Forgetting
In this study, researchers explored ways to extend basic research on memory beyond the laboratory setting. Their goal was to identify highly effective strategies that could optimize the use of study time and improve students' ability to retain information.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H020061
Grant
Learning From Symbolic Objects
In this project, the investigators intended to determine whether experiences with visually attractive concrete objects interferes with students' use of letters, numbers, and mathematical symbols.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H020088
Grant
Longitudinal Impact of Community Violence
In this project, the investigators examined the relation between exposure to school or community violence and academic achievement. They looked at the effects of violence on working memory, motivation, and anxiety.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H020035
Grant
Age-related Changes in Word Problem Solving and Working Memory
The purpose of this project is to examine the cognitive processes through which working memory (WM) affects word problem solving accuracy in the elementary grades. In addition, the investigators will examine whether children at risk for mathematical difficulties in grade 1 have less working memory and greater difficulty solving word problems compared to average achievers of comparable age over time. Considerable research shows that people's ability to solve word problems depends largely on t...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H020055
Grant
Using Cognitive Analyses to Improve Children's Math and Science Learning
In this project, researchers explored how differences in initial conceptual understanding affect children's learning of mathematics and science. Additionally, researchers planned to test alternative instructional strategies to improve learning that addressed these differences.
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H020060
Grant
Understanding Students' Mathematical Competencies: An Exploration of the Impact of Contextualizing Mathematical Problems
In this project, researchers sought to examine whether making mathematical problems appear more practical (that is, related to the context of everyday life) would improve students' performance and mathematical knowledge compared to problems that appear more academic (that is, abstracted from any everyday context). To do so, the researchers investigated which of the factors made mathematical problems seem more practical and also contributed to better student performance on those problems and ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305H030282
Grant
Early ICARE: Early Independent Comprehensive Adaptive Reading Evaluation
Children identified early for reading problems have a much better chance of reaching grade level reading achievement than do students identified in Grade 3 or later. Many assessment instruments exist to find and profile these children, but most require significant teacher time and training to be appropriately used. The purpose of this project is to develop a computer-delivered early reading assessment system, called Early ICARE, which children can complete with minimal attention required by ...
Federal funding program:
Award number:
R305A070231
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