KU Center for Research on Learning
KU-CRL News Archive
CRL researcher selected for fellowship program
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Jana Craig Hare, project coordinator with the Center for Research on Learning, has been named a 2011-2012 CADRE Fellow by the Community for Advancing Discovery Research in Education. She is one of 10 individuals representing diverse interests and experiences within science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education research selected for this program.
As part of the CADRE Fellowship program, Jana will have the opportunity to explore topics essential to building her capacity as a researcher and developer and to engage in the Discovery Research K-12 community. The fellowship program, with support from the National Science Foundation, provides professional development experience for early career researchers and developers working on DR K-12 projects.
Jana is project coordinator for a KUCRL project called the Evidence Games: Collaborative Games Engaging Middle School Students in the Evaluation of Scientific Evidence.
Instructional coaching: Better instruction through partnerships with teachers
Friday, January 06, 2012
Any good teacher can attest that an educator needs to keep learning, just like the students in his or her classroom. The Center for Research on Learning at the University of Kansas has developed an instructional coaching project that is helping teachers worldwide learn on the job and improve how they educate students.
The Kansas Coaching Project partners with schools every year to share proven instructional methods and develop coaches within the schools who work with teachers in the classroom to enact those practices. The coaches are mentors and partners the teachers work with throughout the year, as opposed to the traditional professional development practice of a class or in-service that shares information that is expected to be taken back to the classroom.
“Schools make a very large investment in professional development. Often the nature of the development they follow does not yield long-standing effects through no fault of the teachers,” said Don Deshler, director of the Center for Research on Learning at KU. “Schools are getting a much better return on their investment through instructional coaching. More importantly, the quality of instruction is improving dramatically.”
Under the direction of Jim Knight, the Kansas Coaching Project works with educators and instructional coaches throughout the year. Several annual workshops are held to train new coaches, and tools are available online at no cost to the schools. Videos of instructional coaches at work, discussion forums, reading material and teaching methods are all available for the thousands of members from 40 states and countries such as Canada, India, England, China and Russia.
While the instructional methods coaches use are developed by some of the world’s foremost educational researchers, they are not complicated or inaccessible.
“The idea of instructional coaching is pretty simple,” Knight said. “What are the little things that make the biggest differences? What is effective teaching, and how can we implement it?”
The coaching project uses a three-tiered approach, making effective teaching practices available and easy to use, working with coaches in training them to be effective and collaborating with school districts to help them bring the entire school on board and contributing to the project.
Usually full-time district employees, coaches work in the classroom with teachers as equal partners in ensuring students are receiving the highest-quality instruction.
“Who the coach is, is really critical. They must be seen as credible in the eyes of the staff,” Knight said. “A coach is a shoulder-to-shoulder partner with the teacher.”
Jadi Miller, principal of Elliott Elementary School in Lincoln, Neb., said her school’s three instructional coaches are indeed peers and partners of the teachers who help introduce new ideas and partner with them in the classroom.
“Some people originally viewed the coaches as additional administrators,” Miller said. “I wanted to make sure teachers wouldn’t have any reason not to go to a coach. They don’t have any performance review or supervisory duties. I feel like we make progress on our new ideas and implementation so much faster because of the coaches. They give them that ongoing feedback and support and help plan and contribute so much.”
All interactions between the coaches and teachers are videotaped and shared with the community of partners in the coaching project. Instructional videos are also shared to help coaching and instruction continue to evolve.
Schools that have implemented instructional coaching have seen marked improvement in student performance. Knight and project staff gauge the impact of the coaching and have found nearly across-the-board improvement in participating schools. While the rate of success varies by school, test scores have improved dramatically in many locations.
“It would be nice to say ‘with coaching your scores will improve 20 percent.’ What I can say is coaching leads to improvement in instruction,” Knight said.
Ken Geisick, superintendent of Riverbank Unified School District in Riverbank, Calif., said his district has seen marked improvement in student achievement, both in test scores and in general. One of about 25 school districts using instructional coaching in California, the districts scores have gone up, and teachers have improved their craft as well.
“We had the largest growth in terms of test scores of any district in our county,” Geisick said of achievement after implementing coaching. “Year-by-year improvement in achievement is not easy. Instructional coaching has been the absolute best return on our investment in professional development.”
Teaching, like any other endeavor, improves when its practitioners strive to improve throughout their careers.
“You wouldn’t dream of an Olympic athlete without a coach,” Knight said. “The best always have a coach. The reason they’re great is they know they always have to get better.”
More information
KUCRL to study online education for students with disabilities
Monday, October 31, 2011
Diana Greer, Sean Smith, Ed Meyen, and James Basham
Across the country, virtual schools and online education are gaining popularity at a rapid rate, yet little research exists on whether such methods are effective for students with disabilities. Researchers at the University of Kansas’ Center for Research on Learning have landed a five-year, $7.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to find out whether online learning is working for students with disabilities and to develop new methods of using technology to improve learning.
The KU researchers are interested in finding out what’s happening in online education throughout the country, what methods are working, and whether students, teachers, and parents are getting the most from it, as well as from virtual schools, which have become an attractive alternative for parents whose children struggle to learn in traditional brick-and-mortar schools. KU researchers will conduct research on new e-learning instructional designs based on prior research on learning processes. Particular attention will be given to the learning attributes of students with disabilities.
“We want to determine what’s happening in online instruction in K-12 schools and whether students’ needs are being met,” said Diana Greer, assistant research professor and co-principal investigator for the project.
The Center for Research on Learning will form the Center on Online Learning and Students with Disabilities with two partner organizations: the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, known as NASDSE, which promotes education and services for children and youth with disabilities; and CAST, formerly known as the Center for Applied Special Technology, which has a long history of exploring ways to use technology to improve education for students with disabilities. NASDSE will identify trends and research needs related to online learning, and CAST will identify and develop new online education interventions.
The KU center will conduct research on the effectiveness of interventions and promising practices in pilot study sites across the country, drawing on more than 30 years of experience in conducting high-quality research. In addition to the partner organizations, 25 states have agreed to work with the new center.
“Many students with disabilities have unique needs,” Greer said. “We’re going to learn so much from these students that will drive what we do at the center, drive our development, and drive what we research.”
The partner organizations will conduct in-depth surveys of students, teachers, and parents in schools in each of the 25 states taking part. Researchers will examine general education and special education curriculum in schools and measure it with student achievement to determine the effectiveness of online learning for all students.
“We’ll be targeting states that are leaders in the area of online education,” said Sean Smith, associate professor of special education and co-principal investigator. “Places that have done a lot of work in this area and are leaders in the field will have a lot to offer us.”
Researchers will examine the effect of e-learning on the achievement of students with disabilities.
“With a number of states and K-12 school districts beginning to consider online options, this research is critical to understanding how to meet the instructional needs of all learners, especially those with disabilities, in online environments,” said James Basham, assistant professor of special education and co-principal investigator.
After the initial round of research, the Center for Research on Learning will develop a web site for educators sharing effective methods for online education and universal designs for learning. The site will be both a repository and delivery vehicle for effective online educational practices.
The project is especially timely, Greer said. Estimates have been made that by 2019 as much as 50 percent of K-12 curriculum will be delivered online. Some states require students to take one or more online courses to be eligible for graduation, enhancing the importance of ensuring that online curriculum meets the needs of students with a range of disabilities.
The Center on Online Learning and Students with Disabilities will begin work in January. Principal investigators are Don Deshler, director of the Center for Research on Learning; David Rose, founder and chief education officer at CAST; and Bill East, executive director of NASDSE. Co-principal investigators from KU are Basham, Greer, Smith, and Ed Meyen, professor of special education and co-director of the Center for Research on Learning’s e-Learning Design Lab.
New Yorker article looks at coaching
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
A New Yorker piece on coaching features KUCRL’s Jim Knight and the Kansas Coaching Project. Author Atul Gawande looks at the value of coaching for professionals, such as surgeons, musicians, and teachers. In the article, he describes time spent with Knight observing teachers and coaches at Leslie H. Walton Middle School, in Albemarle County, Virginia. Read the full article here.
ALTEC to help Fort Leavenworth students build 21st Century Skills
Thursday, September 08, 2011
ALTEC, a division of the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, will help students in Unified School District 207 in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., develop 21st Century Skills as part of a $2.5 million grant from the Department of Defense Education Activity’s Educational Partnership. USD 207 is a public school system of 1,800 students in kindergarten through ninth grade within Fort Leavenworth.
The school district will use the funds to blend best practice learning methods to better prepare students for careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). STEM careers have been identified as vital to U.S. competitiveness in the 21st century economy.
CYBER-TEAMS (a modification of STEM to acknowledge the link between arts education and the sciences) will allow USD 207 to expand student thinking beyond the traditional physical classroom model. Learning spaces will evolve with investments in technology and teacher professional development. For example, teams of student will engage in challenge-based learning, addressing the “big idea” of energy. Challenges will play out differently at each grade level, with activities appropriate to each age group. Teams will use traditional math, language, history, and science and art skills along with technology to identify and solve a challenge, such as energy efficiency.
“Over 90 percent of our students are children of military families. Due to deployment schedules, a typical student is with us less than two years. CYBER-TEAMS is designed to spark an interest in STEM careers that will continue long after they have left our community,” said Alan Landever, Director of Technology Services at USD 207.
In addition to ALTEC and the school district, the following are CYBER-TEAMS partners:
• Frontier Army Museum, Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
• Decent Energy, Leawood, Kan.
• Wisdom Tools, Bloomington, Ind.
• Mid-America Regional Council, Kansas City, Mo.
• National Simulation Center, Fort Leavenworth
• NASA Office of Education
• Apple Computer
For more information about the CYBER-TEAMS project, please contact Alan Landever, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or (913) 651-7373
KUCRL lands $12.5 million award
Thursday, August 25, 2011
A $12.5 million award to the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning will help the nation’s largest federal training program for skilled and semi-skilled workers better prepare young people for jobs in 11 industries, beginning with the construction and health care industries.
Under the five-year federal Department of Labor contract, the center will lead a consortium charged with training Job Corps staff and contractors to use more effective teaching methods in their work with the 60,000 individuals ages 16-24 who enroll in Job Corps programs each year, many of whom come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and have had limited success in school.
“These are youth, young adults, who I think are going to be in a better position to beat the odds and have better employment opportunities than their counterparts who don’t participate in Job Corps programs,” said Daryl Mellard (left), executive director of the Consortium for Excellence in Job Corps Staff Development and director of the Center for Research on Learning’s Division of Adult Studies.
Mellard, the 2011 recipient of KU’s Research Achievement Award, is a member of the National Academy of Science committee on Foundations and Application to Adolescent and Adult Literacy.
“This project gives us the opportunity to apply the fruits of our research to a persistent national problem: How to prepare young people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, for careers in today’s highly competitive fields,” said Don Deshler, director of the Center for Research on Learning. “The potential benefits for the students, the instructors and the nation’s employers are profound.”
The consortium initially will work with two Job Corps “centers for excellence” in Dennison, Iowa, and Pinnellas County, Fla.; and then will expand to all 125 Job Corps sites in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Job Corps provides training related to jobs in 11 industries. The consortium’s efforts initially will focus on health care and construction.
Job Corps instructors typically are experts in their fields—culinary arts or nursing, for example—but may not have experience teaching others. KUCRL will draw on more than three decades of research on literacy, teaching and coaching in designing the Job Corps program.
“We want to improve the knowledge, skills and abilities of the Job Corps instructors, counselors and program managers,” Mellard said. “Our emphasis is on building local capacity so they won’t be so dependent on outside experts in the future.”
The consortium will use a mix of face-to-face and online methods to accomplish the goals of the project, including tapping the expertise of KUCRL’s ALTEC division, which has 10 years of experience in developing web-based resources for teachers and schools.
In addition to KUCRL, the Consortium for Excellence in Job Corps Staff Development consists of five organizations bringing diverse experience and expertise to the project:
- Alternate Perspectives Inc., a small, woman-owned business in Washington, D.C.
- Coffey Consulting, LLP, a participant in the federal government’s development program for small businesses, located in Bethesda, Md.
- Cornerstone Solutions Inc., a veteran-owned business in East Point, Ga.
- Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL), a private non-profit educational research agency and a U.S. Department of Education Regional Laboratory in Denver
- Telesolv Consulting, a HUBZone (historically underutilized business zones) small business with experience in website development, maintenance and analytics in Washington, D.C.
“The diversity of the consortium is important because of the complexity of issues that are involved,” Mellard said. “To create systems change on this scale, we have to have the capacity to deal with the multiple facets of the Job Corps system.”
CRL researcher in the news
Monday, July 18, 2011
Jean Hall, a researcher in the CRL’s Division of Adult Studies, recently spoke to the Orlando Sentinel about the federal government’s Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP).
Jean and her CRL colleague Jan Moore have produced a report for The Commonwealth Fund examining enrollment trends and affordability of the PCIP program. They found that “although PCIP enrollment has been lower than expected due to affordability issues, a lack of public awareness, and the requirement that applicants be uninsured for six months, the plans are nonetheless playing an important role in making coverage available to otherwise uninsurable Americans with pre-existing conditions.”
The Sentinel contacted Jean for its article, “Floridians with Pre-existing Conditions May be Eligible for Cheaper Premiums.”
Talking about Teaching
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Jim Knight, director of the Kansas Coaching Project at the KU Center for Research on Learning, is working with the Teaching Channel on a new program called Talking about Teaching. For the program, Jim video records a teacher’s lesson and then conducts a “micro-coaching” session with the teacher. The whole experience is then edited into a short film so you see the teacher’s lesson and you see the conversation. Here’s the first Talking about Teaching video, also available on YouTube:
Mellard receives top research award
Monday, May 09, 2011
Daryl F. Mellard, an internationally renowned expert on basic adult literacy and learning disabilities, is the 2011 recipient of the Research Achievement Award at the University of Kansas.
The award is the highest honor given annually to a full-time academic staff researcher working in a department or research center at KU.
Mellard is an associate research professor in the School of Education and director of the Division of Adult Studies in the Center for Research on Learning. He will be recognized at 4 p.m. May 11 at 150 Joseph R. Pearson Hall. The award — including a plaque and $10,000 in research funds — will be presented by Steve Warren, vice chancellor for research and graduate studies. A reception will follow and the public is invited to attend.
Mellard was nominated for the award by Donald Deshler, director of CRL, who described him as “an enormously productive researcher whose work is making a difference in the quality of life enjoyed by individuals with disabilities. He is a wonderful colleague to other researchers in CRL and is an outstanding mentor to young scholars and graduate students.”
Mellard joined the CRL staff in 1982, following six years as a public school psychologist for districts in Leavenworth, Barber and Kingman counties in Kansas. His research focuses on education and employment issues for adults and interventions to improve adult literacy in adult education and other programs. His academic background includes a bachelor’s degree in psychology, an education specialist degree in school psychology and a doctoral degree in special education, all from KU.
Mellard is co-author of the highly regarded “RTI: A Practitioner’s Guide to Implementing Response to Intervention.” He is also the author or co-author of nearly 50 scholarly journal articles and principal investigator on funded research projects for the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institutes of Health and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In Kansas, he has conducted funded research projects for the Department of Education, the Board of Regents, the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services and other state agencies.
Under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council, Mellard is completing a two-year appointment on the prestigious Committee on Learning Sciences, Foundations and Applications to Adolescent and Adult Literacy. A committee colleague, Steve Graham of Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, describes Mellard as “the top scholar nationally and internationally in the area of basic adult literacy.” His research is “systematic, addresses critical issues in adult basic literacy and provides sound guidance in terms of policy, research and service. In my opinion, his research in this area is without peer.”
The Research Achievement Award was established in 2006 and is administered by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies. Past recipients are David VanderVelde, former director of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Laboratory; Rick Miller, senior scientist in the Exploration Services Section of the Kansas Geological Survey; Debra Kamps, director of the Kansas Center for Autism Research and Training; and Donald Huggins, senior scientist with the Kansas Biological Survey.
New SIM video
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The Alameda Unified School District recently posted this video of teachers, students, and coaches talking about the Strategic Instruction Model®.
Go to main news page
top