#CommonCore: Methods

This section provides a detailed discussion of the methods used to arrive at the conclusions in #CommonCore: How social media is changing the politics of education

Implementation of the America\u27s Choice Literacy Workshops

Fostering literacy is at the heart of the America’s Choice Comprehensive School Reform Design. Strong reading and writing skills are viewed as cornerstones of successful student performance in all subject areas. The readers and writers workshops, which together we call the literacy workshops, play a central role in moving all children toward high standards of performance. The workshops are designed to provide students with a rich immersion into the numerous skills and habits necessary to become fluent readers and writers. The structures of the literacy workshops are intended to facilitate teachers’ analyses of student skills (as represented by their work) in relation to external standards for performance and to help them to provide students with repeated opportunities to develop the skills necessary to produce work that meets the standards. To effectively teach using the workshop structures requires teachers to adopt a series of specified classroom structures and pedagogical strategies. This report examines the implementation of the literacy workshops in America’s Choice classrooms across the United States. The results are based upon data collected from observations and interviews with a random sample of 42 elementary and middle school teachers in 23 America’s Choice schools during the 2000-2001 school year. At the time of our fieldwork, the schools were either at the end of their first or second year implementing America’s Choice. Our analyses focus on two areas: teachers’ fidelity to the structures of the literacy workshops and their depth of understanding of the instructional philosophy and techniques upon which the workshops are based

#commoncore Project: How Social Media Is Changing the Politics of Education

The Common Core has become a flashpoint at the nexus of education politics and policy, fueled by ardent social media activists. To explore this phenomenon, this innovative and interactive website examines the Common Core debate through the lens of the influential social media site Twitter. Using a social network perspective that examines the relationships among actors, we focus on the most highly used Twitter hashtag about the Common Core: #commoncore. The central question of our investigation is: How are social media-enabled social networks changing the discourse in American politics that produces and sustains social policy? To join a conversation about this research in an open forum, tweet using #htagcommoncore

#COMMONCORE Project (2017) How Social Media is Changing the Politics of Education

Fueled by impassioned social media activists, the Common Core State Standards have been a persistent flashpoint in the debate over the direction of American education. In this innovative and interactive website we explore the Common Core debate on Twitter. Using a distinctive combination of social network analyses and psychological investigations we reveal both the underlying social structure of the conversation and the motivations of the participants. The central question guiding our investigation is: How are social mediaenabled social networks changing the discourse in American politics that produces and sustains social policy? ABOUT #COMMONCORE PROJECT In the #commoncore Project, authors Jonathan Supovitz, Alan Daly, Miguel del Fresno and Christian Kolouch examine the intense debate surrounding the Common Core State Standards education reform as it played out on Twitter. The Common Core, one of the major education policy initiatives of the early 21st century, sought to strengthen education systems across the United States through a set of specific and challenging education standards. Once enjoying bipartisan support, the controversial standards have become the epicenter of a heated national debate about this approach to educational improvement. By studying the Twitter conversation surrounding the Common Core, we shed light on the ways that social media social networks are influencing the political discourse that, in turn, produces public policy

The Heart of the Matter: The Coaching Model in America\u27s Choice Schools

The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania was contracted by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) in 1998 to conduct the external evaluation of the America’s Choice school design. CPRE designed and conducted a series of targeted studies on the implementation and impacts of the America’s Choice design. This report coincides with the publication of three separate studies by CPRE on the impact of America’s Choice in a number of districts across the country using a variety of quantitative and analytic approaches. Those impact analyses and a stand-alone piece on classroom observations conducted in Cohort 4 schools can be viewed as separate pieces or as complements to the information presented in this report. Another recent CPRE publication from fall 2001 is a widely distributed report entitled, Instructional Leadership in a Standards-based Reform, a companion piece to both the impact reports and this report

The Heart of the Matter: The Coaching Model in America's Choice Schools

The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania was contracted by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) in 1998 to conduct the external evaluation of the America's Choice school design. CPRE designed and conducted a series of targeted studies on the implementation and impacts of the America's Choice design. This report coincides with the publication of three separate studies by CPRE on the impact of America's Choice in a number of districts across the country using a variety of quantitative and analytic approaches. Those impact analyses and a stand-alone piece on classroom observations conducted in Cohort 4 schools can be viewed as separate pieces or as complements to the information presented in this report. Another recent CPRE publication from fall 2001 is a widely distributed report entitled, Instructional Leadership in a Standards-based Reform, a companion piece to both the impact reports and this report

Educational change in Scotland: Policy, context and biography

The poor success rate of policy for curriculum change has been widely noted in the educational change literature. Part of the problem lies in the complexity of schools, as policymakers have proven unable to micromanage the multifarious range of factors that impact upon the implementation of policy. This paper draws upon empirical data from a local authority-led initiative to implement Scotland’s new national curriculum. It offers a set of conceptual tools derived from critical realism (particularly the work of Margaret Archer), which offer significant potential in allowing us to develop greater understanding of the complexities of educational change. Archer’s social theory developed as a means of explaining change and continuity in social settings. As schools and other educational institutions are complex social organisations, critical realism offers us epistemological tools for tracking the ebbs and flows of change cycles over time, presenting the means for mapping the multifarious networks and assemblages that form their basis

Studying changes in the practice of two teachers developing assessment for learning

This paper describes changes in the practice of two teachers, observed over an eighteen month period, who were participating in a study intended to support teachers in developing their use of assessment in support of learning. The design of the intervention allowed each teacher to choose for themselves which aspects of their practice to develop. Analysis of lesson observations, journal entries and interviews indicate that both teachers were keen to change their practice, but were concerned about the disruption to their established routines, and in particular about the potential for loss of control of their classes. Both teachers did effect significant changes in their classrooms, but these tended to be developments of existing preferred ways of working, rather than radical innovations. In conclusion, it is suggested that to be most effective, teacher professional development needs to be structured strongly enough to afford teacher growth, but flexible enough to allow different teachers to take their practice in different ways

School-based curriculum development in Scotland: Curriculum policy and enactment

Recent worldwide trends in curriculum policy have re-emphasised the role of teachers in school-based curriculum development. Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence is typical of these trends, stressing that teachers are agents of change. This paper draws upon empirical data to explore school-based curriculum development in response to Curriculum for Excellence. We focus on two case studies – secondary schools within a single Scottish local education authority. In the paper we argue that the nature and extent of innovation in schools is dependent upon teachers being able to make sense of often complex and confusing curriculum policy, including the articulation of a clear vision about what such policy means for education within each school

Doing more with less: Teacher professional learning communities in resource-constrained primary schools in rural China.

Teacher professional learning communities provide environments in which teachers engage in regular research and collaboration. They have been found effective as a means for connecting professional learning to the day-to-day realities faced by teachers in the classroom. In this article, the authors draw on survey data collected in primary schools serving 71 villages in rural Gansu Province as well as transcripts from in-depth interviews with 30 teachers. Findings indicate that professional learning communities penetrate to some of China’s most resource-constrained schools but that their nature and development are shaped by institutional supports, principal leadership, and teachers’ own initiative