Steve Whitaker

Project description

In 2003, UVA’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) was awarded a multi-million dollar IES grant to study a Pre-K classroom intervention meant to promote language, literacy, and social relationship skills among three- and four-year-olds. Some teachers were given personal teaching consultants who worked with them regularly to promote these skills.

At the heart of the project was the question of whether this model was scalable using web-based resources instead of consultants. The MyTeachingPartner (MTP) website was developed to help develop language, literacy, and social relationship-teaching skills among teachers who did not receive consultants.

Resource description

The MyTeachingPartner website is a resource developed to introduce teachers to effective language and literacy-promoting skills. It contains teaching resources including

• a year’s worth of language and literacy activities, organized by main skill areas in language and literacy;
• a video library of over 300 clips of exemplary teaching practices, accompanied by narrative description;
• interactive case studies to help teachers work through frequent problem areas;
• an interactive tutorial in the fundamentals of "banking time," a technique used to improve teacher-child relationships.

Link

MyTeachingPartner website

Project description

The inCLASS Observation Tool is a complementary measure to the CLASS Observation instrument, used to assess classroom quality by describing teacher-child interaction across multiple dimensions. Whereas the CLASS focuses on the whole classroom and how a teacher works with students, the inCLASS narrows its lens to describe the interactions a single child has with people and tasks in his or her environment.

Resource description

The inCLASS training program is a web-based resource designed to introduce the inCLASS instrument to teachers and observers. It consists of five modules, each of which takes 30-60 minutes to complete. The modules feature

• Brief video segments introducing key components;
• Narrative text, diagrams, and animations;
• Interactive video, including innovative features allowing users to select areas of the video to highlight what they see as key interactions;
• Interactive assessments with high-quality feedback.

Link

inCLASSObservation website

Project description

NCRECE, the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education, aims to extend MyTeachingPartner’s benefits to teachers across the country. One means of this is through an online course offered to in-service teachers. The NCRECE course focuses on the same skillset promoted by MyTeachingPartner, but offers a much deeper level of exposure, formative and summative feedback, and a final grade that determines whether learners will receive professional development credits through their school district or other employer.

Resource description

The goal of the NCRECE course site is to allow learners to demonstrate effective language, literacy, and social-relationship building skills in their own teaching. This is accomplished through a 15-unit program, meant to be taken over 15 weeks. The course includes overall objectives for learners as well as more specific week-by-week objectives. Each unit includes

• Opportunities for learners to watch and reflect on video of high-quality teaching;
• Chances to reflect on their own teaching and compare it to new information in the areas of language, literacy, and social relationship-building best practices;
• Expert guidance and feedback;
• Formative and summative evaluation of work with feedback;
• Peer interaction around user-selected classroom challenges.

Link

NCRECE course website

Project description

Some teachers in the MyTeachingPartner project (see above) were given access to a personal teaching consultant. We wanted to test the scalability of one-to-one mentoring by using technology to promote such relationships over a distance. Each MTP consultant served 20 teachers over large geographic distances.

Resource description

We developed parallel tools and resources for consultants and their teachers. The consultants’ website included

• Resources to help consultants capture, edit, and share video clips of their teachers’ classroom teaching practices;
• The ability for consultants to post prompts for reflection, along with other resources for their teachers to view;
• "Prompt banks" for consultants to use as resources when writing their own prompts;
• Archives of previous consultancy cycles;
• A rich help and support section, including screencasts of difficult processes.

The teachers’ website included

• Resources to allow teachers to view posted video of their classroom teaching, and read and respond to consultants’ prompts;
• Review archives of their previous consultancy cycles and reflect on their progress over time;
• Over 300 videos of high-quality classroom teaching;
• Interactive case studies;
• A rich help and support section.