Explore the vast range of titles available.

As the COVID-19 pandemic upended the 2019–2020 school year, education systems scrambled to meet the needs of students and families with little available data on how school closures may impact learning. In this study, we produced a series of projections of COVID-19-related learning loss based on (a) estimates from absenteeism literature and (b) analyses of summer learning patterns of 5 million students. Under our projections, returning students are expected to start fall 2020 with approximately 63 to 68% of the learning gains in reading and 37 to 50% of the learning gains in mathematics relative to a typical school year. However, we project that losing ground during the school closures was not universal, with the top third of students potentially making gains in reading.

To determine whether formative writing assessments that are directly tied to everyday classroom teaching and learning enhance students’ writing performance, we conducted a meta-analysis of true and quasi-experiments conducted with students in grades 1 to 8. We found that feedback to students about writing from adults, peers, self, and computers statistically enhanced writing quality, yielding average weighted effect sizes of 0.87, 0.58, 0.62, and 0.38, respectively. We did not find, however, that teachers’ monitoring of students’ writing progress or implementation of the 6 + 1 Trait Writing model meaningfully enhanced students’ writing. The findings from this meta-analysis provide support for the use of formative writing assessments that provide feedback directly to students as part of everyday teaching and learning. We argue that such assessments should be used more frequently by teachers, and that they should play a stronger role in the Next-Generation Assessment Systems being developed by Smarter Balanced and PARCC.

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting stay-at-home orders created a need for assessing elementary, middle, and high school students' experienced stressors associated with the coronavirus situation. In collaboration with a school district wanting information about their students' well-being during the pandemic school shut-down, the current study investigated students' reported types and levels of COVID-19 stressors. Data were collected from 2,738 students from fourth through 12th grade in a suburban Midwestern school district in the United States following school closure related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data on stress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic were gathered from students via an online survey using Qualtrics. The students rated 20 items (e.g., not motivated to do schoolwork, not going to my school) on stress level. Stressor categories found included Social Isolation, Schoolwork Stress, Fear of COVID-19 Illness, and Missing Events. Middle and high school students reported higher schoolwork stress than did elementary students, and overall, females had higher reported stress on several stressors. The current study has implications for school psychologists including utilizing a tool to assess pandemic-related stressors, using prepandemic normative data in schools with caution, promoting education about COVID-19 to reduce fear, supporting teachers regarding addressing schoolwork stress experienced by students, and teaching students anxiety-reducing strategies such as mindfulness or coping strategies.

Using student survey data from six U.S. school districts, we estimate how assignment to a demographically similar teacher affects student reports of personal effort, happiness in class, feeling caredfor and motivated by their teacher, the quality of student-teacher communication, and college aspirations. Relying on a classroom fixed-effects strategy, we show that students assigned to a teacher with similar demographic characteristics experience positive benefits in terms of these academic perceptions and attitudes. The most consistent benefits are among gender matches, and the largest benefits are demonstrated by the combination of gender and racial/ethnic matches. The effects of gender matches are largely consistent across elementary and middle school, while the most consistent effects from race matches occur in middle school.

The development of divergent thinking (DT) in school-age children and adolescents has received considerable attention in the educational psychology literature since the 1970s. A body of research has outlined the existence of slumps (i.e., temporary declines) in this development with, however, conflicting findings concerning the magnitude and timing of these slumps. This study is the first to meta-analyze prior research findings regarding DT development from Grades 1 to 12, with a particular emphasis on the widely controversial fourth-grade slump. A total of 2139 standardized means from 41 studies involving 40,918 subjects were analyzed using a meta-analytic three-level model. The findings showed an overall upward developmental trend of DT across grade levels, with some discontinuities. Specifically, there was no evidence of a general fourth-grade slump; rather, evidences for a seventh-grade slump were found. Moderator analyses indicated that a fourth-grade slump might be observed depending on DT test, task content domain, intellectual giftedness, and country of study. The existence of the seventh-grade slump was also moderated by DT test, task content domain, and gender. Together, this study deciphers a longstanding debate regarding DT development, a prerequisite knowledge to support age-appropriate educational strategies that encourage creativity development. Implications of these findings for creativity research and practice are discussed.

This paper explores the impact of the course “Teaching and Learning of Mathematics (Grades 7 and 8)” for the preparation of pre-service secondary mathematics teachers. It examines how pre-service teachers perceived mathematical problem solving and communicating mathematical knowledge before and after the course. The main objective of the course is to equip them with a working knowledge of basic teaching principles, an understanding of the theories of learning that inform instruction, and a thorough knowledge of the curriculum. The participants of the study are professor X, who teaches the course, and her five pre-service teachers (PTs). The PTs wrote a journal entry after every topic explored during the tutorials, detailing their learning during the course of study. For their journals, specific prompts were provided for them to reflect on their learning and experiences. At the end of the course the PTs were also interviewed. The interview sought PTs perceptions about their communication of mathematical knowledge during the microteaching sessions. The data collected were subjected to qualitative analysis. The findings of the study show that the course deepened PT’s knowledge of mathematical problem solving and also shaped their ideas about how to communicate mathematical knowledge in ways that address the why and how of it.