Institute for Educational Initiatives | Institute for Educational Initiatives

Berends Elected to the National Academy of Education

2020-02-25T05:00:00-05:00

Mark Berends, the director of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Research on Educational Opportunity and a professor of sociology, has been elected to the National Academy of Education.

The Academy advances high-quality research that improves education quality and practice. Members are elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship related to education.

In addition to directing the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity, Berends chairs the faculty committee of the Notre Dame Program for Interdisciplinary Educational Research, is a Fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, and serves on the Institute’s faculty committee. He is also a Fellow in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

“Mark’s research has provided invaluable perspective on how we can improve the education of all youth, particularly the disadvantaged,” said John Staud, the acting director of the Institute and the executive director of the Alliance for Catholic Education. “I am so happy to see his work recognized by the Academy.”

"I am deeply honored to be invited to join the Academy," Berends said. "It is an incredibly distinguished group of thinkers and researchers, and I am proud to be a part of it."

Berends has written and published extensively on educational reform, school choice, the effects of family and school changes on student achievement trends and gaps, and the effects of schools and classrooms on student achievement. His research focuses on how school organization and classroom instruction are related to student outcomes, with special attention to disadvantaged students and school reforms aimed at improving their educational opportunities. Within this agenda, he has applied a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods to understanding the effects of school reforms on teachers and students.

Currently, he is conducting several studies on school choice, including an examination of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program, parent decision making and satisfaction in a lottery-based study of charter schools, and how organizational and instructional contexts are related to student outcomes in charter, voucher, and traditional public schools. Berends serves on numerous editorial boards, technical panels, and policy forums; he is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA); former co-editor of AERA’s American Educational Research Journal and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and twice the vice president of the AERA's Division L, Educational Policy and Politics. His latest books are School Choice and School Improvement (Harvard Education Press, 2011), School Choice at the Crossroads: Research Perspectives (Routledge, 2019), Handbook of Research on School Choice, 2nd Edition (Routledge, 2020), and the International Handbook of the Sociology of Education (SAGE, forthcoming).

Berends is one of 15 newly elected members who will be inducted November 6 in Washington, DC. Academy members are elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship related to education. Nominations are submitted by individual Academy members once a year for review and election by the organization’s membership.

“These diverse scholars are at the forefront of those who are improving the lives of students in the United States and abroad through their outstanding contributions to education scholarship and research,” Ladson-Billings said.

Choosing the Right School

2020-02-21T10:00:00-05:00

Dr. Neil Boothby is a psychologist and founding director of the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child at the University of Notre Dame. He is an internationally recognized expert and advocate for children affected by war and displacement.

Kate Schuenke-Lucien is the Director for Haiti Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE). Since 2012, she and her team have implemented education programs focused on primary and secondary teacher training, strengthening local school governance structures, and building capacity for local educational organizations.

Dr. Monica Kowalksi is the Associate Director for the Program Evaluation and Research and a faculty member of the ACE Teaching Fellows program. Prior to joining the ACE team, she worked in Notre Dame undergraduate admissions for three years.

It is that time of year again. School enrollment season is upon us, and with all of the different options for schools, choosing the right one for your student can be a daunting task. How do you know when a school is the “right fit?” How big of a difference is there really between public and private? Does it matter so long as the school has a good academic reputation? Ultimately, given the diversity of options one has for educating his or her child, it is not productive to limit one’s scope to a particular model of education (e.g., charter, magnet, private, Montesorri, Waldorf). Rather, informed parents should review the different options and ask intentional questions that dig deeper than a school’s academic track record and are tailored to their child’s specific needs. We’ve compiled a series of questions, backed by research, to ask teachers and administrators to add to your arsenal. Whether you’re looking at elementary schools or high schools, these questions will help you walk away with a more valuable opinion than “they had a nice gym.”

What is the breakdown of student academic achievement across demographics?

Yes, academic achievement is important, so do your research on a school’s test scores and academic reputation. Your research may tell you that a school has a strong pattern of academic growth, good test scores, and continuous improvement; however, these numbers will not always tell a complete story. Education journalist and author, Peg Tyre, suggests asking, “are all of the students learning?” For example, do students who are initially in the lower quartile of academic achievement also show academic improvement, or is improvement limited to those students who entered with a strong academic base? You want to find a school where everyone learns.

How does your school view student-teacher relationships?

Student-teacher relationships are a key indicator of a child’s attitude towards school and his or her future relationship with learning (OECD 2015). Therefore, choosing a school in which teachers value a student’s social and emotional development can be just as important as how teachers value acquiring subject-specific knowledge. Students who report strong relationships with their teachers are less likely to be late to school, skip class, and feel like an outsider or lonely. Additionally, these students are more likely to report being happy at school, making friends more easily, and feeling like they belong (OECD 2015).

How do you promote SEL, and what policies are in place to support SEL?

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is how children and adults develop and use “the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions” (CASEL 2018). Typically, SEL is divided into five domains: 1) Self-Awareness 2) Responsible Decision Making 3) Self-management 4) Social Awareness and 5) Relationship skills. Students with higher levels of social and emotional skills are more likely to have better grades, to have higher incomes and better jobs, to live longer, and are less likely to commit violent acts (OECD 2018). Therefore, it is important to ask schools how SEL is built into their curriculum. You can take this a step further and ask how they measure students’ SEL. Any school can have an SEL curriculum, but the schools that value it will measure its impact and continually refine it for greater success.

Do you have a physical education program? How is physical activity integrated into the classroom?

Studies show that an early introduction to and development of healthy physical habits has a significant impact on a child’s future relationship with physical activity and health. Additionally, research tells us that just 15 minutes of physical activity integrated into the classroom can have a positive impact on academic behavior (Rasberry, et al 2011). If you have the opportunity to speak to teachers, ask them about their teaching style, and pay attention to the examples they provide. Do their examples revolve around direct lecture, or are students getting up and moving around the classroom and interacting with the space and with one another?

What are your school’s technology policies? How do you adopt a developmental lens when integrating technology into the classroom? Do you have a digital media literacy program?

In most 21st century classrooms, your student is bound to use technology. Today’s students are digital natives and generally pick up technology easily in comparison to their teachers. Therefore, you want to assess if schools teach your student not only how to use technology but also how to interact with it. As children grow, they develop essential cognitive skills and capacities, traditionally learned through play. With the ever-expanding digital landscape, technology has become a key aspect of play, so just as children must be taught how to interact on the playground, they too must learn how to act in digital landscapes (Graber 2012).

Technology can accelerate children’s relationships with complex social interactions. Interacting with one another through games and virtual spaces removes the social cues associated with body language used to decipher interactions as well as traditional barriers to responding. How do students learn to interact kindly and politely through technology and to transition from interacting with a device to a real person?

Additionally, the ability to distinguish between a virtual world and reality is a learned, developmental skill. For example, consider how a young child may not understand the difference between a virtual friend or pet and become confused when one ceases to exist (Graber 2012). How do the teachers account for this in their introduction to and implementation of technology?

Finally, it’s not just about picking the right school. Once the decision has been made, parents, in particular those of young children, must make a concerted effort to prepare their students for the transition. Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, suggests taking concrete steps to prepare your child as the start of the school year nears, and we agree. Visit the school with him or her, and then integrate elements of the school environment into your home. Start practicing and implementing some of the school’s rules into your home’s rules. Tell different stories about school, and help your child imagine what his or her future days and schedule will look like. Before you know it, the school year will be here, and your child will be ready and excited to learn!

Be sure to listen to Neil, Kate, and Monica continue the conversation on how to best choose a school for your child. In this podcast, they will address questions regarding the variety of school options for families, how to best prepare young learners for academic success as well as the college admissions process, and much more!

Listen to the conversation!

Learn more about the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child at iei.nd.edu/resilience.

Research reveals teachers’ biases when rating first-graders’ academic skills based on learning behavior

2020-02-11T14:00:00-05:00

A recent study, co-authored by a University of Notre Dame professor, shows how educators’ racial and gender biases affect their assessments of students’ academic skills based on noncognitive skills, which include behavior, class participation, self-discipline and interpersonal skills.

Using a national dataset, Calvin Zimmermann, assistant professor of sociology at Notre Dame and Grace Kao, Yale University IBM professor of sociology, examined how first-grade teachers’ perceptions of students’ approach to learning can affect how they rate those students’ academic skills.

The results of the study, published in January in the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, suggest that racial and gender biases regarding students’ noncognitive skills — whether they meet or defy teacher expectations — affect teachers’ overall perception of students’ academic abilities, a previously overlooked area of consideration.

“In talking to teachers during this and other studies, it is clear that many of them care deeply about their students and social justice but they are also overburdened with administrative tasks, preparing for standardized tests and other demands of the job,” Zimmermann said.

“Schools can do a better job of creating policies, practices, and support for teachers that will reduce racial and gender bias and subsequent inequities. Rather than a one-day training, this should be a routine practice.”

In one unidimensional analysis — only looking at race — the researchers found that, when compared to white children with identical noncognitive skills and test scores, teachers penalize black children in math and advantage Asian children in literacy. When Zimmermann and Kao conducted their gender analysis (without considering race), they concluded that teachers penalize girls in both math and literacy.

They found that, despite similar test scores, similar school environments (based on socio-economic profile, namely percentages of students eligible for free or reduced lunch and percentages of non-white students) social circumstances and behavior, disparity in assessment persists. For example, researchers found that even if black children share a below-average assessment in noncognitive skills with their white peers, it is only the black students who are penalized in math. The same behavior results in different outcomes based on race. Asian students with less-than-exceptional noncognitive skills tend to be rated high in literacy when compared to their white peers.

Adding gender to the study indicates that black girls and boys are rated differently in math. When black girls’ learning behaviors (noncognitive skills) are less than stellar, teachers are more likely to rate them as below average in math. Black boys with excellent behavior are less likely to be rated above average in math. Asian girls and Latino girls are not penalized in math compared to white boys when they have the same noncognitive skills, but black and white girls are. Regardless of their learning behaviors, white girls are less likely to be rated above average in math.

Regarding literacy, Asian girls are more likely than white boys to be rated below average when their learning behaviors are below average, but this does not apply to Asian boys. When white girls’ cognitive skills are below average, they are more likely to be rated low in literacy. However, if white girls display stellar noncognitive skills, they are more likely than white boys to be rated above average in literacy.

Zimmermann and Kao also analyzed how racial/ethnic minority girls fared when compared to white girls. Even if Asian, black and white girls share identical below-average noncognitive skills, it is only the Asian and black girls who are more likely to be rated below average in math. Even if Asian girls’ learning behaviors are slightly below average, average or above average, they are advantaged over white girls by being more likely to be rated above average in math. On the other hand, regarding literacy, Asian girls who exhibit below-average noncognitive skills are penalized as compared to their white girl peers. If, however, Asian girls have average learning behaviors, they are slightly advantaged over their white girl peers. Interestingly, Asian girls with above-average noncognitive skills are penalized more than white girls.

“Our findings might seem counterintuitive as scholars agree that girls and women currently outperform boys and men in terms of noncognitive skills, educational achievement and educational attainment,” according to the study.

“Yet, as girls of three out of the four racial/ethnic categories are penalized, albeit in different ways, it appears that teachers hold girls and boys of different racial/ethnic backgrounds to different behavioral standards.”

New Study Explores Long-Term Impact of Educational Access in Chilean Schools

2019-12-04T10:10:00-05:00

What would happen if we granted access for some of the most impoverished children in our communities to attend society’s best, most elite schools?

Would it benefit them? How would they fit in, and how would they be treated by their classmates? What would be the long-term impact on their lives, and how would they look back on their schooling experiences?

A new study from the Institute for Educational Initiatives explores these questions in Chile. But in today’s Chile, these questions are not mere hypotheticals; they currently form the premise for a new law being considered in the Chilean Parliament, which would require Chile’s elite, tuition-funded schools to reserve up to 30 percent of classroom seats for low-income students. Supporters of the controversial legislation hope to promote a future Chile marked by greater equity, but the bill also taps into the root of a complex past and a now-famous social integration experiment at Chile’s premier school in its capital city.

But to really understand the effects of such a social integration policy, we need a much longer time horizon than is typical in education research and policy evaluation. To really understand the effects of a school on its students’ entire lives, you need just that: a lifetime.

And so we look to the past and the story of Saint George’s College, the flagship school of the Congregation of Holy Cross in Chile, and the social integration program it undertook in the late 1960s. Hundreds of students from nearby slum neighborhoods were integrated into the school over the course of a decade. Controversial at the time, the program continued until class tensions in Chile erupted, eventually leading to the coup d’état and rise to power of the military regime led by General Augusto Pinochet. In Pinochet’s first days in power, the military occupied Saint George’s College, kicked out the Holy Cross priests from Chile, and interrupted the program, though allowing the ‘integrados’ (the low-income students on scholarship at the school) to continue at the school through graduation. Some of these students did not stay–they either transferred or dropped out–and some completed their schooling at Saint George’s.

What happened next is unknown. Nobody has ever systematically studied the experiences of these students, or for that matter, the impressions of the other students and teachers at the school when the integration program was put into effect. The celebrated 2004 Chilean film Machuca, directed by Georgian alum Andrés Wood, resurrected the memory of the program, and now the current legislation bears the referent in its popular name: La Ley Machuca. But the question as to the long-term impact of the program is of significant interest, especially since it may serve as a case study to inform the current policy debate in Chile and more generally lend evidence for understanding the lifelong effects of certain types of schooling on the life outcomes of students, especially the poor.

The study is led by two Notre Dame faculty, T.J. D’Agostino and Rev. Timothy Scully, CSC, both of whom are Fellows of the Institute for Educational Initiatives and Kellogg Institute for International Studies. They are collaborating with Chilean education scholar Cristóbal Madero, SJ, of the University Alberto Hurtado, and a Uruguayan sociologist, Nicolás Somma, of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

The research design is mixed methods and will include surveys, focus groups, and interviews of former students of Saint George’s College at the time of the integration program, including both those who were beneficiaries of the program and their classmates. The survey will compare the outcomes of these students with national averages for people from similar demographic backgrounds on a range of civic, educational, religious, and economic outcomes. By using interviews and focus groups, the researchers will seek to understand the experiences and perspectives of the integrados and their peer students in regards to the program, its impact on their lives, and their perspective on the current policy debate.

The study has received support from the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

Alison Cheng develops adaptive testing tool to help high school students increase learning

2019-10-16T13:00:00-04:00

This story was originally posted on the College of Arts and Letters website.

Student engagement has long been recognized as key to academic success. Most research, however, has focused on engagement generally, across the school setting.

Quantitative psychologist Ying “Alison” Cheng is working to better understand the link between student engagement and learning outcomes in a specific course — and how adaptive testing can help.

With funding from a 2014 Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation, Cheng has now developed a computerized adaptive testing system for high school students taking advanced placement (AP) statistics and is exploring the relationship between feedback and engagement.

“Research has shown that providing feedback is crucial to improving skill acquisition, especially when instruction is done in a computer-based fashion,” she said. “As more and more online resources are being offered, this could have a big impact down the road.”

The project, which will be completed in summer 2020, has already shown promising results and has led Cheng to develop a similar assessment program for non-AP statistics students, with the support of $1.4 million in funding from the Institute of Education Sciences.

“Statistics is such a pervasive, important subject — it affects everyone,” she said. “Non-STEM majors will also require statistical literacy, so we think it is very important to take this project beyond the AP population.”

‘Traffic light’ report

Students and their teachers receive a "traffic light" report for each attribute directly after the test.

Cheng, also a fellow at the Institute for Educational Initiatives, began by examining statistics course material and identifying 157 specific concepts, or attributes, students need to learn. Her team analyzed how existing test questions matched up with those attributes and recruited experts to write more — creating a bank of about 800 questions, each labeled with the attributes it measures.

Working with the Center for Social Science Research, they developed the testing interface and began to collect pilot data. In the project’s third year, they launched the testing system in six schools — representing a range of socioeconomic levels in urban, suburban, and rural areas — and used the data to begin designing individual diagnostic reports.

“Adaptive testing allows you to give tailored assessments to each person,” Cheng said. “So, instead of just giving students a score of 80 out of 100 questions, we are able to provide a scoring profile that says, ‘you’re strong in each of these areas, but you’re struggling with these concepts.’”

Through Cheng’s system, students — and their teachers — receive a “traffic light” report for each attribute directly after the test, showing green if they’ve mastered the skill, yellow for borderline, and red if they need to spend significantly more time on that material.

“I was very glad that teachers find it useful as well, especially the feature where they are able to select questions that tap into a certain attribute at a detailed level,” Cheng said. “They can see a class profile, as well as individual student profiles, which tells them if there is something they need to focus on more with the entire group.”

Surprising findings

Throughout the project, Cheng’s team has also been conducting research on three major components of student engagement — affective engagement, or how interested students are in the material; behavioral engagement, or how much time they spend studying and completing homework; and cognitive engagement, or how well students can apply the knowledge and skills they gain to real-world problems.

The results, which were somewhat surprising to Cheng, showed that cognitive engagement was most important in predicting the differences in learning among students.

“If you’re able to have that higher-order thinking and connect the dots between things you learn in different classes and between what you learn in class and real life, that is what really matters,” she said.

In her study, behavioral engagement was, remarkably, not a significant predictor of success, although Cheng theorizes that that may be because AP students already have a high level of behavioral engagement. Her next project focusing on non-AP students will shed more light on that finding.

Another surprising finding concerned issues of identity — whether a student identifies themselves as someone who does well at statistics and could pursue a career in the field — and how it varied between gender groups.

“It was really astonishing — the girls and boys do equally well on the assessments, get equal amounts of teacher support, and are equally engaged. But the girls are less likely to say, ‘I am going to pursue statistics as a career’ or ‘I am statistician material,’” she said. “Even among a group of students who self-selected an AP course, the difference was still there.”

Identifying interventions

Cheng’s team is also focused on community outreach and has hosted training and workshops for more than 80 teachers so far. In their final year, they plan to scale up the adaptive testing program to make it available to the community at large.

The testing system may be a particularly important tool for under-resourced schools in lower socioeconomic areas, where Cheng said students are less likely to take the AP final exam.

The project has laid the groundwork for future research, she said, including projects that expand the testing system to other types of classes, explore issues of identity and gender, and identify interventions teachers can use to improve engagement.

“It is very exciting from a researcher’s perspective to understand what’s going on in terms of engagement,” she said. “This has identified where we should target interventions to promote learning. It could be introducing more real-life problems into classes or including more hands-on projects — that’s something we want to explore further. But this was a very important first step.”

The University of Notre Dame’s Track and Cross Country Teams to Lead Sports Workshop for Youth in Mugunda, Kenya

2019-10-09T06:00:00-04:00

Notre Dame, IN (October 9, 2019) - The Fostering Resilience Initiative, a part of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives, will host a sports workshop for local youth this fall in Mugunda, Kenya, in conjunction with Notre Dame’s track and cross country teams.

Over the University’s fall break on October 9-17, 10 track and cross country athletes will visit the Mugunda Youth Training and Sports Centre in central Kenya, which is part of an ongoing community-led project by the Juhudi Youth Development Initiative. The Fostering Resilience Initiative is partnering with the Mugunda community to develop the first Olympic-standard stadium and sports program in the region, where many of Kenya’s well-known long-distance runners originate. The sports center is one of several projects supported by Juhudi Youth Development Initiative. The Notre Dame student-athletes will serve as mentors and coaches while leading a sports workshop for local youth and will also have the opportunity to explore and learn more about the unique region of Kenya.

“There is much to admire about the Mugunda Parish Community, and its stellar education and youth development and sports programs,” said Dr. Neil Boothby, the founding director of the Fostering Resilience Initiative. “We are pleased that Notre Dame student-athletes will be able to engage meaningfully with the richness and complexities of these Central Kenyan communities and their aspirational youth.”

"Our student-athletes are ecstatic about the opportunity to work with the people of Mugunda, Kenya,” said Matt Sparks, the Hatherly-Piane Head Coach for cross country and track and field. “Our two cultures coming together to share our love of track and field will only help energize everyone's passion for the sport and find commonality between people."

About the Juhudi Youth Development Initiative

The Juhudi Youth Development Initiative was created with the objective of generating the knowledge, skills, and resources needed to support and expand local, educational, and economic opportunities for Mugunda youth between the ages of 15-25. Juhudi means energy in Swahili and reflects the Initiative’s goal to tap into the energy and enthusiasm of Mugunda’s youth to empower them to improve not only their own quality of life but their community’s as well.

About the Fostering Resilience Initiative

The interdisciplinary team, housed in the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives, works to ensure positive outcomes for children and youth facing adversity. By measuring and addressing risks and assets at the child level, as well as within homes, schools, and communities, the Initiative promotes a holistic approach to child and youth development. Its goal is to create environments that not only fulfill children’s and youth’s basic needs, but also promote nurturing relationships, socio-emotional skills, and civic engagement. The initiative currently works in seven countries: Haiti, Peru, Colombia, Kenya, Tanzania, DR Congo, and Indiaw.

To learn more about the Fostering Resilience Initiative click here.

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Rev. Tim Scully, C.S.C., to step down as head of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives to become emeritus director

2019-09-27T12:00:00-04:00

Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) founder Rev. Timothy R. Scully, C.S.C., announced he will step down from his role as director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame and become director emeritus of the institute beginning in January.

“During the more than 25 wonderful years leading the Alliance for Catholic Education and 22 years of serving the institute, I have been extraordinarily blessed to contribute to building a mission in service to children in under-resourced Catholic schools with the most talented, faith-filled and committed team of educational scholars and professional practitioners imaginable,” Father Scully said. “I can think of no more fulfilling expression of my vocation as a Holy Cross priest. I look forward to continuing to support the mission of ACE and the institute in any way I can as director emeritus as I continue teaching and research in my home department of political science.”

“As a highly regarded scholar, challenging and popular teacher and creator of the Alliance for Catholic Education, and through his many administrative roles, Father Scully has devoted his life to Notre Dame, its students and its mission,” said Thomas G. Burish, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost. “In doing so, he has improved the lives of countless students and families. We are grateful for his many contributions.”

A professor of political science and faculty fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Institute for Educational Initiatives and the Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development, Father Scully has long-standing research and teaching interests in comparative political institutions, especially political parties and party systems. More recently, he has also focused on international faith-based education.

Father Scully has written a number of scholarly articles and six books, including his most recent, “Democratic Governance in Latin America,” published by Stanford University Press. He has won multiple teaching awards at Notre Dame, including the Sheedy Excellence in Teaching Award in the College of Arts and Letters, the O’Malley Undergraduate Teaching Award and a Kaneb Teaching Award.

Father Scully founded ACE in 1993 and served as chair of its advisory board until 2013. In 1997, he became the director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives, which today comprises more than two dozen initiatives focusing on the academic quality of and access to faith-based, and particularly Catholic, schools. In addition to ACE, these initiatives include the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity; the Education, Schooling and Society undergraduate minor; the Notre Dame Center for STEM Education; and the Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education.

Under Father Scully’s stewardship, the Alliance for Catholic Education has become the most sought-after source of talent and innovation for Catholic schools in the United States and, increasingly, beyond, contributing to the professional formation of thousands of teachers and school leaders serving in all 50 states. Over the past decade, ACE has focused especially on literacy initiatives in Haiti, improving the reading skills of 36,000 children in that country.

Ordained a Holy Cross priest in 1981, Father Scully served his first years of priesthood teaching at Saint George’s College in Santiago, Chile. He earned master’s and doctoral degrees in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, after graduating summa cum laude from Notre Dame in 1976 and receiving his master of divinity degree from the University in 1979. During his three decades on the faculty at Notre Dame he has served as a University trustee and fellow, executive vice president, and vice president and senior associate provost.

Father Scully’s skill as a leader and educator has been recognized on numerous occasions. Among these recognitions were the 2008 Presidential Citizens Medal presented in a ceremony in the Oval Office, the 2013 William E. Simon Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Social Entrepreneurship, and the 2015 Elizabeth Ann Seton Award (awarded to ACE) for outstanding contributions to Catholic education from the National Catholic Educational Association.

Father Scully is a member of the advisory boards of Notre Dame’s Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Institute for Latino Studies, Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy and Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, as well as Saint George’s College. He is also a life member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, the Inter-American Dialogue and the Latin American Studies Association.

Miller-Graff Awarded $2.5 Million Grant from NIH

2019-09-24T10:00:00-04:00

This article was originally published by Carrie Gates on al.nd.edu.

Women are most likely to experience violence from their intimate partners when they are young — and when they are pregnant.

Exposure to violence during that critical time is associated with a variety of negative outcomes for both mother and infant, and there is a lack of effective, evidence-based interventions to support them.

Laura Miller-Graff, an assistant professor of psychology and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, is working to change that.

Miller-Graff, along with co-principal investigator Kathryn Howell of the University of Memphis, has been awarded $2.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to launch and evaluate an intervention program for pregnant women.

The project team also includes Notre Dame faculty members E. Mark Cummings, the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families Professor of Psychology; Julie Braungart-Rieker, the Mary Hesburgh Flaherty and James F. Flaherty III Collegiate Chair and Professor of Psychology; and Lijuan “Peggy” Wang, an associate professor of psychology.

“We are, of course, thrilled to receive this funding,” Miller-Graff said. “We’ve spent years doing the basic research and collecting pilot data that inform the current research program, so it’s wonderful to see it all come together. We’re also glad to be able to continue providing this resource for women in our community.”

The team piloted the group therapy program for pregnant women in South Bend and Memphis, with promising results. The grant from the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development will allow them to complete a randomized, controlled trial involving more than 200 women in a project titled “Intervening During the Prenatal Period with Women Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence to Improve Maternal Functioning and Infant Adjustment.”

“We’re excited to test the program in the context of a larger, multi-site trial,” said Miller-Graff, who is also a faculty fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. “If the research supports its effectiveness, we hope that it will be a cost-effective and scalable support for pregnant women.”

The team is also working to adapt the program for use in Peru and Mexico, with support from the Kellogg Institute’s Ford Program for Human Development Studies and Solidarity and Notre Dame International, respectively.

Miller-Graff, a Notre Dame alumna, began researching violence exposure and its profound effects on development as a graduate student at the University of Michigan.

After joining the Notre Dame faculty in 2013, she has focused her research on how to prevent children’s exposure to partner violence, with the support of the University’s William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families.

“Violence is an offense against the whole person, the whole family, and our response to it should also be holistic,” she said. “The core of our program focuses on promoting safety, healthy coping and strong positive relationships, but we approach it from a framework that realizes women’s access to these things is intimately connected to a host of other cultural, community and economic resources that inhibit or promote family well-being.”

Berends Awarded Two-Year Grant from IES

2019-09-13T12:00:00-04:00

Mark Berends, a professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO) at Notre Dame, has been awarded a $540,000 two-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences for his project, “School Improvement in Indiana: Exploring Differences among Charter, Voucher Private, and Traditional Public High Schools.”

The grant will support Berends’ ongoing research with colleagues that examines the impact of school choice on students’ high school and post-secondary outcomes. Colleagues from the University of Kentucky—R. Joseph Waddington and Ron Zimmer—and from the University of Washington Bothell—Joseph Ferrare—will collaborate on the study.

“Although a host of studies have examined the impact of charter schools and voucher programs at the elementary and middle school levels, few have looked at the longer-term outcomes for students in high school and beyond,” said Berends.

Berends, a national and international expert on school choice and school reform, hopes the study will further our understanding of whether school choice is effective, for whom, and under what circumstances.

“Mark’s research is an essential part of our mission to show what works in education reform,” said John Staud, the acting director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives. “If we are to ensure that all students have access to an excellent education, we need to know the most effective tools to achieve that reform.”

For more information about Berends and his research, visit his website.

Svarovsky Receives $400,000 NSF Grant to Transform Engineering Education

2019-09-12T09:00:00-04:00

A team led by Dr. Gina Svarovsky of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for STEM Education will conduct a three-year study to examine how engineering experiences can make a lasting impression on children and their families, ultimately having the potential to influence the children’s interests, school trajectories, and professional careers.

The National Science Foundation awarded $400,000 for the team to implement the Research Exploring Activity Characteristics and Heuristics for Early Childhood Engineering (REACH-ECE) study, which will examine the effectiveness of engineering activities for children between the ages of 3 and 5 and their families.

Svarovsky, an associate professor of the practice at the Center for STEM Education and director of the Institute for Educational Initiative’s Evaluation and Research group, will serve as the principal investigator for the project. She will collaborate with three co-principal investigators on the study: Scott Pattison, a research scientist at the Technical Education Research Centers (TERC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Amy Corbett and Maria Perdomo of Metropolitan Family Service (MFS), a community-based organization in Portland, Oregon.

“This is a huge honor and opportunity,” Svarovsky said. “It’s really encouraging that more and more people in the field are starting to realize the critical role of early childhood experiences in the development of STEM interests and identity.”

Svarovsky said the research has the potential to transform engineering education by developing educational products and conceptual frameworks that show how to effectively engage young learners and their caregivers in meaningful and productive engineering learning experiences. The study also focuses on low-income and Spanish-speaking families, engaging with communities that historically have less access to early science and engineering learning opportunities and remain persistently underrepresented in those fields.

“This represents an important step in understanding how we can prepare children for careers in STEM fields, particularly engineering,” said Dr. John Staud, the acting director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives. “Its attention to underrepresented communities lies at the heart of the Institute’s mission to improve the education of all children, particularly the disadvantaged.”

Svarovsky said she has long been interested in how young people, especially those from traditionally underrepresented populations, learn science and engineering in formal and informal environments. “The REACH-ECE project focuses very specifically on the activities that we’re developing for kids and their families,” she said. “What are the specific elements of these activities that make them more effective in cultivating this early STEM—and particularly engineering—interest and understanding?”

Learning engineering skills prepares children to interact with the world in a productive way, Svarovsky said.

“The REACH-ECE team believes that the engineering design process is an essential problem-solving skill for children to develop. As we navigate our current national and global challenges, they want to feel like they have the ability to solve problems and be agents of change,” she said. “Introducing kids to engineering at an early age is one way to do that. Developing creative solutions to problems can help children see that they can act on the world in a positive way and make a difference by thinking critically about the situation at hand. You can be innovative and thoughtful and make a difference when solving problems.”

The study will play a critical role in the Center for STEM Education’s efforts to translate research into action that helps all students engage and excel in the STEM disciplines.

“At the Center, we strongly believe that we need to think about STEM education not only as a workforce or economic argument, but as a way to leverage STEM as a force for good in the world,” Svarovsky said. “We see STEM education as a way to empower people, especially those who’ve been traditionally disenfranchised, become agents of change.”

New Literacy Research Office Launches at Notre Dame

2019-08-20T11:00:00-04:00

The James R. Squire Office of Policy Research in the English Language Arts will open this fall at the University of Notre Dame under the direction of the University’s Center for Literacy Education.

Headed by Dr. Ernest Morrell, the Coyle Professor of Literacy Education and director of the Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education, the office will create studies that advance knowledge and inform policy on teaching English language arts (ELA), such as incorporating media and digital literacies into the teaching of English and increasing the engagement of vulnerable youth by tapping into popular culture to improve literacy outcomes.

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) established the Squire Office in 2003 in memory of James R. Squire, the executive director of the council from 1960 to 1967. The new office at Notre Dame will serve as a national clearinghouse for studies of English language arts education. The office will also conduct primary research about English language arts teachers, teaching conditions, and student achievement. All research will be publicly available, and programming throughout the year will support its dissemination across the country.

“As language continues to evolve, along with our understanding of how people learn it, solid literacy education research is essential to turning what we know into what we do in classrooms,” said Morrell, a former president of NCTE. “Through the vast network of the National Council of Teachers of English, we will tap the expertise of exceptional researchers and practitioners and make the Squire Office a leading voice in moving literacy education forward.”

“Since ACE’s inception, we’ve been dedicated to the formation of effective teachers who grow to become leaders in their fields,” said Dr. John Staud, the executive director of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) and the acting director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives, which houses the Center for Literacy Education. “Our relationship with the Squire Office provides a unique opportunity to help develop the skills and understanding of effective practitioners across the country.”

From 2003 to 2014, the Squire Office was located at the University of Michigan under the direction of Anne Ruggles Gere, the Gertrude Buck Collegiate Professor of the School of Education. The Squire Office published several policy studies each year on key issues in the field, such as fostering high-quality formative assessment and teacher learning communities. The new office at Notre Dame will build on that work, conducting original research and creating white papers and other resources on topics such as

Empowering bilingual students to use their multiple linguistic repertoires and multilingualism in the English/ELA classroom
Uses of media and popular culture in classrooms
Changes in the teaching of canonical and contemporary/multicultural literature and research into innovative practices

“In a time when English and language arts teachers are under intense pressure to prepare students to meet the demands of 21st-century literacy, decision makers need access to strong research that can inform the development of effective policies and practices,” said Emily Kirkpatrick, the executive director of NCTE. “The National Council of Teachers of English is honored to enter into this partnership with the Center for Literacy Education at Notre Dame, which we believe will equip both educators and legislators with the studies they need to make informed decisions that support the growth of all students.”

The first studies out of the Squire Office at Notre Dame will include a study on racial literacy and an examination of the use of bilingual students’ multiple languages to help them succeed. Additional studies are to be published at least once a quarter. Researchers and project leaders will share their findings at conferences and convenings throughout the year.

For more information about the Squire Office, please contact Dr. Morrell at emorrel1@nd.edu or 574-631-7804.

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is the nation's most comprehensive literacy organization, supporting more than 25,000 teachers across the preK–college spectrum. Each year this support is driven by research-based position statements that shape understanding and policy, the publication of 46 peer-reviewed journal issues and more than a dozen professional books, and an annual convention that features 250 authors, 600 concurrent sessions, and more than 7,000 attendees. NCTE is the home of the National Day on Writing®, the popular teaching resource ReadWriteThink.org, and Build Your Stack®, a new initiative focused exclusively on helping teachers build their book knowledge and their classroom libraries. Through the expertise of its members, NCTE has served at the forefront of every major improvement in the teaching and learning of English and the language arts since 1911.

The Center for Literacy Education at Notre Dame fosters collaboration between the Institute for Educational Initiatives’ English education faculty and the College of Arts and Letters with the goal of transforming literacy scholarship and practice in today's urban and multicultural schools. With the support of the O'Shaugnessy Foundation Endowment for Excellence in K–12 Research, it works with ACE's English educators and K–12 leaders and classroom teachers to create a dialogue focused upon what is known about powerful literacy teaching and learning and what we will need to know in order to meet the challenges and opportunities of literacy education in the future. The model is grounded in three levels to create sustainable transformation: forming talent, including teachers and future PhDs; expanding access to create summer camps and community literacy centers, both in the United States and internationally; and path-breaking research.

Trinter Awarded Luksic Family Collaboration Grant through Notre Dame International

2019-05-15T15:00:00-04:00

Dr. Christine Trinter, an assistant professor of mathematics education in the Notre Dame Center for STEM Education and a Fellow of the Institute for Educational Initiatives, has been awarded a Luksic Family Collaboration Grant through Notre Dame International. The grant will contribute a portion of the funds necessary for her team to host a research-practitioner conference in Santiago, Chile, to study the philosophy of differentiated instruction in Chilean schools.

The conference comes as a response to a 2015 mandate from the Chilean Ministry of Education that schools in the country include Universal Design for Learning in their curriculum, that is, empowering teachers to design flexible educational experiences to better meet the needs of individual learners. “All students are unique and have different learning needs in one classroom,” Trinter says. “How do we meet this diverse student body? Universal Design for Learning is grounded in differentiated instruction.”

The conference will provide a forum for a conversation between policymakers, faculty from universities, researchers, and the teachers themselves. Trinter says, “We will all be in the same room so, our hope is that we can craft a research study for this in Chile. There will be a number of teachers there, too, so we will focus on practical strategies for adopting this philosophy in the classroom. Teams will develop lesson plans that are differentiated so they better understand how this philosophy manifests in their curriculum and instruction. Designing a teaching and learning experience in this way is a matter of the educator being more attuned to student needs. It’s more focused on the dignity of the individual than just the learning target.”

Through her work at the University of Virginia with Carol Tomlinson, a leading scholar on differentiated instruction, Trinter partnered with a team of educational consultants at Tandem Profesores, as well as Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile faculty members including Horacio Solar. The conference is scheduled for April 17-18, 2020. Following the conference, a two-day summit will explore further collaboration between PUC, Notre Dame, UVA, and Tandem. Trinter says, “We all came together in a total partnership to help promote this idea that looks at the dignity of the person — the uniqueness of all students. I’m going to learn so much.”

CREO Grads Earn Honors at 2019 AERA Conference

2019-04-16T14:00:00-04:00

Two graduates from the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Research in Educational Opportunity (CREO) were honored at last week’s American Education Research Association (AERA) conference in Toronto for outstanding work on their dissertations.

Megan Austin won the AERA Division L (Policy & Politics) 2019 Dissertation Award, and Julie Dallavis won the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the AERA’s Catholic Special Interest Group (SIG). Each earned her Ph.D. in sociology from Notre Dame as a member of CREO.

Austin is a researcher at the American Institutes for Research, where she develops and directs research studies and technical assistance projects for the Midwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Southeast Regional Educational Library, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of State Support.

Austin’s dissertation, High School Curricular Intensity: Inequalities in Access and Returns Over Three Decades, develops a new measure of the quantity and quality of students’ academic course taking in high school and uses that measure to examine changes in course taking for three nationally represented cohorts of students.

Division L encompasses research on educational policy and politics, including economic, legal, and fiscal issues.

Dallavis is a member of the faculty of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives and works with the Institute’s Program Evaluation and Research Team. She also teaches in the Education, Schooling, and Society minor.

Her dissertation, Does a School’s Mission Matter? Examining Explicit Statements and Underlying Beliefs, examines changes in mission statements in conjunction with the expansion of school choice, the role of adoption and promotion of mission statements by teachers and principals, and the relationship between academic-focused aspects of mission statements and students’ academic performance.

The Catholic SIG supports and promotes research and evaluation of Catholic education, including interdisciplinary and international issues.

IEI Co-Sponsors Conference at the Notre Dame London Global Gateway

2019-03-11T11:00:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame and St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, will explore strategic responses to secularization, freedom and accountability and school leader formation in Catholic schools in the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland at an international conference at the Notre Dame London Global Gateway starting tomorrow.

“Contemporary Issues Facing Catholic Schools: Lessons from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States” is designed to deepen international, research-based dialogue by providing a platform to compare Catholic education institutions across the three countries and to strengthen the systems in each.

With 14 scheduled presenters and 45 attendees, including several bishops and university faculty, the conference’s sponsors hope they will spur important dialogue about the best approach to ensuring the vitality of Catholic schools internationally.

“This conference provides a unique opportunity for us to share the challenges that Catholic schools face in each of our countries,” said John Staud, the acting director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives. “We believe that this dialogue will lead to thoughtful ways we can work together to strengthen Catholic education.”

Along with the Institute for Educational Initiatives, the conference is sponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts. The Notre Dame London Global Gateway with the help of Bridget Keating, is hosting the conference.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Cardinal Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Westminster (London) will preside and preach at the opening mass at the Westminster Cathedral. Bishop Arturo Cepeda of Detroit, Bishop Thomas Deenihan of Meath in Ireland, and Bishop John Wilson of Westminster will then outline the most challenging issues facing Catholic education in their countries.

The remainder of the conference will feature four discussions, each featuring several panelists representing the three countries. The first panel will hone in on the mission of Catholic education within the context of modern-day secularization and how to best counter growing religious disengagement.

The second panel will explore the relationship between education policy, Catholic school institutions and the freedom and autonomy of choice, including the degree of parental freedom in school choice, the freedom of schools to sculpt and pursue individual missions and school accountability as mandated by the government.

The third panel will discuss effective teacher and leader formation as panelists describe the most strategic approaches to building “missionary disciples” within Catholic education institutions.

The fourth panel will center on faith and character formation, particularly how to best engage students with the Gospel in a way that resonates beyond the classroom.

The London conference is the fourth in a series of international gatherings sponsored by the Institute for Educational Initiatives and the Kellogg Institute to provide a research-based context for global Catholic education. While enrollment in U.S. Catholic schools has declined since peaking in the mid-20th century, enrollment worldwide has soared, particularly in the Global South. Notre Dame researchers are interested in what can be learned from Catholic schools internationally and applied to schools in the United States and around the world.

AP-TIP IN Participant Named Midwest Region's AP Teacher of the Year

2019-02-20T07:00:00-05:00

Jonathan Arndt, a math teacher at Argos Junior Senior High School, has been named the 2019 AP Teacher of the Year for the College Board’s 13-state Midwestern region.

Arndt teaches AP Calculus AB, algebra, precalculus, and eighth-grade math, in addition to overseeing a math lab. He is a member of the University of Notre Dame’s Indiana Advanced Placement Teacher Investment Program (AP-TIP IN), which prepares Indiana students for college by increasing enrollment in AP math, science and English courses and providing student support and teacher training to boost students’ success.

“It’s truly an honor to be named teacher of the year,” Arndt said. “I want to thank AP-TIP IN, which gave me the skills and confidence to improve my teaching, and I want to thank my students. They’re the reason I won this award.”

“Jon is dedicated to the Argos community and his colleagues, and he is passionately supportive of his students,” said Karen Morris, the program director of AP-TIP IN. “Working at a small school can be a challenge for any AP teacher. Jon stands out because his effort has impacted a significant number of students at a small school.”

Argos is a small school about 30 miles south of South Bend that serves about 220 students. When Arndt’s first taught AP Calculus AB in 2015-16, just a handful of Argos students enrolled and earned qualifying scores – defined as scoring a three or above on the end-of-year AP exam.

Arndt joined AP-TIP IN in 2016-17 and participated in more than 50 hours of professional development workshops and curriculum. AP TIP-IN primarily focuses on teacher development, providing support and resources such as a fall conference, a mock exam reading, regional teacher meetings and an AP Summer Institute.

Following the first year of Arndt’s AP-TIP IN support, nearly 20 Argos students enrolled in his AP Calculus AB course, and more than half earned qualifying scores. These qualifying scores accounted for half of all the school’s passing AP scores, and more than half of Arndt’s AP students earned a four or five on the AP exam.

“Jon is the most professional teacher I’ve worked with,” said Argos Principal Nick Medich. “Every student who takes his AP course expects to pass it. He’s established a culture where they expect to do well and pass the AP exam.”

“John has an intimate knowledge of his students as learners, and this helps him identify their needs and elevate their success,” Morris said. “His students recognize this – they describe him as always willing to help and be positive.”

Arndt was selected by a College Board committee that included representatives from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin. He is the first AP-TIP IN participant to be named a regional AP teacher of the year.

Notre Dame Places Two on Edu-Scholar Rankings

2019-01-29T20:00:00-05:00

Two professors from the University of Notre Dame and Institute for Educational Initiatives were named in the Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, an annual listing published by Education Week of the 200 scholars who had the year’s biggest impact on educational practice and policy.

Ernest Morrell, the Coyle Professor in Literacy Education and director of the Notre Dame Center for Literacy Education, ranked 123rd in the 2019 list. Mark Berends, a professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity, placed 161st.

Morrell’s research focuses on developing powerful models of teaching and learning in classrooms and non-school environments to successfully engage urban youth and communities. Morrell also holds appointments in the Department of English and Department of Africana Studies, and he is a Fellow in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. This is the fifth year he has been included in the rankings.

Berends has written and published extensively on educational reform, school choice, the effects of family and school changes on student achievement trends, and the effects of schools and classrooms on student achievement. Currently, he is conducting several studies on school choice, including an examination of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program. Berends is also a Fellow in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. This is his first appearance on the list.

“I am gratified to see the Institute represented in these rankings,” said John Staud, the acting director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives. “Our goal is to improve the education of all children, particularly the most disadvantaged, and this shows the national impact of these two outstanding faculty members.”

Rick Hess, the director of education policy for the American Enterprise Institute, compiles the rankings each year. The rankings are based on performances in nine categories that include publications, inclusion on syllabi across the country, education press and web mentions, and mentions in the Congressional Record.

Dr. Nancy Michael Honored with Frank O'Malley Undergraduate Teaching Award

2019-01-15T09:50:00-05:00

You have one. Your parents have one. Your best friend has one: a favorite teacher. Someone who left an indelible mark on you—not necessarily because they shared the most facts with you, but because of how they made you feel and the person they inspired you to become.

Each year at Notre Dame, students nominate, vote, and help bestow the Frank O'Malley Undergraduate Teaching Award to an outstanding faculty member based upon excellent service to the student community. The distinguished honoree for 2018 is Dr. Nancy Michael, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, the director of undergraduate studies, Neuroscience and Behavior, and a Fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives.

Reflecting on being nominated by her students, Michael said, “It is hugely humbling. There’s no greater reward or greater recognition than knowing that you’ve made a difference for the better in the life of someone else.” As a teacher, she wants her students to understand the subject matter. Even more importantly, Michael wants each of them to fully believe they have the capacity to “leave the world a little bit more strong, a little bit more compassionate, a little bit more capable.”

Michael’s zeal for her field, emphasis on active learning, and genuine care for the growth of the whole student sets her apart. “I believe that neuroscience has an opportunity and responsibility to share what we know about human behavior to make the world a better place, she said. She believes that with greater understanding of the mechanisms of behavior, people can begin to think differently about intervention and the way people are cared for. “Understanding that gives choice and power that wasn’t there before,” she said. “I think it’s a Luke verse that was popularized by Spiderman—‘With great power comes great responsibility’—with this knowledge comes power. That’s a repeating theme in my classes.”

Cultivating a long-term learning experience for her students also motivates Michael. She said, “Knowledge doesn’t have to be functional or permanent. That really has informed the way I teach. ‘How do I want you to be a different—and hopefully better—human as a result of this class?’ I hope that in 5, 10, 15 years when all the details of the class have vanished into the background…my students might stop and think, for example, ‘You know I had a class this one time and maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to judge.’ That’s what I love about teaching. That there’s the potential for that every day.”

The annual undergraduate teaching award memorializes legendary Notre Dame Professor Frank O'Malley, who taught at the University for over 40 years. “O’Malley revealed to his students the desperate need in the world for love, passion, and heroism…He made sure that his students’ souls were alive, that they did not become complacent and lukewarm…with the aid of literature, philosophy, and theology, O’Malley gave his students the tools necessary to examine reality and get to the truth of things.”

Testing: 1, 2, 3. Actionable, real-time texts make a difference

2018-11-16T10:00:00-05:00

Chloe Gibbs, an assistant professor of economics and Fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, has won a three-year, $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the effects of parenting education and length of day care on long-term child educational outcomes.

“This grant has given me the opportunity to explore, and help answer, what’s going on inside that black box of how pre-school is effective and how pre-school improves children’s outcomes,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs’ grant will enable her to work with several school districts and their state-funded pre-school programs to provide parents with a curriculum delivered through text messaging. Parents who opt in will receive a few text messages a week with tips explaining how they can encourage their children’s early literacy development at home. Gibbs sees direct benefits. “The programming has been tested and found to be effective in both changing parent’s behaviors and also improving children’s early literacy skills,” she said. “By encouraging parents to do more of this in the home, they become more engaged in their children’s school as well.”

The research will also look at which families and in which types of pre-school programs this programming is most effective. “A lot of my work is motived by the fact that children arrive at kindergarten, already exhibiting pretty dramatic differences in their early literacy and numeracy skills, and those gaps then persist. If there are ways that we can chip away at those gaps earlier, I think it can have important implications for kids going forward,” said Gibbs, who is also a faculty committee member in the Notre Dame Program for Interdisciplinary Educational Research (ND PIER). She teaches a graduate course for Ph.D. students across the social sciences on conducting field experiments with a particular focus on education.

She said she believes parents understand the importance of early childhood development and want to help their children be ready for kindergarten and achieve those milestones, but don’t always have the tools to help. “This is supposed to provide parents with very concrete, actionable, easy-to-implement strategies in real-time because they’re getting it via text message–things like reading the letters on a ‘stop’ sign and sounding out each of those letters with their children on the way to school.”

Her research will examine who these strategies impact the most. “Is it the parents who are already doing those kinds of behaviors at home, and this is a boost above and beyond what they’re doing, or is it most effective in homes where there wasn’t much of this happening and now we’ve encouraged some of it?” Gibbs asked.

Gibbs is also excited about implementing the strategies during the summer. “We’ll be testing whether or not the text message-based curriculum is more effective for children from disadvantaged backgrounds in the summer months,” she said. “Can we supplement what’s already going on so we can address what has been called summer slide, or summer setback, that kids from low socio-economic households tend to lose ground in the summer months relative to their more advantaged peers? Can we close that gap with these kinds of investments and then kids will show up at kindergarten ideally more ready?”

The knowledge gained as a result of this research project will provide valuable information to help form education policies in the United States. Gibbs said she would not have been able to move the work ahead without the grant. “You have to be in a place like Notre Dame that has the kinds of research resources so you can pursue these opportunities, build the relationships with program providers so you can do the field work, and then of course have the financial support to carry it out. It’s nice to see when you have questions that you really want to pursue and you think are policy relevant and will affect children’s lives—to see all of those things fall into place and to be able to carry it forward is very exciting.”

Chen to Improve Assessment Testing for High School Students

2018-10-16T09:00:00-04:00

Ying Alison Cheng, associate professor of psychology and fellow of the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI) at the University of Notre Dame, will lead a $1.4 million project funded by the Institute of Education Sciences to develop the intelligent diagnostic assessment program (i-DAP) for high school statistics education.

Read the full article on research.nd.edu.

Dr. Sean Reardon - "Education, Opportunity, & Inequality in America"

2018-10-02T09:00:00-04:00

Dr. Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty & Inequality in Education at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University visited Notre Dame on Friday, September 21, 2018 to deliver "Education, Opportunity, & Inequality in America" in B101 Jenkins Nanovic Hall.

Dr. Sean Reardon is the endowed Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and is Professor (by courtesy) of Sociology at Stanford University. His research focuses on the causes, patterns, trends, and consequences of social and educational inequality, the effects of educational policy on educational and social inequality, and in applied statistical methods for educational research. Reardon is the developer of the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA). Based on 300 million standardized test scores, SEDA provides measures of educational opportunity, average test score performance, academic achievement gaps, and other information for every public school district in the US.

Professor Reardon received his doctorate in education in 1997 from Harvard University. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a recipient of the William T. Grant Foundation Scholar Award, the National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship, and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.