Educational+Researcher

Carol McDonald Connor, Frederick J. Morrison, Barry J. Fishman,Claire Cameron Ponitz,Stephanie Glasney,Phyllis S. Underwood, Shayne B. Piasta, Elizabeth Coyne Crowe, and Christopher Schatschneider

[|The ISI Classroom Observation System: Examining the Literacy Instruction Provided to Individual Students]
Educational Researcher March 2009 38: 85-99

The Individualizing Student Instruction (ISI) classroom observation and coding system is designed to provide a detailed picture of the classroom environment at the level of the individual student. Using a multidimensional conceptualization of the classroom environment, foundational elements (teacher warmth and responsiveness to students, classroom management) and instructional elements (teacher-child interactions, context, and content) are described. The authors have used the ISI system to document that children who share the same classroom have very different learning opportunities, that instruction occurs through interactions among teachers and students, and that the effect of this instruction depends on children’s language and literacy skills. This means that what is effective for one child may be ineffective for another with different skills. With improving classroom observation systems, the dynamics of the complex classroom environment as it affects student learning can be better understood.

Robert C. Pianta and Bridget K. Hamre

[|Conceptualization, Measurement, and Improvement of Classroom Processes: Standardized Observation Can Leverage Capacity]
Educational Researcher March 2009 38: 109-119

The authors advance an argument that placing observation of actual teaching as a central feature of accountability frameworks, teacher preparation, and basic science could result in substantial improvements in instruction and related social processes and a science of the production of teaching and teachers. Teachers’ behavioral interactions with students can be (a) assessed observationally using standardized protocols, (b) analyzed systematically with regard to sources of error, (c) validated for predicting student learning, and (d) changed (improved) as a function of specific and aligned supports provided to teachers; exposure to such supports is predictive of greater student learning gains. These methods have considerable promise; along with measurement challenges, some of which pertain to psychometrics, efficiency, and costs, they merit attention, rigorous study, and substantial research investments.

Peter Smagorinsky

[|The Cultural Practice of Reading and the Standardized Assessment of Reading Instruction: When Incommensurate Worlds Collide]
Educational Researcher October 2009 38: 522-527 This article critiques the articles by Connor et al., Croninger and Valli, Pianta and Hamre, and Rowan and Correnti, which appeared in the March 2009 issue of //Educational Researcher,// by taking a cultural-historical perspective on reading and reading instruction. In this paradigm a number of those authors’ assumptions are seen as questionable, including the beliefs about reading that it is a self-evident construct, that it is a discrete act, and that it is an acultural act. The author of this critique presents evidence that challenges each of these assumptions and argues that by accepting them, the authors of the critiqued articles institute an order that values the system above relational aspects of schooling and teachers’ informed decision making.