The latest research on the nation’s key education issues will be presented by Vanderbilt University Peabody College faculty April 27 – May 1 at the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference in San Francisco.
A sampling of Peabody research being presented is listed below. All listings are Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). Media should confirm final session schedule via the printed program provided at the conference.
Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development was ranked the No. 1 education school in the nation for the fifth consecutive year by U.S. News & World Report.
Examining associations between teaching and learning processes and children’s development in large-scale preschool interventions
The establishment of publicly funded pre-kindergarten programs is associated with redressing the negative effects of poverty. This session examines programs designed to address children’s needs in three areas critical to academic success: self-regulation, mathematics and literacy. Three teams of researchers, which include Vanderbilt’s Dale Farran, Mary Catherine Wagner Fuhs, Mark Lipsey, David Dickinson and Sandra Jo Wilson, will report detailed observation data collected as part of large intervention studies and discuss associations between teaching, children’s engagement and learning.
Sunday, April 28, 10:35 a.m. – 12:05 p.m., Parc 55 / Cyril Magin III
Effective high schools: insight from the national center on scaling up effective schools
The National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools is an Institute of Education Sciences-sponsored consortium of five universities, two urban districts and an intervention support provider focused on identifying the programs, practices and processes that make some high schools in large urban districts particularly effective. This symposium, featuring professors Tom Smith and Marisa Cannata, highlights research focused on identifying the combination of programs, practices, processes and policies that make some high schools in large urban districts particularly effective with low income students, minority students and English language learners.
Sunday, April 28, 2:15 – 3:45 p.m., Hilton Union Square / Golden Gate 6
Contributions of basic cognitive processes to school-based mathematics learning: uncovering the neural pathways
Building on the promise of educational neuroscience, this session presents novel insights into the acquisition of mathematical competence from recent cognitive neuroscience research. Panelist Bruce McCandliss is one of Vanderbilt’s key faculty who is leading the way in research that merges the fields of education and neuroscience through the country’s first Ph.D. program in educational neuroscience.
Sunday, April 28, 10:35 a.m. – 12:05 p.m., Hilton Union Square / Tower 3 Union Square 19 and 20
Knocking on the Ivory Tower: Connecting teacher qualifications and preparation to student outcomes
With the advent of Race to the Top and other programs, value-added scores have been pushed to the forefront of educational policy. Of particular interest for policymakers are the specific teacher qualifications or classroom practices that are associated with teachers’ value-added scores. Researchers Matthew Springer, Susan Freeman Burns and Matthew Pepper from the federally funded National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College will share findings from an exploratory study on the qualifications and classroom practices of effective math teachers.
Tuesday, April 30, 5:05 – 7:05 p.m., Westin St. Francis / Elizabethan B
Instructional leadership and emotional intelligence: The convergent and divergent validity of the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED)
This symposium brings together scholars who are building and validating assessments of leadership for learning at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Ellen Goldring, Joseph Murphy and Xiu Cravens will present ongoing psychometric research of the Vanderbilt Assessment for Leadership in Education™ (VAL-ED), a research-based evaluation tool that measures the effectiveness of school leaders by providing a detailed assessment of a principal’s performance.
Sunday, April 28, 10:35 a.m. – 12:05 p.m., Westin St. Francis / Elizabethan A
Targeting core practices for instructional improvement
This session will examine how teachers can improve their classroom practice to align with more ambitious standards. Paul Cobb will discuss an ongoing effort to investigate and support the development of district capacity for instructional improvement in middle-grades mathematics.
Tuesday, April 30, 8 – 9:30 a.m., Westin St. Francis / California West
Understanding school personnel retention and turnover: Evidence from the schools and staffing survey
This symposium brings together four new studies that draw on the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), a nationally representative data set, to examine a number of possible causes and consequences of school personnel retention and turnover. Jason Grissom will discuss his research on principal turnover, which is linked to negative school outcomes.
Sunday, April 28, 8:15 – 10:15 a.m., Westin St. Francis / Elizabethan A