Peabody College

Calculators are useful tools in elementary mathematics classes, if students already have some basic skills, new research has found. The findings shed light on the debate about whether and when calculators should be used in the classroom.  “These findings suggest that it is important children first learn how to calculate… Read More

This summer Peabody’s Peggy Westlake, assistant to the director of the Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement, along with her husband, Mark, and daughter, Carolyn, traveled from Nashville to Key West, Fla., to Madawaska, Maine, to San Ysidro, California, to Blaine, Wash., and back to Nashville on motorcycle to… Read More

Standardized testing is an inescapable part of modern education; however, these tests often fail to meet the needs of students with learning disabilities. Vanderbilt Learning Sciences Institute researchers Stephen N. Elliott, Peter A. Beddow and Ryan J. Kettler have developed a decision-making instrument called the Test Accessibility… Read More

The new Peabody Research Institute (PRI) has been created to conduct research on children and families using a permanent staff of researchers and a high level of methodological expertise. Staff will collaborate with and support faculty on grants, including education research. The new center will be initially staffed with researchers… Read More

One of the things Peabody graduate Amy Cate, BS’03, likes best about teaching is the unpredictability. “It’s different every day,” she says. “You go in with a plan, but you never know what’s going to happen.” As a Spanish teacher at J.T. Moore Middle School, a public school in Nashville, Cate often tells her students, “Así es la vida”—“such is life”—presumably in order to help them deal with perennial travails such as homework or quizzes. Read More