Harvard Graduate
School of Education will work with the Strategic Education Research Partnership and other partners to complete a program of work designed to a) investigate the predictors of reading comprehension in 4th - 8th grade students, in particular the role of skills at perspective - taking, complex reasoning, and academic language in predicting deep comprehension outcomes, b) track developmental trajectories across the
middle grades in perspective - taking, complex reasoning, academic language skill, and deep comprehension, c) develop and evaluate curricular and pedagogical approaches designed to promote deep comprehension in the content areas in 4th - 8th grades, and d) develop and evaluate an intervention program designed for 6th - 8th grade students reading at 3rd - 4th grade level.The HGSE team will take responsibility, in collaboration with colleagues at other institutions, for the
following components of the proposed work: Instrument development: Pilot data collection using interviews and candidate assessment items, collaboration with DiscoTest colleagues to develop coding of the pilot data so as to produce well - justified learning sequences for perspective - taking, complex reasoning, academic language skill, and deep comprehension.Curricular development: HGSE investigators Fischer, Selman, Snow, and Uccelli will contribute to the development of a discussion - based curriculum for 4th - 5th graders, and to the expansion of an existing discussion - based curriculum for 6th - 8th graders, with a particular focus on science content (Fischer),
social studies content (Selman), and academic language skills (Snow & Uccelli).
She served as a classroom science, math and
social studies teacher, in grades 4 through 8, first at John F. Long Elementary
School in Phoenix, Arizona from 2005 to 2007,
followed by White Pine
Middle School in Saginaw, Michigan from 2007 to 2011.
Following a discussion of the challenges of providing clinical experiences, the authors describe the outcomes of a
study involving remote partnerships in learning between candidates enrolled in a distance education
social studies methods course and mentor teachers employed in
middle and secondary
schools.
A 1994
study by the Search Institute examining adopted adolescents concluded some of the
following facts: Adopted children score higher than their
middle - class peers on indicators of
school performance and
social competence.