Research

Effective teachers don't just impact their own students' achievement, they help improve the performance of their fellow teachers' students. New research by Min Sun of University of Washington College of Education and her collaborators points toward how schools can maximize the talents of their teachers to improve instruction, especially poverty-impacted and minority children who often are taught by less experienced teachers.

As some advocacy groups push to deregulate the preparation of teachers and expand independent, alternative routes into teaching, a new policy brief authored by the University of Washington College of Education’s Ken Zeichner reviews what is known about the quality of five of the most prominent independent teacher education programs in the U.S.

Even as family liaisons and other cultural brokers play an increasingly important role bridging between schools and the families they serve, well-intentioned efforts frequently reinforce deficit-based approaches to historically marginalized communities.

A new study from the University of Washington College of Education published in the American Educational Research Journal describes cultural brokering approaches that flip the usual script and offer avenues for creating more equitable avenues of family-school collaboration.

Even as poverty-impacted schools have found success recruiting more high-ability teachers over the past two decades, fewer teachers of color are sticking with the profession. A new study from the University of Washington College of Education points to one of the biggest obstacles to closing the teacher diversity gap: teachers of color are significantly less satisfied with their jobs than white colleagues.

"Run, fat rabbits! Run, run, run! That fox wants to eat you, one by one! Dinnertime!"

Children lean forward on the floor of Bothell Library, enthralled as children's librarian Mie-Mie Wu brings to life Sue Williams' tale of a hungry fox on the prowl.

After singing a counting song and listening to Wu read Eve Merriam's "12 Ways to Get to 11," the children are joined on the floor by their parents. Together, children and parents cut out pictures of rabbits and then group them in different ways to add up to 11.

Four University of Washington College of Education projects focused on expanding access to great STEM teaching and learning were featured during this year's NSF Video Showcase "STEM for All."

The open and free event features three-minute video presentations from more than 150 projects aimed at improving STEM education that are funded by the National Science Foundation. The public was invited to view the videos, join the discussion online with presenters, and vote for the most effective presentations May 17-23.

For perhaps a majority of voters in the United States, formal civic education takes place in a high school government course. Yet for many students, particularly those in poverty-impacted schools, government courses regularly fail to be rigorous, ambitious or engaging.

Twenty-one University of Washington College of Education doctoral students will discuss their research projects on May 13, with topics that include how elementary students streamline math problem-solving, the role of teacher ratings of externalizing behaviors to predicting rates of suspensions and academic attainment, and the challenges facing immigrant families of children with developmental disabilities.   

A new partnership between the University of Washington College of Education's Institute for Science + Math Education, UW Bothell’s OpenSTEM Research collaborative, Pacific Science Center, Red Eagle Soaring and The Seattle Public Library has received a $2.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation for a three-year project called Backpacks for Science Learning.

For years, many of the nation's secondary school students have failed to get the kind of intensive, ongoing literacy instruction they need, either to catch up in the basics or to move beyond them.

As a result, said Professor Sheila Valencia of the University of Washington College of Education, educators and students alike have found ways to work around texts.