Program for Infant/Toddler Care Module I: Social-Emotional Growth and Socialization
WestEd’s Program for Infant/Toddler Care (PITC) has produced a series of award-winning videos and supporting materials. The products include video magazines (in DVD format), curriculum guides, trainer’s manuals, and related materials—all providing easy-to-follow techniques to ensure emotionally secure and intellectually engaging group child care. Videos are available in English, Cantonese, and Spanish. The PITC series is organized into four modules, each containing videos and print materials (see separate descriptions of each module).
Module I Print Materials:
- Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A Guide to Social-Emotional Growth and Socialization
- Module I Trainer’s Manual
Module I Videos and Video Magazines:
- First Moves: Welcoming a Child to a New Caregiving Setting
- Flexible, Fearful, or Feisty: The Different Temperaments of Infants and Toddlers
- Getting in Tune: Creating Nurturing Relationships with Infants and Toddlers
Supplementary Materials for Module I:
- Addendum to Trainer’s Manual Module I
- Spanish-Language Handouts and Transparencies
For a complete list of PITC products for sale, including current prices, download the PITC order form. At the end of the form, you will find instructions on how to order materials through the California Department of Education.
A Research Agenda for Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education in Mathematics: Essential Directions, Methodological Approaches, and Guiding Principles
While there has been an increasing amount of research over the last three decades on what culturally responsive and sustaining education (CRSE) in mathematics looks like and why it matters, less is known about how to implement CRSE sustainably and at scale.
In this report, the authors raise critical questions and offer essential directions, methodological approaches, and guiding principles for CRSE research that can promote and support the implementation of CRSE in mathematics.
The topics explored in this report include:
- reframing outcomes of CRSE in mathematics;
- building mathematics teachers’ capacity to enact CRSE;
- co-designing CRSE with families and communities;
- developing organizational processes to support CRSE;
- prioritizing methodological approaches for advancing CRSE;
- establishing guiding principles for CRSE research;
- detailing data and analytic approaches for CRSE research; and
- charting opportunities for CRSE research.
The following five briefs are related to this report:
- Strengthening Implementation of Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education in Mathematics
- Reframing Outcomes of Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education in Mathematics
- Codesigning Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education With Families and Communities
- Developing Organizational Processes to Support Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education
- Building Mathematics Teachers’ Capacity to Enact Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education
Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy (RAAL) Course: Teacher’s Guide Unit 3, Reading Science
This third unit of the Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy Course introduces close reading of a range of science texts and genres. Readings focus on nutrition, physiology, and health, including special attention to the causes and dangers of obesity. Students continue to practice literacy skills introduced in Units 1 and 2 and add new strategies related to the reading of science texts specifically.
The Teacher’s Guide for Unit 3 includes:
- Unit overview and rationale
- Scope and sequence
- Student goals
- Lesson plans and lesson background information
- Companion sustained silent reading lessons
- Documents for projection
- Copies of Unit 3 Student Interactive Notebook pages
- Reproducible pages for student metacognitive logs
- Assessment tools
- Connections to the Reading Apprenticeship Framework
Analyzing Student-Level Disciplinary Data: A Guide for Districts
Discipline in schools can be categorized as exclusionary actions, which remove students from their normal learning setting (e.g., out-of-school suspension), or inclusionary actions, which do not (e.g., after-school detention).
The relationship of exclusionary discipline to negative outcomes for students, particularly racial/ethnic minority students and students with disabilities, has raised questions among policymakers, parents, and other stakeholders about equity in school punishment and whether alternatives may be employed in response to student offenses.
This guide is designed to help school and district leaders use data to better inform their use of disciplinary actions.
The guide can help administrators:
- Determine whether disciplinary actions are disproportionately applied to some student subgroups
- Determine whether differences exist in student academic outcomes across the types of disciplinary actions that students receive
- Design and carry out analyses
- Engage in conversations with external researchers who are studying disciplinary data
The Education Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know®
In statehouses, school boards, and communities across the US, battles are raging over the direction of education policy—from the standards that are shaping what students learn to how test results are being used to judge a teacher’s performance. These battles are being waged against a backdrop of shifting demographics, rapidly developing technology, a transforming economy and workplace. What’s more, the COVID-19 pandemic is prompting educators to rethink the school’s mission in society.
In The Education Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know®, nationally recognized education authority David Kirp and WestEd’s Improvement Specialist, Kevin Macpherson, provide a balanced, accessible overview of the key policy and practice issues in pre K–12 education today. They expose the fault lines of the major debates–what values should guide education and how can those values best be incorporated in policy and practice. They focus on equity and equality of opportunity as well as the tension between market and bureaucratic mechanisms as drivers of school improvement. Many of the topics they address, including racial integration, charter schools, student rights and teachers’ unions, are hotly contested. In an area where partisanship reigns, Kirp and Macpherson take an approach guided by research and not driven by ideology. A primer for educational policymakers and administrators, parents, and undergraduate and graduate students in education courses, The Education Debate offers a solid grasp of the major debates in contemporary education policy.
Creating Effective Surveys: Best Practices in Survey Design
When education leaders use survey results to inform their decisions, they are often left wondering if the “right” survey questions were asked.
To help state and local leaders improve existing instruments or create better instruments for data collection, this quick reference guide, developed by the Region 15 Comprehensive Center and REL West, highlights best practices in designing effective surveys.
By administering better surveys we can collect more specific and accurate data, which in turn can lead to better evidence with which to inform decisions.
Download the guide to for guidance on improving your surveys.
Supporting an Inclusive and Effective Process for Revising California’s Teaching Standards
The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the Department of Education were able to successfully embark on the complicated process of updating their California Standards for the Teaching Profession with the support of the Region 15 Comprehensive Center. The complex process yielded updated standards that reflect the most current research, center equity, and are designed for effective implementation.
Download this impact story to learn more.
This impact story originally appeared on the Comprehensive Center Network website and is published here with permission from the Center.
Developmental and Behavioral Screening Guide for Early Care and Education Providers
If developmental concerns are caught early on, early care and education providers can help ensure young children receive the support and services they need.
This guide is designed to increase awareness of and access to screening, services and supports, and referral resources that are available for California’s young children and their families.
The first section contains an overview and discussion of the provider’s role in screening and monitoring within the context of early care and education settings, including:
- The differences between screening and monitoring
- When and why to screen
- How to engage and support families in the process
The second section features a comprehensive list of developmental and behavioral screening resources that are available online.
Toolkit for a Workshop on Building a Culture of Data Use
This field-tested workshop toolkit guides facilitators through a set of structured activities to develop an understanding of how to foster a culture of data use in districts and schools.
WestEd researchers Nancy Gerzon and Sarah Guckenburg reviewed current research and identified five essential elements found in districts and schools with effective data-use practices:
- Participating in the flow of information for data use
- Communicating professional expectations for data use
- Providing resources and assistance to make meaning from data
- Providing professional development on data-use knowledge and skills
- Providing leadership to nurture a culture of data use
This guide enables a facilitator to present a conceptual framework aligned with these five elements. It also offers professional development materials to support district and school leaders in engaging their administrators, teacher leaders, and data team members to explore how to establish, maintain, and nurture a culture of data use.
Included are an agenda for a one-day professional development session (or a series of shorter sessions), guiding ideas to scaffold participant learning, and suggestions for participant activities. The handouts offer research reviews, vignettes, tools, and resources that highlight effective practices in each of the five framework elements.
Mentoring New Teachers Through Collaborative Coaching: Facilitation and Training Guide
Designed for professional developers who work with mentors, the Facilitation and Training Guide can be used to recreate or customize the comprehensive mentoring program developed by WestEd’s Kathy Dunne and Susan Villani.
Activities are organized at two levels: (1) for working directly with mentor teachers and (2) for helping professional developers design their own mentor training programs. Each step-by-step activity includes a statement of purpose, facilitator notes, and all necessary handouts and overheads.
In addition to the hardcopy binder materials, a CD-ROM holds all customizable handouts and agendas as well as complete PowerPoint presentations. The materials in this guide supplement and expand upon the companion book, Mentoring New Teachers Through Collaborative Coaching: Linking Student and Teacher Learning.