Events

A Detour in School Improvement Journeys: How Schools are Learning and Changing in a Pandemic

Featuring Megan Duff, Doctoral Candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University
Hosted by Dr. Joshua Glazer, Associate Professor of Education Policy

A school’s capacity for improvement is critical to its ability to strategically manage change. Schools with high improvement capacity are better able to manage continuous change internally and more effectively respond to external pressures. COVID-19 has thrust schools into a uniquely uncertain and shifting policy environment, raising the question of how schools with different organizational capacity are responding.

In this talk, Megan Duff will discuss her study using latent transition analysis (LTA) and comparative studies to explore how schools with different levels of capacity have adapted and learned in response to COVID-19. Looking at New York City elementary and middle schools, she finds teachers perceive six types of school organizational capacity. While all schools have struggled to respond to COVID-19, certain types of schools had structures in place that helped them pivot more quickly as the pandemic unfolded. And in nearly all schools, academics have been deprioritized in favor of other elements of organizational capacity, such as parental engagement, trust, and social-emotional support.

About Megan Duff
Megan Duff is a doctoral candidate in Education Policy at Teacher College, Columbia University. Her research examines school and district improvement with a focus on leadership and organizational learning and change. Much of her current work uses mixture modeling to understand heterogeneity in school capacity and improvement trajectories, as well as the implications of various improvement capacities for schools’ responses to the COVID-19 crisis. Her recent work also includes a multi-year study examining how networks for school improvement learned to support the implementation of rigorous college-and-career-ready standards in New York City. In addition, she is studying implications of the design of research practice partnerships for district learning. Prior to beginning her doctorate, Megan worked for six years as a Middle School English teacher and coach in New York City traditional and charter schools.

Join us for the Inaugural GSEHD Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lecture featuring Dr. Sarah Ray, Assistant Professor of Human and Organizational Learning, with a Response by Dr. Shaista Khilji, Professor of Human and Organizational Learning

Professional, academic, and social growth are hallmarks of university life. Across the country, many students, faculty, and staff like to share their educational or work experiences in higher education over social media. And while online engagement with the university community can amplify one’s voice, social media can also shed light on problems with institutional norms and practices.

Dr. Sarah Ray and her team are studying Twitter's impact on higher education institutions. She will share an ongoing study and preliminary findings around how institutional social media engagement reinforces the status quo which stifles minoritized voices. She will also engage in a discussion around the consequences of maintaining the status quo, including challenges to recruitment and retention of minoritized students, faculty and staff

Helping Students Make Connections in Science Class: Lessons Learned from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) Video Study

featuring Dr. TIffany Sikorski, Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 Video Study was an international comparison project to identify differences in science teaching across countries. The study famously reported that United States science lessons are fragmented; they contain many activities to motivate students, but lack conceptual storylines to help students connect key science ideas. Though the TIMSS video study occurred two decades ago, its influence persists today, for example, in the “coherent content storylining” movement associated with the Next Generation Science Standards, and repeated calls for increased coherence in US science curriculum.

In an effort to support ongoing research, TIMSS researchers released a subset of the classroom videos to the public. On the 20th anniversary of the TIMSS study, Dr. Sikorski’s team began a secondary analysis of these videos. The United States videos included two physical science lessons, one life science lesson, and two earth science lessons. Her team studied the structure of each lesson, but in addition, they carefully examined the content of students’ whole class and small group conversations. The analysis uncovered substantial evidence of students noticing inconsistencies, suggesting relationships, and identifying gaps in explanations. In other words, students did try to make connections in these lessons, and they did so despite, or even in response to, apparent gaps in the lesson storyline. In this lecture, Dr. Sikorski will present key findings from her team’s study, and discuss implications for curriculum development, teacher education, and future large-scale video studies of science teaching.

Part Two in the Re-Imagining Higher Education Worldwide After COVID-19 Series

featuring
Mr. Bruce Ferguson, President of the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani
Dr. Nirmala Rao, Vice Chancellor of Asian University for Women

hosted by Dr. Kyle Long and Dr. Bernhard Streitwieser fo GSEHD's International Education Program

This second seminar in the "Re-Imagining Higher Education Worldwide after COVID-19 Series" engages chief executive officers to explore how the pandemic has impacted their institutions’ approaches to both internationalization and local responsiveness.