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Julie Cohen
The Promises and Pitfalls of Using Language Models to Measure Instruction Quality in Education
Topics: MethodsAssessing instruction quality is a fundamental component of any improvement efforts in the education system. However, traditional manual assessments are expensive, subjective, and heavily dependent on observers’ expertise and idiosyncratic factors, preventing teachers from getting timely and… more →
Different methods for assessing pre-service teachers’ instruction: Why measures matter
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTeacher preparation programs are increasingly expected to use data on pre-service teacher (PST) skills to drive program improvement and provide targeted supports. Observational ratings are especially vital, but also prone to measurement issues. Scores may be influenced by factors unrelated to… more →
Experimental Evidence on the Robustness of Coaching Supports in Teacher Education
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentMany novice teachers learn to teach “on-the-job,” leading to burnout and attrition among teachers and negative outcomes for students in the long term. Pre-service teacher education is tasked with optimizing teacher readiness, but there is a lack of causal evidence regarding effective ways for… more →
Measuring Conversational Uptake: A Case Study on Student-Teacher Interactions
Dorottya Demszky, Jing Liu, Zid Mancenido, Julie Cohen, Heather C. Hill, Dan Jurafsky, Tatsunori Hashimoto.Topics: MethodsTags: Instructional practicesIn conversation, uptake happens when a speaker builds on the contribution of their interlocutor by, for example, acknowledging, repeating or reformulating what they have said. In education, teachers' uptake of student contributions has been linked to higher student achievement. Yet measuring and… more →
Measuring Teaching Practices at Scale: A Novel Application of Text-as-Data Methods
Topics: MethodsValid and reliable measurements of teaching quality facilitate school-level decision-making and policies pertaining to teachers. Using nearly 1,000 word-to-word transcriptions of 4th- and 5th-grade English language arts classes, we apply novel text-as-data methods to develop automated measures… more →
Measuring Teaching Practices at Scale: A Novel Application of Text-as-Data Methods
Topics: MethodsTags: Instructional practicesValid and reliable measurements of teaching quality facilitate school-level decision-making and policies pertaining to teachers, but conventional classroom observations are costly, prone to rater bias, and hard to implement at scale. Using nearly 1,000 word-to-word transcriptions of 4th- and 5th… more →
Policy Implementation, Principal Agency, and Strategic Action: Improving Teaching Effectiveness in New York City Middle Schools
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTen years ago, the reform of teacher evaluation was touted as a mechanism to improve teacher effectiveness. In response, virtually every state redesigned its teacher evaluation system. Recently, a growing narrative suggests these reforms failed and should be abandoned. This response may be… more →