Dan Berebitsky

Trust as a Mediator of the Relationships Between Poverty, Racial Composition, and Academic Achievement Evidence From Michigan's Public Elementary Schools

Purpose: Research shows that trust is significantly related to academic achievement. This study expands knowledge of this connection in two ways. First, because a stratified, random sample of elementary schools from an entire state was used, the results have considerable generalizability. Second, this study tested the relationship between trust and achievement and assessed whether links between academic achievement, socioeconomic status (SES), and racial composition are mediated by the levels of trust teachers report in students and parents. Data Collection and Analysis: Schools were systematically randomly selected and stratified by location, prior achievement, SES, and size to represent all traditional public elementary schools across Michigan. Teachers responded to surveys measuring the levels of trust in schools. A path analysis was conducted at the school level to model variation in trust and the proportion of students passing the state mathematics and reading assessments. Findings: Using path analysis and controlling for measures of school context, greater trust was associated with increased school achievement in mathematics and reading on state assessments used for accountability purposes. Also, school SES, racial composition, and size were indirectly related to achievement through their associations with trust. However, racial and economic disadvantage were not directly related to achievement after controlling for prior achievement and trust. Conclusion: Because racial and economic disadvantage were related to achievement only indirectly through their negative associations with trust, trust relations appear to mediate the relationship between school disadvantage and academic achievement. Future researchers may wish to study whether programs seeking to increase trust in schools can effectively minimize the academic disadvantage typically associated with poverty and racial composition.

Teachers’ Support of Students’ Vocabulary Learning During Literacy Instruction in High Poverty Elementary Schools:

The purpose of this study was to examine third-grade teachers’ support for students’ vocabulary learning in high poverty schools characterized by underachievement in reading. We examined the prevalence and nature of discourse actions teachers used to support vocabulary learning in different literacy lessons (e.g., phonics); these actions varied in the cognitive demands placed on the students. Results showed that teachers rarely engaged students in cognitively challenging work on word meanings. Various lesson features and student and teacher characteristics were associated with teachers’ support for students’ vocabulary learning (e.g., teachers’ knowledge about reading). A major finding was that the extent of teachers’ support of their students’ vocabulary learning was significantly related to gains in reading comprehension across the year.

Investigating How to Support Principals as Instructional Leaders in Mathematics

We present a framework for considering principals’ knowledge and actions to support high-quality instruction in a specific content area (mathematics). Using design research, we engaged principals in professional development and assessed principals’ ability to identify aspects of high-quality mathematical tasks and instruction through pre–post task sort analyses and classroom video analyses. Significant differences occurred in principals’ identification of high-quality mathematics tasks and instruction, students’ thinking, and teachers’ actions. Subsequent data identified changes in principals’ feedback to mathematics teachers; however, this change was not sustained in following years. We hypothesize necessary conditions for supporting principals as instructional leaders in specific content areas.

Search for large extra dimensions using dielectron and diphoton events in pp collisions at {radical}(s)=1.8 TeV

Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulous, and Dvali have proposed a model of low-scale quantum gravity featuring large extra dimensions. In this model, the exchange of Kaluza-Klein towers of gravitons can enhance the production rate of electron and photon pairs at high invariant mass in proton-antiproton collisions. The amount of enhancement is characterized by the parameter

The Relationship Between Collective Efficacy and Teachers’ Social Networks in Urban Middle Schools:

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A Study of Teachers’ Discourse Moves That Support Text-Based Discussions

, the fundamental Planck scale in the bulk extra dimensions. We have searched for this effect using

Resources, Learning, and Policy: The Relative Effects of Social and Financial Capital on Student Learning in Schools

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Validation of the mathematics teachers’ sense of efficacy scale

of diphoton data and

Literacy coaching as a component of professional development

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A Multilevel Exploratory Study of the Relationship between Teachers' Perceptions of Principals' Instructional Support and Group Norms for Instruction in Elementary Schools.

of dielectron data collected with the Collider Detector at Fermilab at