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Data Quality Monitoring (DQM) is a crucial task in large particle physics experiments, since detector malfunctioning can compromise the data. DQM is currently performed by human shifters, which is costly and results in limited accuracy. In this work, we provide a proof-of-concept for applying human-in-the-loop Reinforcement Learning (RL) to automate the DQM process while adapting to operating conditions that change over time. We implement a prototype based on the Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithm and validate it on a simplified synthetic dataset. We demonstrate how a multi-agent system can be trained for continuous automated monitoring during data collection, with human intervention actively requested only when relevant. We show that random, unbiased noise in human classification can be reduced, leading to an improved accuracy over the baseline. Additionally, we propose data augmentation techniques to deal with scarce data and to accelerate the learning process. Finally, we discuss further steps needed to implement the approach in the real world, including protocols for periodic control of the algorithm's outputs.

The "My Teaching Partner-Secondary" (MTPS) program demonstrated improvements in classroom interactions and student outcomes in secondary schools using one-on-one coaching between study staff and teachers. Despite promising results, the time, cost, and oversight from a university research team may pose barriers to adoption of coaching programs like MTPS at scale. The "My Teaching Team" (MTT) project sought to translate key ingredients from MTPS into existing professional development contexts that are already built into many middle and high school educators' weekly schedules: co-planning or professional learning community meetings. Six teams of secondary teachers (N = 30 teachers) participated in a pilot test of the usability of MTT materials across 5 months in one school year. Three teams elected to use MTT materials, and three elected to be a comparison group who continued their typical practices. Teams adopting MTT materials were observed to do so with good implementation integrity, and reported satisfaction with the intervention. Compared to typical practice teams, those using MTT were observed to spend more meeting time discussing teaching practice and less time discussing logistics/mechanics, and engaged in more video sharing and feedback to team members in the MTT sessions that explicitly encouraged this. The number of MTT meetings completed by a team, as well as spending more time discussing teaching practices and video sharing (but not feedback provided) during team meetings, predicted students' self-reports of greater engagement and observations of higher levels of emotional support provided in the classroom. Implications for translating empirically-supported interventions from the lab to real-world school settings are discussed. [This paper was published in "Frontiers in Education" v7 Article 883226 2022.]

Binary stars are recognized to be important in driving the dynamical evolution of stellar systems and also in determining some of their observational features. In this study, we explore the role that binary stars have in modulating the estimates of the velocity dispersion of stellar systems. To this aim, we developed a tool which allows to investigate the dependence of synthetic velocity dispersion on a number of crucial quantities characterizing the binary content: binary fraction and the distributions of their mass ratio, eccentricity and semi-major axis. As an application, we evaluate the impact that binary stars have on the estimation of the dynamical mass of dwarf spheroidal and ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, finding that it can be particularly relevant, especially for low mass and low density systems. These results bear profound implications for the interpretation of the measured velocity dispersion in such systems, since it weakens or relieves the claim for the need of large amounts of dark matter., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

The experiences and learning opportunities children are exposed to in pre-K give them a boost as they enter school. However, the positive effects of pre-K attendance on children's academic and cognitive skills become smaller and sometimes disappear by third grade due to non-attenders "catching-up" to their peers. To make pre-K programs more effective, it may be key to create policies and practices that strengthen instruction to support children's unconstrained skills, such as vocabulary, problem-solving and critical thinking. This brief examines patterns of children's performance on assessments of different types of skills in the fall and spring of kindergarten for children who attended pre-K and their classmates who had no prior pre-K experience. The authors explore factors that may be related to reasons why growth in pre-K attenders' skills slows during the kindergarten year, in turn helping non-attenders quickly "catch up" to their peers. This brief concludes by providing recommendations for policy and practice.

The present investigation examined the links between preschool teachers' self-reported emotional exhaustion (n = 117) with the quality of their classroom interactions and the dosage and rigor of their instruction. Research Findings: Although teachers' experience of emotional exhaustion was not associated with the dosage and rigor of instruction, more emotionally exhausted teachers demonstrated lower quality interactions with children in their classroom. Additionally, there was some evidence to suggest that the association between emotional exhaustion and preschool teachers' classroom interactions was dependent on their years of education, such that the relation between teachers' education and their interactions with children was reduced when they described themselves as more emotionally exhausted. Practice or Policy: Taken together, these results suggest that supporting preschool teachers' well-being, and in particular helping minimize emotional exhaustion, may be a beneficial strategy to foster a higher quality classroom environment. [This paper will be published in "Early Education and Development."]

The present study examined differences in school readiness skills in the fall of kindergarten between pre-K attendees and non-attenders (n = 2,581) among children in a large, diverse county. Also considered was the extent to which skills associated with pre-K enrollment varied as a function of children's background characteristics and features of their pre-K program. Results revealed pre-K attenders demonstrated better academic and executive function skills in the first months of kindergarten than non-attenders; no consistent differences were detected for teachers' reports of children's socioemotional adjustment. Differences in academic skills and self-regulation associated with attendance in pre-K were largest for dual language learners and children from the lowest-income families. Children enrolled in private pre-K programs demonstrated less optimal socioemotional skills at kindergarten entry. [This paper will be published in "Early Childhood Research Quarterly."]

The present investigation examined the benefits of pre-K through the end of kindergarten for children from low-income homes who lived in a large and diverse county (n = 2,581) as well as factors associated with a reduction in benefits during the kindergarten year. Results revealed that pre-K graduates outperformed non-attenders in the areas of achievement and executive functioning skills at the end of kindergarten, and also that the benefits of pre-K at the start of the year diminished by a little over half. This convergence between groups' performance was largest for more constrained skills, such as letter-word identification, and was attributed to the fact that non-attenders made greater gains in kindergarten as compared with graduates of pre-K. Importantly, convergence in the groups' performance in kindergarten was not attributed to pre-K children's classroom experiences in kindergarten. Convergence was, however, attributable to pre-existing individual differences and there was support for the notion that even though children's skills are susceptible to improvement as a result of pre-K, their longer-term outcomes are likely to be impacted by factors that are outside the scope of early schooling. [This paper will be published in "Developmental Psychology" (EJ1271687).]

For a point of the projective space $\PG(n,q)$, its R\'edei factor is the linear polynomial in $n+1$ variables, whose coefficients are the point coordinates. The power sum polynomial of a subset $S$ of $\PG(n,q)$ is the sum of the $(q-1)$-th powers of the R\'edei factors of the points of $S$. The fact that many subsets may share the same power sum polynomial offers a natural connection to discrete tomography. In this paper we deal with the two-dimensional case and show that the notion of ghost, whose employment enables to find all solutions of the tomographic problem, can be rephrased in the finite geometry context, where subsets with null power sum polynomial are called ghosts as well. In the latter case, one can add ghosts still preserving the power sum polynomial by means of the multiset sum (modulo the field characteristic). We prove some general results on ghosts in $\PG(2,q)$ and compute their number in case $q$ is a prime., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures; accepted for publication in Lecture Notes in Computer Science

The present study considered the ways in which interactional quality in the classroom and teacher--child relationships independently and synergistically shaped the early academic, social-behavioral, and executive function outcomes of 1,498 preschoolers from low-income families from a large, culturally, and linguistically diverse county. The findings revealed that children who had closer and less conflictual relationships with their teachers demonstrated greater improvements in all domains of school readiness across the preschool year. Moreover, preschool attendees did not reap the maximum academic benefits from high quality classroom environments unless they also had high-quality individual relationships with their teachers. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. [This is the online version of an article published in "Social Development."]

We recall the notions of Clifford and Clifford-like parallelisms in a $3$-dimensional projective double space. In a previous paper the authors proved that the linear part of the full automorphism group of a Clifford parallelism is the same for all Clifford-like parallelisms which can be associated to it. In this paper, instead, we study the action of such group on parallel classes thus achieving our main results on characterisation of the Clifford parallelisms among Clifford-like ones., Comment: 2 Figures

Globular clusters in the Milky Way are thought to have either an {\it in situ} origin, or to have been deposited in the Galaxy by past accretion events, like the spectacular Sagittarius dwarf galaxy merger. We aim to probe the origin of the recently discovered globular cluster FSR 1758, often associated with some past merger event, and which happens to be projected toward the Galactic bulge, by a detailed study of its Galactic orbit, and to assign it to the most suitable Galactic component. We employ three different analytical time-independent potential models to calculate the orbit of the cluster by using the Gauss Radau spacings integration method. In addition, a time-dependent bar potential model is added to account for the influence of the Galactic bar. We run a large suite of simulations to account for the uncertainties in the initial conditions, in a Montecarlo fashion. We confirm previous indications that the globular cluster FSR 1758 possesses a retrograde orbits with high eccentricity. The comparative analysis of the orbital parameters of star clusters in the Milky Way, in tandem with recent metallicity estimates, allows us to conclude that FSR1758 is indeed a Galactic bulge intruder. The cluster can therefore be considered an old metal poor halo globular cluster formed {\it in situ} and which is passing right now in the bulge region. Its properties, however, can be roughly accounted for also assuming that the cluster is part of some stream of extra-Galactic origin. We conclude that assessing the origin, either Galactic or extra-galactic, of globular clusters is surely a tantalising task. In any case, by using an {\it Occam's razor} argument, we tend to prefer an {\it in situ} origin for FSR 1758., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Virtual Human Simulation has been widely used for different purposes, such as comfort or accessibility analysis. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using this type of technique to extend the training datasets of pedestrians to be used with machine learning techniques. Our main goal is to verify if Computer Graphics (CG) images of virtual humans with a simplistic rendering can be efficient in order to augment datasets used for training machine learning methods. In fact, from a machine learning point of view, there is a need to collect and label large datasets for ground truth, which sometimes demands manual annotation. In addition, find out images and videos with real people and also provide ground truth of people detection and counting is not trivial. If CG images, which can have a ground truth automatically generated, can also be used as training in machine learning techniques for pedestrian detection and counting, it can certainly facilitate and optimize the whole process of event detection. In particular, we propose to parametrize virtual humans using a data-driven approach. Results demonstrated that using the extended datasets with CG images outperforms the results when compared to only real images sequences.

In this paper we focus on the description of the automorphism group $\Gamma_{\parallel}$ of a Clifford-like parallelism $\parallel$ on a $3$-dimensional projective double space $\bigl(\mathbb{P}(H_F),{\mathrel{\parallel_{\ell}}},{\mathrel{\parallel_{r}}}\bigr)$ over a quaternion skew field $H$ (with centre a field $F$ of any characteristic). We compare $\Gamma_{\parallel}$ with the automorphism group $\Gamma_{\ell}$ of the left parallelism $\mathrel{\parallel_{\ell}}$, which is strictly related to $\mathrm{Aut}(H)$. We build up and discuss several examples showing that over certain quaternion skew fields it is possible to choose $\parallel$ in such a way that $\Gamma_{\parallel}$ is either properly contained in $\Gamma_{\ell}$ or coincides with $\Gamma_{\ell}$ even though ${\parallel} \neq{\mathrel{\parallel_{\ell}}}$.

Data from the NICHD [National Institute of Child Health and Human Development] Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 1,307) were used to estimate the additive and multiplicative benefits of high quality child care between birth to 54 months of age and high quality elementary school education between first and fifth grade. Results indicated that the math and language and literacy benefits of high quality child care accrued from the end of preschool through age 15 only when coupled with higher quality classroom environments during the elementary school years. In contrast, the benefits of high quality child care were no longer present when children later attended lower quality classrooms in elementary school. Taken together, these results point to the importance of continued investments in children's education throughout the first decade of life. [At the time of submission, this article was in press with "Developmental Psychology."]

Given two parallelisms of a projective space we describe a construction, called blending, that yields a (possibly new) parallelism of this space. For a projective double space $(\mathbb{P},\parallel_\ell,\parallel_r)$ over a quaternion skew field we characterise the "Clifford-like" parallelisms, i.e. the blends of the Clifford parallelisms $\parallel_\ell$ and $\parallel_r$, in a geometric and an algebraic way. Finally, we establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of Clifford-like parallelisms that are not Clifford., Comment: Dedicated to Helmut Karzel on the occasion of his 90th birthday

Multilevel modeling techniques were used with a sample of 643 students enrolled in 37 secondary school classrooms to predict future student achievement (controlling for baseline achievement) from observed teacher interactions with students in the classroom, coded using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System--Secondary. After accounting for prior year test performance, qualities of teacher interactions with students predicted student performance on end-of-year standardized achievement tests. Classrooms characterized by a positive emotional climate, with sensitivity to adolescent needs and perspectives, use of diverse and engaging instructional learning formats, and a focus on analysis and problem solving were associated with higher levels of student achievement. Effects of higher quality teacher-student interactions were greatest in classrooms with fewer students. Implications for teacher performance assessment and teacher effects on achievement are discussed. [This paper was published in "School Psychology Review" (EJ1007218).]

On August 9, 2012, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) convened a meeting of researchers and U.S. Department of Education (ED) and IES staff to discuss recent advances in measuring teacher effectiveness. The objectives of the meeting were to: (1) Identify and discuss recent advances in the use of value-added models (VAMs) and student growth models (SGMs) as one measure of teacher effectiveness, including their implications, applications, and limitations for practicing educators; and (2) Identify considerations for future research. Participants from the research community were carefully chosen to represent a broad range of academic disciplines, expertise and perspectives. Each participant from the research community was asked to share in advance of the meeting a two-page written summary of their views on the implications of recent advances in value-added and SGM measures. These briefs are presented here. (Individual briefs contain references.) [For the meeting summary, see ED539039.]

This report draws from decades of experience using observation in early childhood education, which has implications for administrative decisions, evaluation practices, and policymaking in K-12. Early childhood education has long embraced the value of observing classrooms and teacher-child interactions. In early childhood education the features of the settings in which children are served are the hallmarks of quality. These features can include health and safety considerations, the materials and physical layout of the space, and the interactions that take place between adults and children--such as conversations, emotional tone, or physical proximity. Standardized observations of these early childhood education features in turn yield metrics that are used in state and federal policy, program improvement investments, and the credentialing of professionals--all uses that K-12 education is now considering. This paper examines lessons learned from observation in early childhood education that may be helpful as states and districts begin implementing more rigorous observation protocols for K-12 teachers. Although these lessons apply to all grades, they may be particularly relevant for K-3 as assessment of student performance using standardized achievement tests is most challenging in those grades. These lessons focus on the importance of standardization, trained observers, methods for ensuring the validity and reliability of the instruments, and the use of observational measures as a lever to produce effective teaching. These lessons form the basis for the recommendations offered in this paper. (Contains 1 figure and 33 endnotes.)

Over a decade ago, Bredekamp asserted (1996) that the field of early childhood education lacked a research base to document the effectiveness of approaches to producing highly skilled and effective early educators. The National Center for Research in Early Childhood Education's (NCRECE) Course and MyTeachingPartner (MTP) Coaching were developed to fill the gap in effective PD targeted toward improving teacher-child interactions. In both cases, this PD focused on improving the interactions known to support children's development, as identified by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta et al., 2008). The NCRECE study was intentionally designed to use two distinct professional development approaches, targeted toward the same outcome (improved teacher-student interactions), to examine their unique individual or combined influence on enhancing interactions. As part of the randomized controlled trial, intent to treat results suggest that both the NCRECE Course and the MTP Coaching do change teachers' interactions in ways that support children's development (Hamre et al, in press; Pianta et al., 2011). This paper explores variation in teachers' responsiveness during both the Course and MTP Coaching phases of the NCRECE study. Of particular interest is the identification of classroom and teacher factors that may serve as moderators between participants' responsiveness and change in their instructional practice. A total of 433 teachers were recruited into the course phase of the study. Upon consent, they were randomized at the site location level into the course or control group for the first phase of the study so that approximately half of the teachers participated in each group. A total of 405 teachers were recruited into the consultancy phase of the study. Of teachers in the analytic sample, 41% worked in Head Start programs and a significant portion worked in public schools (37%). Teachers were experienced, with an average of 14 years of experience teaching and an average of 16 years of education. Most of the teachers were African American (47%) or White (31%) with a smaller number of Latino (15%), Asian American (4%), and multi-ethnic (4%). The poverty rate among children in the classrooms taught by teachers in the sample was quite high (mean = 0.88, sd = 0.21). The NCRECE Course and MTP coaching intent to treat findings reported elsewhere indicate there are different types of intervention designs that can improve teachers' practice in ways that matter for children's development (Pianta et al., 2011). The current treatment on the treated study takes this work a step further, looking inside main effects of interventions to begin to understand the mechanisms through which change can occur, and for whom. In this case, participants' personal and classroom characteristics as well as their responsiveness to two different types of intervention were considered, and shown to matter in some ways the same, and in some ways different, across the interventions. Consistent with previous findings (Downer et al, 2009), and across both types of interventions, teachers who have less experience in prek classrooms benefit most from the intervention experiences. This is consistent with other literature on novice teachers, pointing to both their continued need and desire to develop (Darling-Hammond, 2001). Given the persistent concern regarding new teacher quality and retention, tending to the explicit needs of new teachers with interventions known to support effective practice should be a priority. Although there were several teacher/classroom characteristics that related to change in one intervention phase or the other, the main difference of note is how participants' responsiveness in the MTP Coaching intervention, but not in the NCRECE Course, was associated with improved instructional interactions. Given the personal and interactive nature of coaching, responsiveness by the participant may be more critical to change in their practice then attending a course (Pianta et al., 2011). Further, participant responsiveness to MTP and change in practice was moderated by teacher experience and composition of children in the classroom. This points to a need for professional development opportunities that align with the same intended outputs, but use different learning formats or modalities that work best for the individual learner involved. Based on these preliminary findings, future work would benefit from examining a more comprehensive look at intervention responsiveness, as well as unexplored teacher/classroom characteristics.

In the current study characteristics of the teacher and classroom that influence teacher responsiveness to the course or consultancy are explored. If classroom quality or characteristics of teachers, such as anxiety levels or efficacy in teaching prior to intervention participation are predictive of responsiveness, then future programs will be able to provide additional supports and resources for these individuals. Further, it may be that the influences of these characteristics differ depending on the intervention setting. For example, the course may provide a safe haven for teachers who are shy and nervous, while the consultancy, which is an intensive, one-on-one relationship, may increase teacher anxiety levels and limit participation. On the other hand, teachers who have more child-centered beliefs about development and classroom interactions may be more responsive to the course and consultancy. Two hundred twenty-three teachers were randomized into the course, however only 167 teachers had at least partial data. Two hundred eight teachers were randomized into the consultancy, and 193 had at least some data and were included in analyses. Teachers were diverse in their educational attainment, experience, and in their racial/ethnic background. Overall, higher authoritarian beliefs about children limited teacher responsiveness to the course while anxiety prohibited teachers from fully benefiting from the consultancy. Other teacher characteristics (e.g., education, ethnicity) also impacted responsiveness to both intervention settings. Further, participation in the course and consultancy was differentially impacted for teachers' with literacy-rich classrooms. These findings have implications for promoting participation in varying intervention settings and shed light on identifying individuals for which more resources for participation may be allocated. (Contains 4 tables.)

There is widespread acknowledgement that the production of effective teaching and teachers is perhaps the critical component of education reform and innovation for improvement of student learning. This aim requires a serious investment of time, rigor, and evaluation to produce professional-development programs that actually work. This report illustrates features of new evidence-supported approaches to professional development that have promise for closing not only the evidence gap, but the achievement gap as well. The focus is on one web-based, scalable approach to professional development--MyTeachingPartner, or MTP--that illustrates how evidence-driven professional development can be designed and used to improve teacher effectiveness and student learning. MTP uses a standardized method of online, individualized coaching and a library of highly focused video clips showing effective teachers in action that are tightly coupled with a standardized metric for observing teacher practice in the classroom, called the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, or CLASS. This report provides background information on the broader challenges of building effective professional development for teachers, the theory of action that undergirds the CLASS-MTP system, and a description of the CLASS-MTP tools and evidence base. The report closes with a discussion of the policy and practice challenges of implementing effective systems of teacher professional development on a district or statewide level based on the evidence gleaned and lessons learned from this work. (Contains 2 figures, 1 table, and 27 endnotes.) [Preparation of this paper was supported in part by the Eunice K. Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development.]

Improving teaching quality is widely recognized as critical to addressing deficiencies in secondary school education, yet the field has struggled to identify rigorously evaluated teacher-development approaches that can produce reliable gains in student achievement. A randomized controlled trial of My Teaching Partner-Secondary--a Web-mediated approach focused on improving teacher-student interactions in the classroom--examined the efficacy of the approach in improving teacher quality and student achievement with 78 secondary school teachers and 2237 students. The intervention produced substantial gains in measured student achievement in the year following its completion, equivalent to moving the average student from the 50th to the 59th percentile in achievement test scores. Gains appeared to be mediated by changes in teacher-student interaction qualities targeted by the intervention. [For a related What Works Clearinghouse Intervention Report, see ED557783.]

The National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education's (NCRECE) program of research is a series of experimental studies of specific approaches to training early childhood (EC) educators to be effective in implementation of curriculum and instructional interactions focused on promoting language and literacy skills, two domains that operate as gatekeepers to later achievement. Previous NCRECE work has demonstrated that a 14-week course designed to enhance teachers' use of effective teaching practices was effective in changing teacher beliefs, knowledge, and observed practice (Hamre et al., 2010). This paper examines the extent to which teachers from a variety of backgrounds were engaged in the course and the extent to which their engagement was associated with significant changes in belief, knowledge, and practice. The authors briefly discuss the context for this work. First, the authors examine the extent to which there was variation in implementation and engagement across the 15 course sections in 9 sites. Second, they examine the extent to which teachers from a variety of backgrounds engaged equally in the course, both in terms of quantity and quality of engagement. Finally, they examine which aspects of participation are most closely associated with changes in teachers' belief, knowledge, and practice. The NCRECE course was offered in nine sites across the country: Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois, Columbus, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Hartford, Connecticut; Memphis, Tennessee; New York City; Rhode Island; and Stockton, California. Participating teachers worked in a variety of early childhood (EC) programs including Head Start, preschool, and child care. Results suggest several teacher-level factors that predict engagement. Teachers with less authoritarian beliefs and teachers with less pre-k teaching experience were more likely to be engaged in course material. It may be that the course content, which focused on the importance of teacher-child interactions and also highlighted the importance of fostering children's autonomy, was in conflict with some teachers beliefs in ways that led them to become more disengaged with course material. Teachers with more teaching experience reported the course was somewhat less useful, although they still gave generally high ratings. Interestingly, the quality of experienced teachers' engagement was somewhat lower--they performed more poorly on homework and midterm assignments. This is somewhat counterintuitive as everyone might expect these teachers to know the most about classroom interactions. However, it may be that teachers who have been in the classroom for a long time have more set ideas about what effective interactions look like, and thus have a harder time performing on tasks that ask them to shift to thinking about new ways to interact in the classroom. Teachers from a wide variety of educational backgrounds reported that the course was useful and displayed equal level of engagement. It is unusual for a course to target such a broad range of teachers but this finding suggests that the course material, focused on teacher-child interactions, was relevant to teachers across the educational spectrum. This may reflect the fact that few teachers, even those who have taken many early childhood courses, have had opportunities to learn about effective teacher-child interactions in a college course setting. Adding to efficacy evidence from the intent-to-treat analysis, this study suggests that teachers who attended more course sections and completed more of the homework assignments displayed greater changes from pre- to post-test on three of the four measures of beliefs and knowledge. Thus, dosage appears to matter. There was not evidence to support the idea that teachers' own views of usefulness, instructor-reported engagement, or the quality of teachers engagement (i.e. homework and midterm scores) were systematically associated with changes in belief and knowledge. Future analyses may examine the individual components of participation and quality of engagement in more detail to try to unpack the "active ingredients" of this course. (Contains 4 tables.)

This is the second of two reports commissioned by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) intended to address the dire need for teacher preparation policy and programs to reflect recent advances in scientific knowledge of child and adolescent development. In the first report, "Principles and Exemplars for Integrating Developmental Sciences Knowledge into Educator Preparation" (ED550392), Jon Snyder and Ira Lit (2010) summarize the scientific support for knowledge of child and adolescent development as a primary focus of teacher preparation programs. In this report Robert C. Pianta, Randy Hitz, and Blake West focus on the implications of this science for policy. They point out that, first: the last two decades have produced new understandings of child and adolescent development and learning based on extensive and rigorous scientific study; and second, the accountability movement in education will soon address the need to reconceptualize and reassess educational outcomes in ways that emphasize students' advanced cognition and conceptual understanding, capacity to work in teams and groups, leadership and motivation, skilled communication, and proficiency with digital media and technology. This report offers several illustrations depicting the reality and consequences of the absence of systematic or programmatic linkage between the science of child and adolescent development and teacher preparation, and then moves into implications for policy-making at federal and state levels, in accreditation, and in teacher preparation programs. Recommendations from the expert panel to key stakeholders are included. [For the brief report, see ED550465.]

The National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education's (NCRECE) program of research is a series of experimental studies of specific approaches to training early childhood (EC) educators to be effective in implementation of curriculum and instructional interactions focused on promoting language and literacy skills, two domains that operate as gatekeepers to later achievement. This program builds progressively on research demonstrating that: a) early education promotes early literacy and language largely as a function of effective instructional practices and implementation but enormous variation in such practices undermines the promise of early education; b) effective curricula are not enough to ensure achievement in early childhood; teachers need training to be effective in their approaches to literacy and language skill instruction and interactions with children; and c) the growing demand for early childhood educators places a premium on the value of evidence-based training linked to child performance if expanding programs are to be effective in reducing the achievement gap. This presentation reports the efficacy of a course for EC teachers designed to enhance their use of effective teaching practices. The NCRECE course was offered in nine sites across the country: Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois, Columbus, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Hartford, Connecticut; Memphis, Tennessee; New York City; Rhode Island; and Stockton, California. Participating teachers worked in a variety of EC programs including Head Start, preschool, and child care. The findings suggest that the NCRECE coursework, designed to enhance teachers' knowledge about effective teacher-child interactions, is effective at changing teachers' beliefs, knowledge and practices. This work supplements other recent research documenting effective professional development for EC teachers, which has tended to focus on curricular or mentoring programs, by providing evidence of ways in which coursework can enhance effective teaching practice. (Contains 3 tables.)