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To examine the effects of the sudden shift to online instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020, we sought to get a firsthand understanding of the experiences of teachers who were required to make the change to full online teaching. Teaching online requires technological knowledge, but it also requires a different pedagogy in order to keep students engaged and motivated to learn. Many educators indicated that this was a significant challenge. Our goal was to illuminate teachers' experiences in order to include their voices in changes to educator preparation programs. A total of 699 complete survey responses were received representing educators in several grade levels working in nine states in the United States. Qualitative analysis revealed that many responses were related to extant research on teachers' selfefficacy. Thus, this paper will shed light on the experiences of educators during the first semester of 2020 including the months of January through April, and teachers' perceived efficacy. We find that teachers felt more efficacious regarding aspects of online teaching over which they felt an internal locus of control, such as delivery of curriculum and their own skill in the use of technology. For items over which they had less control, such as parental support and involvement, student motivation, and student access to adequate technology, teachers indicated much less efficacy. The majority of responses paint a complicated and somewhat dismal picture of the loss of personal connection with their students. Based on these data, recommendations for both education preparation programs, and policy are discussed such as districts and schools must provide sufficient professional learning opportunities and create a culture of collaboration amongst teachers that can assist them in building internal school capacity for good online instruction for their students. The COVID-19 pandemic should be used as an opportunity to evaluate gaps in digital equity and make positive strides to ensure all students, regardless of race, disability, economic background, or geographic location, have full access to quality online education. [Note: The page range (49-66) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range is 49-65.]

Comprehensive classroom management that promotes positive student behavior is necessary in secondary school. Techniques must be easy for teachers to manage across multiple class periods and be developmentally appropriate for older students. While previous literature has examined elements of classroom management in isolation, this study introduced five crucial elements of classroom management one at a time and then layered them to create a structured system for high school, special education classrooms. The following elements were introduced in order: (1) establish and teach positively stated expectations; (2) provide specific, contingent praise; (3) implement group contingency reinforcement systems; (4) implement individual reinforcement systems; and (5) apply in-class responses to inappropriate behavior. Three teachers were assisted in developing and using these elements and fidelity measures were obtained. A multiple baseline single subject research design was used to evaluate the effects of the elements on increasing on-task behavior of 36 students in their high school classrooms. Results are consistent with previous literature regarding the efficacy of the selected classroom management elements. Moderate increases in student on-task behavior were noted across phases, with a slight increasing trend as elements were added. Implementation fidelity was variable across phases and participants. Implications of results for practice are discussed.

High-quality, effective vocabulary instruction is essential for supporting all students' academic success, and it is particularly important for students with disabilities. Teacher preparation programs are faced with the challenge of not only training preservice teachers to provide effective vocabulary instruction across grades and content areas, but also to prepare them to teach students with disabilities. This randomized control trial included 200 preservice teachers. We tested the effects that a combination of multimedia instruction and performance feedback on evidence-based practices for effective vocabulary instruction had on participants' knowledge and application of those practices. Compared with participants who received traditional lecture and text-based instruction and subjective feedback, we found that the group that received multimedia instruction and performance feedback implemented more of the practices, more frequently and for a longer duration. Implications for research and teacher preparation are discussed.

Ecosystem engineers, organisms that modify the physical environment, are generally thought to increase diversity by facilitating species that benefit from engineered habitats. Recent theoretical work, however, suggests that ecosystem engineering could initiate cascades of trophic interactions that shape community structure in unexpected ways, potentially having negative indirect effects on abundance and diversity in components of the community that do not directly interact with the habitat modifications. We tested the indirect effects of a gall-forming wasp on arthropod communities in surrounding unmodified foliage. We experimentally removed all senesced galls from entire trees during winter and sampled the arthropod community on foliage after budburst. Gall removal resulted in 59% greater herbivore density, 26% greater herbivore richness, and 27% greater arthropod density five weeks after budburst. Gall removal also reduced the differences in community composition among trees (i.e., reduced beta diversity), even when accounting for differences in richness. The community inside galls during winter and through the growing season was dominated by jumping spiders (Salticidae; 0.87 ± 0.12 spiders per gall). We suggest that senesced galls provided habitat for spiders, which suppressed herbivorous arthropods and increased beta diversity by facilitating assembly of unusual arthropod communities. Our results demonstrate that the effects of habitat modification by ecosystem engineers can extend beyond merely providing habitat for specialists; the effects can propagate far enough to influence the structure of communities that do not directly interact with habitat modifications.

This paper presents the use of simple, outcome-based assessment tools to design and evaluate the first semester of a new introductory laboratory program created to teach green analytical chemistry using environmental samples. This general chemistry laboratory program, like many introductory courses, has a wide array of stakeholders within and beyond the major. Among the stakeholders, there was low-level yet widespread apprehension that changes in the introductory level content would weaken student preparation. Because of this unease, it was important to prove to faculty and students alike that the new laboratory program could effectively help students reach the new laboratory learning goals without sacrificing technical content. A set of simple assessment tools, student precision and accuracy data from experiments during the semester, and a laboratory practical and a student survey from the end of the semester were used as both formative and summative program assessments. This article establishes the power of these simple, course-embedded tools to yield insights into program strengths and weaknesses and, ultimately, to demonstrate to all faculty and students the effectiveness of this first-semester program.