Survey on Teachers Using Digital Games

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center surveyed K-8 teachers from across the United States on whether and how they are using digital games with their students, and found that:

-       Digital games have landed in K-8 classrooms.

-       Gender does not predict digital game use in instruction, but younger teachers, those who teach at schools serving low-income students, and teachers who play digital games for their own pleasure are more likely to use games with their students.

-       Teachers who use games more often report greater improvement in their students’ core and supplemental skills.

-       Four out of five game-using teachers say their students primarily play games created for an educational audience, compared to just 5% whose students most often play commercial games.

-       Few teachers are using learning games of the immersive variety, the kind that lend themselves to deep exploration and participation in the types of activities that set digital games apart from more didactic forms of instruction.

-       Educators who do not teach with digital games are more likely than game-using teachers to report that they are “not sure how to integrate games” into their teaching, suggesting how consequential this uncertainty can be.

-       Teachers are learning to teach with digital games via more informal means (i.e., from fellow teachers and by self teaching) than formal training programs (i.e., pre-service and in-service).

-       Nearly three quarters (71%) of digital game-using teachers report that games have been effective in improving their students’ mathematics learning.

Takeuchi, L. M., & Vaala, S. (2014). Level up learning: A national survey on teaching with digital games. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/jgcc_leveluplearning_final.pdf

Expectations of Students in Kindergarten

This paper compares kindergarten classrooms between 1998 and 2010 using two large nationally-representative datasets. We show substantial changes in each of the five dimensions considered: kindergarten teachers’ beliefs about school readiness, time spent on academic and non-academic content, classroom organization, pedagogical approach, and use of standardized assessments. Kindergarten teachers in the later period held far higher academic expectations for children both prior to kindergarten entry and during the kindergarten year. They devote more time to advanced literacy and math content, teacher-directed instruction and assessment, and substantially less time to art, music, science and child-selected activities. Changes were most pronounced for schools serving high proportions of low-income and non-white children.

Bassok, D., Latham, S., & Rorem, A. (2016). Is kindergarten the new first grade?: The changing nature of kindergarten in the age of accountability. AERA Open, 1(4), 1-31, http://dx.doi.org/.1177/2332858415616358.

Teacher Collaboration Experiences

This report explores the prevalence of teacher collaboration in schools across the United States and assesses the extent to which teacher collaboration varies in schools with different levels of students in poverty. The researchers’ analysis focuses on teachers’ reports of three particular aspects of teacher collaboration: the prevalence of opportunities, the frequency of collaboration activities, and the usefulness of collaboration experiences.   

Key Findings:

·       Only a third of teachers reported that they have sufficient time to collaborate with other teachers.

·       Teachers who reported having greater opportunities and time for collaboration consistently reported higher levels of collaboration activity, regardless of the type of collaboration in question.

·       Peer observation was the least common form of peer collaboration, with nearly half of teachers reporting that they never observed another teacher's classroom to get ideas for instruction or to offer feedback in a typical month.

·       School poverty did not have a statistically significant relationship with teachers' reports of collaboration opportunities or the frequency of activities.

The findings show that the association between frequency of collaborative feedback and its perceived helpfulness is most salient for teachers in low-poverty schools; there is no apparent link between frequency and perceived helpfulness among teachers in high-poverty schools.

Tsai, T. & Johnston, W. R. (2018). The prevalence of collaboration among American teachers: National findings from the American Teacher Panel. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2200/RR2217/RAND_RR2217.pdf