Common Core State Standards Research Articles

Applying Design-Based Research Findings to Improve the Common Core State Standards for Data and Statistics in Grades 4–6

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics have a widespread impact on children’s statistical learning opportunities. The Grade 6 standards are particularly ambitious in the goals they set. In this critique, experiences helping children work toward the Grade 6 Common Core statistics expectations are used in conjunction with previous research to identify ways in which the Grades 4–6 standards might be supplemented or revised to help maximize learning. It is suggested that opportunities for children to perceive datasets as aggregates and to draw reasonable conclusions about statistical data by attending to context should be purposefully introduced in Grades 4–5. Currently, the Common Core does not have explicit learning standards for these activities in fourth and fifth grade. It is also suggested that teachers help students question their natural tendencies to focus extensively on the mode when summarizing data. The current standards do not specifically mention the mode. Revising or supplementing the Common Core in the suggested ways holds potential to make the Grade 6 statistical learning standards more attainable for children and to help teachers better anticipate the statistical thinking tendencies that are likely to emerge during classroom discourse.

Effects of Common Core State Standards on Student Physical Activity Rates and Student and Teacher Perceptions in Physical Education

Since its development in 2010, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been adopted in over 40 states. While the literature discussing the implications of this initiative is robust, the research examining its effect on K–12 physical education (PE) is limited. Moreover, there is little empirical data on the effect of the CCSS on student physical activity (PA) rates in PE. Thus, this study examined the effect of CCSS instructional integration into PE lessons on PA rates of sixthgrade students and on student and teacher perceptions in a public K–12 school. This study utilized a one-group within-subjects randomized design. Rates of PA were compared between PE classes that integrated the CCSS (i.e., CC+) and PE classes that did not integrate the CCSS (i.e., CC-). Student and teacher perceptions of the lessons were also studied. In addition, the feasibility (i.e., acceptability) of the use of an objective measure of PA intensity (accelerometer) was assessed. A linear mixed model analysis of percentage of time in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) produced a significant effect for condition, CC+ M = 19.7%, SD = 7.0; CC- M = 33.1%, SD = 10.4, F(1, 24) = 182.82, p < .001, d = 1.46, 95% CI [.88, 2.41]. The mixed-model analysis of total steps per minute also produced a significant difference by condition, CC+ M = 20.99, SD = 9.46; CC- M = 32.76, SD = 9.46, F(1, 21) = 133.45, p < .001, d = 1.48, 95% CI [.90, 2.15]. Linear mixed-model analysis of student and teacher perceptions showed no significant differences on any of the six items, indicating general agreement. Intraclass correlations of the student and teacher reports were 0.70 for the CC- items and 0.68 for the CC+ items, again demonstrating general agreement between students and the teacher. Students reported that the accelerometer was “easy to wear” (4.05 out of 5.0); the teacher report was slightly higher (4.83 out of 5.0). Large effect sizes on both PA dependent measures suggest that CCSS integration tasks may have a significant negative effect on PA levels. Student and teacher reports did not differ between CC+ and CC- lessons on a number of lesson attributes and also suggest that the use of accelerometers to measure PA is acceptable. More research needs to explore whether these results generalize to other settings, teachers, students, and activities and examine the overall effect of the CCSS on fitness across the school year. In addition, future research should examine whether certain types of CCSS integration tasks may be more successful with sustaining MVPA. Subscribe to TPE

Best Practices for Teaching Discussion as Part of High School Common Core State Standards

Instructional discussion is a teaching method used in many classrooms across grade levels. In fact, the Common Core State Standards promote the use of instructional discussion in secondary classrooms (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2018a). Students, however, are not always taught best practices for engaging in a discussion and may feel unprepared to participate. As a result, discussions may not produce the dynamic learning opportunity they are intended to foster. This essay provides 10 tips for high school teachers to prepare students in the high school classroom to engage in a meaningful classroom discussion effectively in order to ensure students are learning and are engaged in a productive manner while meeting the demands of the Common Core Standards.

Bias in Physical Educators’ Grading Practices With ELA Literacy

As accountability initiatives in public education such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) begin to gain traction, it is apparent that physical educators must integrate English Language Arts (ELA) literacy tasks into their daily instruction. This study tested whether physical education (PE) teachers have less experience and exhibit bias when grading ELA literacy tasks, compared to non-PE teachers. Participants from this study included 201 teachers from 77 schools in a local region of New York State. Results revealed that approximately 90% of PE teachers reported having little to no experience with grading ELA literacy assignments. In addition, physical educators were significantly more critical than their non-PE counterparts; ELA assignments were judged as being lower quality, being less neat, having poorer sentence structure, and showing less effort. The lack of consistency between PE teachers and non-PE teachers raises questions about validity and whether there is a need for more professional training should the CCSS mandate continue in PE. Subscribe to TPE

Literacy Curricula, the Common Core, and Defending an Unpopular Profession: The Lived Experiences of Undergraduate Preservice Literacy Teachers

This study explored the lived experiences of eight pre-service teachers, specifically their understandings of teaching Common Core-aligned English language arts (ELA) and their feelings about becoming teachers of literacy amid the current era of accountability. Phenomenological methods were used to interview participants and analyze data for significant statements made by all eight pre-service teachers involved. Major themes to emerge include that pre-service teachers felt prepared to design ELA lessons but unprepared to develop an ELA curriculum; they felt the Common Core State Standards had changed everything about teaching; and they were anxious about becoming teachers during a time of great educational change. These findings can illuminate some of the tensions, successes, and challenges that pre-service teachers face, and may help teacher educators to tailor instruction to meet the needs of their students at a time when enrollment numbers in teacher education programs are at historic lows.

Research Commentary: Critiques of the Common Core in Early Math: A Research-Based Response

We respond to a call to analyze issues of curriculum standards and to present alternative storylines by addressing criticisms of the Common Core State Standards in early childhood. We describe a storyline from multiple media and evaluate this storyline's criticisms, focusing on the criticism that the standards are developmentally inappropriate. We review research and conclude that the criticism is invalid and may reflect a historical belief in the primacy of development over learning rather than the research record. Misinterpreting or ignoring relevant research has equity consequences because it may particularly harm those children most in need of learning support in learning grade-level mathematics. Fortunately, theory and research illuminate learning trajectories that help all children meet these standards.

Priming Your Environment for Growth Through a Collaborative Model of Instructional Coaching

Teacher preparation is complex in nature. Students in K-12 education comprise an increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse population. Standards have significantly evolved with state and Common Core State Standards that now place a greater emphasis on academic discourse both in written and oral forms. To better prepare the next generation of teachers to address these shifts in expectations, we are examining the influence of instructional coaching at the university level. The work encompasses professional development on research-based ELL principles to support the changing populations of students in conjunction with coaching sessions to enhance coursework. The results of this study were statistically significant and have set the stage for our next steps in sustainable change at the university level.

Activating the implementers: The role of organizational expectations, teacher beliefs, and motivation in bringing about reform

Internationally the research community has been seeking a deeper understanding about how to shape the work of educators over decades of educational reforms. This study attempts to contribute to this understanding by answering: “What motivates educators to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)?” Using data from all school educators in one highly diverse school district in California and structural equation modeling to investigate the relationships between teachers' CCSS-related action and associated organizational and individual factors, findings suggest both organizational (expectation) and intrinsic (motivations and beliefs) factors are directly and indirectly influencing teachers’ action towards CCSS implementation.

High Order Thinking Skills: Strategies for Raising Student’s Thinking Processes and Children’s Cognitive Development in Reading Comprehension

This article presents various strategies for raising student’s high order thinking skills (HOTS) in reading comprehension. Basically, to be able to raise the capability of HOTS, a student is encouraged to have better thinking processes so that varied strategies to implement HOTS will work out properly and accordingly. Just like children’ cognitive development, HOTS is best put into practice since early childhood. The strategies to improve the student’s critical thinking skills in reading comprehension are described thoroughly in three different ways: 1) seven strategies proposed by the National Reading Panel, 2) word reading skills proposed by Mellard et al. (2010), and 3) Vocabulary knowledge proposed by Wise et al. (2007). This article is developed based on the importance of 21st century skills proposed by National Commission on Excellence in Education, Common Core State Standards Initiative, Partnership for 21 Century Skills, and Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills to be included in today’s curriculum. According to the one of the organisations proposing the 21st century skills, students and young generation are demanded to be able to acquire specific soft skills pertaining to critical thinking.

Teachers’ perceptions of the official curriculum: Problem solving and rigor

This contribution to curriculum ergonomics focuses on teachers’ perceptions of problem solving and rigor in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, the curricular aims and objectives component of the official curriculum in the U.S. Our analyses involve 89 middle school mathematics teachers (MSMTs) using two different types of district-adopted textbooks: thinking device (TD) and delivery mechanism (DM). We found that MSMTs’ perceptions of problem solving and rigor in the Common Core varied by textbook type. Consequently, while this paper examines teachers’ perceptions of curricular aims and objectives, it was apparent that another component of the official curriculum, teachers’ district-adopted textbooks, played a strong role in influencing these perceptions. The implications of these results are discussed.

How secondary social studies teachers define literacy and implement literacy teaching strategies: A qualitative research study

Educational standards have changed rapidly and drastically in the past several years, including an increased focus on literacy within the social studies. Using data from a four-month qualitative study, this article examines how seven secondary social studies teachers talked about and defined literacy, and how those perspectives informed their pedagogical choices. The enquiry is a response to two areas: first, the many and varied definitions of literacy found in the literature (for example, content area literacy, multiliteracies and media literacy); and second, the added attention given to disciplinary literacy in the widely adopted Common Core State Standards. We found these teachers had four common elements when talking about and defining literacy: (1) reading comprehension; (2) writing fluidity; (3) skills; and (4) vocabulary. Additionally, we discovered that teachers discussed using four kinds of literacy teaching strategies: (1) content area reading strategies; (2) disciplinary reading strategies; (3) writing strategies; and (4) dialogue strategies. However, we determined that the teachers' theoretical understanding of literacy had only minor influence on their pedagogical choices. Instead, we found overarching assessments such as an end-of-course, advanced placement or state-wide reading exam had greater influence on the pedagogical choices the teachers made. The findings suggest that the effort to expand literacy instruction into the disciplines is still a work in progress, which falls in the hands of teacher educators and professional development providers.

“Common” Instruction? Logics of Ability and Teacher Decision Making Across Tracks in the Era of Common Standards

This article investigates the interaction between the Common Core State Standards and curricular tracking by examining instructional decision making across tracks in a large metropolitan district. This study draws on institutional logics as a framework to analyze 106 instructional decisions from 24 participants involved in middle school literacy instruction. In lower-track classes, participants often adapted the curriculum and adopted a more teacher-centered approach. About half of the rationales for those decisions reflected a logic of tracking, less than a fifth reflected a logic of differentiation, and almost a third reflected elements of both logics. These findings demonstrate that despite common standards, a tracked school structure continues to serve as a powerful signal about the curriculum and instruction seen as appropriate for different groups of students.

Using the Theory of Planned Behavior to explore teachers’ intentions to engage in ongoing teacher professional learning

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors influencing teachers’ intentions to engage in professional learning on the mathematics Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The aim was to identify specific factors teachers encounter that impinge upon or facilitates implementing new instructional practices. Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behavior was used to examine the influence of three constructs (attitude toward the behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) on teachers’ intentions to implement the instructional expectations associated with the CCSS in mathematics. Data for this quantitative study was collected from 152 teachers in an urban school district in California. The result of the study provides support for the adequacy of the theory of planned behavior for predicting and understanding teachers’ behavioral intention toward professional learning. Intention was predicted significantly by perceived behavioral control, subjective norm and attitude toward the behavior.

The Nature and Measurement of Children's Early Composing

AbstractYoung children's writing development (i.e., writing occurring in preschool and kindergarten prior to the skilled, fluent writing associated with formal schooling) is an important predictor of later literacy achievement. Current policy movements, such as the Common Core State Standards, invoke increased composing demands, yet research has often focused on children's growing ability to transcribe (e.g., form letters, spell words) rather than their ability to compose text and generate ideas. The current study examined literature from the past 30 years to determine the prevailing operational definitions of early composing and the ways in which composing has been measured to date. Given inclusion criteria, the authors collected and coded articles to determine trends and prevailing approaches (n = 445). Findings revealed that various theoretical and conceptual frames influenced approaches to assessing children's composing, yielding little shared understanding of the nature and development of early composing. Findings also revealed that tasks used to measure children's early composing development have not always aligned with theoretical notions of early writing, nor have they been properly operationalized in psychometrically sound, valid, and reliable ways. Further, analyses of trends across time yielded insight into the evolving conceptualizations and prioritization of particular aspects of early composing, such as the focus on children's use of conventional encoding in a composing task context. Implications for practice are discussed in light of these findings.

Teaching the Key Traits of Expository Nonfiction With Children's Books

AbstractTo craft engaging nonfiction prose, young writers should focus on a specific idea or concept of interest and use acclaimed children's books as mentor texts to help them understand options for developing their ideas. In this article, the authors provide examples of high‐quality children's nonfiction for exploring various formats and text structures and for developing effective expressive voice and rich language—all craft techniques associated with excellent expository informational writing and consistent with the Common Core State Standards. Specific discussion questions and activities are included.

Transitioning from practicing teacher to teacher leader: a case study

ABSTRACTGiven US students’ lack of international competitiveness in mathematics and science, many states have adopted the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM). To help ensure that the Standards for Mathematical Practice within the CCSSM and effective teaching practices are implemented appropriately, many teachers are emerging as teacher leaders with the intent of supporting teachers with this implementation. Unfortunately, not all of these teachers are necessarily prepared in the field of teacher leadership. Recognizing the importance of having well-prepared teacher leaders, this article describes the case of Ms. Hodges, as she transitioned from mathematics teacher to teacher leader. Data revealed that several factors affected Ms. Hodges’ transition, some positively and others negatively. These results as well as implications for teacher leader development are provided.

Have you Heard? Newsworthy items from the field

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) released a report on the teacher preparation, research, and service happening at colleges of education. Far fewer U.S. students than European students are studying foreign languages. A study of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program shows reduced math achievement among students using vouchers to attend private schools. Education Week presents stories of and data on incidents of hate and discrimination in schools. Students can now use their mobile devices to apply for federal financial aid for college. Education Week is tracking teachers who are running for state legislatures. A Thomas B. Fordham Institute survey examines whether and how English language arts instruction has changed since the launch of the Common Core State Standards.

College Students’ Understanding of Fraction Operations

This study investigates college students’ understanding of arithmetic fraction operations as defined by the Common Core State Standards in grades three through six Mathematics. This study is meant to extend upon an extensive body of research regarding elementary and middle grades students’ understanding of fraction operations and see if recognized erroneous thinking among younger students persist among college students. Among these misconceptions include: fraction equivalence, common denominators, the algorithm and the concept of division, whole number bias, and incorrectly applying fraction operations. The results of this study suggest that college students have the same misunderstandings and misconceptions as elementary students in regards to fraction operations.

Preservice Teachers’ Critical Connections to Effective Mathematical Teaching Practices: An Instructional Approach Using Vignettes

ABSTRACTPreservice teachers (PSTs) must be able to link content, effective teaching practices, and student learning; thus, it is critical for teacher educators to emphasize connections between research and practice in methods courses. Reflection plays an important role in this process. In this article, the authors discuss and illustrate a vignette activity sequence used in a secondary mathematics methods course focused on the Common Core State Standards Mathematical Practices and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Mathematical Teaching Practices. This activity sequence includes a mathematical task with authentic student work, a targeted vignette, and a reflection exercise connected to the PSTs’ ongoing fieldwork. The authors include a guide to implementing the activity sequence with an accompanying example used in a methods course. In addition, implications for research and practice are discussed including utilization in other content areas.

Thinking About Words: First Graders’ Response to Morphological Instruction

AbstractThe authors detail word‐learning strategies from a small‐scale early reading intervention for first graders (N = 3) focused on Greek and Latin roots in science‐based informational texts. Educators can provide explicit instruction to support student awareness of word structures in content‐specific vocabulary, and this instruction can be adapted to meet the needs of students at different reading levels. The current intervention involved an exploration of morphology, including the study of Greek and Latin roots and of affixes, and its contribution to word relations and meanings. The intervention was designed to complement Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. The instructional approaches included root identification tasks, problem‐solving techniques, and practice with word production by analyzing selected terms in authentic scientific texts. Analyses suggested that opportunities to personalize and practice with roots and affixes, specifically through interactive activities such as discussions and creating visual representations, supported the development of students’ morphological awareness.