Fireside Chats

Graduate Student Council sponsored fireside chats offer a unique opportunity for session attendees to interact with the session panelists.  Panelists do not present papers, but rather questions may be addressed to the panel for discussion in relation to the chosen topic.  A moderator will have questions prepared, but audience members are also free to question the panelists and to contribute to the discussion. 

Topic: Reimagining our Schools: An Exercise in Purposeful and Effective Evaluation.

Chairs: 
 
Whitney Wall
Ph.D. Student, Queen’s University, Belfast
Senior Representative, Division H
Whitneyelaine8@gmail.com
 
Bradley Coverdale
Ph.D. Student, University of Maryland
Junior Representative, Division H
bjcoverdale@gmail.com 

Abstract
With attention on all fronts turned to improving the quality of children’s school experiences in the United States, researchers and practitioners are faced with many questions. What is the most effective way to train teachers?  How do we help struggling teachers? What data do we look at to determine which students and teachers are struggling? How do we raise achievement levels despite budget cuts, which affect school resources? How do we keep our schools safe? Such questions are among the many quandaries faced by those in the business of improving schools.  Entering this field can be challenging to say the least for new researchers and practitioners.  This Fireside Chat will give attendees an opportunity to join experienced researchers from a variety of backgrounds in a simulated experience of formulating recommendations for struggling schools. School level information and data sets will be presented to stimulate discussion around recommendations for such schools. Through mutual engagement in this exercise, we can learn from one another’s knowledge and experiences and hopefully take home some insights that can be applied to our own work.

Session Panelists

  Nancy Baenen, Senior Director, Program Accountability, E&R  

  John Q. Easton,  Director,Institute of Education Sciences

  Joan Herman, Director, CRESST (Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing), UCLA 

  Sam Stringfield, Professor, College of Education and Human Development, University of Louisville   

  Katherine Ryan, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign