East Tennessee State University US ED OESE Evaluation:
Evaluand is partnering with East Tennessee State University (ETSU) to provide research support to the Center of Excellence in STEM Education, for their Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant from the US Department of Education Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE).
The project, titled STEM, Literacy and Computation in Education for School Leaders (SLICE-SL), is developing and testing a professional learning model designed to increase the number and diversity of highly effective educators in six school districts in East Tennessee. The three-year Leadership Academy at the center of the project prepares school leaders to support and grow teacher quality, and to implement innovative learning approaches in their schools across four instructional domains: (1) STEM + English Language Arts integration, (2) computational thinking, (3) project-based learning, and (4) social and personal competencies as framed by the Tennessee Department of Education.
The project leverages Year 1 training by the National Center on Education and the Economy’s National Institute for School Leadership (NISL) program to implement team-based action learning instructional projects in more than 20 public schools spanning the full range of grades. In addition, teachers participating in the project can earn up to six graduate courses from ETSU toward four advanced certificates or degrees.
Evaluand is providing an independent, theory-based evaluation of the SLICE-SL model with support from their established partners at Ad Hoc Analytics. A comprehensive, mixed-methods approach is being applied support three evaluation purposes: (1) implementing an efficacy study meeting What Works Clearinghouse standards; (2) providing performance feedback and ongoing assessment of progress toward improving the SLICE-SL model and its theoretical basis; and (3) utilizing objective measures of both outcomes and implementation to understand the model’s feasibility and potential for efficacy.