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Creative Ideation Meets Relational Support: Measuring Links Between these Factors in Early Adolescence

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This study examines measurement of creative ideational behaviors alongside factors of student engagement that may play a role in the development of students’ creative potential during early adolescence in school. Two studies used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, crossvalidation, and invariance testing of 2 extant measures with multiple samples of 6th grade students 10 in the United States. Key findings show that reduced versions of the Runco Ideational Behavior Scale for Students (RIBS-C) and the student engagement instrument (SEI) demonstrated a close fit to the data and sufficient evidence of reliability and validity. In addition, flexibility in creative ideation showed consistently high correlations with relational support with peers and teachers and educational aspiration and relevance. Results provide greater precision for futuremeasurement and support 15 for developmental and sociocultural theories of creativity in the learning environment. This study also reinforces the cognitive perspective that distinguishes properties of fluency and flexibility.

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Lane ESD Credit Equivalency Pilot Project: Summary Report

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The Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) conducted an implementation study for a credit equivalency pilot project during the 2016–17 school year. Teacher teams from five Oregon high schools participated in the project, developing the frameworks for and providing Career Technical Education (CTE) classes within their schools that offer students the opportunity to earn content area credit. The purpose of the study was to begin to identify the policies and practices that need to exist to ensure integrity when enacting a course equivalency process, leading to positive college and career readiness outcomes for students.

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Interpersonal and intrapersonal skill assessment alternatives: Self-reports, situational judgment tests, and discrete choice experiments

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Responding to a groundswell of researcher and practitioner interest in developing students’ interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, we evaluated three measurement approaches for creativity and global citizenship. We designed a 10-criteria evaluative framework from seminal and cutting-edge research to compare extant self-reports and situational judgment tests (SJTs) from each construct and to design two discrete choice experiments (DCEs). Our evaluation detailed opportunities, challenges, and tradeoffs presented by each approach’s design considerations, possibilities for bias, and validity-related issues. We found that researchers rely heavily upon self-report instruments to measure constructs, such as creative thinking and global citizenship. We found evidence that the self-report instruments evaluated were susceptible to some biases more than others. We found that SJTs and DCEs may mitigate some concerns of bias and validity present in self-report when measuring interpersonal and intrapersonal skills. We make recommendations for future development of these formats.

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Teaching and Learning in Dual and Concurrent Enrollment Programs: Performance Tasks in the Postsecondary Transition

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Teaching and Learning in Dual and Concurrent Enrollment Programs: Performance Tasks in the Postsecondary Transition is the second of two reports on entry-level college course work, produced through research funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Over the last four years, EPIC researchers analyzed a sample for entry-level course syllabi, assessments and assignments to understand the nature of entry-level course expectations, including course content, requirements, and challenge level.

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Four Keys Reference Guide

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Many educators, families, and students are taking a hard look at the current educational system in the United States and finding there is a significant gap between what is and what ought to be if we want our country to succeed in the 21st century. The Four Keys to College and Career Readiness (the Four Keys) provides a framework and common language to use as we work to close this gap by developing systems that support all students as they prepare for the future.

SouthCarolina_Toolkit

South Carolina College and Career Readiness Toolkit

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The South Carolina College and Career Readiness Toolkit was designed to foster conversation among leaders from school districts and higher education about what it means to be college and career ready, and to help develop action plans for new and strengthened partnerships. The Center of Excellence for College and Career Readiness (the Center) worked with the Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) to develop these materials in support of statewide comprehensive planning efforts. The toolkit has some information specific to South Carolina, but can serve as a model for all states and districts wishing to implement a comprehensive college and career readiness action plan.

Policy Brief: More Than One C

More Than One C: Educating Students to Be Ready for Careers and College

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This policy brief from EPIC discusses the United State’s bias toward college-going as the gold standard and how to counteract that singular mode of thinking. EPIC outlines why definitions of K–12 success should balance an emphasis on each C (college and career). EPIC also shows the related pitfalls of districts failing to attend to the issues that are most salient for their communities. To avoid those dangers, EPIC recommends democratizing postsecondary pathway access to ensure equity, localizing districts’ definitions of success to suit community needs, and personalizing educational experiences so students can become ready on their own terms.

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Essential Skills and Dispositions: Developmental Frameworks for Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, and Self-Direction

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This set of developmental frameworks was created to facilitate discussion within communities of practice and to enhance a shared understanding of the dynamic nature of four essential skills—collaboration, communication, creativity, and self-direction in learning. The frameworks define components inherent to each skill and describe performance across a beginner to emerging expert progression, informed by research on the development of expertise. Unlike discipline-specific learning progressions and rubrics, the developmental progressions reflect components essential to the skill itself and describe growth dependent on many years of active exploration, experimentation, setbacks, and reflection.