Kelley Regan

Game-based learning has emerged as a promising tool in education, particularly for students with disabilities. Educational games can significantly enhance student engagement, motivation, and skill development across subjects by providing personalized learning experiences and immediate feedback. New developments in generative AI offer opportunities to embed advanced features into educational games. Drawing on focus group insights from educators and families (N = 21), we highlight the key features that teachers and parents want to see in educational games. We then discuss how generative AI can potentially supplement and ensure that those key features are included. A case study of applying these features to a game-based tool to support writing across curriculum is provided. This article offers a glimpse into the informal exploration phase of a larger design research project aimed to develop a proof-of-concept for an intervention that builds a bridge between AI, educational games, and scaffolding STEM content for students with all abilities.

Internship is a culminating student teaching experience traditionally involving sustained mentorship in the classroom of an experienced mentor teacher with some university supervision, and as such, it is a critical component in teacher preparation. When provisionally licensed teachers complete a non-traditional internship in their own classroom, however, they must rely primarily on university supervision for mentorship. We describe a study of an eCoaching model for university supervisors who were able to successfully provide sustained mentorship to these teachers through eCoaching. After completing online training modules, the participants implemented the eCoaching model that included focused goal setting and multiple feedback loops. In this study, we examined multiple data sources to describe university supervisors’ practices when enacting eCoaching and to gain a better understanding of their perspective about the use of the eCoaching model with provisionally licensed interns.

Generative AI has the potential to support teachers with writing instruction and feedback. The purpose of this study was to explore and compare feedback and data-based instructional suggestions from teachers and those generated by different AI tools. Essays from students with and without disabilities who struggled with writing and needed a technology-based writing intervention were analyzed. The essays were imported into two versions of ChatGPT using four different prompts, whereby eight sets of responses were generated. Inductive thematic analysis was used to explore the data sets. Findings indicated: (a) differences in responses between ChatGPT versions and prompts, (b) AI feedback on student writing did not reflect provided student characteristics (e.g., grade level or needs; disability; ELL status), and (c) ChatGPT’s responses to the essays aligned with teachers’ identified areas of needs and instructional decisions to some degree. Suggestions for increasing educator engagement with AI to enhance teaching writing is discussed.

This article using a persuasive writing example to showcase how digital technologies can be used to support all students, especially emerging bilingual learners, as they learn genre‐specific norms for writing.

Even though effective teaching is required when doctoral students assume positions in higher education, few doctoral programs have courses or formalized experiences designed around pedagogy for undergraduate and graduate students. The lack of pedagogical emphasis is especially concerning for newly minted doctoral students who will be preparing future special educators to teach students with disabilities in K-12 settings. In this article, the Continuum of Teaching Experiences (CTE) Model for preparing doctoral students to teach in higher education is described. This university teaching model depicts practice opportunities that promote pedagogical learning and prepare doctoral students for independent instruction of higher education courses. The CTE model scaffolds opportunities that provide doctoral students with varied entry points across a continuum of possibilities. Additionally, the CTE model is highly adaptable across multiple doctoral preparation programs, emphasizing a malleable framework that can be refined for variable programmatic needs.

For the teaching of writing across disciplines, teachers need to use formative assessments to document student learning and to direct their instructional decision making. Using genre-specific rubrics is a strategy that can be used across disciplines. The content of the rubrics should differ to reflect the norms, practices and discourses of those disciplines. The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide (a) a description of an analytic persuasive writing rubric to assess students' disciplinary writing and (b) guidance as to how practitioners can use this rubric to make data-driven decisions about students' writing instruction within various disciplines. This chapter provides an authentic teaching scenario involving students with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder. Request access from your librarian to read this chapter's full text.

Rubrics can be used to give students targeted feedback on their writing and, therefore, teachers should be able to use them as a type of formative assessment to guide writing instruction. This article describes an exploratory study of how three teachers provided instruction for fourth, fifth, and seventh graders with learning disabilities and attention–deficit hyperactivity disorder in using a technology–based graphic organizer (TBGO) to compose persuasive essays. Given professional development inclusive of online modules, long–range plans, and virtually facilitated professional learning communities, the teachers used a digital dashboard to (a) monitor students’ writing progress with a genre–specific analytic rubric, (b) target a specific instructional skill, and (c) document their instructional decision(s). The article illustrates how educators can effectively use genre–specific writing rubrics in practice to make data–driven decisions about student writing.

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During the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, many K-12 schools suddenly shifted from the traditional brick and mortar schooling to virtual learning. With this shift, many teachers and students faced unanticipated instructional challenges. In this study, three elementary school teachers in the Mid-Atlantic opted to utilize an innovative technology based graphic organizer (TBGO) to support their virtual writing instruction for a persuasive essay unit. Participants included three 5th grade teachers and 13 diverse 5th grade students with disabilities, English language learners, or struggling writers. After receiving the bichronous (synchronous and asynchronous) professional development on the TBGO intervention, teachers delivered writing instruction online. Students’ writing outcomes at pretest, posttest with TBGO, and posttest without TBGO were examined. Findings revealed that there were significant differences from the pretest to both posttests for students’ total written words, the number of transition words, and writing quality. Additional qualitative findings indicated positive experiences for both students and teachers utilizing the TBGO during virtual instruction. The resilience of both students and teachers utilizing the writing intervention online is discussed.