Current Research Projects
The Pathway to Academic Success: A Cognitive Strategies Approach to Text-Based Analytic Writing to Improve
Academic Outcomes for Secondary English Learners
Funder: U.S. Department of Education Office of Innovation and Improvement: Investing in Innovation Project (i3)
Academic Outcomes for Secondary English Learners
Funder: U.S. Department of Education Office of Innovation and Improvement: Investing in Innovation Project (i3)
The Pathway to Academic Success: A Cognitive Strategies Approach to Text-Based Analytical Writing to Improve Academic Outcomes for Secondary English Learners
Principal Investigator: Carol Booth Olson
Partners: University of California, Irvine Writing Project (UCIWP); Norwalk La-Mirada Unified School District; Hacienda La Puente Unified School District; Santa Barbara Unified School District; North County Professional Development Consortium; South Coast Writing Project; California State University, Los Angeles Writing Project; California State University, San Marcos Writing Project
Funding: $11,122,902 - U.S. Department of Education Office of Innovation and Improvement: Investing in Innovation Project (i3)
Project Description: The Pathway intervention is a cognitive strategies approach to text-based analytical writing to help English Learners (ELs) to successfully complete courses in core academic subjects and meet the rigorous California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. The project will involve 240 Grades 7-12 teachers and their students in four school districts across the Southern California region. We will conduct a randomized field trial with 46 hours of professional development (PD) in Years 1-2; 46 hours PD for control-turned-treatment teachers in Year 3; and district institutionalization in Year 4.
Project Objectives and Expected Outcomes: The project aims to close the achievement gap for EL students by providing high-quality professional development to teachers in the Pathway intervention, thereby improving teaching quality to help secondary ELs successfully complete courses in core academic subjects and become college-bound. Student outcomes will include improvements in writing as measured by an on-demand pre/post assessment of analytical essay writing and State and district assessments, ELA standardized test scores, and high school graduation rates.
Target Number of Students to Be Served: 105,000
Principal Investigator: Carol Booth Olson
Partners: University of California, Irvine Writing Project (UCIWP); Norwalk La-Mirada Unified School District; Hacienda La Puente Unified School District; Santa Barbara Unified School District; North County Professional Development Consortium; South Coast Writing Project; California State University, Los Angeles Writing Project; California State University, San Marcos Writing Project
Funding: $11,122,902 - U.S. Department of Education Office of Innovation and Improvement: Investing in Innovation Project (i3)
Project Description: The Pathway intervention is a cognitive strategies approach to text-based analytical writing to help English Learners (ELs) to successfully complete courses in core academic subjects and meet the rigorous California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. The project will involve 240 Grades 7-12 teachers and their students in four school districts across the Southern California region. We will conduct a randomized field trial with 46 hours of professional development (PD) in Years 1-2; 46 hours PD for control-turned-treatment teachers in Year 3; and district institutionalization in Year 4.
Project Objectives and Expected Outcomes: The project aims to close the achievement gap for EL students by providing high-quality professional development to teachers in the Pathway intervention, thereby improving teaching quality to help secondary ELs successfully complete courses in core academic subjects and become college-bound. Student outcomes will include improvements in writing as measured by an on-demand pre/post assessment of analytical essay writing and State and district assessments, ELA standardized test scores, and high school graduation rates.
Target Number of Students to Be Served: 105,000
The Pathway to Academic Success: Enhancing Student Achievement through the Common Core Standards: Anaheim
Union High School District
Funder: U.S. Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition
Union High School District
Funder: U.S. Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition
The Pathway Project: A Cognitive Strategies Approach to Reading and Writing Instruction for Teachers of Secondary English Language Learners (2012)
PI: Carol Booth Olson
Consortia Partners: The UCI Writing Project, Department of Education, University of California, Irvine, and the Anaheim Union High School District
Funding: U.S. Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA)
Project Description
The aim of the Pathway Project academic reading/writing intervention is to improve the practices of classroom teachers in ways that positively impact student learning and school achievement.
The project design team will deliver, test the efficacy of, and continue to fine-tune the following tools and strategies:
Project Goal
Our purpose is to replicate and demonstrate the efficacy of an existing, successful professional development program for teachers of secondary ELLs in the Santa Ana Unified School District, in Santa Ana, California called the Pathway Project in Anaheim Union High School District in Anaheim, California, a large urban (33,000 students), low SES district, where 67% students are classified as ELLs.
Project Design
We will conduct an ongoing, sustained professional development program over a five-year period involving 46 hours of training per year, through six release days and five afterschool workshops. An experimental design will be used to evaluate effectiveness of the intervention.
PI: Carol Booth Olson
Consortia Partners: The UCI Writing Project, Department of Education, University of California, Irvine, and the Anaheim Union High School District
Funding: U.S. Department of Education Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA)
Project Description
The aim of the Pathway Project academic reading/writing intervention is to improve the practices of classroom teachers in ways that positively impact student learning and school achievement.
The project design team will deliver, test the efficacy of, and continue to fine-tune the following tools and strategies:
- A conceptual model (i.e., the Pathway model) for supporting transitional and mainstreamed English Language Learner (ELL) students’ academic progress through English language arts classes in secondary school;
- A strong, strategies-based PD program for teachers of transitional and mainstreamed ELLs that can be delivered through “training of trainers” institutes;
- A sequence of reading/writing intervention materials, customized for grades 7-12, that teachers can implement in the classroom to develop students’ declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge of the cognitive strategies experienced readers and writers use in the process of meaning construction;
- A systematic and explicit intervention designed to accelerate the academic English of transitional and mainstreamed ELL students based on an analysis of students’ academic writing.
Project Goal
Our purpose is to replicate and demonstrate the efficacy of an existing, successful professional development program for teachers of secondary ELLs in the Santa Ana Unified School District, in Santa Ana, California called the Pathway Project in Anaheim Union High School District in Anaheim, California, a large urban (33,000 students), low SES district, where 67% students are classified as ELLs.
Project Design
We will conduct an ongoing, sustained professional development program over a five-year period involving 46 hours of training per year, through six release days and five afterschool workshops. An experimental design will be used to evaluate effectiveness of the intervention.
The Pathway to Academic Success: Enhancing Student Achievement through the Common Core Standards: Santa Ana
Funder: California Postsecondary Education Commission
Funder: California Postsecondary Education Commission
The Pathway to Academic Success: Enhancing Student Achievement Through the Common Core Standards
Principal Investigator and IHE Director: Carol Booth Olson, Professor and Director of the UCI Writing Project
Co-Investigators
Project Coordinator: Catherine D'Aoust
Funding: California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC)
This project will serve all of the English/Language Arts and History/Social Studies teachers in two large intermediate schools in the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD). In both schools approximately 98% of the students are Chicano/Latino, 90% are eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch, and 60% are classified as English Learners. Both schools improved their API scores between 2009 and 2010, but neither school met requirements for 2010 Adequate Yearly Progress. The district’s 6-12 instructional focus is on academic writing and the district is developing a 6-12 Writing Guide that will roll out in grades 6, 7, and 8 from 2011-2013.
Project Goals:
The Evaluation Plan focuses on two research questions:
1.To what extent will teachers’ involvement in the Pathway to Academic Success Professional Development (PD) model enhance teachers’ self-efficacy and change observed teaching practices of interpretive reading and text-based analytical writing in ways that meet the rigorous new CaCCSS-ELA standards?
2.To what extent will teachers’ implementation of the Pathway to Academic Success Common Core intervention improve academic outcomes for intermediate school students on measures of students’ reading and writing, including an on-demand direct writing assessment, district benchmark assessments, and standardized state assessments of English language arts?
Principal Investigator and IHE Director: Carol Booth Olson, Professor and Director of the UCI Writing Project
Co-Investigators
- Joshua Lawrence, UC Irvine Department of Education
- Robin Scarcella, Director of the Program in Academic English, UC Irvine School of Humanities
Project Coordinator: Catherine D'Aoust
Funding: California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC)
This project will serve all of the English/Language Arts and History/Social Studies teachers in two large intermediate schools in the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD). In both schools approximately 98% of the students are Chicano/Latino, 90% are eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch, and 60% are classified as English Learners. Both schools improved their API scores between 2009 and 2010, but neither school met requirements for 2010 Adequate Yearly Progress. The district’s 6-12 instructional focus is on academic writing and the district is developing a 6-12 Writing Guide that will roll out in grades 6, 7, and 8 from 2011-2013.
Project Goals:
- To create a sustained partnership between the UCI Writing Project (UCIWP), UCI School of Humanities (UCISH), Orange County Department of Education (OCDE), and Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD), which draws upon the expertise of each partner, to design and implement high-quality professional development (PD) focused on the California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CaCCSS-ELA) so that teachers can prepare students to meet these challenging new standards.
- To improve the quality of literacy instruction in the targeted intermediate schools by linking two existing district literacy initiatives--the Pathway Project academic reading/writing strategies and Thinking Maps--to the CaCCSS-ELA, thereby enhancing teachers’ research-based content knowledge and pedagogical strategies.
- To develop and guide teachers in the implementation of curricular materials that are aligned to the rigorous reading and writing anchor standards delineated in the CaCCSS-ELA.
- To provide one-on-one coaching to encourage participating teachers to enhance their classroom literacy instruction.
- To promote collaboration and shared responsibility for literacy instruction between English/Language Arts (E/LA) and History/Social Studies (H/SS) teachers to develop mutually reinforcing skills and exhibit mastery of standards for reading and writing across a range of texts and classrooms.
- To engage and train teachers in the development of their own model Common Core-aligned text-based writing lessons for grades 6-8, augmenting the forthcoming district Writing Guide for grades 6-8.
- To groom a cadre of teacher leaders to serve as role models and trainers of other teachers as the Common Core Standards are implemented district-wide in all nine intermediate schools.
The Evaluation Plan focuses on two research questions:
1.To what extent will teachers’ involvement in the Pathway to Academic Success Professional Development (PD) model enhance teachers’ self-efficacy and change observed teaching practices of interpretive reading and text-based analytical writing in ways that meet the rigorous new CaCCSS-ELA standards?
2.To what extent will teachers’ implementation of the Pathway to Academic Success Common Core intervention improve academic outcomes for intermediate school students on measures of students’ reading and writing, including an on-demand direct writing assessment, district benchmark assessments, and standardized state assessments of English language arts?
The Pathway Project: A Cognitive Strategies Approach to Reading and Writing Instruction for Teachers of
Secondary English Language Learners
Funder: U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences
Secondary English Language Learners
Funder: U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences
Investigators: Carol Booth Olson, Penelope Collins (with Robin Scarcella, UCI School of Humanities; Robert Land, University of California, Los Angeles; David van Dyk, UCI Department of Statistics; James Kim, Harvard University; Russell Gersten, Instructional Research Group)
Funding: Institute of Education Sciences
The purpose of the Pathway Project study is to determine the efficacy of a reading/writing intervention that makes visible for teachers and their students the cognitive strategies that experienced readers and writers use to construct meaning from and with texts. The intervention is designed to enhance the academic reading and writing skills of secondary English language learners. The study focuses on two key research questions:
An experimental design is used to evaluate effectiveness of the intervention. Both teachers and students were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions at the start of the study. The treatment students progress as a group into the classes of teachers in the experimental condition for three years.
Funding: Institute of Education Sciences
The purpose of the Pathway Project study is to determine the efficacy of a reading/writing intervention that makes visible for teachers and their students the cognitive strategies that experienced readers and writers use to construct meaning from and with texts. The intervention is designed to enhance the academic reading and writing skills of secondary English language learners. The study focuses on two key research questions:
- To what extent does teacher involvement in the Pathway Project professional development model changed observed teaching practices of analytical reading and writing in secondary school classes serving mainstreamed English language learners?
- To what extent does teachers' implementation of the Pathway Project intervention improve academic outcomes for mainstreamed English language learners?
An experimental design is used to evaluate effectiveness of the intervention. Both teachers and students were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions at the start of the study. The treatment students progress as a group into the classes of teachers in the experimental condition for three years.
Extending the Pathway Project to the Community College: Exploring Strategy Use in High School and College
Composition
Funder: National Writing Project Local Sites Research Initiative
Composition
Funder: National Writing Project Local Sites Research Initiative
Extending Pathway Project Research to the Community College
Principal Investigator: Carol Booth Olson
Graduate Student Researcher: Tina Matuchniak
Funding: National Writing Project / US Department of Education
The goals of this project are to determine the extent to which the UCI Writing Project's Pathway Project reading/writing intervention has prepared students in the academic literacy skills necessary to compete successfully at the community college level, assist the community college to study the experiences and needs of the students, and design a professional development program for faculty based on study findings.
Principal Investigator: Carol Booth Olson
Graduate Student Researcher: Tina Matuchniak
Funding: National Writing Project / US Department of Education
The goals of this project are to determine the extent to which the UCI Writing Project's Pathway Project reading/writing intervention has prepared students in the academic literacy skills necessary to compete successfully at the community college level, assist the community college to study the experiences and needs of the students, and design a professional development program for faculty based on study findings.