TWU's Wheeler to receive award

Feb. 14, 2025 — DENTON — Ann Wheeler, PhD, of the Texas Woman's University Mathematics division, will receive the 2025 American Education Research Association's Classroom Observation SIG Paper Award for co-writing “Interpretation of Video Observation Scores for Explicit Attention to Concepts and Students' Opportunities to Struggle.”

The award will be presented in April.

The research provides validity evidence for a video observation instrument focused on two clusters of effective mathematics instructional practices, Explicit Attention to Concepts (EAC) and Students' Opportunities to Struggle (SOS). The instrument was developed as part of a larger study on implementation of EAC and SOS, and the validity evidence in this report supports the interpretation and use of the tool for research involving video recordings of classroom teaching.

The primary data source was 169 video-recorded lessons from 57 teachers. Results indicate distinct factor structures for EAC and SOS and acceptable interrater agreement. The paper argued that evidence supports the instrument's use in capturing the implementation of these practices across varied contexts and approaches to teaching.

The paper was co-written with Dr. Angela Crawford and Dr. Joe Champion of Boise State University.