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The COVID-19 pandemic brought about unprecedented stressors for college students. Early reports found the immediate onset of these stressors led to increased problematic drinking and psychological distress in university students. However, it has remained unclear what lasting effects the pandemic will have on drinking and coping mechanisms. The current study examined the impact of prolonged COVID-19 stressors on the drinking behavior of college students a year into the pandemic. College students (N = 377) completed an online survey in the spring of 2021 that assessed their drinking during the pandemic, coping styles, and level of stress on 8 COVID-19 specific stressors developed by the research team. Our results showed a large percentage of college students continued to report problematic and increased drinking a year into the pandemic. Stress concerning online education was the strongest predictor of increased drinking, problematic drinking, and using substances to cope. These results suggest that students may be sensitive to abrupt changes in learning modality, and many may turn to negative coping mechanisms. This is an important consideration for educators when making changes to their instructional plans and suggests helping students regain an internal locus of control concerning their academics could be beneficial.

Effective curricular support systems must include resources supporting high-fidelity activity implementation. We examined the frequency of pre-kindergarten teachers' online demonstration video viewing and its association with fidelity of implementation of a math and science curriculum. We found a range in frequency of video viewing and a positive relationship between video viewing and fidelity of implementation. We interviewed a subsample of selected teachers to understand their use and perceptions of videos. Themes suggesting teachers purposefully selected videos and perceived specific video characteristics as useful for activity implementation could inform future creation of implementation supports and support for teachers' use of resources.

Purpose: The authors tested the efficacy of a team-based instructional leadership intervention designed to increase middle school mathematics and science teachers' use of educational technologies for multiple representations of content to foster students' conceptual understandings. Each school's leadership team comprised an administrator, a technology instructional specialist role, and a mathematics and a science teacher leader. Design/methodology/approach: The authors tested the intervention in a quasi-experimental design with five treatment and five matched comparison schools. Participants included 48 leadership team members and 100 grade 6-8 teachers and their students. The authors analyzed data using two-level, nested multiple regressions to determine the effect of treatment on leaders' practices; leaders' practices on teachers' learning and integration; and teachers' learning and integration on students' learning. Leaders and teachers completed monthly self-reports of practices; students completed pre- and post-tests of knowledge in science and math. Findings: Significant treatment effects at the leader, teacher and student levels establish the efficacy of this team-based approach to school leadership of an educational technology integration innovation. Leaders at treatment schools participated in a significantly higher total frequency and a wider variety of leadership activities, with large effect sizes. Teachers participated in a significantly wider variety of learning modes focused on technology integration and integrated technology significantly more frequently, with a wider variety of technologies, all with moderate effect sizes. Students in treatment schools significantly outperformed students in comparison schools in terms of science achievement but not in mathematics. Research limitations/implications: The overall sample size is small and the approach to participant recruitment did not allow for randomized assignment to the treatment condition. The authors tested the influence of treatment on leader practices, on teacher practices, and on student achievement. Future work is needed to identify the core components of treatment that influence practice and investigate the causal relationships between specific leaders' practices, teacher practices and student achievement. Originality/value: This study establishes the efficacy of a replicable approach to developing team-based instructional leaders addressing educational technology. It contributes to the knowledge base about how district leaders and leadership educators might foster school leaders' instructional leadership, and more specifically technology leadership capacity.

Tech-enhanced projects can spark student agency and deeper learning--but new research suggests that success depends on teachers' sense of efficacy and control with the technology at hand, write Emily Barton, Dan Brown, and Jennifer Chiu.

Teachers do not consistently maximize the potential of classroom technologies for enhancing student learning. As their self-efficacy is positively associated with technology integration, developing teachers' self-efficacy could increase high-quality integration. We investigate how a holistic system of professional learning about technology integration including formal, informal, and independent professional learning might allow for access to and prompt reflection on self-efficacy source information. We interviewed six middle school math and science teachers from two schools where leadership teams participated in a leadership development program aiming to ultimately support teachers' technology integration. To gather the teachers' perspectives, we asked them to reflect on and explain visual displays of their reported confidence in technologies and frequency of professional learning. Through core assertions, we suggest a holistic system of learning supports teachers' access to three sources of self-efficacy information (verbal persuasion, vicarious experiences, and mastery experiences) and prompts teachers' reflection on source information such that it can impact their self-efficacy. We make recommendations for leaders to operate on these findings, as leaders are responsible for fostering the conditions necessary for teachers' effective technology integration, as well as recommendations for future research to increase the generalizability and depth of understanding.

This randomized controlled trial examined effects of the MyTeachingPartner-Math/Science intervention on the quality and quantity of teachers' mathematics and science instruction, and children's mathematics and science outcomes in 140 pre-kindergarten classrooms. Teachers participated in the intervention for two years with consecutive cohorts of children. Results from Year 1 are considered experimental, however due to high levels of attrition, results from Year 2 are considered quasi-experimental. Across both years, intervention teachers exhibited higher quality and quantity of instruction. In Year 1, there were no significant effects of the intervention on children's outcomes. In Year 2, children in intervention classrooms made greater gains in teachers' ratings of mathematics and science skills and performed better on a spring assessment of science skills. These results have implications for designing and evaluating professional development aimed at supporting children's mathematics and science knowledge and skills.

Educators face a "paradox of choice" when it comes to selecting the best education technology tools for their students. In a ballooning market with approximately 8,000 ed tech tools in use and 3,250 ed tech companies (Censuswide, 2020; LearnPlatform, 2020), there are too many choices and too few ways to access useful information about what works where. When it comes to ed tech, profound obstacles hobble busy educators trying to do right by their students. High-quality efficacy research on technology tools is scarce. Educators want advice from peers, but struggle to find guidance relevant to their specific contexts. Administrators find themselves taking a hit-or-miss approach to technology procurement (Morrison et al., 2014). This article discusses: (1) how this status quo of flying blind in terms of choosing education technology can be changed; and (2) how the education sector can build a better bridge between research and practice, so knowledge about what works where can be documented and spread.