ISER's Center for Alaska Education Policy Research (CAEPR) Director Dayna DeFeo presented to a national audience of teacher educators, higher education administrators, and policymakers on innovative ways that Network for Excellence in Teaching (NExT) survey data may be used to inform policy, practice, and cross-institutional collaboration.
Read More
ISER’s Dayna DeFeo, director of the Center for Alaska Education Policy Research (CAEPR), and Research Associates Jessica Passini and Trang Tran provided current research to educators, administrators and policymakers on student transitions from high school to post-secondary education, including college and technical schools.
Read More
The Center for Alaska Education Policy Research (CAEPR) is collaborating with the Department of Biological Sciences in a new National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project to redesign UAA’s general introductory biology course for non-majors. The goal is to increase student learning and engagement, and to encourage more UAA students to pursue STEM majors and careers.
Read More
Researchers at ISER's Center for Alaska Education Policy Research (CAEPR) have recently published two articles examining issues important to Alaska's teachers.
- It’s more than just dollars: Problematizing salary as the sole mechanism for recruiting and retaining teachers in rural Alaska, by Dayna DeFeo, Diane Hirshberg, and Lexi Hill. This article, published in the Alaska Native Studies Journal, argues that improving teacher retention in Alaska’s rural schools will require both adequate pay and attention to working conditions. Full text available for download.
- Statute and implementation: How phantom policies affect tenure value and support, by Dayna DeFeo, Matt Berman, and Diane Hirshberg. This article, published in Educational Policy, discusses how teachers and principals understand, inflate, or underestimate tenure protections, and how those interpretations affect the perceived value and effectiveness of the tenure policy itself. Abstract available for download, full text available for purchase.
Read More
Dayna DeFeo and colleagues from the College Preparatory and Developmental Studies Department in UAA’s Community & Technical College studied how students spend independent study time in the drop-in tutoring lab.
Read More
Dayna DeFeo is excited to take on the role of CAEPR Director while former Director, Diane Hirshberg, pursues an Arctic social science policy research agenda.
Read More
Before coming to Alaska, Dayna DeFeo studied how language shapes identity, and her work in New Mexico suggests alternate pathways to becoming a "heritage speaker."
Read More
Teacher turnover is expensive for the state, and bad for student learning - and CAEPR's new report highlights the costs.