Grants
Emma K. Adam, William T. Grant Foundation, "Qualitative Coding of Diary Reports over the Transition to Adulthood" ($22,518).
Daniel Edelson, National Science Foundation and University of Maryland, "Inquiring with GIS (I- GIS) Project: A Partnership Between Scientists and Educators" ($154,004).
Louis Gomez, Chicago Public Schools, "Clemente Small School Development Project" ($85,000); National Science Foundation, "Understanding the Connection Between Reading and Science Achievement and Reading Achievement" ($1,279,143); Gomez and Ann McKenna, GE Foundation McCormick Award, "Building Capacity to Support Rigorous and Sustained Math Thinking" ($500,000).
John P. Kretzmann, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, "Integrating ABCD Principles into Grant Making Practices, Parts I and II: Customizing a Guide to Assessing Community and Organizational Assets" ($100,000).
Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation's Innovation Fund, "Launch into Verbal Excellence (LIVE) Program" ($198,576); Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation, "Civic Education Project" ($30,000); Malone Family Foundation, "National Expansion of the Civic Leadership Institute" ($105,000). Penelope Peterson and James Spillane, Carnegie Corporation of New York, "Northwestern University Educational Leadership Collaboratory, Phase II" ($300,000); Spillane, Searle Family Foundation, "Educational Excellence and Equity: Investigating Relations Among Institutional Arrangements, Social Networks and Teachers' Knowledge and Motivation" ($100,000).
Presentations
Dan McAdams gave invited presenta- tions at University of Michigan in February and the Eastern Psychological Association convention in Boston in March on the topic "The Redemptive Self: Generativity and the Stories Americans Live By."
James Spillane presented "Distributed Leadership" as the keynote address at the First International Summit on Leadership in Education conference in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 22. Spillane also presented "Distributed Leadership" to the Second International Summit on Leadership in Education in Boston on November 6, as well as to the Kansas Department of Education on October 25 and November 30. Publications
P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale's new book, Human Development Across Lives and Generations: The Potential for Change (co-edited with Kathleen Kiernan and Ruth J. Friedman), was published by Cambridge University Press. The volume examines possibilities for promoting healthy development in three important areas: human capital, partnership behavior and psychological well-being. It integrates lessons from leading researchers in multiple disciplines. 
Barton Hirsch's book on after-school programs has just been published. Refl ecting the broad interest in this work, A Place to Call Home: After-School Programs for Urban Youth is available in hardcover from the American Psychological Association and in paperback from Teachers College Press. The book is based on Hirsch's four years of research with six Boys & Girls Clubs. Eva Lam, "Language Literacy and Identity on the Internet" in Dimitris Koutsogiannis and Maria Arapopoulou (Eds.), Literacy Education: Local Perspectives in a Globalized World (2005); "Second Language Socialization in a Bilingual Chat Room" in Language Learning and Technology (2004); "Border Discourses and Identities in Transnational Youth Culture" in Jabari Mahiri (Ed.), What They Don't Learn in School: Literacy in the Lives of Urban Youth (2004).
J. J. Bauer and Dan McAdams, "Interpreting the Good Life: Growth Memories in the Lives of Mature, Happy People," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2005); McAdams, "Redemption and American Politics," Chronicle of Higher Education (2004).
James Spillane, "Distributed Leadership," The Educational Forum (2005); P. Burch and Spillane, "How the Subjects Matter: Instructionally Relevant Policy in Central Office Redesign," Journal of Education Change (2004); J. Diamond, A. Randolph and Spillane, "Teachers' Expectations and Sense of Responsibility for Student Learning: The Importance of Race, Class and Organizational Habitus," Anthropology in Education Quarterly (2004); J. Diamond and Spillane, "High Stakes Accountability in Urban Elementary Schools: Challenging or Reproducing Inequality?" Teachers College Record (2005).
Awards
Eva Lam received the Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2004 at the University of California at Berkeley. Douglas Medin, professor of psychology and education, was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. The academy, chartered by Congress to advise the federal government on science and technology issues, is generally considered the nation's most distinguished organiza- tion of scientists.
Medin also received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association. This award honors psychologists who have made outstanding theoretical or empirical contributions to basic psychology research. Medin was honored for his contributions to the understanding of human cognition with regard to learning, memory, categorization and decision-making.
Edelson's My World GIS Wins Software Award
Earth science software developed by Daniel Edelson recently received a top ranking in awards sponsored by the online publication eSchool News. In its People's Choice Awards 2005, readers of the online publication rec- ognized My World GIS as one of the top selections in the school science software category. Edelson, associate professor of learning sciences and computer science, led the development of My World GIS as a geographic information system for use by students in middle school through college.
"Teachers have struggled for years to use geographic information systems software, but it's designed for professionals with hundreds of hours of training," Edelson says. "What we're doing is putting those capabilities into software designed specifically to meet the needs of students and teachers in classrooms."
Studies Support Teacher Effects, Small Classes
Two recently published studies by Spyros Konstantopoulos and his col- leagues highlight the need for effective teachers and small classes, especially for minority students. Konstantopoulos's study of teacher effectiveness offers the first evidence from a large-scale randomized experiment that teachers have significant impact on student learning. It uses data from a four-year research project including more than 11,000 students in kindergarten through third grade.
"Being able to attract good teachers and keep them in the profession is of critical importance," says Konstantopoulos. His study also has implications for school choice policies, since it concludes that the teacher a student has matters more than the school the child attends. In addition, the study found that in disadvantaged schools, it matters more which teacher a child receives than it does in other schools. "Hence, recruiting and preserving effective teachers in disadvantaged schools are essential for closing the achievement gap," he says.
The first solid evidence on the effects of class size for minority students came from Konstantopoulos's study, which used data from a five-year fol- low-up to a major Tennessee research project. Being in small classes from kindergarten to third grade had lasting benefits in mathematics and reading for all students five years later. Moreover, minority students had additional achievement gains in reading that carried over for five years.
The studies were published in Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Journal of Educational Research with Barbara Nye and Larry V. Hedges.
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