Professional Title
Associate Research Scientist
Organization/Institution
About Me (Bio)
Jamie N. Mikeska completed her Ph.D. in the Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy graduate program at Michigan State University in 2010. Since 2013, she has served as an associate research scientist in the Understanding Teaching Quality research group at Educational Testing Service (ETS). She is currently principal investigator on two NSF funded studies. The first one is a NSF EAGER project examining how two types of science measures -- practice-based content knowledge for teaching (CKT) items and subject matter knowledge items – assess distinct aspects of elementary teacher’s knowledge and how these measures relate to other indicators of teachers’ professional preparation and experience. The second project is funded through the NSF DRK-12 program and proposes to develop, pilot, and validate a set of performance-based tasks delivered within a simulated classroom environment in order to improve preservice elementary teachers’ ability to orchestrate discussions in science and math. During her post-doctoral appointment, she served as project director on a research study that examined how informal science institutions can best design resources to support teachers, administrators, and families in helping middle school students learn how to conduct scientific investigations and better understand the nature of science. In addition, during her graduate studies, she worked for four years on a research project examining the effects of science-specific professional development on teachers’ knowledge and teaching practices and the learning and engagement of their students. Prior to graduate school, she taught elementary school for five years in Montgomery County, MD and earned her National Board certification during her tenure as a public school teacher. Her research interests center on the connection between professional development, science teachers’ learning and classroom practice, and students’ achievement and engagement.
Keywords
Citations of DRK-12 or Related Work (DRK-12 work is denoted by *)
- Mikeska, J. N., Howell, H., & Straub, C. (2019). Using performance tasks within simulated environments to assess teachers’ ability to engage in coordinated, accumulated, and dynamic (CAD) competencies. International Journal of Testing, 19(2), 128-147.*
- Mikeska, J. N., Holtzman, S., McCaffrey, D. F., Liu, S., & Shattuck, T. (2019). Using classroom
- observations to evaluate science teaching: Implications of lesson sampling for measuring science teaching effectiveness across lesson types. Science Education, 103(1), 123-144.
- Mikeska, J. N., Kurzum, C., Steinberg, J., & Xu, J. (2018). Assessing elementary science teachers’ content knowledge for teaching science for the ETS Educator Series: Pilot results. (Research Report No. RR-18-20). Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
- Mikeska, J.N., Shattuck, T., Holtzman, S., McCaffrey, D., Duchesneau, N., Qi, Y., & Stickler, L. (2017).
- Understanding science teaching effectiveness: Examining how science-specific and generic instructional practices relate to student achievement in secondary science classrooms. International Journal of Science Education, 18(39), 2594-2623.
- Mikeska, J.N., Phelps, G., & Croft, A. (2017). Practice-based measures of elementary science teachers’ content knowledge for teaching: Initial item development and validity evidence. ETS Research Report Series, 2017(1), 1-72. doi: 10.1002/ets2.12168.