Our Vision

Provide trusted tools that are thoughtfully designed to help educators optimize
learning opportunties for any child, anywhere.

Our Tools

With other tools still in development, our classroom observation and coaching system, ENGAGE, is ready for use in preschool classrooms.

ENGAGE is a brief, technology-enhanced, web-based observational tool for use in preschool classrooms.  ENGAGE helps teachers, coaches, administrators, and researchers simultaneously measure children's active engagement  and the practices that classroom teams are using to support that engagement. Observations are designed to be brief snapshots of the classroom as a complement to, not a replacement of, other broad measures of classroom quality or multi-tiered systems of support.

ENGAGE can be used across:

  • Different instructional routines (i.e., adult-directed large group, adult-directed small group, and child-led exploratory play)
  • Different types of early childhood settings (e.g., inclusive and separate early childhood special education classrooms)
  • Different program approaches (i.e., child-led, adult-led, and balanced)
  • Different types of preschool-age children (e.g., those with disabilities or developmental delays and those without disabilities).

ENGAGE can be used by:

  • Early Childhood Educators and Special Educators
  • Professional development coaches
  • Administrators
  • Researchers

ENGAGE can be used within:

  • Classroom team meetings that focus on problem-solving and instructional planning
  • Coaching and instructional support that happens with early education teams
  • Formal and informal systems that measure classroom quality
  • Research examining methods to improve children’s outcomes

Our Team

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR LeAnne Johnson, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor for Special Education Programs in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She is an affiliate faculty member of the Institute for Translational Research in Children’s Mental Health and a core faculty member for the OSEP funded National Center for Leadership on Intensive Interventions (#H325H140001). Dr. Johnson is also the Director of the Early Childhood Special Education Licensure and M.Ed. programs. Her interests focus on innovative approaches to building the skill sets and mindsets needed to improve outcomes for young children.

PSYCHOMETRICIAN AND STATISTICIAN Danielle Dupuis, Ph.D., is the Director for the Research Methodology and Consutling Center in the College of Education and Human Development. Previously, Danielle has worked as a Research Associate/Assistant on several large federally-funded research projects examining the effect(s) of various instructional interventions on student achievement, and in test development for Assessment Product Solutions, NCS Pearson. In addition to her work in research, Danielle has also taught graduate and undergraduate courses in statistics, survey design, and survey analysis.

PROJECT COORDINATOR Andrea Ford, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is a research scientist in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She has served as project coordinator for three, federally-funded research projects. Her interests focus on promoting language development in young children with disabilities and promoting use of evidence-based practices by early educators.

Our Funders

This work was supported in part by the Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Special Education Research (Grant #R324A170032).