About

Ann Partee is an Associate Research Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Virginia's School of Education and Human Development. She is affiliated with the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL), which focuses on research that improves teaching and learning from infancy to higher education. Her work involves contributing to the environment of collaborative and innovative research aimed at enhancing educational practices and outcomes.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Computer Science
• Medicine
• Pedagogy
• Social psychology
• Medical education
• Psychiatry
• Nursing

Selected publications

• Using data to promote inclusion through early childhood mental health consultation

  Frontiers in Education · 2025-01-10 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Introduction Early childhood educators continue to need support to build their capacity to promote positive social and emotional development and address challenging behavior when it occurs, without resorting to exclusion. One approach to improve the experiences and outcomes of young children through better support to educators is Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (ECMHC). ECMHC is an evidence-based intervention that pairs a mental health professional (i.e., “consultant”) with early childhood educators to build the capacity of providers to promote inclusion by supporting young children's social and emotional development. Methods In this paper, we describe a model of ECMHC that combines data-driven action planning and an individualized approach to build educators' capacity to implement social and emotional teaching practices with fidelity. The model begins with in-context classroom observations of child engagement and teaching practices, as well as a teacher-report of child behavior. Based on this observational baseline data, a standardized formula selects a personalized set of social and emotional teaching strategies recommended for the focus of consultation, based on the strengths and challenges of the teacher and child. Strategies included foundational strategies (e.g., fostering strong teacher-child relationships), flexible strategies (e.g., using cues and visuals), and targeted strategies (e.g., supporting problem-solving skills). Consultants and teachers then collaboratively work together to select strategies to focus on in consultation, allowing for flexibility and individualization based on individual teacher and child strengths and challenges. Results We address the following two aims: (1) examine teaching practices and children's behavior at the beginning of consultation and how these data resulted in different recommended teaching strategies, based on our standardized formula, (2) present three case examples to further illustrate how these data guided consultation to improve social and emotional teaching practices during the 2023 to 2024 school year. We found that this baseline data collection and the subsequent data-driven process for selecting strategies was feasible in that all consultants and teachers served by ECMHC were able to use it. We also found variability in baseline data and the associated ECMHC teaching strategies recommended, suggesting that the measures were sensitive to unique classroom needs and individualized recommended strategies accordingly. Discussion We discuss how this approach allowed consultants to tailor ECMHC services to the unique strengths and challenges of each child and teacher dyad, while being firmly grounded in empirical research and previously validated assessments.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Supporting preschool teachers’ social-emotional competencies and “lenses” for challenging behavior in Virginia’s early childhood mental health consultation program

  Social and Emotional Learning Research Practice and Policy · 2025-03-08 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper introduces the Lenses for Children and Families tool, a practitioner-friendly framework to understand and promote teacher attributions for challenging behavior—or how teachers perceive behaviors. We first argue that teacher attributions for challenging behavior are an important social-emotional competency, and that to shift attributions, teachers draw on other social-emotional competencies including self-awareness, emotion regulation, and perspective taking. Then, we describe how the Lenses tool was used to help early childhood teachers notice and shift their attributions for children’s challenging behaviors as part of the Virginia Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation pilot program. We illustrate examples of teachers and consultants using the Lenses tool through short vignettes drawn from actual cases. We conclude by providing considerations for practitioners interested in addressing teachers’ attributions for challenging behavior as part of their work to support teachers’ social-emotional competencies.

  PublisherDOI

• Implementation of an early childhood mental health consultation pilot in Virginia: Critical tensions and implications for scale-up

  Frontiers in Education · 2023 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Medical education
  • Psychology

  Early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) is a targeted prevention service that aims to build the capacity of early care and education (ECE) professionals and foster supportive environments that promote children’s social–emotional competence and improve mental health and well-being. A key challenge to delivering ECMHC at scale is navigating complex multi-level factors to maximize successful implementation and program benefits at scale. The current study describes the implementation tensions arising during the first year of a pilot ECMHC program conducted in partnership across multiple agencies and a state’s department of education. In the 2021–2022 pilot year, ECMHC was offered as a free service to ECE programs in one large region of Virginia, with the goal of examining feasibility to scale statewide in future years. Consultation was implemented in 45 preschool classrooms across 30 programs. Implementation data were collected using consultation logs and participant surveys, and 20 participants (educators, families, program directors) participated in focus groups. Three implementation tensions are highlighted in this paper: (1) ideal plans versus reality of a new ECMHC roll-out; (2) how to support ECE professionals’ practice as it relates to children’s behavior, without contributing to a deficit view that children need to be “fixed;” and (3) systemic factors in the early childhood field that undermine the implementation and effectiveness of ECMHC. For each tension, we provide context from the larger literature on ECMHC, describe relevant decision points from Virginia’s pilot ECMHC program, and present implementation data to illustrate these tensions in practice. We conclude with reflections on lessons learned that have implications for other ECMHC and SEL intervention scale-up efforts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Narrowing the Research-to-Practice Gap in Effective Professional Development in a State Preschool Program: Describing the Process and Findings from a Research-Practice Partnership

  Early Childhood Research Quarterly · 2023 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Medical education
  PublisherDOI

• Teacher and Child Factors Associated with Emotion Talk between Teachers and Preschoolers Displaying Elevated Externalizing Behaviors

  Early Education and Development · 2022 · 3 citations

  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Social psychology

  Research Findings: Talking about emotions with their caregivers help young children develop emotional competence, and is particularly beneficial for children who display elevated externalizing behaviors. However, prior descriptive work has shown that teacher-child emotion talk in preschool classrooms is scarce. As children are spending increasing amounts of time in preschool programs, there is value in understanding the factors associated with teacher-child emotion talk for supporting these types of interactions. In this study, child and teacher factors associated with teacher-child emotion talk frequency were examined. Participants included 183 preschool teachers and 470 children rated by their teachers as displaying elevated externalizing behaviors in a mix of federally funded (Head Start), state funded, and private preschool programs within two eastern states in the United States. Emotion talk frequency was observed in the context of a standardized, dyadic teacher-child storybook reading task. Results from a multilevel model showed that emotion talk frequency was primarily explained by differences between teachers. Particularly, teachers talked with children about emotions more often when they (1) held an early childhood major and (2) were observed to engage in more responsive teaching. Policy or Practice: Results identify malleable teacher factors linked to teacher-child emotion talk frequency. Findings also highlight the role of preschool teachers as socializers of young children’s emotions and suggest the need for future research to understand how the quality of emotion talk varies between and within teachers.

  PublisherDOI

• Preschool Children’s Observed Interactions with Teachers: Implications for Understanding Teacher–Child Relationships

  School Mental Health · 2022-04-09 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Implementing Banking Time with Teachers and Preschoolers Displaying Disruptive Behaviors: Links Between Consultant-Teacher Relationship Quality, Implementation Fidelity and Dosage, and Dyadic Teacher–Child Interactions

  School Mental Health · 2021-07-22 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Examining the Role of Preschool Classrooms’ Behavioral Composition as a Predictor of the Quality of Teacher–child Interactions

  Early Education and Development · 2019-11-28 · 15 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Research Findings This study examined the relation between classroom behavioral composition and teacher–child interactions in preschool classrooms and the potential for teachers’ experience, education level, and area of study to buffer against the challenges of teaching in classrooms with high levels of disruptive behaviors. Classroom behavioral composition was operationalized in two ways (classroom mean and classroom proportion of children at or above 90th percentile) using teacher reports of children’s disruptive behaviors. Results indicated that the proportion of children at or above the 90th percentile was linked to a decline in the quality of teacher–child interactions in classroom organization and instructional support across the year. Marginally significant interaction effects suggested that holding a bachelor’s degree may be a protective factor for teachers’ emotional support quality at the beginning of the year, but more years of teaching experience seemed to worsen the negative effect of challenging classroom behavioral composition on the quality of emotional interactions over the course of the school year. Practice or Policy: The quality of preschool teachers’ practice showed declines across the year when teachers perceived very disruptive behaviors in the classroom. The results of this study have implications for preservice training, teacher professional development, and quality rating and improvement systems focused on teacher–child interactions.

  PublisherDOI

• Enhancing the Impact of Professional Development in the Context of Preschool Expansion

  AERA Open · 2017-10-01 · 69 citations

  articleOpen access

  Among all the factors that influence the success of preschool programs, none is more important than the quality of the teaching workforce. The design and delivery of effective approaches to professional development (PD) are central to the support of the early childhood education workforce. In this article, we provide a model outlining the PD features that help to ensure that PD is effective, as well as the program- and policy-level supports needed to implement this type of PD as a part of local, state, and federal preschool programs. Throughout the article, we summarize recent research that is refining our understanding of the characteristics of effective PD, and we draw from research as well as our own experience in working with Head Start and state preschool programs across the country to illuminate challenges and promising practices in implementing effective PD at scale.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Choosing to Be Positive.

  Educational leadership · 2016-09-01

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Amanda P. Williford

  University of Virginia

  15 shared

• Pilar Álamos

  Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

  6 shared

• Jason T. Downer

  University of Virginia

  6 shared

• Bridget K. Hamre

  Institute for Advanced Study

  5 shared

• Gabrielle Lachman

  University of Virginia

  4 shared

• Jenna Conway

  Virginia Department of Education

  2 shared

• Erin Carroll

  University of California, Berkeley

  2 shared

• Gretchen Brion‐Meisels

  Harvard University

  1 shared

Labs

• Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and LearningPI

Awards & honors

• Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) state polic…