The following words and terms, when used in this chapter, shall have the following meanings, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise.

1. (1) Academic language--The oral, written, auditory, and visual language specific to a discipline. It includes vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, syntax, discipline-specific terminology, and rhetorical conventions that allow students to acquire knowledge and academic skills.
2. (2) Accelerated instruction/Acceleration--Includes aligned research-driven strategies and supports within a multi-tiered instructional model that helps students make more than one year of growth in one year of time.
3. (3) Complex text--Texts that provide students opportunities to work with new language, knowledge, and ways of thinking. Text complexity is evaluated along quantitative dimensions such as word and sentence length, qualitative dimensions such as text structure, levels of meaning, and language conventions, and considerations, including the reader's background, motivation, and knowledge of the topic.
4. (4) Deliberate practice--Practice that is systematic, requires sustained attention, and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance on targeted skills.
5. (5) Encoding--The process by which information is initially coded to be stored and retrieved. Encoding requires attention to key concepts and knowledge structures and is aided by reducing extraneous cognitive load or information in the learning environment.
6. (6) Engagement--A state in which students are cognitively and behaviorally connected to and involved in their learning experience, characterized by participation, curiosity, and perseverance.
7. (7) Evidence-based--A concept or strategy that has been evaluated as a whole and found to have positive effects when implemented with programmatic fidelity.
8. (8) Explanatory feedback--Feedback that provides the learner with an explanation of strengths and weaknesses related to the learning activity or assignment.
9. (9) Explicit instruction--Instruction in which the teacher's actions are clear, unambiguous, direct, and visible. Explicit instruction makes it clear what the students are to do and learn.
10. (10) Fixed personality traits--The misconception that personality traits become fixed at certain stages of an individual's development and do not change over time.
11. (11) Formative assessment--A deliberate low or no-stakes process used by teachers during instruction to elicit and use evidence of student learning to provide actionable feedback and improve students' attainment of learning targets.
12. (12) Hemispheric dominance--The misconception that each brain hemisphere is specialized to process information differently and that the dominant hemisphere determines a person's personality and way of thinking.
13. (13) High-quality instructional materials--Instructional materials, approved by the State Board of Education, that ensure full coverage of Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills; are aligned to evidence-based best practices in the relevant content areas; support all learners, including students with disabilities, emergent bilingual students, and students identified as gifted and talented; enable frequent progress monitoring through embedded and aligned assessments; include implementation supports for teachers; and provide teacher and student-facing lesson-level materials.
14. (14) Instructional preparation--Describes the process by which a teacher uses knowledge of students and student learning to prepare instructional delivery to a unique group of students. Instructional preparation may include activities such as lesson plan design, evaluation of instructional materials, and lesson internalization.
15. (15) Interleaving--An instructional technique that arranges practice of topics in such a way that consecutive problems cannot be solved by the same strategy.
16. (16) Just-in-time supports--A learning acceleration strategy that integrates small, timely supports to address gaps in the most critical prerequisite knowledge and skills that students will need to access grade or course level content in upcoming units.
17. (17) Learning styles--The disproven theory that identifies learners by type--visual, auditory, reading and writing, and kinesthetic--and adapts instruction to the individual's learning style.
18. (18) Lesson plan design--Describes the process by which a teacher creates the planned learning experiences and related instructional materials for a topic. Lesson plan design includes activities such as developing or selecting objectives, learning experiences, sequencing, scaffolds, resources, materials, tasks, assessments, and planned instructional practices.
19. (19) Lesson internalization--An aspect of instructional preparation specific to teaching a lesson or unit. It includes activities such as evaluating sequencing, learning goals, and expected outcomes, using assessment data to identify prior knowledge, studying lesson content, rehearsing lesson delivery, identifying possible misconceptions, as well as planning instructional strategies, materials, and pacing.
20. (20) Metacognition--The awareness of how one's mind learns and thinks and the use of that awareness to optimize the efficiency of learning and cognition.
21. (21) Multiple means of engagement--A range of options provided to engage and motivate students in learning.
22. (22) Multiple means of representation--A range of options provided in the ways that information is presented to students.
23. (23) Multiple means of action and expression--A range of options provided in the ways that students express or demonstrate their learning.
24. (24) Open education resource instructional materials--State-developed materials included on the list of approved instructional materials maintained by the State Board of Education under Texas Education Code (TEC), §31.022, where the underlying intellectual property is either owned by the state of Texas or it can be freely used and modified by the state in perpetuity.
25. (25) Patterns of student thinking--Common patterns in the ways in which students think about and develop understanding and skill in relation to particular topics and problems.
26. (26) Productive struggle--Expending effort to understand a challenging situation and determine a course of action when no obvious strategy is stated, and receiving support that encourages persistence without removing the challenge.
27. (27) Recall--Also referred to as "retrieval," the mental process of retrieving information that was previously encoded and stored in long-term memory.
28. (28) Remediation--Strategies that focus on the drilling of isolated skills that bear little resemblance to current curriculum. Activities connect to past standards and aim to master content from past years.
29. (29) Research-based--A concept or strategy with positive findings from studies effective in isolation or combination with other researched strategies or evidence-based programs.
30. (30) Retrieval practice--Also referred to as "testing effect" or "active recall," it is the finding that trying to remember previously learned material, including by responding to questions, tests, assessments, etc., leads to better retention than restudying or being retold the material for an equivalent amount of time.
31. (31) Science of learning--The summarized existing cognitive-science, cognitive psychology, educational psychology, and neuroscience research on how people learn, as it connects to practical implications for teaching.
32. (32) Second language acquisition--The process through which individuals leverage their primary language to learn a new language. A dynamic process of learning and acquiring proficiency in the English language, supported by exposure to comprehensible input, interaction, formal instruction, and access to resources and support in English and primary language.
33. (33) Spaced practice/Distributed practice--Spaced practice sequences learning in a way that students actively retrieve learned information from long-term memory through multiple opportunities over time with intervals in between--starting with shorter intervals initially (e.g., hours or days) and building up to longer intervals (e.g., weeks).
34. (34) State Board of Education-approved instructional materials--Materials included on the list of approved instructional materials maintained by the State Board of Education under Texas Education Code (TEC), §31.022.
35. (35) Summative assessment--Medium-to-high-stakes assessments, administered at the conclusion of an instructional period that are used to evaluate student learning, knowledge, proficiency, or mastery of a learning target.

Source Note:The provisions of this §235.2 adopted to be effective May 18, 2025, 50 TexReg 2796.