Establishing a student-centered classroom environment where learning puts students' interests first is essential for middle school students to learn and thrive. Student success does not simply rely on instruction; it relies on external factors such as school and classroom climate, positive relationships with their teachers and other adults, and a…

Declining academic performance, along with a growing apathy of students toward the value of education, demonstrates that students in the United States public education system do not recognize the value of a positive experience in middle schools. A plethora of research and writing has been done on elementary schools and secondary schools, but…

Early adolescence represents a particularly vulnerable period of development during which young people are susceptible to establishing lifelong behavior patterns associated with poor life, health, and educational outcomes. Previous research demonstrates older adolescents and young adults often experience negative life events (NLEs) prior to…

The authors test biosocial models that posit interactions between biological variables (testosterone, estradiol, pubertal status, and pubertal timing) and social context variables (family, peer, school, and neighborhood) in predicting adolescent involvement with cigarettes and alcohol in a sample of 409 adolescents in Grades 6 and 8. Models…

Only few studies have explicitly attended to the nature of the perceived underlying factors that prompt young adolescents' reflective thinking in association with K-12 learning environment. This paper focuses on an analysis of the factors that are perceived by young students as prompting their reflective thinking and how those factors apply to the…