In this article, we describe a year-long superhero storytelling project we facilitated with youth in a midwestern middle school. In this project, students read "Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spiderman," designed superhero stories set in their community, and presented artistic representations of their stories to their families and peers. We…

This dissertation examines the effects of neighborhood characteristics on Detroit Public School Community District students' attendance rates for the 2018-19 school year. First, I analyze the effects of daylight savings time, relative to school start time, on absences for elementary and middle school students. By observing the natural change in…

This brief examines where STEM deserts were located within Houston Independent School District (HISD) boundaries and the students most likely to live in a STEM desert. STEM deserts are areas in which students have more limited access to STEM endorsement paths or STEM course offerings. The analyses showed STEM deserts were more common in the…

This project-based thesis aimed to facilitate the creation of a collaborative culture quilt that celebrates the diverse cultural backgrounds, heritage, and traditions of students and teachers. The curriculum focused on various artists from different cultures, expanding students' understanding of art and culture both inside and outside the…

This study represents an extension of the findings of Kieffer and Thompson (2018) and evaluates potential correlates of state- and district-level achievement gaps in reading and mathematics between monolingual and multilingual students. Using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, this study reported that there were substantial…

The research study reported on was conducted to establish how the walls of quality education for disadvantaged communities can be rebuilt through classroom discipline. Social and economic instability, which has always existed, has been intensified by the recent widespread political unrests, which in turn has eroded discipline in the classroom…

Young adolescents (N = 68) completed questionnaires concerning perceptions of neighborhood stress (i.e., high negative influences, low cohesion, and connectedness). Youth self-reported their own depressive symptoms and participated in a public speaking task designed to be moderately stressful. Increases in skin conductance in response to this…

This article explores the possibilities (and complexities) of multimodal meaning-making in the digital dimension, which allows students to compose with a variety of different modes, such as images, sound, music, and writing. This lets them think deeply about the ways in which meaning is constructed, conveyed, and eventually interpreted by an…

The present study applied the social-ecological framework to explore factors associated with adolescents' experiences in bullying victimization in Taiwanese middle schools. Data include a random sample of 1,262 students, ages 13-15, from 43 middle schools in Taiwan's New Taipei City. Hierarchical generalized linear modeling was utilized to analyze…

Using data from 223 Latino adolescents residing in poor, urban neighborhoods, we investigate whether spirituality, religious importance at home, and religious involvement moderate the relation between community violence exposure and psychological well-being. Results showed significant interaction effects between community violence exposure and…

Pedagogies employing critical traditions have increasingly been used to ameliorate achievement disparities and centralize issues of power in the education of Students of Color. In this study, I trace a teacher's journey--new to critical pedagogies--as she learned about community cultural wealth and incorporated family histories as…

This study uses a mixed-method sequential exploratory design to examine influences on urban adolescents' engagement and disengagement in school. First, we interviewed 22 middle and high school students who varied in their level of engagement and disengagement. Support from adults and peers, opportunities to make choices, and external incentives…

The purpose of this study was to investigate students' conceptions of and feelings about land use. Specifically: (1) What are students' conceptions of and feelings about land use? And (2) in what ways might students' conceptions and feelings vary by community setting and grade level? This study was qualitative and descriptive in nature and…

Background: We assessed the associations of 5 school and 7 neighborhood variables with fifth-grade students achieving Healthy Fitness Zone (HFZ) or Needs Improvement-Health Risk (NI-HR) on aerobic capacity (AC) and body composition (BC) physical fitness components of the state-mandated FITNESSGRAM® physical fitness test. Methods: Data for outcome…

Ecological studies, when the school is the unit of analysis, may help to design and evaluate school intervention programs. The paper discusses selected contextual determinants of bullying, using data collected in Poland in 2015 and aggregated to school level (4085 students; 70 junior high schools). The main hypothesis is related to the…