As a part of the teacher licensure program at the graduate level at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), the M.Ed. Licensure candidate is required to complete an action research project during a 3-semester-hour course that coincides with the 9-semester-hour student teaching experience or with school employment. This course, Education…

A weak negative attitude towards learning science was noticed among the students in Qatar, a matter that was reflected on their achievement in national tests. To test if the use of PBL would improve the students' attitudes towards learning science, a sample of 25 nine graders from Hamza school were motivated to plan their own investigations and to…

The current study investigated whether a 5-month, adult mentoring intervention delivered by school personnel could enhance the school engagement of ninth grade urban minority adolescents. Compared to 20 at-risk students who did not receive an intervention, 20 at-risk students who were randomly assigned to mentoring exhibited significantly less…

Validity data are presented for a new measure of threat appraisals in response to community violence. Adolescents (N = 358; 45% male; 91% African American, M = 12.10 years, SD = 1.63) and their maternal caregivers participated in two waves of a longitudinal interview study focused on the consequences of exposure to community violence. Structural…

Students who successfully complete grade nine are substantially more likely to graduate from high school than are students who fail the freshman year. However, many middle grades students are not academically prepared for ninth grade. This report addresses five questions that can help school leaders ensure that middle grades students know the…

The purpose of this study was to explore whether or not adolescents who are deemed underachievers and who struggle to read school-assigned textbooks will engage with popular culture texts of their own choosing (e.g., magazines, comics, TV, video games, music CDs, graffiti, e-mail, and other Internet-mediated texts). The 60 student participants,…

This research is an examination of how gender is constructed through the pedagogical practices of the teacher in one secondary English/literacy classroom. It is evident from the classroom data that the teacher talks to the male students and the female students very differently and in this way constructs gender in different and inequitable ways.…

"Smoothing the Path" describes successful state-level strategies and policy lessons that have been learned in four states during the development of schools that integrate secondary and postsecondary education. Statewide efforts in the multi-year Early College High School Initiative, which began in Ohio and Utah in 2002 and in Texas and…

This article describes how a mathematics teacher uses literature and creative writing in her ninth-grade classes to motivate, instruct, and assess her students. (Contains 4 figures.)

Protective effects of ethnic identity on daily psychological well-being were examined in a sample of 415 ninth graders from Mexican and Chinese backgrounds. Utilizing daily diary assessments and multilevel modeling, adolescents with a greater regard for their ethnic group exhibited greater levels of daily happiness and less daily anxiety averaged…

This study explored the relation of ethnic identity to two determinants of career interests identified by social-cognitive career theory (SCCT): self-efficacy and outcome expectations. For a sample of 128 Latino/a ninth graders, the results indicated that ethnic identity had a direct and positive relationship to career decision-making…

This study assessed adolescent females' self-reported attraction and interest in dating adolescent male bullies and victims of bullying. Thirty-six 9th and 10th grade female adolescents (mean age = 15 years; 69.2% White; 30.8% Non-white) from a city high school in the Mid-Atlantic United States examined three photographs and listened to a verbal…

When one mentions the word engineering, most people think immediately of high-tech items such as computers, or large-scale projects such as bridges, buildings, and roads. While these products represent the products of engineering, there are clear challenges to having students work directly on any of these projects in the context of a science…

There is concern among second language educators in Canada that male students are losing interest in studying French as a second language (FSL). In response, in the fall of 2003, a study was conducted to investigate gender differences in second language (L2) motivation among Grade 9 core French students. Building upon the traditional model of L2…

"Project 'Graduation Really Achieves Dreams'" ("GRAD") is an initiative for students in economically disadvantaged communities that aims to reduce dropping out and increase rates of college enrollment and graduation by increasing reading and math skills, improving behavior in school, and providing a service safety net. At the…