Two prominent factors that have been linked to students' mathematics achievement are teachers' instructional practices and students' self-efficacy. However, these factors are typically considered in isolation, negating the relationship between the two. This study examined the effect of two instructional practices, direct instruction and inquiry…

Educators and researchers have been fighting the reading wars for the last century, with battles see-sawing literacy instruction in American schools from phonics to whole language and, most recently, back to phonics again. Over the last decade, 32 states and the District of Columbia have adopted new "science of reading" laws that require…

The study described in this paper investigated a unique collaboration among a special education and two general educators that sought to prepare students for success in the general education mathematics curriculum and that consisted of coordinated, reform-based instructional design across classroom and pull-out services provided by the special…

This study aims to integrate video games into classrooms not as a replacement for regular lessons but as supplementary materials under the teacher's supervision. To this extent, the researcher created an educational English learning video game specifically modeled on the students' real lives. Ninety-six middle school students, 48 in the control…

This study provided an in depth look at the benefits to the explicit teaching of an effective reading strategy, text annotation. A quasi-experimental research design study evaluated the effectiveness of the use of text annotation on sixth-grade students' reading and social studies achievement and overall reading confidence. The participants in…

Little-to-no research examines the provision of targeted mathematical interventions to students struggling with mathematics in a virtual environment. And yet, the global pandemic of 2020--extending into 2021--found schools in such a scenario. This article reports two studies in which researchers explored the intervention package of explicit…

This article, based on a 2-year study of working strategically with Years 5 to 8 priority learners, concludes that what is effective writing instruction for all students is particularly effective for priority learners. It also suggests, however, that knowing your students well and making adaptations to some dimensions of effective writing…

The objective of this study was to compare the effectiveness of discovery based learning and direct instruction strategies in peer-led leadership workshops in enhancing the leadership skills of middle school children in India. Three hundred and seventy-five, 10-13-year-old girls participated in the study. The children completed a paper and pencil…

This study investigated the implementation of a primary mathematics initiative in an Australian Indigenous community school designed to improve students' mathematical proficiency. Throughout the 7-month initiative, four classes ranging from Year 2 to Year 6 participated in the initiative. Findings indicated an increase in mathematics achievement…

This paper reports the outcomes of an experimental evaluation of "Direct Instruction Spoken English" ("DISE"), an English language curriculum that focuses on developing English speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in English Learners (ELs). Twenty-nine middle schools in three states were randomly assigned to teach…

This paper reports the outcomes of an experimental evaluation of "Direct Instruction Spoken English (DISE)," an English language curriculum that focuses on developing English speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in English Learners (ELs). Twenty-nine middle schools in three states were randomly assigned to teach "DISE"…

We present results of an evaluation of the first year of a multi-year comprehensive middle school reading program. Four public middle schools in rural Virginia with large populations of students with limited reading proficiency participated in a study to determine the reading program's impact. We evaluated 235 students with low reading achievement…