The achievement gap has alluded school leaders for more than 50 years. Students living in poverty are continually at the bottom of every academic measure, specifically in mathematics. The COVID-19 closures have exacerbated the gap to a point where it will be noticeable for our entire lifetime. This study sought to enlighten educators on the…

The purpose of this descriptive correlational quantitative study was to examine contributing factors of students and teachers affecting teacher self-efficacy and students' reading achievement in rural Oklahoma elementary schools in grades first through fifth. The contributing factors of students being analyzed included (a) poverty and (b) race or…

This study examined the perceptions of educators to determine if they felt that they were adequately prepared to teach in a high poverty school setting. The participants, educators from four school districts, completed a survey based on their perceptions of their own level of self-efficacy and preparedness to work in high poverty schools. The…

In the United States, beginning teacher retention rates are extraordinarily low; only 50% of teachers remain in the classroom after five years. In particular, the state of Arizona has been recruiting significant numbers of teachers from out of state and attempting to retain them with minimal success. This persistent problem has led the neediest of…

The ongoing phenomenon of African American males' poor academic performance has been evidenced in research data, indicating this subgroup of students tends to have one of the largest academic deficits, behavioral issues, and high school dropout rates which often leads to the school-to-prison pipeline process (Craven et al., 2020). The researcher…

Career development in children largely involves learning about the world of work from family members, peers, and classroom exploration in elementary school. For children of economic disadvantage, a lack of resources and restricted access to information may curtail their ability to envision career attainment. The current qualitative study explored…

This concurrent multi-phase mixed methods study investigated whether indicators of Social Cognitive Theory could be observed in Grades 3-5 classrooms and if these indicators could be used to describe teacher effectiveness in high poverty schools. The conceptual framework drew upon Bandura's (1997) measurement of the individual self-efficacy of…

More than ever, schools across the United States and around the globe are embracing social and emotional learning (SEL) to assist students in adopting these skills and many other interpersonal (e.g., teamwork, leadership) and intrapersonal (e.g., self-regulation, resilience) capabilities. This dedication to SEL is well supported by research.…

RAND researchers present results from a spring 2019 survey of a nationally representative sample of kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) public school teachers about their approaches to supporting students' social and emotional learning (SEL) and the factors that might influence those approaches. The authors explore teachers' SEL practices,…

Background/Context: Teacher collaboration, instructional practices, and efficacy are linked in various ways in the literature. For example, in schools where teachers reported greater use of differentiated instruction, team collaboration and culture were reportedly higher (Smit & Humpert, 2012). Further, teachers' instructional mastery…

This study was developed to produce qualitative data about the cultures of two high-poverty, high-achieving elementary schools in Arkansas. The research was intended to contribute to the existing information regarding professional collaboration, collegiality, and self-determination/efficacy as related to student assessment data. The focus of this…

Drawing from the concepts of social constructionism, the article provides insights on how six purposively sampled Grade 6 vulnerable children, aged between 11-15, from poverty-stricken families, child-headed households and those allegedly orphaned by AIDS, resiliently navigated their schooling spaces and places in one rural, primary school in…

In its vision for education, the National Planning Commission (2011:264) of South Africa states that "all children can access and benefit from high quality education" through flexible services which are available, accessible and responsive to the needs of children, and that "specific consideration will be given to the most…

Given global threats to the continued functioning of ecosystem services that sustain us all, educators would be wise to embrace the task of redefining our individual and collective orientations to the natural world. Since the inception of the modern environmental education movement in the 1970's, outdoor education at residential camps has…

This single-site case study describes the outcomes and lessons learned from the implementation of a technology professional development initiative aimed at helping three special education teachers from an urban elementary school learn how to infuse technology in their content literacy instruction. Three types of qualitative data were collected:…