For decades, educators have hoped to integrate geospatial tools into K-12 classrooms but struggled with barriers of time, technology, and curriculum alignment. The authors formed a design partnership with ninth-grade science and social studies teachers in an urban high school in order to conduct teacher professional development while also…

Background/Context: Discussion in classrooms has been cited as an activity integral to active participation in a democracy. Much research into classroom practice reveals that recitation, not discussion, is the most common form of classroom discourse. How teachers conceive of discussion, what they actually do when they attempt discussion with…

Background/Context: Portfolio assessment is a popular form of authentic assessment, but often portfolios become simply folders full of papers rather than student reflections on their work. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The author conducted a study aiming to help the ninth-grade students in his English language arts classroom…

Many children struggle to learn to read, and these difficulties can persist well into adulthood. To address this problem, researchers have investigated the processes that underlie reading. An informative body of work has thus identified basic skills (e.g., decoding, vocabulary knowledge) as necessary for successful reading. Researchers also have…