The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference in how high and low performing elementary school districts use and analyze data to differentiate instruction, make changes to district/grade level curriculum, determine professional development needs, determine teacher effectiveness, and determine the use of school district…

The purpose of this mixed methods phenomenological study was to explore the data-driven instructional decisions that elementary teachers make in literacy. Educators have moved towards a culture of being data-driven, and have declared data use in schools to be significant to school improvement and accountability (Marsh, Pane, & Hamilton, 2006).…

Providing a meaningful and experiential learning environment for all students has long created a concern for alternate ways to teach students who are reportedly demonstrating non-mastery on state standardized assessments. As the benchmark for showing successful academic achievement increases, so does the need for discovering effective ways for…

Adolescents differ in the extent to which they believe that parents have legitimate authority to impose rules restricting adolescents' behavior. The purpose of the current study was to test predictors of individual differences in legitimacy beliefs during the middle school years. Annually, during the summers following Grades 5, 6, and 7, early…

The aim of this study is to understand the relationship between metacognition and students' everyday problem solving. Specifically, we were interested to find out whether regulation of cognition and knowledge of cognition are related to everyday problem solving and whether students who perform better in the decision-making problem will better…

As students advance in their education, the use of stories and specifically the process of storytelling often wane from the central mode of learning to be replaced with more didactic methods and content-driven applications. However, the use of stories has remained a central component of moral/ethics education and continues to be used as a…

This study investigated whether the use of "Spelling Through Morphographs" (Lessons 1-45) designed for grade 3-adult students could be effective when implemented in an above-average educational setting with grade 2 students. Using a cross-grade, longitudinal design, designed to provide a methodological foundation for addressing the acceleration of…

Questions and concerns exist regarding the exclusion of students with disabilities from statewide assessments, partly because the number of student with disabilities who are included in state assessment varies from state to state and is generally low. This contributes to a belief that accountability for all students may be misunderstood or ill…

Education leaders and much literature exhort teachers and school leaders to use data more often and more effectively to guide planning and decision making--called, "data driven decision making." This term is ubiquitous in literature and reform discourse, but "on the ground," so to speak, practitioners face significant challenges in analyzing,…

We examined self-descriptions of children of Somali refugee families in Australian primary schools, focusing on how children's school-related skills and needs relate to the interpretive frames of mainstream and ethnic cultures. Three groups of Grade 5 and 6 children (Somali, Disadvantaged, Advantaged) made choices among school-related skills, and…

The purpose of this dissertation is to characterize and analyze the specific implementation decisions made by teachers in Dominican primary schools. A new curriculum was developed in 1995 as part of a Ten-Year Plan to reform the educational system. Analyzing what teachers do and the factors that shape their instruction is relevant for improving…

This action research project focuses on increasing student comprehension and achievement. The study examined the effectiveness of completing detailed item analysis of assessments for the purpose of placing students into different Language Arts classes and learning groups within those classes. Research advocates placing students of similar ability…

This paper reports on a process in which program designers, classroom teachers, and students worked together to adapt the 7th grade "keepin' it REAL" prevention curriculum to a developmentally, socially, and academically appropriate curriculum for 5th graders. A Community-Based Participatory Research methodology (CBPR), combined with a 9-step…

It is the moral responsibility of educators to work diligently to provide every student with rich, challenging coursework in efforts to prepare them for post high school careers and education. The use of common formative assessments provides teachers with the valuable, timely information they need to make instructional decisions that will better…

This study examines teacher interactions with boys and girls in single-gender technology classes. We analyzed transcripts of videotapes of instruction, interviews with the teachers and students, student questionnaires, and final robot programs. Girls and boys differed in a number of ways, and teachers explained their differing interactions with…