The study examined the effects of the U.S. Department of Education's Student Mentoring Program (SMP) on students' interpersonal relationships, academic outcomes, and delinquent and risk behaviors. The study focused on approximately 2,600 at-risk fourth-through- eighth-grade students in 32 SMP sites. Applicants were randomly assigned to a program…

Over the past decade, research on the use of technology in the mathematics classroom has focused primarily on issues of student learning and engagement. In this article, we focus on middle grades mathematics teachers' use of The Geometer's Sketchpad, and study both the decisions they make about when to use technology, and their motivations for…

Communities That Care (CTC) is a prevention system designed to reduce adolescent substance use and delinquency through the selection of effective preventive interventions tailored to a community's specific profile of risk and protection. A community-randomized trial of CTC, the Community Youth Development Study, is currently being conducted in 24…

PCI Education conducted a three-year longitudinal study to determine the comparative effectiveness of the "PCI Reading Program" ("PCI") for students with severe disabilities as implemented in Florida's Brevard Public Schools and Miami-Dade County Public Schools. The primary question addressed by the study is whether students…

Background: It has been claimed that thematic or integrated approaches to curriculum delivery offer a range of advantages over subject-based modes of delivery including improved pupil motivation. Purpose: This study put claims regarding pupil motivation to the test, using the achievement goals framework. This contemporary approach to understanding…

The objective of this study was to examine the pattern of relations between missing weight and height (BMI) data and a range of demographic, physical activity, sedentary behavior, and academic measures in a young sample of elementary school children. A secondary analysis of a large cross-sectional study, PLAY-On, was conducted using self-reported…

This study's purpose is to examine the existing school climate literature in an attempt to constitute its definition from a historical context and to create a valid and reliable student-reported school climate instrument. Five historically common school climate domains and five measurement tools were identified, combined, and previewed by the…

The purpose of this report is to discuss the continuing difficulties school leaders and students face as they grapple with the "achievement gap" among students of different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Several years ago, researchers at the Washington School Research Center sought to evaluate the "unique contribution of low…

Despite widespread agreement that the activity of "reasoning-and-proving" should be central to all students' mathematical experiences, many students face serious difficulties with this activity. Mathematics textbooks can play an important role in students' opportunities to engage in reasoning-and-proving: research suggests that many decisions that…

Accelerated middle schools are self-contained academic programs designed to help middle school students who are behind grade level catch up with their age peers. If these students begin high school with other students their age, the hope is that they will be more likely to stay in school and graduate. The programs serve students who are one to two…

Biology teachers know how important it is for them and for their students to engage first-hand with nature. Ideally, bringing students to fields, woodlands, and wetlands to observe, explore, and wonder is the best way to stimulate curiosity and practice scientific inquiry. However, for many reasons, field excursions are not always practical or…

Mobile technology is ubiquitous and diverse and permeates many aspects of daily life at home, during leisure activities, and in public spaces. The study presented here is of two sixth grade classes in Michigan, USA and two seventh grade classes in Norway. The students and the teachers in these four classrooms were equipped with mobile technologies…

Cyberbullying is a global problem with a wide range of incidents reported in many countries. This form of bullying may be defined as harassment using technology such as social websites (MySpace/Facebook), email, chat rooms, mobile phone texting and cameras, picture messages (including sexting), IM (instant messages), or blogs. Cyberbullying…

Analyzing problem-behavior trajectories can be difficult. The data are generally categorical and often quite skewed, violating distributional assumptions of standard normal-theory statistical models. In this article, the authors present several currently available modeling options, all of which make appropriate distributional assumptions for the…

When the author asked her eighth-grade students to list some reading strategies, they were well prepared to answer her. But when she asked them how they knew they did not understand what they were reading--in other words, how they knew they need to use these reading strategies--they were unable to produce an explanation. She launched an action…