As education policy in the U.S. focuses increasingly on the quality of classroom instruction, there is a growing need to identify valid constructs and develop reliable tools that measure student opportunities to learn academic knowledge and skills. The purpose of this study is to examine the relative contributions of two different classroom…

The potential for music programs to promote psychosocial wellbeing in mainstream schools is recognised in both policy and research literature. Despite this recognition, there is a dearth of consistent research evidence supporting this link. Authors attribute this lack of consistent evidence to limitations in the areas of research design and…

This article describes a 7th grade Language Arts teacher's investigation into whether she could use her district-prescribed literature selections to effectively increase her students' awareness of sociocultural issues. She used an instructional strategy called Think-Aloud to explicitly discuss social and cultural issues as they related to the…

An instructional focus on critical literacy (CL) encourages students to become active readers and writers of cultural texts so that they can create their own meanings in order to shape and transform their social conditions (Lankshear & McLaren, 1993; Shor, 1992). It is, however, seldom pursued with English learners (ELs) because teachers…

In this article the authors set out to examine the effect of tracking in mathematics. Previous analyses have shown it to be quite prevalent at 8th grade unlike much of the rest of the world. The US practices both between- and within-school tracking, leading to very different content coverage for different students. Without judging the merits of…

Schools have gone through educational reforms having various focuses on curriculum changes, consolidation, open classrooms, mastery learning, decentralization, shared decisionmaking, legislative mandates and controls, high expectations, integrated thematic instruction, professional development, technology integration, and standards with…

This report makes recommendations for the development of middle-school assessment in mathematics, based on a synthesis of scientific findings in cognitive psychology and mathematics education. The focus is on background research, rather than test specifications or example tasks. Readers interested in early development and pilot efforts associated…

This study analyzes the learning expectations related to grades 1-8 algebra across several U.S. states and high performing TIMSS Asian countries and regions, including Singapore, Taiwan and Japan. In order to narrow and focus the investigation, only one topic within the strand is carefully reported. Based on the official curriculum documents,…

It is possible to get prospective elementary school teachers to learn interesting mathematics well by not only requiring that they learn the material in a mathematics course but also requiring that they teach it as part of an enrichment program at the middle school level. This article discusses the reasons for such a course, and describes a…

The purpose of this study was to examine the structure of students' knowledge formed in information education at junior high-school level. Seventy-two 7th graders (first-year junior high-school students) and 78 10th graders (first-year high-school students) participated in the study. A cluster analysis was performed on 40 items of knowledge that…

In California, Algebra I is the 8th grade math content standard. The United States Department of Education found the annual 8th grade General Math California Standards Test to be out of compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 since it assesses 6th and 7th grade math standards and not Algebra I math content. In response to the…

This study examined the perspectives of a sample of Appalachian middle and high school social studies teachers regarding the teaching of controversial current events. Specifically, the survey ascertained the teachers' familiarity with school district administrative policies regarding the teaching of controversial current events, their perceptions…

The Illinois Science Assessment Framework is designed to assist educators, test developers, policy makers and the public by clearly defining those elements of the Illinois Learning Standards that are suitable for state testing. It is not designed to replace a local science curriculum and should not be considered a state science curriculum. The…

That which legislation many times fails to accomplish with adults, organized public education achieves through children. There is no better way, and perhaps no other way, to save the Nation's natural resources from three centuries of ruthless exploitation than by a program of adequate instruction in the Nation's schools. Children cannot begin too…

These proceedings contain the papers of the IADIS International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2013), October 22-24, 2013, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by The University of North Texas (UNT), sponsored by the…