Dutch secondary education is a multi-tiered system, and many students are placed in a single track in the first year (seventh grade) of secondary education. As part of the placement procedure, all sixth-grade students take an end of primary school test. Although these standardised attainment tests (SATs) are considered high-stakes tests, the…

Background: Researchers regularly must decide what information is necessary to understand school climate and how to include climate in a study. For example, which factors and/or scales should be used, is using just 1 scale for school climate sufficient, and to what extent does the selection of a single scale influence the research findings? Aims:…

Background: Researchers regularly must decide what information is necessary to understand school climate and how to include climate in a study. For example, which factors and/or scales should be used, is using just 1 scale for school climate sufficient, and to what extent does the selection of a single scale influence the research findings? Aims:…

In this paper we explore how Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) conceptualise vulnerability and risk, and how these conceptualisations inform their responses to students at risk of exclusion from school. The literature typically makes a distinction between within-child and systemic or structural factors. We draw on interview data from…

Existing research literature in computing and IT education shows that there has been limited work on investigating how offense based learning approaches using hacks can enhance learning of mobile security topics. In an effort to fill this research gap, we performed an experimental study with a unique, nifty user hack driven offense based learning…

Despite decades of research, NOS is still rarely explicitly and accurately taught in K-12 schools (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2023). Teachers often address NOS ineffectively as a result of inadequate knowledge of NOS and science content (Wahbeh & Abd-El-Khalick, 2014) as well as NOS pedagogy (Hanuscin et al., 2011). A variety of contextual…

Background: Integrated STEM approaches are acknowledged as important for making school subjects relevant and engaging for students and are reinforced with the current emphasis on computational thinking. Still, such approaches are rarely realized in schools. This study investigates how the traditional 'grammar of schooling' may prevent realization…

Background: Youth mental health needs have worsened following COVID-19. Rising demand for school mental health services is straining capacity. Several states have added policies requiring mental health education, yet these vary widely and barriers to operationalization exist. Purpose: This paper explores the onerous landscape of mental health…

The 2020 Norwegian national curriculum for primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary education includes a "competence aim" after Year 7 that expects pupils to be able to "investigate how gender, gender roles, and sexuality are presented in music and dance in the public sphere and create expressions that challenge…

Purpose: Worldwide, schools implement social-emotional learning programs to enhance students' social-emotional skills. Although parents play an essential role in teaching these skills, knowledge about their perspectives on social-emotional learning is limited. In providing insight into the perspectives of parents from adolescent students this…

This research study examined the relationship between school leadership style and the use of writing across the curriculum (WAC) in secondary classrooms. Writing practices and the use of writing as a form of assessment in subject areas other than ELA is thought to be a way to better prepare students to meet the literacy expectations of the 21st…

Due to its task-based, gamified, and interactive features, unplugged programming activity has been widely employed in education and teaching as an activity away from electronic screens and other digital devices. There is ongoing debate over how to help K-9 pupils develop their computational thinking through unplugged programming activities. Based…

The purpose of this study was to determine if Knowledge Management Theory and Jim Collins' (2001) Hedgehog Concept from his book "Good to Great" were appropriate tools for strategic planning initiatives in K-12 public schools and to understand if there was a correlation between the application and use of these and (1) a principal's years…

Research shows that motivation is a critical precursor to students' science achievement. However, research on the topic yields ambiguous results in different cultural contexts. While the positive association between motivation and science achievement has been evidenced universally, the relatively predictive effect and strength of different…

Whole-school reforms have received widespread attention, but a critical limitation of the current literature is the lack of evidence around whether these extensive and costly interventions improve students' long-term outcomes after they leave reform schools. Leveraging Tennessee's statewide turnaround reforms, we use difference-in-differences…