Despite evidenced challenges compared to non-rural areas, rural communities are in a unique position to help address recent national demands for renewed STEM emphasis in schools (Saw & Agger, 2021). This study utilizes interviews from five rural educators who participated in a three-week STEM learning camp to discuss: 1) how teachers perceive…

At Mayfield Middle School, in order to create personalized and more meaningful learning experiences for the students, it was realized that a typical, traditional schedule was not always conducive to the types of learning experiences teachers wanted to create. Teachers had great ideas for projects and practices that would incorporate more critical…

With the prevalence of Large Language Model-based chatbots, middle school students are increasingly likely to engage with these tools to complete their assignments, raising concerns about its potential to harm students' learning motivation and learning outcomes. However, we know little about its real impact. Through quasi-experiment research with…

This study seeks to illuminate and describe the experience of students engaging in mathematical portfolios. In particular, this study reveals key insights into how students demonstrate their mathematical identity and metacognition. Portfolio assessment has been described as an intentional collection of evidence that captures student…

This study presents a collaborative learning experience design aimed to promote Algorithmic Literacy (AL) among middle school students. Developed in partnership with middle school teachers and students, the design addresses the need to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate an algorithm-driven digital landscape. The…

Environmental education (EE) is instrumental in developing environmentally literate citizens with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to support sustainable development. In the case of EE school field trips in the USA, these experiences also foster learning and skill development that supports meeting state and national educational…

This autoethnography illustrates benefits of doctoral education consistent with the holistic paradigm underlying today's society and development of a practice-research-practice cycle useful to science teacher educators. Emergent hypotheses indicate ways to increase a doctoral student's well-being, intellectual risk taking, production of creative…

In the current study, we address calls for research on the complex nature of integrations of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) components. This is a multiple case study of six middle school pre-service teachers (PSTs) as they taught science in their school practicum. We investigated the nature of PSTs' integration between knowledge of students'…

This study examined student learning outcomes from a middle school computer science (CS) curriculum developed through a researcher and practitioner partnership (RPP) project. The curriculum is based on students creating mobile apps that serve community and social good. We collected two sets of data from 294 students in three urban districts: (1)…

This study examines the commitments of an alternative teacher education program in linking theory and practice, one of the most prominent problems of the field. This qualitative phenomenological study drew from semi-structured interviews with seven faculty members and associate instructors, electronic surveys with seven program students,…

Purpose: It is vital in today's society that teachers are proactively involved in educational change. Given that proactive motivation is a critical driver of proactivity, this study aims to investigate how teachers' formal and informal workplace-learning experiences were connected with their proactive motivations to implement educational change.…

Introduction: To better understand the process students with visual impairments experience in learning and using braille as a literacy medium, the researchers conducted interviews. The role of technology in the literacy experiences of the students was also examined. Methods: Individual interviews were conducted with four triads (a student, a…

The ubiquitous use of social media by children offers a unique opportunity to view diverse funds of knowledge. Connecting learning to students' funds of knowledge is particularly important for non-dominant learners, who experience tensions between home, community and school science cultures. This study is embedded in a research project which…

This paper describes several innovations to an early field experience emerging from a community, school, and university partnership focused on a middle school serving diverse students from low-income neighborhoods. With the primary goal of utilizing teaching candidates to provide direct academic, social, and instructional support to the middle…

As schools have placed an increased emphasis on instructional technology, the amount of money spent on hardware and student devices in classrooms has increased significantly (Nagel, 2014). Because administrators are underestimating the instructional shift required for effective integration of these devices, they are not allocating enough time and…