This study was designed to determine eighth grade teachers' perceptions of the impact, quality, and types of job-embedded professional development activities they have participated in and the relationship to student achievement in language arts, math, or science. The researcher identified school districts with 50% or more of their eighth grade…

Although American schools are required to meet civic education goals of preparing students to become active and informed citizens, high-quality civic opportunities (e.g. service learning and volunteering) are consistently less available to youth of color who are typically enrolled in schools located in high-poverty communities. The purpose of this…

This article explores how digital storytelling offers the potential to support transformative global citizenship education (TGCE) through a case study of the Bridges to Understanding program that connected middle and high school students globally using digital storytelling. Drawing on a TGCE framework, this research project probed the curriculum…

Kentucky school districts have been charged to present an academic program review that documents the use of dance across curriculum content at all grade levels. This program review will replace statewide standardized tests for all students in the state of Kentucky and will count 20% toward each school's accountability score. Schools within the…

The purpose of the study was to examine teachers' perceptions of the impact of high stakes testing on instructional content, instructional strategies, motivation and morale, and pressure to improve student performance in relation to their views on accountability. It also sought to identify teachers' perceptions of the effect of high stakes testing…

Teaching in a democracy is challenging and filled with dilemmas that have no easy answers. For example, how do educators meet their responsibilities of teaching civic norms and dispositions while remaining nonpartisan? "Democratic Discord in Schools" features eight normative cases of complex dilemmas drawn from real events designed to…

Although policymakers stress the importance of education in promoting peace, little research examines the ways that schools prepare students affected by conflict to participate in the restoration of peace in their political community. Post-conflict societies experience severe challenges in strengthening political processes and social cohesion.…

English language learners (EL) are the fastest growing sub-group of the student population in California, yet ELs also score the lowest on the science section of the California Standardized Tests. In the area of bilingual education, California has dramatically changed its approach to English learners since the passage of Proposition 227 in 1998,…

This transcendental phenomenological qualitative study examines attitudes toward Controversial Public Issue instruction by teachers who used mandated standards and state tests. After the interviews of 11 social studies teachers (high school, middle school and junior high) five distinct themes emerged in the study. Overall, participants execute…

Communicative self-efficacy serves as an important link between discussing controversial issues and civic engagement because confidence in one's discourse skills is important to managing conflicting perspectives and developing solutions to community-based problems. Freely available to schools, "Word Generation" is a cross-content…

This study investigates pre-service teachers' TPACK development in a secondary science teacher education program that combined a content-specific technology integration course with extensive field experience. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Quantitative data were collected through a pre-post administration of the…

School-based HIV/AIDS science education has the potential to impact students when integrated into the science curriculum. However, this mixed method study shows that school-based HIV/AIDS science education is often not infused into career subjects such as science education but integrated into civics education and taught by teachers who lack the…

Alison Stephen, who has wrestled for many years with the challenges of teaching emotional and controversial history within a multiethnic school setting, relished the opportunity to link her school's teaching of the Holocaust with a comparative study of other genocides. As she reports, her aim was to not create a hierarchy of suffering or…

This article investigates how affluent students made sense of social justice issues that were embedded in mathematics learning activities. I present 2 case studies of such activities at the intermediate and secondary levels in 2 different schools. The analysis draws on video records and classroom artifacts and applies the theoretical framework of…

Augmented reality (AR) technologies are identified as one of key emerging technologies for education in the next 5 years. AR takes advantage of virtual objects or information overlaying physical objects or environments, resulting in a mixed reality in which virtual objects and real environments coexist in a meaningful way to augment learning…