School counselors help foster student's academic, social, and career development; yet, school counselors are often neglected in research on school climate and student safety. Framed by the theory of planned behavior, this study examined how 206 school counselors' multicultural counseling competence, multicultural self-efficacy, and perceptions of…

Instructional influences on productive use of academic vocabulary were investigated among 460 mostly African American and Latina/o fifth graders from 36 classrooms in eight public schools serving low-income families. Students received a 6-week unit on wolf management involving collaborative group work (CG) or direct instruction (DI). The big…

The purpose of the study was two-fold: to (a) investigate the influence of explicit nature of science (NOS) and explicit argumentation instruction in the context of a socioscientific issue on the argumentation skills and NOS understandings of students, and (b) explore the transfer of students' NOS understandings and argumentation skills learned in…

Social-emotional learning programs are increasingly being implemented in U.S. schools to address a wide range of problematic behaviors (e.g., bullying, delinquency) and to promote academic success. The current study examined the direct and indirect impact of the Second Step Middle School Program (Committee for Children, 2008) on bullying,…

Background: Asthma places a heavy burden on Chicago's schoolchildren, particularly in low-income, minority communities. Recently, our group developed a 10-week afterschool program, the Student Asthma Research Team (START), which successfully engaged high school youth in a Photovoice investigation of factors impacting their asthma at school and in…

Involving more than 1,500 academically gifted students and their parents, this study examined relationships between family environment and social competence of gifted students. Results from an online survey revealed that our gifted students rated their families as cohesive and flexible with high levels of satisfaction and communication among…

This research examined whether the benefits of parents' involvement in children's learning are due in part to value development among children. Four times over the 7th and 8th grades, 825 American and Chinese children (M age = 12.73 years) reported on their parents' involvement in their learning and their perceptions of the value their parents…

Fourth- and fifth-grade students' motivation and engagement during classroom discussions were investigated in 2 studies. Study 1 examined students' moment-by-moment engagement during collaborative peer-managed small-group discussions in comparison to conventional teacher-managed whole-class discussions. Study 2 evaluated the long term effects of…

Over the past few decades, service-learning has surged in popularity. Although most programs are implemented in high school and college classrooms, service-learning has the potential for great impact in middle school. The present article evaluates a pilot service-learning program for fifth- and seventh-grade (N = 86) children in a large, urban,…

The purpose of this action research project report was to increase engagement during independent reading for 32 fourth-grade students and 26 seventh-grade science students. At Site A, data was collected from August 27, 2012 through December 14, 2012. At Site B, data was collected from September 24, 2012 through December 14, 2012. Students'…

In this action research project report, the teacher researcher focused on the problem of lack of achievement of students in middle school social studies classes. The purpose of the project was to increase motivation and engagement of students by incorporating the use of technology; thereby, increasing achievement. A total of 105 sixth-grade…

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of parent involvement in relation to the influence on student achievement within a school community. In addition, this study worked towards gaining an understanding of the parent's role in the school community. Researching educational data may suggest that more parent involvement will have a…