In 2017, the state of Kentucky distributed the Teaching, Empowerment, Leading, and Learning (TELL) survey to gain an understating of the learning environments in Kentucky schools. Many of the items on the TELL survey addressed key components of the School to Watch criteria and rubric. Researchers were interested in the teaching and learning…

For more than 100 years, education communities have debated how best to educate the young adolescent. Proponents of both the junior high school model and the current middle school model have advocated for a specialized approach to educating adolescents that emphasizes the developmental needs of students. To accomplish this, various organizational…

Virtual reality has the potential to revolutionize education because it immerses students in their learning, blocking out visual and auditory distractions and letting learners focus intensely on a structured learning experience. The authors describe how using virtual reality headsets helped 5th graders at Gavin Cochran Elementary School in…

School climate has been connected to many important school and student-level outcomes: student achievement, teacher retention, and more. However, the understanding of the extent to which school climate and educator well-being are connected is less robust. This paper explores the extent to which school climate predicts educators' perceptions of…

In this qualitative case study, we explored student and teachers' experiences with the implementation of personalized learning in a rural Kentucky school district. Students revealed differences among teachers implementing personalized learning. Student engagement depended on their teachers' willingness to adapt their instruction and learning…

Understanding factors that foster resilience and buffer against the negative psychological impact of COVID-19 is critical to inform efforts to promote adjustment, reduce risk, and improve care, particularly for adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders. This prospective longitudinal study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of the…

A university geology department partnered with a STEM-focused high school to introduce project-based learning-centered geoscience content at the ninth-grade level. We hypothesized that these students, already interested in science, would be a natural recruitment pool into geoscience. Because they are enrolled by lottery, their demographics match…

This paper uses a case study approach to examine how the heteronormative nature of one middle school setting and classroom environment shapes the climate of safety, support and learning for LGBTQ students when they are engaged in studying a novel with a gay character. Heteronormative environments inform and shape positioning of and by students and…

The Middle-Grades Leadership Development (MLD) Project was designed to develop principal leaders and leadership teams who create high-performing middle-grades schools. Designed by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, the four-year project was funded from 2013 to 2017 by a U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3)…

Researchers have shown that criminal opportunity significantly predicts school-based adolescent victimization. However, little is known about the extent to which opportunity for school-based victimization might be gendered. In this study, the authors drew from criminal opportunity and feminist research and extended the principle of homogamy to…