This article discusses a partnership with two different civic education organizations to study three different student-centered discussion designs. In one study, the authors worked with the Close Up Foundation. Close Up is a non-profit that annually brings 20,000 high school and middle school students from all 50 states and U.S. territories to…

For over a century, teacher-centered learning occurred as the most prominent method of teaching students (Medve, 2023). The student-centered classroom provides students the opportunity to focus their learning on curriculum which is interesting to them. "Problem-Based learning (PBL) is a type of student-centered learning heavily influenced by…

Technology will not inherently make students in any classroom more mathematically inquisitive, however, the use of technology can foster student-centered inquiry. This article explores the impact technology has on mathematics learning when it emphasizes the ways it supports student-centered pedagogies. Through this lens, the authors focus on…

Using a student-centered approach, Generation Citizen's (GC) action civics model helps students gain civic knowledge and skills as they work together to take action on a local issue in their community. This paper draws upon reflections from GC's decade-plus of teaching action civics at scale in middle and high schools across the United States,…

Mathematics is a branch of science that is used to understand and explore the relationship between the parts that make a great structure or a whole, the cause-and-effect relationships between the parts and the whole, all natural phenomena and, life in short. Students in Math must make progress in learning to follow teacher's instructions and…

Project-based learning (PBL) grounds instruction in authentic learning experiences where students engage in real-world explorations that culminate in a final product or performance. We report on a mixed methods study with 43 ninth-grade English language arts (ELA) teachers (22 PBL and 21 comparison) and 1,671 students exploring the feasibility of…

While Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education is essential in the high school curriculum, it often carries a reputation of being formidable and overwhelming. The resulting unease students often face inhibits their ability to learn effectively; thus it can be beneficial to integrate a more familiar approach to teach them…

From 2016 to 2021, the Better Math Teaching Network (BMTN) aimed to transform high school mathematics teaching in New England. Researchers and teachers worked together to make high school Algebra I classes more student centered. The BMTN was piloted with a group of nine teachers during the 2015-2016 school year and added teachers the following…

There is a need for teenagers and adolescents to be aware of mental health topics that affect their peers and community as well as resources for how to seek help. Project Mental Health Awareness (PMHA) is a self-sustaining program designed to be incorporated into any junior high or high school curriculum to increase mental health awareness and…

This brief shares learnings from Building Equitable Learning Environments (BELE) district partnerships around the sixth Essential Action: Measure What Matters. This Essential Action focuses on achieving equitable learning environments through the routine collection and review of relevant student feedback data to co-design new practices and…

From 2016 to 2021, the Better Math Teaching Network (BMTN) aimed to transform high school mathematics teaching in New England. Researchers and teachers worked together to make high school Algebra I classes more student centered. Network leaders organized the BMTN as a networked improvement community (NIC) to address a common problem of practice…

The talents that neurodiverse individuals bring to STEM fields are being increasingly recognized, thus it is important to ensure neurodiverse youth have opportunities to experience an array of STEM fields as viable career options. Based on the results of a systematic review, this article provides recommendations for how informal STEM learning…

Student-centered instruction is featured in reforms that aim to improve excellence and equity in mathematics education. Although research on stereotype threat suggests that student-centered instruction may have differential effects on racial minority students, the relationship between student-centered mathematics instruction and student engagement…

This article presents a field-tested approach for integrating music arranging into middle and high school music ensembles. This project-based unit of study builds on scholarship in informal music learning and social constructivism. Reflections from former high school students who participated in the project help illuminate these connections. The…

This study shares two frameworks for analyzing teacher actions that support students in generalizing and examines how those frameworks align with teacher questioning. One classroom teaching episode focused on the mathematical activity of generalizing is shared to illustrate effective generalizing promoting practices. We found several patterns of…