The three books reviewed in this article represent the continuous effort to make visible the significant bridge between theory and practice in the fields of literacy and children's literature. While the authors maintain distinct purposes for their creations, the texts each speak to a strong theoretical support for the practices they describe. The…

In this study we investigated the lives and academic histories of eight students enrolled in an alternative-school program in a mid-sized Midwestern city. Through the triangulation of interviews, fieldnotes, local newspaper articles, artifacts such as student work and information provided in cumulative folders, and a battery of measures of…

Neurologist and middle school teacher Willis, frustrated by mandates handed down by "non-experts" who didn't know what she knew about how the brain works, developed strategies to rekindle the spark of learning and escape the rote nature of teaching to the test. By encouraging practice to create an accessible neural circuit, finding ways…

The Model-Assisted Reasoning in Science (MARS) project seeks to promote model-centered instruction as a means of improving middle-school science education. As part of the evaluation of the sixth-grade curriculum, performance of MARS and non-MARS students was compared on a curriculum-neutral task. Fourteen students participated in structured…

This manuscript describes how two school administrators, now educational leadership professors, successfully reframed leadership to create change. Bolman and Deal's (1984; 2003) reframing of pedagogy provided the theory for understanding this complex change process and the school administrator's role. As a conceptual framework, reframing theory…

When 29 percent of final grades for students at Bendle Middle School showed up as Ds and Es, teachers knew something had to give. Kenkel, Hoelscher, and West describe how the ABCI approach, based on mastery learning, shook up a community culture of low expectations for working class kids, and opened the way for more appropriate teaching methods…

Webster Middle School, situated in a large Midwestern city, serves primarily an African-American, lower-to middle-class population. As with many other schools in similar geographic and demographic situations, the academic performance of its students was very poor, the physical facilities were in decay, and enrollments were dropping, with only 250…

In this paper the authors focus on one early-career teacher, co-author Natalie Gibson, whose initial teaching experiences were mediated by educational settings shaped by these different and often conflicting traditions. Their study of Natalie's early-career trajectory is concerned with understanding her effort to develop a conception of…

In response to the numerous school reform initiatives being implemented, Sternberg proposed a theory of contextual modifiability stating that successful change in a school requires that the school be modifiable. Sternberg developed the School Characteristics Inventory (SCI), a 116-item Likert scale questionnaire, to assess schools'…

This research reports on the efforts of six middle school and high school science teachers in a public school district in New York City to balance innovative teaching methods and strategies with the New York State Learning Standards and Regents requirements. More specifically, this research examines the factors that influenced the implementation…

The author offers an analysis of the failures and insights she experienced working with adolescents at a progressive school while discussing how the students understood and experienced race and identity -- their own and that of others. While she encountered students who were willing to take her into their worlds, her efforts fell flat when her…

This qualitative case study investigated a large, suburban, public middle school focusing on educators' perceptions of leadership within their professional learning community. Participants included the principal, administrative team, and key faculty members. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and were analyzed by hand coding and…

Personality type concepts have been introduced at Anwatin Middle School, an urban middle school in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where nearly two-thirds of the students receive reduced price or free lunches. In Anwatin's diverse climate--approximately 70% of Anwatin's students are students of color, mostly Black and Hmong--looking at personality…

This article discusses the results of two qualitative studies concerning a group of 58 African American girls attending an urban school district. Findings from the first study document year one of a longitudinal project examining how the girls develop socially and academically in a state-operated school district. Data from the second study…

The purpose of this study was to examine how a teacher understood her students and then thought and made decisions about content, curriculum and pedagogy. Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and Deweyan philosophies of experience and education provided the theoretical frameworks. Data were collected through observations (N = 38) and interviews (N…