This study has pedagogical implications in view of rapidly growing technological development and widespread use of the Internet in instruction. The spread of online homework sites with highly commercial aims has opened a new research area regarding the structure, aim and the significant role of homework in education. Particularly, the changes in…

In many nations educators are fighting to build a curriculum that reflects the knowledge and beliefs of all peoples rather than a dominant political power group. This perspective is particularly significant when examining school discourse in Taiwan, a country with a long-standing multicultural population and a diverse history of alien occupations.…

In this study, we describe the development of rapid reading measures, sentences presented to students in a nearly subliminal manner, with a literal comprehension question asked following their removal. After administering alternate forms of these measures to students, we present the results from three statistical analyses to ascertain their…

The majority of research on the efficacy of ClassWide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) is based on research with urban elementary students (Rohrbeck, Ginsberg-Block, Fantuzzo, & Miller, 2003), with much less research in middle schools. This study investigated CWPT with 975 middle school students in 52 classrooms, grades 6 through 8, over a three-year period.…

This study investigated differences in aggressive attitudes, academic achievement and discipline referrals between bullies and non-bullies in a sample of 261 6th and 7th grade students over a two-year period. Through the use of a peer nomination survey, 16 students were identified as bullies both years (persistent) and 21 were identified only in…

This report is a follow-up to "Gaining Ground in the Middle Grades" (Williams, Kirst, Haertel, et al., 2010). That study specified a comprehensive set of actionable practices that differentiated higher academic achievement among 303 middle grades schools in California. In doing so, the study provided a compelling and coherent account of…

Immigration and migration to New York City (NYC) collectively create a dynamic population of students. In this brief the authors use a decade of detailed, longitudinal data on NYC's 1st-8th graders to explore both the "stock" of students enrolled and the "flow" of new entrants in each academic year. Together, these paint a…

This textbook presents a seventh-grade composition course stressing the different forms of language exercises--letters, narratives, descriptions, and expositions. This series of books aims to help the teacher by providing a systematic arrangement of subject-matter, thus saving the labor of searching for suitable material and, at the same time,…

Many middle school students claim that their voices are ignored in the classroom, where the attitude is too often that the teacher holds the one right answer. Instead of this approach, teachers may wish to use the Socratic Seminar, which prompts students to examine issues and ideas through dialogue and actively involves and motivates them, giving…

The purpose of this study was to determine middle school students' attitudes toward physical education using an attitude instrument grounded in attitude theory. In addition, this investigation also sought to ascertain if gender and grade level influence student attitudes toward the subject matter. Participants for this study were 995 students from…

Previous research (e.g., Woodward & Baxter, 1997) found that Standards-based mathematics teaching provides marginal or no benefits for low achievers, in contrast with positive effects for middle and high ability students. A randomized quasi-experiment in 52 Canadian schools found that low achieving grade 7 and 8 students who received support…

The current study is an investigation of early adolescents' perceptions of social support from parents, teachers, classmates, and close friends, and how that support is related to measures of students' adjustment on a range of behavioral indices. Data were collected on a sample of 246 students in Grades 6 through 8 using the Child and Adolescent…

The goals of this study were to (a) examine differences between two age groups of adolescents with and without learning disabilities (LD) in their general and specific self-efficacy beliefs (in history and mathematics), their academic achievement (in history and mathematics), and their loneliness, effort, and hope; and (b) identify predictors of…

"Fast Track" is a pseudonym for an accelerated, advanced language arts program for verbally gifted and high potential students in grades 6-8. The critical thinking model used for "Fast Track" was gleaned from Coalition of Essential Schools founder Ted Sizer's Habits of Mind: significance, evidence, connections, perspective, and supposition, as…

The third in a series of reports from P/PV's three-year study of the role Boys & Girls Clubs play in the lives of the youth they serve, "Making Every Day Count" examines how Club participation is related to youth's positive and healthy development in three outcome areas identified by Boys & Girls Clubs of America as central to its mission: good…