In the face of everyday classroom challenges, students display resilience by responding with increased agentic engagement. We hypothesized that this tendency toward greater initiative and lesser passivity was both an outcome of autonomy need satisfaction and autonomy-supportive teaching and a predictor of students' future capacity to experience…

This article features a collaborative autoethnographic examination of three adolescent-researchers' digital literacies. The participatory design punctuates the role of the adolescent-researchers as they explored their meaning-making practices. Such collaborative research, which included three adolescents and their parents, not only resurfaces…

This essay argues for an expanded understanding of three of the Essential Attributes--Developmentally Responsiveness, Empowerment and Equity--established by "This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents" to address the unique needs of adolescents who are refugees. It provides a practical framework for readers to assist their…

Middle grades transitions pose challenges to many students who meet these tasks with varying levels of success. Contemporary developmental and strengths-based literature offers Hope Theory (Snyder, 2002), a research supported approach that can mitigate risks in school transitions. This article describes how middle grades educators can apply the…

Educators are often unaware of assets Mexican Indigenous children possess that originate from their cultural practices. Using Critical Latinx Indigeneities and Indigenous Heritage Saberes, our studies focus on three unique Indigenous learning communities that provide opportunities of empowerment for these students. We examine the experiences of…

The barriers to school attendance that affect young Aboriginal people in Australia are diverse, immense and well documented; however, except for a handful of studies, Aboriginal students' voices receive no platform for policy makers to hear them. In this paper, we present results from yarning circles about barriers to school attendance conducted…

The goal was to gain a deeper understanding of the extended use of student-designed games. 207 students (grades: eight, nine, eleven) from one school participated. They were randomly divided in Experimental (student-designed games) and Equivalent group (traditional instruction). Both experienced the same learning units (two, 12 sessions) over the…

Despite evidence that youths' literacy practices and identities are important contributors to literacy learning, studies of secondary literacy instruction often focus on understanding classroom storylines from the perspectives of teachers and schools. The purpose of this case study was to examine how one youth, Leo, shaped the storyline of his…

The purpose of this study was to explore, using the voices of diverse high school students, the classroom factors that are important for promoting classroom belonging and engagement. Thirty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with tenth grade students about classroom belonging and behavioral engagement in their favorite and least…

A growing body of research has suggested that teachers who give their students the opportunity to voice their opinions by purposefully negotiating the curriculum can improve engagement and realize a number of important affective goals. In this paper, we describe the study of one teacher, Jennifer, as she attempted to purposefully negotiate the…

Citizens Leadership Academy (CLA) in Ohio is preparing its middle schoolers for success in high school, college, and life. CLA is second among all public schools in the city on student growth. The school's eighth graders reach and surpass proficiency at a rate that is more than three times that of their peers across the city. Reading and math…

Despite the use of various anti-bullying programs, bullying continues to plague middle schools. However, there is an approach to bullying that complements other programs and can be easily integrated into course curriculum. This approach uses young adult novels to encourage adolescents to use perspective taking and empathy building through…

As middle school teachers, the authors want their students to develop voice and agency because they want them to be able to make productive decisions about how to approach mathematics, communicate mathematics, and use mathematics to interpret and transform the world in which they live. They use this article to present two vignettes that examine…

Formative assessment is a tool for learning that virtually every educator uses in the classroom to some extent. While teachers may be motivated to use formative assessment for a variety of reasons, its intended purpose is to be a tool for both teachers and students for teaching and learning, respectively. However, many teachers, even those with…

Gifted middle school students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades engaged with a community activism curriculum designed and implemented by the author, their gifted education facilitator, as part of their gifted programming. This authentic learning experience asked students to follow a creative problem-solving process that fostered thoughtful…