We used a grounded theory approach to investigate and describe the learning of middle school students when they carry out mathematical activities (in the classroom or out of it) and explore mathematical objects and relations using mobile phones. We found that a web of conditions and consequences could be related to the students' learning when they…

To gain a better understanding of teachers' beliefs about, perceptions of, and classroom practices using STEM integration, a multi-case case study was conducted with three middle school teachers. These teachers were purposefully selected from a pool of teachers involved in a year-long professional development module on STEM integration to…

This technical report describes the process of development and piloting of reading comprehension measures that are appropriate for seventh-grade students as part of an online progress screening and monitoring assessment system, http://easycbm.com. Each measure consists of an original fictional story of approximately 1,600 to 1,900 words with 20…

This dynamic resource details the philosophy, rationale, and implementation of choice-based authentic art education in elementary and middle schools. To do the work of artists, children need opportunities to behave, think, and perform as artists. The heart of this curriculum is to facilitate independent learning in studio centers designed to…

The authors unpack a unit in which students were asked to consider the question, "Who and what is an American?" The activity originated with a discussion of 6 fictional profiles; students were asked to place these people along a continuum from "least American" to "most American." The resulting discussions broadened…

This article explores the ways that students in a humanities class talked about, researched, and disrupted homophobia at Jones School, a public combined middle school and high school in a small New England town. It includes strategies that move beyond discussions of right and wrong to a place of critical inquiry and support for the human rights of…

Achievement goal theory distinguishes between mastery goals (the goals of developing competence) and performance goals (the goals of demonstrating competence) [Ames [1992] "Journal of Educational Psychology" 84: 261-271]. In this study, we employed this theory aiming to better understand why adolescents' motivation to learn science…

This qualitative study was based on grounded theory and used purposive sampling for selecting participants. The sample for this study included 12 of the 16 superintendents in this region. This rural Appalachian region has historically outperformed the remainder of the southeastern state on reading and math achievement tests at the elementary and…

The current study was designed to examine the ways in which perceived behavioral norms among grade mates and school social climate vary across the transition to middle school. The main goals of the study were to test whether Latino students may be more sensitive to the school social climate than White students and whether perceived behavioral…

The purpose of this study was to explore a cognitive approach to analyzing students' written responses to mathematics performance assessments to inform learning, instruction, and assessment design and development. The existing data used in this study were seventh grade students' written responses to, and item scores on, four released mathematics…

Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) was used to elicit salient behavioral, normative, and control beliefs of children without disabilities toward playing with a hypothetical peer with a disability in general physical education. Participants were 350 elementary and middle school students who completed two questionnaires. Questionnaires were…

The development of an equally beneficial and efficient teaching and learning system implies the application of multiple educational theories and methods. One method that had become prominent throughout the years is ability tracking. Based on this method, elementary and middle-school students are grouped into levels that are designated to…

Alternatives to vertical scales are compared for measuring longitudinal academic growth and for producing school-level growth measures. The alternatives examined were empirical cross-grade regression, ordinary least squares and logistic regression, and multilevel models. The student data used for the comparisons were Arabic Grades 4 to 10 in…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore why some low-income minority students were academically successful in school using a three-tiered approach to research including individual student interviews, classroom observations, and photographs and follow up interviews on photographs to identify factors contributing to academic…

This study reports middle school astronomy classes that implemented photographs and classroom response systems (CRSs) in a discussion-oriented pedagogy with a curriculum unit for the topics of "day-night" and "cause of seasons." In the new pedagogy, a teacher presented conceptual questions with photographs, her 6th grade…