To develop as writers, students require regular practice writing and examples of quality texts that can serve as guides for their own writing. Reading like a writer (RLW) is a specific way of reading that can benefit student writers. The purpose of this basic interpretive qualitative study was to examine the writing decisions of 19 eighth grade…

Discipline disparities are driven by classroom teachers' decisions to refer a student for disciplinary action "and" by school administrators' decisions in response to those referrals (Amos, 2021). In this qualitative study, the researcher will explore educators' perceptions on the disparity in discipline referrals and evaluate…

This study investigates how 11- to 12-year-old students construct data-based decision trees using data cards for classification purposes. We examine the students' heuristics and reasoning during this process. The research is based on an eight-week teaching unit during which students labeled data, built decision trees, and assessed them using test…

Adolescence is a key developmental period for developing and strengthening brain circuits that underlie effective decision-making skills, which profoundly impact lifelong health and academic, professional, and economic achievement. But decision-making skills are learned rather than inherent. School presents an ideal environment for the direct…

This article presents the findings from a yearlong narrative inquiry of teacher enactment of state mandated curricular reform in middle level social studies. Four brief narratives and cross-narrative themes are presented to provide examples of the complexities of teacher decision making and positionality when implementing new reforms. Analysis…

This study applied Simulation Investigation for Empirical Network Analysis to disentangle friendship selection and influence regarding the academic achievement of Chinese adolescents in a 3-year longitudinal study of 880 middle school students (400 girls, Year 1 mean age = 13.33) and 525 high school students (284 girls, mean age = 16.45). Both…

The purpose of this intrinsic qualitative case study was to understand the meaning-making experiences and experienced-based decision making that occur among middle school girls while playing the tabletop role playing game Dungeons & Dragons through the online videoconferencing platform zoom. table-top games have been played in some form for…

The world of K-12 public education was one area of society that was directly impacted by the introduction of COVID-19 and emergency remote teaching. Teachers and districts alike responded in the way that they determined was best for their students, and the response of teachers at Little Middle School was no different. This narrative inquiry seeks…

The past two decades have seen a growing de-professionalization of teaching. Combating this educational climate requires music teacher education programs to prioritize both critical pedagogical practices and policy knowhow in order to reestablish a focus on relational engagements and the navigation of the complex tensions lived daily in schools.…

Most of the world's population believe in the idea of learning styles (Dekker et al., 2012; Howard-Jones, 2014; Macdonald et al., 2017; Torrijos-Muelas et al., 2021). The theory of learning styles conveys individuals learn best in a certain way (e.g., visual, auditory, or kinesthetic). An extension of this theory is the hypothesis that an…

In middle grades education, advisory programs are structured, intentional, and supportive environments that assign 10 to 20 students to an adult advisor (most often a teacher) who serves as a mentor, advocate, and guide throughout their middle school years. Advisory programs promote community and personalized support in middle schools. In addition…

Background: School choice models assume that parents and children have varied educational preferences and that catering to those preferences will result in superior educational experiences for all. Yet, we still know relatively little about how parents identify the best school "fit" for their children and families. This question is…

Purpose: The importance of teacher leadership in enhancing school outcomes is recognized, but there remains a scarcity of research addressing the conditions for principals to nurture such leadership. This study examined how school contextual factors, i.e. faculty trust and academic emphasis, moderate the impact of principals' distributed…

This study was conducted while 9th grade students learn to solve inequalities and seeks to understand their approach to solving problems with a real-life context. Specifically, the aim is to understand: (1) What are the main characteristics of the students' approaches to the proposed problems? (2) What is the impact of the real context on the…

In an increasingly data-driven society, making decisions with data is a requirement not only for research scientists but also for navigating life more generally (Kjelvik & Schultheis, 2019). An informed citizenry must be prepared to discover patterns, predict outcomes, make decisions with data, and evaluate data-based claims for legitimacy and…