This work focused on increasing Year 3 students' use of critical thinking and taking the "second-person perspective" (2ndPP) when interpreting and resolving life issues. Previous research indicated the Personal Viewpoints Pedagogy (PVP) elicited social thinking that exhibited strong perspective-taking and precursors to critical thinking…

In most general education classrooms in Germany, students with and without special educational needs are taught together. To support teachers in adapting instruction to these heterogeneous classrooms, we have developed learning progress assessment (LPA) and reading instructional materials, the "Reading Sportsman" (RS), in line with the…

Parents often select schools by relying on subjective assessments of quality made by other parents, which are increasingly becoming available through written reviews on school ratings websites. To identify relationships between review content and school quality, we apply recent advances in natural language processing to nearly half a million…

In a collaborative partnership between a public school district in the northeast United States and university faculty, social-emotional/behavioral (SEB) screening was implemented across the district at three elementary schools serving students in kindergarten through second grade. Although both parents and teachers served as informants in SEB…

This study examines how school-based personnel (i.e., principals, assistant principals, and school social workers) defined and engaged in collective leadership to support undocumented students. This instrumental, comparative case study explores their roles, relational processes, and the extent to which school-based personnel's relationships…

P-12 school districts may look for ways to evaluate teaching materials, resources, and practices in an attempt to make thoughtful instructional decisions - moving towards a balanced literacy approach. This study focused on a collaborative effort between a university and a partnership district to perform a literacy needs audit for grades K-5. The…

Across the U.S., educators face a common challenge: How can we help all students become strong readers and writers? In the author's state of Tennessee, many educators believe they have a reading crisis. Two-thirds of 3rd graders do not read and write on grade level as measured by the statewide assessment (Tennessee Department of Education, 2019a).…

Research Findings: The amount of time and type of program that children experience in early childhood settings may be associated with children's kindergarten-entry skills, or kindergarten readiness. Taking a person-centered perspective, in the present study, we examined the extent to which reliable and unique profiles of early childhood…

Universal screening is a critical component of school-based prevention systems. Screening data enable educators to target students for supplemental intervention, align resources to meet needs, and identify students who may be at risk for learning disabilities. One major requirement of the screening process is that all students are included to gain…

The importance of K-12 school leadership for student learning, teacher recruitment and retention, and school culture is well documented by research. Furthermore, there are compelling reasons for examining the connection between faith and educational leadership practice, a connection which should yield distinctive practices in faith-based schools.…

The COVID-19 pandemic widened existing educational inequities for Black and Latino students, students who are English learners, and students with disabilities. Research shows that family engagement has a positive impact on student outcomes; therefore, forging connections between schools and families as enrollment rebounds will be especially…

Educator's perceptions and use of a state-mandated kindergarten entry assessment (KEA), the Alaska Developmental Profile (ADP), were investigated using a mixed-methods approach with 233 educators representing 23 districts in the state of Alaska. Educators reported inconsistencies in the administration, implementation, perceptions, and use of the…

Word frequency is an important predictor of lexical-decision task performance. The current study further examined the role of this variable by exploring the influence of frequency trajectory. Frequency trajectory is measured by how often a word occurs in childhood relative to adulthood. Past research on the role of this variable in word…

Authentic, "messy data" contain variability that comes from many sources, such as natural variation in nature, chance occurrences during research, and human error. It is this messiness that both deters potential users of authentic data and gives data the power to create unique learning opportunities that reveal the nature of science…

The premise of this article is that studies of distributed leadership could benefit from further incorporation of institutional approaches to better understand complex reform demands facing school leaders working for instructional improvement. We begin by articulating the core components of a distributed perspective on leadership and of an…