The middle school concept, aimed at creating a more developmentally responsive learning environment for young adolescents, gained a stronghold in the later part of the 20th century. Proponents of this concept have argued continually for the holistic implementation of its six key characteristics if its benefits are to be realized. These…

Early adolescence marks a developmental period during which there is a window of opportunity to explicitly teach and make a significant difference in a young person's development of social and emotional competencies (SECs). All students can benefit from the inclusion of SECs and failing to develop such SECs can result in poor outcomes in several…

The authors outline the potent relationship between continuing professional development (CPD), teacher efficacy, and student learning outcomes in the context of a major reform of middle years teacher work in Queensland, Australia. The authors explore core features of effective teacher CPD, including content focus, active learning, coherence,…

The introduction of middle schooling in Australia has brought about changes to the working conditions of many teachers including finding themselves in teacher teams. The formation of such teams has been identified as critical to Australian middle school reform with teacher teams underpinning several of the fundamental components of a middle school…

The success or failure of a school reform can be measured by whether the reform has become an accepted, effective, and sustainable part of the school's culture. For example, as the National Middle School Association (2003) argued, "new programs must become integral to the school culture" (p. 11) before a school can call itself a…

As a new reform in Australian education, middle schooling has been gaining momentum. The rationale behind middle schooling is to bridge the traditional primary-high school gap and provide a more developmentally appropriate educational experience for young adolescents. Middle schooling in the USA has gone through a "boom-to-bust" cycle…

Three well-established issues for educational reform to insert middle schooling into the traditional primary-secondary tiers are (a) lack of preservice training of specialist middle school teachers, (b) the absence of clear positive educational outcomes linked to the promotion of middle schooling policy as a philosophy of teaching, and (c) the ad…