Attending to students' thinking and using it to inform instruction has been shown to be an effective and equitable teaching practice. Research on teachers' noticing of thinking conceptualizes noticing as a cognitive process, while work on noticing for equity treats noticing as culturally situated but primarily focuses on participation. Drawing on…

In this essay, Lisa Sandlos and Rennie Tang investigate the potential for movement to play a more significant role in schoolyard design processes to enhance the physical literacy of middle school youth. This research responds to a need for prioritizing physical literacy for historically marginalized youth whose movement needs are often different…

Latine parents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in the United States (US) often face challenges when supporting their adolescents' education in subjects like math. Guided by strengths-based, culturally grounded frameworks, this study explored the challenges Latine parents faced when supporting adolescents' math learning and how they leveraged…

Traditionally, learning among young students has taken place within structured, physical classroom settings. However, the emergence of distance learning has introduced a diverse range of learning methods, including online, hybrid, and blended approaches. When the COVID-19 pandemic led to extended delays in in-person instruction, use of educational…

Secondary course assignment substantially determines a teacher's day-to-day work life, incentivizing them to realize their personal desires, which prior work shows tend to be working with more advanced students. Teachers have varying abilities to enact these desires, potentially due to their political capital, which is largely influenced by…

Growth mindset has been shown to predict academic achievement in a variety of student populations, though the strength of the relationship can vary depending on the characteristics of the students examined. Using a large-scale sample of middle school students from a diverse district in the United States, we examine how multiple facets of students'…

This qualitative case study investigated the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) by sixth-grade teachers in diverse educational settings within the Central Valley of California. The research focused on identifying the practical successes and ongoing challenges faced by educators in elementary and middle school…

The return to in-person schooling post-COVID-19 pandemic has brought increased pressure on educators to ensure academic success for students. This study examines the school climate of 40 elementary and middle schools in California's Central Valley and its impact on academic performance and attendance, comparing pre-pandemic (2018-2019) with…

Despite recent calls to more fully incorporate multimodal perspectives into literacies research, there is still limited scholarship examining how students critically engage in reading activities by drawing on embodied practices. Racially and linguistically minoritized students are particularly disadvantaged by dominant logocentric and…

Background and Context: Differences in children's and adolescents' initial attitudes about computing and other STEM fields may form during middle school and shape decisions leading to career entry. Early emerging differences in career interest may propagate a lack of diversity in computer science and programming fields. Objective: Though middle…

Newsela contracted with LearnPlatform by Instructure (LearnPlatform), a third-party edtech research company, to examine the relationship between Newsela ELA usage and outcomes for students. LearnPlatform designed the study to satisfy Level II requirements (Moderate Evidence) according to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The study included…

In October 2023, the California Department of Education released test scores for all students in Grades 3-8 and 11 for the 2022-23 school year. These results represent an opportunity to analyze whether and to what extent student learning has rebounded after the dramatic declines in scores resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and related school…

Elementary students' literacy skills are decreasing nationwide ("The Nation's Report Card," 2019). This is concerning because as literacy skills slip, the literacy demands for American workers are steadily increasing (OECD, 2013). Unfortunately, adding to the situation is the fact that students' attitudes towards reading are worsening…

Trauma, including abandonment, neglect, poverty, or abuse, affects students. Because of this, a classroom community is vulnerable to the sheer unpredictability of behaviors. Students who have experienced trauma need support in order to create a classroom community where they can thrive and learn. This study examines a Whole-Child Approach…

Recent studies have posited that K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education should go beyond traditional subject silos and take an interdisciplinary approach that integrates these core subjects into a cohesive curriculum to foster authentic problem-solving skills. The purpose of this study was to field test one of five…