Elementary school teachers' math anxiety has been found to play a role in their students' math achievement. The current study addresses the role of teacher math anxiety on ninth-grade students' math achievement and the mediating factors underlying this relationship. Using data from the National Mindset Study, we find that higher teacher math…

Based on data drawn from audio recordings of a 9th grade female English teacher in Southern California and her interactions with students in her classroom, I examined how she represents the thinking and voices of her students as her students during confrontation and conflict. Analysis demonstrates how the projected ventriloquation of her students'…

This article describes how participants in the California Teacher Inquiry Network learn the art of making their invisible thinking processes visible, helping them see more clearly that they have internal resources to help students master similar kinds of thinking processes.

We know little about the challenges districts and teachers face when establishing Ethnic Studies courses. In one school district, variation in teachers' Ethnic Studies knowledge impeded the production of curricula and its implementation. This study examines how Ethnic Studies teachers responded to the problems of differential knowledge and…

This dissertation explored the roles schools can play in the successful outcomes of large carnivore or keystone reintroduction projects. Schools are more than centers for knowledge acquisition--they connect their community and disseminate information quickly to a wide audience. This study took place in California's Eastern Sierra Nevada, a…

This qualitative design based research study examined the Connected Learning theoretical framework coupled with academic language scaffolds for Long Term English Learners (LTELs) in a secondary public school setting. The participants of this study were students that have been in the United States for more than six years and have yet to be…

As advanced technology increasingly infiltrated into classroom, the flipped classroom has come to light in secondary educational settings. The flipped classroom is a new instructional approach that intends to flip the traditional teacher-centered classroom into student centered. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of the…

In California, at the time of this study, the CAHSEE determined if a student will graduate with a high school diploma or receive a certificate of completion of high school requirements. Although students may have completed all their high school credits, if they do not pass the CAHSEE, then the student will not receive a high school diploma or a…

The author examined the effects of teacher caring, teacher content explanations, and teacher interest promotion on Latino students' interest, self-efficacy, and achievement in mathematics. Participants in the year-long study were 326 Latino 9th- and 10th-grade students attending a large urban high school in southern California. Teacher variables…

Commercial publishers have shaped reading and writing instruction in American schools through their interpretations of state-developed reading and writing standards and standards-aligned materials, which teachers then implement in English classes, including those serving multilingual learners. This paper uses microethnographic discourse analysis…

The aim of this thesis is to investigate and present the status of student synthesis with color coded formula writing for grade level six through twelve, and to make recommendations for educators to teach writing structure through a color coded formula system in order to increase classroom engagement and lower students' affect. The thesis first…

Exergames (active video games that require kinesthetic movement) played in proximity to other players or against a gaming machine have been linked to positive increases in cognitive functioning. This study tested to see if remote exergame play over the Internet had an impact similar to exergames that are played in proximity. The study shows that…

Too often, students enter our classrooms with insufficient knowledge of physical science. As a result, they have a difficult time understanding content in texts, lectures, and laboratory activities. This lack of background knowledge can have an impact on their ability to ask questions and wonder--both key components of inquiry. In this article,…

The purpose of this study was to discover what teaching strategies were utilized by Special Day Class (SDC) teachers to prepare their 9-12 grade students to pass a course in Algebra 1 and the mathematics section of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). This study used a mixed methodology involving a quantitative survey and qualitative…

While many of the concepts and approaches that comprise student-centered learning have deep roots in learning theory, the cognitive sciences, and youth and child development, empirical research on student-centered learning's impact in K-12 classrooms remains limited. This report offers highlights from three studies commissioned by Nellie Mae,…