The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how kindergarten teachers describe their use, as well as the effectiveness and value, of developmentally appropriate practices for teaching kindergarten curriculum in a mid-size urban school district in New Jersey. It was not known how kindergarten teachers describe their use, as…

The purpose of this study is to understand the thoughts of teachers on the Amistad Integrated Units and the influence of the culturally relevant units on Black female students. The researcher identified if culturally relevant pedagogy influenced teacher instructional practices and the classroom academic experiences of Black female students. The…

In this article, Nicole Joseph, Meseret Hailu, and Jamaal Matthews argue that Black girls' oppression in the United States is largely related to the dehumanization of their personhood, which extends to various institutions, including secondary schools and, especially, mathematics classrooms. They contend that one way to engage in educational…

Language, procedure, and identity are L2 teaching/learning essentials that may promote agency and stimulate synergies among knowledge, practice, and reflection (Diaz Maggioli, 2014; Duff, 2012). This meta-report presents three studies that collectively advance agency and endorse linguistic foundations as enrichment, differentiated instruction as…

This mixed methods research studied the effect of the Journey Method with Google Maps, a memorization strategy for memorizing informational text, on the recallability levels in high school biology students at an urban high school in Paterson, New Jersey. This memorization technique was based on an ancient memorization strategy, called the method…

The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, hip hop of the 1980s and early 1990s, and spoken word poetry have each attempted to initiate the dialogical process outlined by Paulo Freire as necessary in overturning oppression. Each art form has done this by critically engaging with the world and questioning dominant systems of power. However,…

Balanced literacy has been proposed as a compromise or middle ground between philosophical approaches to reading instruction that stress teaching of word recognition and those that stress construction of meaning. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the READ 180 balanced literacy supplementary instruction program on…

Engagement and motivation have become increasingly important to mathematics education, particularly as concern about the educational success of students in the US grows. As a way to describe the patterns cognitive, behavioral, and affective engagement of students, Goldin, Epstein, Warner, and Schorr (2011) developed the theoretical concept of…

Research Findings: This paper reports on children's use of science materials in preschool classrooms during their free choice time. Baseline observations showed that children and teachers rarely spend time in the designated science area. An intervention was designed to "market" the science center by introducing children to 1 science…

It's easy for professional learning communities to become stalled at the stage of collegial discussions about improving teaching practice. The authors explore what spurs communities to progress beyond talk to collective action that brings change. Smith, Wilson, and Corbett participated in the creation of teacher learning communities in urban…

This study examined the perceptions of Language Arts teachers, Mathematics teachers, and administrators in four high schools in a large urban New Jersey school district regarding a standards-based teacher evaluation system implemented in 2003 adapted and modeled on "Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching" (Danielson,…

The decline of artistic expression in late childhood is an ongoing and well identified problem in the field of art education, yet it has been generally accepted as a natural occurrence and irreversible attribute of normative development. However, this foreclosure of artistic learning has serious implications to the concerns of emotional…

Master teachers working in real urban classrooms have shared their exemplary teaching practices in an After-School Pedagogical Laboratory (L-TAPL), a program for elementary students that aims to improve the achievement of urban students and the competence of their teachers. The L-TAPL enrichment program curriculum includes language arts, math,…

The "International Society for the Social Studies Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. It contains the following papers: (1) Teacher Perceptions of Authentic Pedagogy: A Case Study of Professional Development in an African American High School's…

In 1999-2000, over one-third of all students in the 30 Abbott districts spoke a native language other than English, and more than one-tenth were considered limited English proficient (LEP). The proportions of LEP students varied considerably across the districts, but they comprised between 5% and 29% of total enrollments in 18 of the districts.…