Background: The Pennsylvania Youth Survey (PAYS) is administered biennially to adolescents; it covers knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors about risk and protective factors. Purpose: This study explored 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students' attitudes and beliefs about current trends regarding drugs, alcohol, and mental health. Methods: We asked…

The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which teachers in one high performing Southwestern Pennsylvania Middle School view the model and use of Professional Learning Community teams in their school with an existing survey instrument. Twenty-three of twenty-four teachers participated in this voluntary mail survey. The researcher used…

Schools have gone through educational reforms having various focuses on curriculum changes, consolidation, open classrooms, mastery learning, decentralization, shared decisionmaking, legislative mandates and controls, high expectations, integrated thematic instruction, professional development, technology integration, and standards with…

Access to a quality education is unevenly mapped by the demographic context of the communities in which public school students live. A growing body of research suggests that this geographic effect deeply challenges the goal of equalizing educational opportunities. This paper explores the relationship between students' neighborhood characteristics…

Although critical ethnographers have explored in some depth the ways that social critique informs how youth assess their schooling experiences, the implications of social critique by educators themselves have been of much less interest. Yet, numerous professional educational movements have been wrought from social critique or, at the very least,…