What do children actually carry away from participating in planned activities in natural areas such as those in outdoor camps and schools? Prior research has seldom been rigorous in establishing participants' connection to, knowledge of, and orientation toward nature before intervention, followed by a clear specification of what range of…

Beginning learners of English progress through the same stages to acquire language. However, the length of time each student spends at a particular stage may vary greatly. Under the current educational policies, ELL students are expected to participate in the general education curriculum while developing their proficiency in the English language.…

An important, but as yet unresolved pedagogical question is whether discovery-oriented or direct instruction methods lead to greater learning and transfer. We address this issue in a study with 101 fourth and fifth grade students that contrasts two distinct instructional methods. One is a blend of discovery and direct instruction called…

Acting out behaviors is a hindrance to learning across the country. The school-wide positive behavior support (SWPBS) model is a behaviorally-based systems approach to addressing problem behaviors in our school today. The problem this study is designed to address is the issue that student misbehaviors and disruptions cause a loss of valuable…

The development and psychometric qualities of a measure using teacher judgment to rate performance in reading comprehension for narrative text is described--the Rating Scales for Academic Skills-Reading Comprehension Narrative (RSAS-RCN). Sixty-five teachers from the third, fourth, and fifth grades of 8 elementary schools completed the measure on…

In 2 experiments the authors investigated whether assigning a perspective to middle school students prior to reading a long informational text would improve their reading comprehension. Pretest-posttest control group designs were employed in both experiments, in Experiment 1 (n = 146 fifth- and sixth-grade students) and in Experiment 2 (n = 83…

Class size and student achievement have been debated for decades. The vast amount of research on this topic is either conflicting or inconclusive. There are large and small scale studies that support both sides of this dilemma (Achilles, Nye, Boyd-Zaharias, Fulton, & Cain, 1994; Glass & Smith, 1979; Slavin, 1989). Class size reduction is a…

As learning technologies proliferate, it is important for research to address how to best align instruction to educational goals. For example, recent evidence indicates that working collaboratively may have unique benefits for facilitating the acquisition of conceptual understanding, as opposed to procedural fluency (Mullins, Rummel & Spada,…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate the effect of prekindergarten attendance on boys' and girls' standardized reading achievement scores in third and fifth grade. The thrust for more emphasis on increased information regarding the impact that prekindergarten has on standardized test results, both short-term and long-term, is…

Like many states throughout the nation, Pennsylvania is in the midst of major reforms to its teacher evaluation system. Under the new system, the state will base annual evaluations on several measures, including supervisor observations using the Framework for Teaching (FFT) and, for many teachers, their contributions to student achievement growth…

This study examines the roles of emotionally supportive teacher-child interactions and child characteristics (aggressive-disruptive behavior and low peer social preference) in first-, third, and fifth-grade children's perceptions of teacher closeness and sense of peer community. Results from a series of multilevel models suggest that emotionally…

This study is relevant to parents, private organizations, and the educational system interested in discovering whether charter school students perform better academically than traditional public elementary school students. The Pennsylvania System of School Assessment data were used to analyze and compare student performance in grades 3-5 from two…

School leaders face increased pressure to identify instructional and administrative practices that increase student achievement. However, achievement gaps persist between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged student groups. This study highlighted relationships between ability grouping and academic achievement in a suburban school district.…

This study examined how the use of teacher think-alouds influenced and transferred to the reading comprehension and metacognition of seventh grade middle school social studies students in two Reading Apprenticeship classrooms. The researcher conducted classroom observations at a middle school in a mid-size suburban and rural school district in…

Despite the ever-increasing number of online professional development (OPD) programs, relatively few studies have been conducted to examine the efficacy of such programs for teachers and students. This manuscript presents findings from an impact study of OPD courses in fractions, algebraic thinking, and measurement on 79 fifth grade teachers'…