The purpose of this study was to determine the impact that meaningful watershed educational experiences (MWEE) had on the academic achievement of middle school students. A quantitative, ex post facto causal-comparative design was used. The sample population consisted of 1067 8th-grade students across four middle schools within the Pennsylvania…

Flipped classroom learning methods have been gaining a lot of popularity in recent years. Educators have recorded many mixed results about the effectiveness of this method to achieve superior concept retention in students. Although there has been lot of research published about flipped learning, very little is known how this method affects the…

This study employed a quantitative experimental correlational (action research) design utilizing Pearson's r correlation coefficient to determine whether or not there was a statistically significant relationship between students' socioeconomic status and having a diagnosed disability at one economically disadvantaged public, rural, co-educational…

Personalized Learning Environments (PLEs) are student experiences where the pace of learning and the instructional approach are optimized for the needs of each student. Standards-aligned learning objectives, instructional approaches, and instructional content (and their sequencing) may all vary based on learner needs and interests. Learning…

It is not known how school leaders describe their own technology leadership competencies at the upper elementary and middle school levels. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study is to describe what technology leadership competencies are present in assistant principals and principals of grades 4-8 in the state of Pennsylvania. This study…

Little is known about the naturalistic development of mindfulness in adolescence and how it relates to changes in emotional well-being. The current longitudinal study examined the development of one dimension of mindfulness, nonreactivity to difficult inner experience (or in more colloquial terms, being able to notice, but "take a step…

Plate tectonics is the organizing paradigm of geosciences, but it is also conceptually complex, and students often struggle with developing a system level understanding of the earth. This article reports on research designed to create a characterization of the different levels of sophistication around plate tectonics in the form of a learning…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic affected the social and psychological well-being of early adolescent schoolchildren. Participants were 309 youth (51% female, average age = 12.38 years) enrolled in the sixth, seventh, or eighth grades of a single middle school located in…

A qualitative case study design was used to explore the use of the think-aloud reading comprehension strategy in the implementation of math journals. The goal of the study was to determine if a teacher's direct instruction in the implementation of think-alouds improved "at risk" eighth-graders' abilities to answer word problems more…

Providing students with the opportunity to generate new content and share it with a wide audience invites students to compose texts with the care and conviction that cannot be duplicated when writing solely for the teacher. This piece documents one teacher's effort to engage 99 eighth graders with an authentic writing opportunity: the…

This study provides initial evidence supporting intended score interpretations for the purpose of assessing opportunity to learn (OTL) via an online teacher log. MyiLOGS yields 5 scores related to instructional time, content, and quality. Based on data from 46 middle school classes, the evidence indicated that (a) MyiLOGS has high usability, (b)…

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…

This study investigates the influence of structural transitions to high school on adolescents' friendship networks and academic grades from 6th through 12th grade, in a direct comparison of students who do and do not transition. We utilize data from 14,462 youth in 51 networks from 26 districts (Promoting School-Community Partnerships to Enhance…

Purpose is an important aspect of character development and thriving in adolescence; yet, there is little research explaining how it develops or how contexts such as school can support its development. In this study, 1,304 eighth graders completed a survey that measured purpose as the integration of 2 dimensions-- beyond-the-self life goal…

As federal mandates continue to emphasize the use of standardized tests, academic research is needed to determine if reading intervention programs are helping to close the achievement gap between struggling readers and their grade level peers. Although previous research indicated that reading intervention can be an effective tool for increasing…