The conception of Global Learning Communities (GLCs) was researched to discover potential benefits of the use of online technologies that facilitated communication and scientific data sharing outside of the normal classroom setting. 1,419 students in 635 student groups began the instructional unit. Students represented the classrooms of 33…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the implementation of a whole school one-to-one iPod Touch project in a middle school in the southeastern United States. While some focused studies have been undertaken in this new field of learning, there has been little research to date that documents activity within a whole school implementation…

This study investigates the potential of a digital game that overlays popular game-play mechanics with formal physics representations and terminology to support explicit learning and exploration of Newtonian mechanics. The analysis compares test data, survey data, and observational data collected during implementations in Taiwan and the United…

Three million students in the United States are classified as gifted, yet little is known about the effectiveness of traditional gifted and talented (G&T) programs. In theory, G&T programs might help high-achieving students because they group them with other high achievers and typically offer specially trained teachers and a more advanced…

International comparisons have highlighted that the U.S. mathematics curriculum, both in terms of curriculum influences (e.g., textbooks, standards) and actual instruction, is broad and shallow. Standards-based reform is explicitly designed to improve coherence and reduce redundancy across grades. This article evaluates the redundancy of…

This study is to investigate the effectiveness of using mobile devices such as iPhone/iPad/android phone/tablet to facilitate mobile learning in aural skills. The application "Auralbook" was designed in 2011 by an engineer/musician to use mobile devices to learn aural skills. This application enables students to sing, record, clap and…

Spurred by a succession of reports pointing to the importance of algebra as a gateway to college, educators and policymakers embraced "algebra for all" policies in the 1990s and began working to ensure that students take the subject by 9th grade or earlier. A trickle of studies suggests that in practice, though, getting all students past…

Although the number of students who complete high school continues to rise, dramatic differences in school success remain across racial/ethnic groups. The current study addressed Hispanic adolescents' academic performance by investigating the relationships of parental involvement, culturally responsive teaching, sense of school belonging, and…

This study investigated U.S. ethnic majority and minority youth's perceptions of fair and unfair treatment by authorities and evaluations of three situations of interracial exclusion (N = 685). Findings revealed that older adolescents who reported fair treatment by authorities were more likely to perceive wrongfulness in interracial exclusion…

In an experimental study (N = 209), the authors compared the effects of exposure to typical middle-school written science content when presented in the context of the scientific discovery narrative and when presented in a more traditional nonnarrative format on 7th and 8th grade students in the United States. The development of texts was…

The "GeoLiteracy for English language learners" (ELLs) program is a curriculum that enhances reading and writing skills while teaching geography content for US students in kindergarten through eighth grades. The program includes 85 lesson plans that address all US national geography standards, a quarter of which address environmental…

Films are multimodal, often memorable, and change one's way of thinking. Films provide narratives and visual metaphors that function as tools for one's imagination and learning. No other film has amplified this phenomenon in the United States more than the "Star Wars" Cycle. "Star Wars" exemplifies the multidimensionality of…

A self-report assessment scale of school connectedness was validated in this study based on the data from middle-school children in a northeastern state of the United States (n = 145). The scale was based on the School Bonding Model (Morita, 1991), which was derived reductively from the social control (bond) theory (Hirschi, 1969). This validation…

For those who are committed to Lesson Study as a means of developing teacher capacity and bringing about innovation of mathematics teaching and learning, there is value in looking at related strategies, now widely in use in several countries, which aim to achieve similar goals. In this paper, three related strategies will be examined alongside…

This article utilizes the 1999 TIMSS-R data from U.S. states and districts to explore the consequences of variation in opportunities to learn specific mathematics content. Analyses explore the relationship between classroom mathematics content coverage and student achievement as measured by the TIMSS-R international mathematics scaled score.…