Advancing in key courses in ninth grade is an early, crucial step in preparing for college. Students who miss academic targets early in high school may not be ready to go to college 4 years later. In the United States, when students fail key courses in ninth grade, they may struggle to catch up to their peers who successfully took and passed these…

Teachers of diverse classes often include different forms of support in their teaching to accommodate the varying learner needs, while some benefit from the services of Learning Support Educators (LSE) who manage the learning needs of students who experience barriers to learning. With the onset of lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the…

Background: It is well established that successful learning with multimedia is challenging, especially for younger learners. Aims: It was investigated whether students would profit from instructional support regarding the use of multimedia learning strategies. Sample: Participants were high school students in 8th, 9th, and 10th grade (N = 168).…

The aim of this study was to explore trajectories of teachers' instructional support as perceived by students during a national initiative to develop lower secondary schools. Grade eight and nine students (N = 815) from nine Norwegian schools participated in three waves of data collection within one-and-a-half academic years. Growth mixture model…

Previous studies on poverty within the gifted population have shown that economically vulnerable gifted students are underrepresented in gifted programs. Moreover, the majority of published studies on this topic were conducted in Western cultures. We explored the psychological, cognitive, academic, social, and environmental supports for…

Resilience can be viewed as successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances (e.g. poverty). This article reports on an investigation of which the primary aim was to establish how additional educational support enhances adolescents' resilience and academic performance. A quantitative approach was followed using two schools.…

Engagement is considered key in measuring student development, offering valuable clues into the adaptation, motivation and participation of students. This article sheds light on the multifaceted construct of engagement and its implications for first-generation migrant adolescents. Participant interviews and observations were conducted to…

The transition from middle into high school can be perilous for some students. High school freshmen fail at an alarming rate. In a general sense, the environment, expectations, structure, and culture of high schools are different from middle schools. However, school leaders can implement transition programs that may promote success of 9th graders.…

This paper is a retrospective descriptive content analysis of all identified school documents for 90 ninth-grade students with a history of truancy, collected from two Swedish compulsory schools. The study investigates individual, school, and psychosocial factors in the documents and three analyses are presented: (1) a general analysis of the…

In this longitudinal study, we investigated the role of word reading and mathematical difficulties measured in 9th grade as factors for receiving educational support for learning in upper secondary education in Grades 10 to 12 (from ages 16 to 19) and furthermore as predictors of dropout from upper secondary education within 5 years after…

Through a 5-year qualitative case study of an inclusive high school, we examined students' experiences of self-determination. We conducted analyses of multiple interviews with students, parents, teachers, guidance staff, and administrators using grounded theory methods and guided by self-determination conceptual frameworks. Explicit expectations…

Case studies of two high schools that have been turned around from failing to successful show different ways in which failing high schools can be made to succeed. Both high schools concentrated on first helping incoming freshman, and both reforms were driven by data. They differed in staffing and the focus of their first year of reform.

Compensatory pedagogy is in theory a strategy used to manage social and cultural diversity (Sleeter, 2007) by providing extra resources or special treatment for so-called deprived groups. A problem with this particular kind of approach to social and cultural diversity is that it lacks critical awareness of the way social differences (i.e. race,…

Recent statistics suggest that only 56% of Black students and 55% of Latino students who enter the ninth grade graduate with a high school diploma four years later, and only 12% to 14% graduate having met the requirements to attend a state university. The reasons most often cited for those statistics are boredom and lack of engagement. Creating…

For big urban districts, it can be slippery work to catch and hold students who are falling off track at a point that derails too many graduations: the transition from 8th to 9th grade. This article reports that the Chicago school district is putting a suite of new data reports into the hands of those who teach and counsel its 30,000 freshmen this…