Justice-oriented teaching must address how classroom-based disciplinary learning is shaped by interactions among local practice "and" systems of privilege and oppression. Our work advances current scholarship on high-leverage practices [HLPs] by emphasizing the need for teaching practices that restructure power relations in classrooms…

An urban middle school goes through the transformation of becoming a university-supported lab school. Drawing upon design thinking principles, the planning team cultivates a sense of shared empathy, creative problem-solving, and an ethos of curiosity and learning in a collaborative environment.

This case study, framed within a school-university partnership, highlights the tensions inherent to employing design-based approaches for educational change. The case illustrates core tensions between an abductive, open-ended, design-based approach to change versus more traditional (deductive/inductive) approaches to managing change in schools.…

The tendency in urban schools is that teachers hold incomplete understandings about their students (by virtue of difference in cultural, race, language, and social class) is a lingering challenge since "Brown v. Board of Education" desegregated students in schools while also casting out large numbers of Black educators (Walker, 2013).…

The objective of our program is to foster and facilitate authentic research experiences in middle and high school science courses. We do so by providing students with a complete experience in scientific experimentation and communication. The centerpiece is a set of experiment modules in which students investigate the effects of toxic chemicals on…

This mixed methods study seeks to explore the relationships between teacher concerns, self-efficacy, and level of comfort with the implementation of drama-based instruction (DBI) within a large-scale initiative to increase learning opportunities through the arts. This study was embedded in a year-long professional development program during which…

Specialized middle level teacher education programs are an oft-purported lever for middle level education reform. Preparing teachers to enact "new" teaching practices that challenge the status quo in field placement schools presents a formidable challenge, however. This research investigated reform-oriented collaborative inquiry (ROCI),…

Recently, many local normal universities have been carrying out transformation and development project. Leshan Normal University, a local normal university, is prone to change traditional talents cultivation mode. By taking LSNU as an example, this paper attempts to make an exploration on constructing application-oriented talents training system…

This article presents Culturally Responsive Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (CRPBIS), the first framework to operationalize cultural responsiveness in the context of positive behavioral interventions and supports in the United States (Bal 2011). To develop the CRPBIS framework, the author first conducted a systematic review of…

Preparing students as 21st century learners is a key reform in education. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills developed a framework that identifies outcomes needed for successful implementation of rigorous standards. The Dual Language (DL) program was identified as a structure for reform with systems and practices which can be used to prepare…

Teaching in a democracy is challenging and filled with dilemmas that have no easy answers. For example, how do educators meet their responsibilities of teaching civic norms and dispositions while remaining nonpartisan? "Democratic Discord in Schools" features eight normative cases of complex dilemmas drawn from real events designed to…

The Full Service Schools (FSS) reform model is an inter-agency collaboration between the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), Choices, Inc., Insights Education Group and the DC Department of Mental Health. This comprehensive school reform model is based in the Response to Intervention paradigm and is designed to mitigate student academic…

Providence, Rhode Island, is one of those gritty eastern mill towns that wears its centuries-old history on its sleeve. Like many American cities, Providence is home to a struggling public school system with chronically low-performing schools. They include Roger Williams Middle, where last year only 17 percent of eighth-graders scored at or above…

In 2007, the physical education program at Sunnyside Middle School in Lafayette, Indiana, was in constant flux. Teacher turnover occurred annually, facilities were subpar, the curriculum was outdated, opportunities for professional development were rare, and most importantly, students lacked maximum movement opportunities in physical education. In…

Across the globe, progressive universities are embracing any number of MUVEs (multi-user virtual environments), 3D environments, and "immersive" virtual reality tools. And within the next few months, several universities are expected to test so-called "telepresence" videoconferencing systems from Cisco Systems and other leading…