We examine effects of the pandemic on student attendance, course grades, and grade retention in North Carolina in 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 using descriptive and regression analyses. We find each outcome worsened on average in 2020-2021, with larger changes at the high end of the absence distribution, the low end of the grade distribution, and among…

Schools have an important role to play in adolescent suicide prevention. This article describes universal screenings for depression and suicidality as one component of the Signs of Suicide (SOS) program in middle and high schools following the suicide death of a student in the past few years. Of the students screened (N = 7,429), 11.0 percent of…

A gender gap persists in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Although females constitute half the total workforce in the United States, they make up just greater than a quarter of employees in STEM fields. In recent years, one approach to addressing the gender gap in STEM has involved middle grades science…

The current study examined the measurement invariance (MI) of the Georgia Brief School Climate Inventory (GaBSCI) with a rural and predominately Hispanic sample (N = 413). The results present support for the one-factor structure and MI of the GaBSCI across genders and Spanish-speaking groups, but only partially for different school levels.

Civil, informed debate is essential for any healthy democracy. This is truer than ever judging from the often uncivil, fact-free public discourse one sees too often on television and social media. But does participation in formal debate training improve educational outcomes? While policy debaters historically have come from high-income public…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between middle school students' school burnout, problem-solving skills, peer relationships, and perceived school experiences and to determine the predictive power of perceived school experiences, problem-solving skills, and peer relationships on academic burnout. Method: The…

Background: Middle school victimization and problem behaviors often co-occur, but little is known about patterns of co-occurrence, or how long effects persist into adulthood. Objective: Drawing on general strain theory, this study aimed to identify sex-specific profiles of victimization and problem behaviors during middle school, and their…

Self-report scales have become the most widely used instruments to capture people's self-perception of creativity. Previous studies, however, provided only a limited insight into the psychometric properties of such measures. This paper reports an extensive item response theory (IRT) analysis of the Short Scale of Creative Self (SSCS): one of the…

Teacher leaders function in many roles in supporting school success including instructional leadership and supporting colleagues. This study draws upon the Status of the Social Studies Survey (Fitchett, P. G., and P. J. Vanfossen. 2013. 'Survey on the Status of Social Studies: Development and Analysis.' "Social Studies Research and…

The robotics context is suggested as a context that supports the learning of the sciences including mathematics. The present study investigates how the robotics context affects students' motivation for learning mathematics. Two groups of seventh-grade students participated in the present research: a robotics class (32 students) and a regular class…

Identity construction during adolescence constitutes a primary psychosocial developmental task. A growing body of research has addressed the importance of school education in fostering adolescents' identity formation and the skills they need to thrive. Although several studies aimed at defining the factors contributing to a coherent, stable, and…

Masculine ideology and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with student risk behaviors. With data from a sample of eighth-grade students, this study used hierarchical linear regression to examine the relationships between household ACEs, masculine ideology, and teacher-reported student risk behaviors. Results indicated that…

A growing body of research has suggested that teachers who give their students the opportunity to voice their opinions by purposefully negotiating the curriculum can improve engagement and realize a number of important affective goals. In this paper, we describe the study of one teacher, Jennifer, as she attempted to purposefully negotiate the…

The aim of this research is to investigate ability of sixth grade students' comprehension of the listened story text. The research is the survey type of quantitative research methods. The population of the study consisted of the sixth grade students of the middle schools in the city center of Yozgat, Turkey in the 2018-2019 academic years. A…

The purpose of this study is to explore the strength of relationships between 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students' scientific process skills and scientific creativity through structural equation modeling (SEM). For this purpose, data were collected from 353 students in grades 7-9 in Turkey. Scientific Process Skills and Scientific Creativity survey…