Lack of reading motivation impedes upper elementary and secondary school students' willingness to improve critical reading skills and strategies to be successful in school. Struggling readers often show a negative attitude towards reading tasks and manifest low motivation to read. Although the importance of motivation is clear, there is limited…

Observational methods are increasingly being used in classrooms to evaluate the quality of teaching. Operational procedures for observing teachers are somewhat arbitrary in existing measures and vary across different instruments. To study the effect of different observation procedures on score reliability and validity, we conducted an experimental…

The aim of this thesis is to investigate and present the status of student synthesis with color coded formula writing for grade level six through twelve, and to make recommendations for educators to teach writing structure through a color coded formula system in order to increase classroom engagement and lower students' affect. The thesis first…

Alaska's School Climate and Connectedness Survey (SCCS) is a statewide survey developed by American Institutes for Research (AIR) in partnership with the Association of Alaska School Boards (AASB) in 2006. Through student and staff responses, it measures positive school climate, how connected students feel to adults and peers, social and emotional…

The study examined the impact of Teach for America (TFA) and The New Teacher Project's Teaching Fellows (TF) programs on the mathematics achievement of students in grades 6-12. TFA and TF provide alternative routes to teacher certification and aim to provide high-quality teachers to schools in low-income areas. TFA and TF were studied separately,…

Recently much have been invested in the interactive whiteboard educational technology in Turkey. The government is still wishful to spread it to schools of all levels. This study tries to understand teachers' and students' attitudes toward interactive whiteboard technology along with differences in attitudes resulting from some demographic…

The authors intended to (a) identify the association between gender or grade level and teachers' homework (HW) feedback and (b) examine the relationship between teachers' HW feedback, HW-related behaviors (e.g., amount of HW completed), and academic achievement. Four hundred fifty-four students (Grades 5-12) participated in this study. The results…

Research on factors that may promote engagement is hampered by the absence of a measure of classroom-level engagement. Literature has suggested that engagement may have 3 dimensions--affective, behavioral, and cognitive. No existing engagement scales measure all 3 dimensions at the classroom level. The Classroom Engagement Inventory (CEI) was…

Educators and policymakers have set a goal that all students graduate from high school ready for college and careers. A substantial body of research supports the idea that the path to college and career readiness begins well before middle and high school. In an earlier policy report, ACT examined the percentage of academically far off track…

Students in residential treatment center (RTC) schools are likely to have histories of extreme or ongoing relational trauma (e.g., abuse and neglect by primary caregivers), have substantial interpersonal and relationship problems, and exhibit many high-risk behaviors. Accordingly, these students may have particular difficulty forming positive…

Each year, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) offers a summer education program designed to assist students with a variety of instructional needs. The 2015 summer education program allowed students the opportunity to repeat required courses needed for promotion, to get ahead by taking required courses before the next school year, or to…

This study uses the Mathematical Tasks Framework (Stein & Smith, 1998) to assess the cognitive demand of mathematical tasks implemented in four mathematics classrooms, and to investigate the role of technology in both low- and high-level cognitive demand tasks. The metaphor of using technology as an amplifier or reorganizer (Pea, 1987) is used…

This qualitative study describes and analyzes the perspectives of students with challenging behaviors regarding what they believe contributes to student teacher relationship quality. The conceptual framework guiding this study was informed by research in the following areas: transactional theory, self-efficacy theory, and teacher-student power…

Throughout the history of education, it has been noted that teachers are influential people in lives of children (Applegate & Applegate, 2004; Daisey, 2010; Gambrell, 1996; Ruddell, 1995). Children spend one-third (or more) of the day with teachers; and as they enter into adolescence, children come in contact with more and more teachers during…

Two theoretical perspectives have been proposed to describe, explain, and intervene in adolescent development--prevention science and positive youth development (PYD). An integrative model bridging these two perspectives posits that it is important to assess the extent to which the same, similar, or complementary mechanisms may be responsible for…