Many initiatives have emphasized the importance of challenging students in text using readability formulas. Almost all formulas employ mean word frequency yet long-standing issues abound. Researchers question using a singular mean with a skewed variable like frequency. They also question the degree to which frequency pinpoints complex words,…

Latine parents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in the United States (US) often face challenges when supporting their adolescents' education in subjects like math. Guided by strengths-based, culturally grounded frameworks, this study explored the challenges Latine parents faced when supporting adolescents' math learning and how they leveraged…

Understanding and supporting students' development of graph literacy is important. We studied how aspects of graph literacy might be supported (or hindered) in middle school by analyzing the content in textbooks. Specifically, we conducted a content analysis of tasks involving two-dimensional Cartesian graphs presented in grade 6-8 US textbooks.…

Research shows that writing motivation decreases throughout schooling and predicts writing performance. However, this evidence comes primarily from cross-sectional studies. Here, we adopted a longitudinal approach to (a) examine the development of attitudes toward writing, writing self-efficacy domains, and motives to write from Grade 6 to 7, and…

This article reports on a case study from a larger project exploring ways in which online citizen science projects can enhance students' learning in science and in digital technology. In this case, two teachers integrated the digital technology curriculum with the science capability "interpreting representations" using the engaging…

This study explored the interest, outcome expectations, choice goals and choice actions in engineering and technology, collaboration value, problem solving attitudes, and spatial reasoning and orientation skills of 63 middle school females in grades six, seven, and eight. The participants were involved in a five full-day coding robotics summer…

Supporting students in becoming effective problem solvers is a critical component of K-12 mathematics instruction. Unfortunately, little is known about the factors that are related to problem solving proficiency in middle school students. We report the results of a study that employed a hierarchical linear regression analysis to examine the…

A group of adults, dressed in authentic medieval costumes, organize and stage a full-scale battle at a local park; weapons (made from foam), roles, and medieval speech are all part of the event. This is known as "Live Action Role Play" -- more commonly referred to as "LARP." Although many settings and scenarios have been used…

Student's learning and retention of academic content in a meaningful way depends on strengthening their cognitive structures. Once this structure, which provides a framework in which new knowledge will be included, is ascertained, engaging in teaching activities can create an opportunity for learners to have a different learning experience. Word…

The share of students attending charter schools has been rising. There is evidence that charter school growth has increased socioeconomic segregation of students between schools. In this paper, we assess whether charter school growth affects how students are organized within nearby traditional public schools (TPS). We use administrative data from…

Many U.S. students possess only a weak knowledge of fraction arithmetic. I hypothesize that textbooks are a critical reason for students' poor performance on fraction arithmetic. This is not because of what textbooks contain but rather because of what they lack. Distributions of fraction arithmetic problems in textbooks are imbalanced, with…

We conducted a descriptive exploratory study in which we analyzed 313 sixth to eighth grade students' answers to a word problem, accompanied by diagrams, involving generalization in an algebraic functional context. In this research, we jointly addressed two objectives: (a) to determine the strategies deployed by students to generalize and (b) to…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how teachers who teach 6th, 7th, or 8th grade English language arts in a virtual charter school environment describe the gamification process to support student engagement in the classroom. The overarching research question was: How do teachers who teach 6th, 7th, or 8th grade…

This study examined the metacognitive knowledge of Finnish comprehensive school students and explored whether grade-based differences in metacognitive knowledge exist among 6th, 7th and 9th graders. Integrating qualitative (declarative, procedural, conditional) and contextual (person, task, strategy) frameworks, the research aims for a…

In this study, structural equation modeling was used to examine the effect of gifted students' attitudes toward reading on their reading habits and writing tendencies. The study group for this research, in which the correlational survey model was used, was formed with the convenience sampling method. The study was conducted with 134 gifted…