Through a qualitative multiple case study, the researcher's goal in conducting this study was to investigate and understand the experiences of five upper elementary teachers in grades three through five who transitioned from traditional grading practices to standards-based grading (SBG) practices at one elementary school. Using Albert Bandura's…

In 2019, the authors had the opportunity to ask a few questions about climate and sustainability in the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) national survey of primary and intermediate schools. NZCER began regular surveys of primary schools in 1989 and has run a national survey of English-medium schools every 3 years since then,…

Digital technology has become more ubiquitous in classrooms across the western world. Literacy learning is topical in New Zealand education under the umbrella of the current National Standards policy, a policy introduced on the basis of rhetoric around improving achievement for priority learners. The study presented in this paper would then appear…

New Zealand Council for Educational Research's (NZCER's) research project "Educational policy and practice for a changing climate" explores what kinds of changes or adaptations the education systems may need to make in the immediate and short-to-medium-term future in response to climate change. This report outlines findings from one…

Direct vocabulary instruction of Tier 2 and Tier 3 words in intermediate-grade curricula is an important tool of literacy instruction because English is a language grafted from many roots and has not developed a one-to-one phoneme-grapheme correspondence. In addition to knowing graphemes and phonemes, students must formally learn words that cross…

This conceptual article provides an overview and critique of the major versions of multiple comprehension strategies instruction (MCSI) that have been studied since 1980. The author argues that MCSI is a multifaceted instructional approach that takes on many different forms in the research literature. Even intervention studies that ostensibly…

This article investigates how affluent students made sense of social justice issues that were embedded in mathematics learning activities. I present 2 case studies of such activities at the intermediate and secondary levels in 2 different schools. The analysis draws on video records and classroom artifacts and applies the theoretical framework of…

According to an extensive review of the literature, effective instructional delivery and "classroom management" practices are critical factors to elevate student achievement (Shindler, Jones, Williams, Taylor, & Cadenas, 2012). The purpose of this study was to analyze a comparison of classroom management practices on student…

Differentiated Instruction is an approach to teaching which meets the diverse academic needs of students by considering learner readiness, interest and learning style. The approach is grounded in the socio-cultural, multiple intelligence and learning style theories. In addition, differentiation is a research based method for meeting the…

Students in intermediate and middle level grades are often caught up in the exciting visual images and auditory stimuli that are a part of all their everyday communication and learning experiences. As a group of students who are growing intellectually and socially in the midst of, and through, predominantly media messages, they require reading and…

A teacher describes what happened when she discovered that a blind student had been mainstreamed into one of her fifth-grade art classes. (RM)

Since the mid-1980s there has been an increasing chorus of calls for professors to reimmerse themselves in the rigors and realities of teaching in a K-12 classroom setting. This paper reports on the rewards and risks its two author/educators encountered in their K-12 classroom teaching reimmersions. One author voluntarily initiated a year-long…

Describes study of 80 middle-school classrooms to observe teacher practices, student behaviors, instructional materials, and room decorations and tally numbers of male and female participants. Develops system classifying both sexist and equitable practices. Surprisingly, the math classes were most equitable in student participation; language arts…

Proposes that the gaps and contradictions in and between educational theory and practice, as seen in educational institutions, are a product of the social and historical location of middle schools, and that alternative conditions are therefore possible. Indicates, with reference to expressions of attitudes to middle schools made by those involved…

Assessed the implementation level of Carnegie recommendations for middle schools in Louisiana and investigated whether implementing these recommendations was related to desirable student and school outcomes, using the Middle School Practices Questionnaire. Implementation results were not promising. However, implementing recommended middle-level…