This phenomenological qualitative research study aimed at understanding the scheduling practices of middle school principals in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. More specifically, this study examined how frequent changes are made to the middle school master schedule, factors that contribute to scheduling changes, barriers to scheduling, and the…

Teaching youth how to self-regulate is a focus of a trauma-informed school approach. Peace Spaces, including Peace Corners and Peace Rooms, are a trauma-informed intervention used to teach self-regulation skills to students. The current study used a Consensual Qualitative Research design to identify and describe the thoughts, concerns, and…

The increased use of technology and access to social media has changed how individuals communicate. According to McNamara (2018), the use of social media via the internet has become an increasingly popular and pervasive aspect of people's lives. Teenagers use social media and technology as their primary method of communication, with U.S. teens,…

The Buck Institute for Education defines Project-Based Learning as, "a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge." (What is PBL, 2020). The idea behind this teaching technique is to…

This quantitative quasi-experimental study was completed to identify the impact the Success for All: Reading Edge (SFA) program had on student achievement at a Title I middle school. To improve literacy and student achievement in schools, scripted reading programs were created. With the popularity of these programs, research needs to be completed…

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact that meaningful watershed educational experiences (MWEE) had on the academic achievement of middle school students. A quantitative, ex post facto causal-comparative design was used. The sample population consisted of 1067 8th-grade students across four middle schools within the Pennsylvania…

Studies that distinguish parental monitoring (parent-driven behaviors) from parental knowledge often fail to find protective effects of monitoring on adolescent behavior problems. To answer whether parental monitoring is more strongly associated with adolescent behavior problems among adolescents who may need it most, this study applied…

Flipped classroom learning methods have been gaining a lot of popularity in recent years. Educators have recorded many mixed results about the effectiveness of this method to achieve superior concept retention in students. Although there has been lot of research published about flipped learning, very little is known how this method affects the…

Despite many differences across Pennsylvania's rural school districts, band programs face similar recruitment, retention, and matriculation challenges. Rural school districts in Pennsylvania account for 235 of the 499 school districts in Pennsylvania while educating less than 20 percent of the student population in the state. In addition, rural…

Makerspaces have the potential to improve the learning outcomes of students in both middle and high schools. They support science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) style initiatives, as well as promote natural creativity among students who tend to struggle in expressing it. This study aims to gain significant insight from…

Making is a movement present in the United States which fosters creativity and invention through the creation and sharing of products. This case study of one Western Pennsylvania school district's integration of Making into its lower and upper secondary schools shows how the investment in space and equipment, guided by visionary leadership, can…

This study employed a quantitative experimental correlational (action research) design utilizing Pearson's r correlation coefficient to determine whether or not there was a statistically significant relationship between students' socioeconomic status and having a diagnosed disability at one economically disadvantaged public, rural, co-educational…

One of the affordances of the Every Student Succeeds Act (Every Student Succeeds Act. Pub. L. No. 114-95. 161 Stat. 1177(ESSA), 2015) was that it mandated U.S. districts and schools to take a closer look at the academic performance of English learner students with disabilities (ELSWDs), who constitute 14.3% of all English learners (ELs; National…

Since the development of the public school system, schools have been tasked with producing upstanding citizens and productive members of society (Smith, 2013). Although the focus of adolescent character development has been incorporated into the U.S. public school system, parents, guardians, and caregivers are often excluded from the…

Developing an understanding of fractions is critical as a significant predictor for the learning progression of advanced domains; however, students face significant challenges in learning fractions because of their unique properties. To systematically approach remediation, this study examined the common error patterns committed by middle-school…