The Louisiana Striving Readers evaluation assessed the implementation and effectiveness of the Voyager "Passport Reading Journeys" (PRJ), a widely used supplemental literacy intervention for struggling adolescent readers that reflects the research-based practices recommended by the National Reading Panel (2000) and other more recent…

The present study investigated the magnitude of school bullying problems among Taiwanese adolescents and collected detailed information about the locations, perpetrators and offence types of peer victimization. Gender differences were also explored. Unlike many previous surveys, the present study utilized multiple measures and provided a more…

The purpose of this study is to determine if the Sharpening Math Skills Lab technology-mediated mathematics instructional practices for math-delayed middle school students have positive effects on their mathematics achievement and spatial visualization ability and to gauge student engagement in learning, implementation of the principles of…

This study documented efforts to facilitate ideas of beginning inference in novice grade 7 students. A design experiment allowed modified teaching opportunities in light of observation of components of a framework adapted from that developed by Pfannkuch for teaching informal inference with box plots. Box plots were replaced by hat plots, a…

The PD program evaluated in this study is designed to address the problem of low student achievement in topics in rational numbers. The study focuses on seventh grade, the culminating year for teaching those topics. The study randomly assigned 77 mid- and high-poverty schools from 12 districts to treatment and control conditions and collected…

African American youth are characterized as experiencing declining academic motivation and engagement while simultaneously maintaining optimism for their future success. Thus, researchers hypothesize academic motivation to be a negative factor for educational aspirations when applied to an urban sample of African American middle school students (N…

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of a dynamic software simulation on the understanding of the kinetic molecular theory by 7th graders. Students in the control group (n = 62) studied a curricular unit that addressed the differences in arrangement and motion of molecules in the three phases of matter. The experimental group (n…

The authors examined how math track placement and gender affected 7th-grade students' self-esteem, self-concepts, and social comparisons. Participants were 170 students who completed surveys that assessed their self-esteem, academic self-concepts of ability, and the kinds of social comparisons they make. Results showed that higher track students…

This study examined the relationship between STAR Math gains and TCAP composite scores. The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a significant relationship between STAR Math pretest and posttest gains over the course of the 2005-2006 academic year through the use of the STAR Math software program and TCAP math composite scores at…

The author shares a story about the positive power of nature in the lives of children, particularly those children who are at-risk for school failure. The setting for the story is the Central Child Development Center (CCDC) in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a public preschool with four-year-old kindergarten students (4K) and preschoolers with special…

In K-12 classrooms, as well as on the college and university level, the incorporation of digital games has played a vital role in the educational system. While introducing teachers to new fields, these digital games have been designed and implemented for the classroom and have shown positive results at a variety of educational levels. Cases on…

Biomaterial science is a rapidly growing field that has scientists and doctors searching for new ways to repair the body. A merger between medicine and engineering, biomaterials can be complex subject matter, and it can certainly capture the minds of middle school students. In the lesson described in this article, seventh graders generally learn…

We report on the initial attempts at evaluating "at scale" a particular technological/curricular innovation that enables more students to develop deeper knowledge. The methods, issues, and findings of the current pilot experiment speak not only to the success of SimCalc MathWorlds, the focus of our research program, but also to the…

Longitudinal relationships between adolescents' life satisfaction and peer victimization and prosocial experiences were assessed. A total of 417 students in Grades 6-8 completed the Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS: Huebner, 1994) and the Children's Social Experience Questionnaire - Self Report (SEQ-SR: Crick & Grotpeter,…

There is growing recognition that models play a fundamental role in the comprehension of science concepts. This paper aims at enhancing students' understanding and thinking by model construction. Seventh grade middle school students from an urban public school participated in this study as a part of their weekly science club that met after the…