After third grade, students' motivation and enjoyment of writing begins to wane, and this trend continues through most of their education. Middle grade students especially need high-quality writing instruction; however, many teachers report feeling inadequately prepared to teach writing. To combat these issues, teacher preparation programs should…

Data use is considered a key lever in school improvement processes, but the punitive pressure of high-stakes accountability can influence whether or not data use is enacted in ways which facilitate improvement. School leaders must learn to respond to high-stakes accountability in ways which lead teachers to feel safe, efficacious, and agentic with…

Due to low achievement among minorities and English Language Learners, a blue-ribbon panel was convened by NCATE to address the issue. It was determined that a transformation of teacher preparation was imperative. Out of this idea arose the clinical model for teacher preparation, which was deemed to be the important factor in preparing college…

This case study followed the implementation of the co-principal leadership model in a K-8 school district for three years. A district superintendent implemented the co-principal model to (1) resolve issues around merging existing schools with well-established principals; (2) provide leadership stability and succession planning; and (3) serve as a…

The study assessed the oral narrative abilities of 10 normal and 10 learning-disabled (LD) middle school children (11-12 years old). Narratives were assessed using A. Applebee's system for the development of story organization. The narratives were also examined for the specific components used within the stories themselves. Findings revealed…

History learning involves more than the mastery of cognitive skills and problem solving, because history learning always takes place within socio-cultural environments, and the material is charged with values and identity issues. This paper presents a theoretical perspective for understanding and designing history learning environments outside of…

Youth effectiveness training administered to a group of delinquent children in a Wisconsin Middle School caused no significant change in self-concept over the 10 weeks of the program. Measure used was a pretest, posttest model of the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale. (CM)

Recommendations for improving middle-grades teacher preparation include (1) strengthen definitional clarity and standards; (2) foster leadership and interprofessional communication; (3) improve teacher education curriculum and field experiences; (4) target public relations to potential teachers; (5) advocate for the whole young adolescent; and (6)…

This paper discusses a research study that focused on middle grades students' abilities to read and to move between different graphical representations before and after instruction. The data analyzed were collected from a group of 76 sixth grade students who were in 3 different mathematics classes in a middle school located in central North…

Describes the development of a coding scheme that represents students' ideas and its application to the analysis of interviews with urban students (n=8). Results indicate that decomposition is a linchpin concept for building an understanding of nutrient cycling, and ideas which relate to children's natural framework theories provide a generative…

Examines 199 middle school students' understanding of percent, focusing on number sense. Reports that students performed better interpreting a quantity expressed as a percent given a pictorial continuous region than when a pictorial discrete set of circles was given. Students had difficulty interpreting a quantity expressed as a percent of a…

Survey responses from 46 of 57 Virginia middle school agriculture teachers revealed positive attitudes toward agriscience, knowledge about the curriculum, and high expectations. Length of tenure at a school decreased likelihood of teaching agriscience. These four factors were meaningful predictors of the amount of agriscience taught. (SK)

Research findings show that mathematics is better learned by students experiencing it through manipulatives. However, interviews with 30 teachers of fourth through eighth grades reveal that many teachers were uncertain of how to use the manipulatives and felt manipulative instruction to be inappropriate for students above the fourth grade. (eight…

Summarizes results of a pilot study to determine how eight moral values stated by former Education Secretary William Bennett are learned by students in classrooms. According to students, teachers must follow the rules themselves to teach character education effectively. Respect is best taught through a hidden curriculum of modeling and quality…

Describes a study to identify the concerns, issues, and questions about middle-level education in four communities. Survey data gathered from teachers, parents, and the general public were clustered into manageable categories. Major concerns included a pervasive sense of anonymity, puzzling curriculum, lack of rigor or challenge, sociability and…