This study investigated the relationship between characteristics and views of 35 middle school sexuality education teachers and their students' responses to the course. Teacher and student questionnaires indicated a variety of teacher variables were significantly related to students' sexual knowledge, attitudes, and anticipated behaviors and to…

Surveys of Native-American students in grades six through eight examined their attitudes toward and knowledge of fetal-alcohol-syndrome risk factors and prevention strategies. Results revealed that there were limited prevention programs in middle schools, though students considered it an important topic. Families and peers were the most important…

A middle school teacher asked her students how they felt they learned best and how they felt a teacher could assess what they learned. Students perceived a large gap between their learning and what tests reflected they had learned. They provided suggestions for a more effective tool for measuring learning. (SM)

Examination of gender differences in self-efficacy, attitudes toward mathematics, and achievement of 48 gifted 7th and 8th grade students after participating in a 2-week course on probability and statistics found no differences in achievement or self-efficacy between cooperative learning mixed gender or single gender groups. Differences in…

The purpose of this study was to examine problem-based learning (pbl) and how students in the middle grades math and science classroom perceived its effectiveness. Analysis of student perceptions of changes in their learning processes and self-efficacy was analyzed through student interviews. Data identified the components of changes in students'…

This qualitative study investigates rural middle school students' perceptions of academic engagement. Participant-produced drawings (Kearney & Hyle, 2003), integrated with a series of semi-structured interviews (Patton, 2002), served as the primary data collection techniques. Twenty middle school students participated, stratified for socioeconomic…

This article unpacks the decision to decharter a successful urban middle school serving African American students, especially focusing on parental choice in a school caught between two urban reform initiatives: charter schooling and state takeovers of urban districts. Originally chartered by a university, DeCharter became a "school of choice" in…

A Puerto Rican teacher of an eighth grade consisting of 33 students (19 girls and 14 boys) at a racially-mixed public middle school found that teaching students about race and gender is a risky venture. The median age of the students was 13.8. The racial demographics were as follows: 45% African-American, 31% Euro-American, 18% Latino, 3%…

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study is the largest and most ambitious study ever undertaken by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Forty-five countries collected data in more than 30 languages. Five grade levels were tested in the two subject areas. This report describes the science…

Many young adolescents, possibly as many as half, feel boxed in and bored in their middle schools. Research suggests that schools, parents, and the rest of the community must do more to make middle schools places where young adolescents thrive. In spite of the emergence of the junior high school and later the middle school in the 20th century,…

This book is a collection of essays by full-time classroom teachers who describe their efforts to implement the vision of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards documents and to empower their students in mathematics. Chapter 1, "Students' Conceptions of Mathematics and the Challenge of the Standards" (Dorothy Buerk),…

This practicum was designed to develop a transition program and social activities for sixth-graders to help ease the passage from elementary school and increase their sense of belonging in a sixth- through eighth-grade junior high school. The students were surveyed concerning their degree of self-esteem, connection to school, perception of…

The attitudes of middle and junior high school teachers toward their job and school climate are compared in this study. Twenty-nine teachers from a school having a modern middle school orientation (multi-age grouping, exploratory curriculum, and an interdisciplinary team organization) were compared with twenty teachers from a departmentally…

Evaluation questionnaires were administered to more than 92 percent of the professional staff associated with the Knox County Extended School Year (ESY) Program during the summer and fall of 1974 and to more than half of the students enrolled in the summer quinmester, along with a random sample of 10 percent of the students enrolled in October…

This document represents the efforts of a research project to determine if the implementation of "middle school concept" would create an organizational structure or social context that would enhance relationships both within and between the staff and the student body. The study aimed at providing a preliminary description of West Middle School in…