Differentiated instruction, an inclusive teaching strategy incorporating essential skills while individualizing curriculum at current instructional levels, has little inquiry into its effect on standards-based grading system within the middle grades setting. This qualitative study was designed to better understand teacher perceptions of…

Recent policies and programs in science education underscore a need to address "opportunity gaps" for students who are parts of minoritized social, cultural, or racial/ethnic groups. In order to implement professional learning for teachers to assist them in effectively supporting all students, it is critical to understand the classroom…

In this synthesis, we analyzed 10 prealgebraic reasoning interventions for students with mathematics difficulty (MD) in Grades 6 through 8. All interventions focused on one or more prealgebraic concepts including integer operations, algebraic expressions and equations, and functions. Of the 10 intervention studies, six employed single-case design…

Philosophy for Children (P4C) is an educational approach that helps children question, reason, construct arguments, and collaborate with others. This approach to teaching is new to Chinese teachers and students who have traditionally relied on rote learning and dissemination of knowledge. Independent thinking and questioning are rarely encouraged.…

The paper reports an empirical study that examined relationships between the implementation quality of an argument-based inquiry (ABI) approach, teachers' talk moves, and students' critical thinking. Students were taught using an ABI approach in which they had opportunities to engage in critical thinking. However, this instructional approach was…

Background: An overarching goal of school science education is to prepare young people for a rapidly changing and complex world. Middle school science students need more than a basic understanding of science concepts in preparation for further study. Rather, they need the skills to question and evaluate evidence and make decisions about complex…

Generative AI, particularly Language Models (LMs), has the potential to transform real-world domains with societal impact, particularly where access to experts is limited. For example, in education, training novice educators with expert guidance is important for effectiveness but expensive, creating significant barriers to improving education…

As part of a renewed focus on current environmental concerns, the new geography programs set out for middle schools introduced new subjects on global change in 2015, subsequently replaced by a focus on climate change in 2020. The case study approach to teaching, imposed by official directives, makes it difficult for middle school students to…

Despite the growing body of research on how to support older readers, few studies consider whether U.S. teachers can identify students who have difficulty reading instructional materials across content areas or whether teachers feel like they have the knowledge and resources to support those students. Such information could lay the groundwork for…

The aim of this study was to explore the needs for the identification of design elements of a web-based learning system that would help students develop their science process skills (SPS) to be used in science lessons. A descriptive survey method was adopted as the methodology of the study. Survey data was collected from a sample of 36 teachers…

This study explored four middle-school mathematics teachers' provision of non-examples and instructional explanations in teaching rational numbers to seventh-grade students. The data sources were 8 lesson hours of observations conducted in four different classrooms. Yin's [(2018). "Case study research and applications: Design and…

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of mathematical modeling activities using the history of mathematics on students' anxiety in geometry instruction. The study was conducted with 7th-grade students (n=30) studying in a public school during the first semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. In the research, nested mixed pattern from…

In their daily work teachers are responsible for several complex tasks; might AI be harnessed to support teachers in the challenging work of planning lessons? In this paper we investigate the use of an AI tool, namely ChatGPT, to generate a lesson plan that may be of use to teachers in their planning. A carefully worded prompt, informed by…

This paper provides information on datasets for the research project that examined the efficacy of three educational technologies including "From Here to There!", a research-based game for improving algebraic understanding. The dataset contains 4,092 7th-grade students' data collected through a randomized control trial conducted in…

This article examines teaching strategies to empower metacognition through dance writing and collaborative dance making based on a project for middle school dance students at a Title I middle school during the Fall of 2020. This project draws on theoretical frameworks of critical pedagogy, intersectionality, and educational constructivism. Based…