Over the past decade, personalized learning has emerged as a major aim in the contemporary education systems of many countries. This qualitative case study examined middle school educators' perceptions of how their school's collective experimentation with Genius Hour supported the broader implementation of personalized learning. Teachers in the…

Equipping educators to hear students' voices, and then translating that information into concrete behavioral and instructional changes, is what the team at Partners in School Innovation has undertaken in San Jose, California, for the last several years. Their efforts have not only suggested promising practices, but also highlighted important…

Previous research suggests that students can use exploratory talk to support their thinking and learning. However, students' own perspectives on such talk, and whether/how they value it, are rarely sought. Thirty 12-year-olds and their teacher used Talk Factory on an interactive whiteboard and iPads to support exploratory talk in English lessons…

Spoken word poetry is an art form that has the propensity to engage students in critical thinking and empower them to use voice to represent their perspectives regarding controversial issues. Infusion of spoken word poetry in social studies classroom serves as a powerful means of self-representation for youth and alternative perspectives at a time…

Civic education is a moral development imperative of the Indonesian national curriculum and the United Nation's policy on education for sustainable development. It was within this context that we investigated the impact of ethical dilemma story pedagogy (EDSP) on student learning in a constructivist Indonesian STEM learning environment. EDSP uses…

Critical practices for promoting English language learners' global and multicultural perspectives become more important in this global and interconnected world operating under systems of power, ideology, and hegemony. Grounded in the theoretical framework of critical global literacies and its explicit connection to pedagogy, the purposes of this…

Educators are often unaware of assets Mexican Indigenous children possess that originate from their cultural practices. Using Critical Latinx Indigeneities and Indigenous Heritage Saberes, our studies focus on three unique Indigenous learning communities that provide opportunities of empowerment for these students. We examine the experiences of…

Efforts to solve and control social problems are the responsibility of social studies teaching and learning in junior high school. One way to support such efforts is by empowering students' critical thinking skills. For effective empowerment of critical thinking skills, emancipatory learning was developed. The goal is to enable students to…

The purpose of this study was to explore, using the voices of diverse high school students, the classroom factors that are important for promoting classroom belonging and engagement. Thirty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with tenth grade students about classroom belonging and behavioral engagement in their favorite and least…

As middle school teachers, the authors want their students to develop voice and agency because they want them to be able to make productive decisions about how to approach mathematics, communicate mathematics, and use mathematics to interpret and transform the world in which they live. They use this article to present two vignettes that examine…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to inquire into the effectiveness of authentic writing instruction embedded in a critical service-learning project in a middle school English Language Arts curriculum. Design/methodology/approach: This paper analyzes middle school students' survey responses before and after their participation in a critical…

Democratic education focuses on developing students using democratic principles and processes in the classroom. In this study, we aim to understand how self-identified democratic educators practice democratic education in public-school classrooms. Nine participants, teachers in K12 schools, were interviewed for this qualitative study. In…

Much of the special education research on writing has focused on skill acquisition and remediation. However, a significant problem with this approach is that it does not account for the sociocultural nature of writing or the importance of culturally sustaining pedagogies in writing instruction. In this article, the author uses practitioner…

Theoretical and empirical support for the benefits of elaborative strategy instruction for middle level students is highlighted. Consistent with the "Keys of Educating Young Adolescents," teaching elaborative strategies enhances academic achievement, engages learners, and empowers students' future independent learning. A transactional…

The purpose of this study was to describe the impact of a flexible classroom environment, including the teacher and student relationship, and its role in fostering creativity in middle school students. The case study design included gathering data through interviews and observations. It was determined that democratic, workshop-based classrooms are…