Data-driven decision-making (DDDM) requires educational leaders and teachers to monitor and evaluate programs and processes and link results to individual and organizational outcomes. A classroom teacher's ability to collect and review data, analyze data to identify trends and strategies for student achievement, and use data to determine and…

This study was grounded in the spatial computational thinking model developed by the "3D Weather" project funded by the NSF STEM+C program. The model reflects a discipline-based perspective towards computational thinking and captures the spatial nature of computational thinking in meteorology and the reliance of computational thinking on…

Teaching reading has been an ongoing challenge for many educators across the United States. Numerous studies suggest that teachers feel they were not adequately prepared to teach reading and have low efficacy in delivering literacy instruction. Teaching reading requires educators to be knowledgeable about the alphabetic principle, decoding new…

Mississippi has made significant gains in education over the past ten years. Yet, teacher attrition rates are still low impacting student achievement. This study was conducted to investigate if there is a significant difference in the sense of self-efficacy for teachers from suburban and rural, elementary and middle schools of Mississippi. Teacher…

Luecha Ladachart, Manus Poothawee, and Ladapa Ladachart take a unique approach in their study entitled, "Toward a hypothetical place-based learning progression for haze pollution in the northern region of Thailand," whereby they frame acquiring disciplinary knowledge within a place-based learning progression in response to regional…

This study explores factors that may be related to Mississippi's 2015 eighth-grade reading scores, which rank the state in 50th place (Nation's Report Card, 2016). Whereas there are likely several factors that contribute to middle-school students' poor performance on the high-stakes tests, this study examines teachers' reported knowledge and use…

This article describes the perceived physical and psychological health impacts of community gardening on participants in the Mississippi Delta. Themes identified include the use of gardening as an educational tool and as a means to increase self-efficacy and responsibility for personal and community health. Additional benefits of gardening as…

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effects that high-stakes tests have on middle school teachers' morale and teachers' efficacy in the state of Mississippi. The participants in this study were teachers in the areas of language arts, mathematics, and science at the middle school level. The researcher used a correlational design,…

This study explored the topic of middle school students and their instructional reading environment. As students progress through school, there is a decrease in the amount of time spent reading for pleasure. Overall, students' attitudes toward reading and motivation to read decline as they get older due to a complex mix of factors including…