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…

Public schools, and education in general, were founded on the principles of preparing young people to participate in civic life as active and informed citizens. Yet, civic competency scores are consistently low and demonstrate that students are not prepared for the civic engagement required of them when they leave school. The purpose of this…

The world of K-12 public education was one area of society that was directly impacted by the introduction of COVID-19 and emergency remote teaching. Teachers and districts alike responded in the way that they determined was best for their students, and the response of teachers at Little Middle School was no different. This narrative inquiry seeks…

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…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how public middle school teachers describe their current strategies (RQ1), motivations (RQ2), and challenges (RQ3) when using computer technology (CT) in their instruction in California. In contrast to most prior studies into CT integration, this study followed a qualitative…

This study aims to better understand Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) in middle school science teaching by revealing the perceptions of sixth-grade students in a public school in Turkey about POGIL. In the research conducted as a case study, the data were collected through interviews with 12 students who were taught the Particle…

Purpose: There is little consensus in the literature regarding a) what it means for a school leader to lead with data, and b) how to measure data-informed leadership in a reliable and valid way. This study examines the psychometric properties of an operational measure intended to assess the extent to which a school leader is a data-informed school…

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a course taught with worksheets on the subject of blood circulation. The study was conducted with students aged 12-13 in a single class at a public middle school. This worksheet has seven questions in total. At the end of the lesson, the students' opinions about the lesson were obtained…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how teachers who teach 6th, 7th, or 8th grade English language arts in a virtual charter school environment describe the gamification process to support student engagement in the classroom. The overarching research question was: How do teachers who teach 6th, 7th, or 8th grade…

It is known that teacher noticing skills improve through different interventions such as video clubs, lesson study, and short-term professional development programs. However, it is not known whether this improvement is permanent and whether teachers can transfer their noticing skills into the classroom. It is extremely important to provide an…

K-12 science teachers in the United States are encouraged to teach their students engineering. When incorporating engineering into their science curricula, teachers commonly either focus on: (1) engineering and lace science throughout; or (2) science and lace engineering throughout. This study explores middle school students' nature of engineering…

Game-based learning has attracted great interest in science education as an effective way to increase student achievement. Most studies in this field have focused on digital or non-digital games. In the literature, some studies generally compare educational games with traditional teaching methods. More studies need to be conducted to compare the…

Partner reading with paragraph shrinking has been shown to be an effective classwide reading intervention in elementary school, but has yet to be studied with eighth-grade students or with content area reading such as science and social studies. The current study examined the effects of implementing the classwide intervention for 3 wk with 86…

This dissertation comprises a set of three connected articles framed by a narrative inquiry methodology, which explores the literacy practices of a teacher and her students in an English Language Arts middle school classroom at a midwestern urban public school. Part one investigates teacher practices and discourses that led to creating an…

Prior research highlights a positive effect of incorrect worked examples on mathematics learning. Yet the mechanisms underlying these benefits are unclear. To investigate potential mechanisms of the benefits of various worked example types, we examined process data from a previously published classroom-based experiment. More specifically, we…