Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) characteristically experience academic difficulties. There is growing evidence that the continuum from academic competence to underachievement is partially explained by executive function (EF; neurocognitive attention-regulation processes) and stress. Yet, there is scarce research…

This qualitative case study served to investigate teachers' and students' experiences implementing BASE Education, an electronic learning (e-learning) platform for social and emotional learning (SEL), in an urban charter middle school in Paterson, New Jersey. Convenient purposeful sampling was used to recruit seven students and three…

This study uses linear probability models with student and teacher fixed effects to assess whether the racial match between teachers and students affects "at-risk" ratings on a teacher-completed universal screener of student internalizing and externalizing behavior. The data are from a large, urban California school district. I find that…

In the present study, we explore the perceptions of urban middle school students' representations of nature using participatory photography and their nature connectedness. Preadolescents (N = 108, 6th grade, age 11-13) were asked to take a photo of what nature is to them and write a short description of what is in the image. In a mixed method…

As institutions strive to improve teaching and learning for all, educators must consider equitable instruction. This includes equitable distributions of authority and agency among students. The authors define distribution of authority as shared opportunities for decision-making in enacting mathematical tasks and agency as the power to carry out…

The present study investigated the indirect effects of personality (Big Five) on shyness through two emotion regulation strategies -- emotion suppression and cognitive reappraisal -- in a community sample of 256 Greek pre-adolescents. Results showed that shyness was positively predicted by both regulation strategies, with emotion suppression…

This case study was designed to investigate the implementation of a cross-content academic vocabulary intervention in an urban school. Two aspects of the intervention were the focus of interest: student learning and teacher sensemaking. Participants included four content-area teachers and their sixth-grade students. Each week, students received…

Restorative justice practices are an increasingly popular approach to behavioral management, rooted in relationships rather than the behaviorist approach of many traditional forms of schooling. Research on restorative practice implementation demonstrates that schools rarely have time to consider cultural change, as they rush to reduce suspensions…

Given the growing evidence of academic language demands embodied in science practices, this study aimed to design and evaluate the effectiveness of a literacy-science integrated program that emphasized the incorporation of academic vocabulary instruction and collaborative discussion of a socio-scientific issue in sixth-grade science classrooms in…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of IXL Math online software in raising student achievement on the New York State Math exam, with special focus on effects by student gender, ethnicity and disability status. The study includes an analysis of the relationship between scale scores and time spent using the IXL system, number…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) characteristically experience academic difficulties. There is growing evidence that the continuum from academic competence to underachievement is partially explained by executive function (EF; neurocognitive attention-regulation processes) and stress. Yet, there is scarce research…

Urban middle school students (N = 1,057; M[subscript age] = 12.06) viewed Facebook-like profiles of peers who varied by race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation and indicated the social class (SC) of those peers along two dimensions--family income and social class position. As hypothesized, most profiles were perceived as middle class and…

We examined the effect of multiple school-related, resilience-promotive factors against exposure to violence (ETV) at school among an urban sample of 6th-grade students (n = 441, 57% female, mean age = 11.81), 90% identify as students of color. Using multilevel mixed-effects linear models, we analyzed two waves of data (baseline and 4-month…

Student motivation is a necessary catalyst for reading achievement; therefore, educators need to determine how to motivate reluctant readers, including students reading below grade level. Our qualitative study begins to address this challenge by reporting what struggling adolescents and their teacher at 1 urban middle school discussed about their…

Adolescents growing up in low-income communities experience decreases in school engagement during their transition to middle school due to multiple stressors. Holding goals for their futures increases their resilience, yet research on the types of goals that are most beneficial and on parents' influence on the formation of future goals is limited.…