The lack of digital skills among Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college students is a challenge that negatively affects their academic performance, leading to the college's poor throughput rate. This study aimed to evaluate the digital skills and knowledge of TVET college students of Newcastle, South Africa, about their…

This study explores using a guided note-taking strategy to address the issue of low listening skills among students. The primary aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy in strengthening listening skills. Conducted as qualitative research using a descriptive method, the study involved a school principal, classroom teachers, and three…

Accounts of educational opportunity gaps for Black boys are overwhelmingly focused on later years of development. Achievement and discipline disparities are evident across their lifespan. Life course and intersectionality theories were used to develop a framework for understanding obstacles Black boys face during their preschool through high…

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented adoption of online learning in community colleges. On one hand, online learning increases access and offers students flexibility and convenience. On the other hand, existing research illustrates online courses increase achievement and equity gaps. Hence, this article contends that online learning in…

Achievement gaps exist along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, social class, and ability status from elementary school to graduate school in the United States. Instructors can help reduce achievement gaps by adopting practices that have been shown to promote the success of students from marginalized groups, so-called "inclusive teaching…

Social media has increased students' cultural awareness today, pivoting a need to implement cultural responsiveness in the classroom climate. Twenty-first-century learners need effective teachers who create meaningful experiences and optimize student learning by intentionally working to connect with students, adapting to diverse cultures, and…

In all years of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in primary mathematics education, Finland ranked in the lower places (44-61) in the dispersion index (the difference in scores between the 95th percentile and the 5th percentile), while Israel ranked in the upper places (1-3) in the same index. In the last PISA test, Israel…

What if you had a collaborative process of looking at student data that could pinpoint student gaps in learning and suggest effective strategies to close those gaps? What if you knew not only what you should "start" doing to enhance student learning, but also what you should stop doing because it hasn't given you the hoped-for results?…

This book explains seven critical steps to improve children's writing. Though seemingly 'natural', writing proves devilishly difficult for far too many school pupils and closing this gap can have a lasting impact on their academic and life success. With the goal of giving every teacher the knowledge and skill to teach writing with confidence, it…

Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation was to examine school improvement strategies that were recommended to improve the academics of a campus, shifting from low performing to academic success. Method: In this study, a quantitative content analysis was used to identify common school improvement strategies that are shared in school leadership…

This paper describes the development and use of a tool designed to support educators to use a broad range of professional knowledge to enable inclusive literacy teaching that delivers social justice and narrows the attainment gap associated with poverty. The tool encourages teachers to formally recognise and act on a wide range of evidence about…

At all educational levels, the number of English learners continues to increase; their academic and linguistic success are growing concerns. The problem is that middle school English learners struggle to reach English proficiency in literacy and language. Closing the achievement gap is a challenge for both English learners and middle school…

Improving schooling by reducing achievement gaps based on family background has been on the agenda of school governance worldwide for more than three decades. International benchmarking like the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is used to find models of best practice in effective school governance. Enlarging school…

Learning communities for college students have been shown to improve first-year student outcomes and narrow equity gaps, but longer-term data to evaluate whether these benefits persist through multi-year retention and graduation are rare. This is especially important for students in science, technology, engineering and math, who often confront…

Despite some gains, women continue to be underrepresented in many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Using a national longitudinal dataset of 690 participants born in 1991, we tested whether spatial skills, measured in middle childhood, would help explain this gender gap. We modeled the relation between 4th-grade spatial…