Background: Researchers interested in more playful literacy practices often abandon school-related contexts to instead follow young people to after-school settings, community spaces, social spaces, home environments, and online hangouts. However, play also makes itself visible, even (and sometimes especially) in more formalized learning spaces.…

Improving student performance, especially that of those learners who experience poverty, disabilities, language barriers, or some combination of these factors, is an ongoing challenge for many, if not all, school districts. It can be particularly so for smaller or more geographically isolated districts that, compared to their larger urban…

Servant leadership is a central focus of organizations in and outside of public education. This leadership philosophy is centered on the idea that a leader serves his or her stakeholders. While service in leadership is not a new phenomenon, it has gained acceptance in many areas of research and practice within public schools as a measure of both…

Developed by the National Writing Project (NWP), the College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) seeks to improve students' argument writing by building teachers' understanding of and skill in teaching source-based argument writing. The program features intensive professional development, skill-based instructional resources, and…

Long-term English learners (LTELs) are students who were identified as English learners (EL) when they entered U.S. schools and continue to be ELs for 5 or more years. Although many factors influence LTEL status, student performance on standardized language and achievement tests particularly shape their trajectory through school. Yet, little is…

Computational thinking (CT) has attracted significant interest among many educators around the globe. Despite this growing interest, research on CT and programming education in elementary school remains at an initial stage. Many relevant studies have adopted only one type of method to assess students' CT, which may lead to an incomplete view of…

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most dramatic and far-reaching events to impact education in recent years. At the onset of this global crisis, schools were required to pivot, with little warning or planning, to educate the more than 50 million school-age children in the United States through some form of nontraditional instruction (NTI),…

It is widely agreed that Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) needs to take account of cultural and religious considerations and this principle is reflected in current government advice in England. At the same time, and for a number of reasons, many of those who teach RSE in schools find it difficult to take account of religious considerations,…

Rural communities across the United States are experiencing a rapid increase in the number of immigrant students. While the number of culturally and linguistically diverse students continues to grow within Midwestern states, the demographics of teachers remain white, female, and monolingual. Often teachers have little to no training working with…

Multi-grade teaching is a widely accepted phenomenon in both developing and developed countries. In this article I report on a phenomenological inquiry into written feedback practices of teachers in multi-grade classrooms and how they described and interpreted their feedback practices pertaining to learners' writing activities in English First…

The current study examined the criterion validity of a computer adaptive universal screener with an end-of-year state mathematics assessment using extant data provided by a local education agency. Participants included 1,195 third through eighth graders. Correlational analyses were used to report predictive and concurrent validity coefficients for…

Rural communities face unique challenges that can complicate technological integration and impact the effectiveness of 1:1 technology initiatives. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore teachers' and administrators' perceptions of technology integration after implementing a 1:1 initiative in a rural, public district. Three primary…

Drawing from the professional experience of one "zhijiao" teacher in the southwestern border of China, this study uses a narrative method to describe and analyze the growth and development of an effective teacher serving in a rural and remote school with a high concentration of ethnic minority students. Qualitative data for this single…

After the COVID-19 pandemic came to the United States in March 2020, teachers and educational leaders looked to virtual learning as a way for students to overcome learning challenges and improve educational experiences for students. Stakeholders were met with conflicting claims about virtual learning. Proponents of virtual learning claimed virtual…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused severe disruption to students worldwide, especially younger ones. This instrumental case study investigated how elementary students in a rural United States southeastern community experienced the sudden, extended closure of their school building facilities triggered by this health emergency. Multiple stakeholder…