Measures of academic engagement and disruptive behavior in students are strong predictors of social, academic, and lifelong career outcomes. Educators need a measurement tool that is feasible, accurate, and cost-effective in order to identify students who may be in need of additional behavioral support. Direct Behavior Ratings (DBRs) offer a…

Place-based learning encourages students to explore their local communities, learn about history, and develop critical thinking skills. This article focuses on six middle school students who participated in a History Club and entered the National History Day competition and discovered how history and place liberates learning.

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in teacher turnover, which poses a notable challenge to improving the quality of education. Individual characteristics such as teacher motivation, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction have been linked to the tendency for turnover. However, the exact connections between these attributes remain…

This study was situated at Mountain Middle School (Pseudonym). Students at Mountain Middle School often engage in collaborative compositions embedded within week-long multidisciplinary and multiage units of study called Odysseys. These units of study and the collaborative composition projects are classified as formal cooperative learning. Johnson…

Being able to defend victims of school bullying is central in any intervention; thus, it seems paramount to investigate which factors may contribute to defending behavior. The present report aims to investigate whether empathic self-efficacy is associated with helping behavior and whether interpersonal factors (i.e., social preference and…

Building on previous research that demonstrates the association of youth experiences in afterschool science and higher science identities, this paper presents a network study of 421 middle school students that examines afterschool science participation, friendship ties, and science identities. Participation in afterschool science clubs is…

Following psychologist Langer's theory, this study aimed to examine the influence of conditional tasks containing inherent uncertainty on the cultivation of mindfulness. It used preceding research to develop conditional mathematics tasks corresponding to integers and rational numbers, within a 10-lesson curriculum. It divided a total of 182 middle…

Hazing is a growing concern in US middle schools, high schools, and colleges. As more is understood about the complex phenomenon, so are strategies to prevent its occurrence and the cultures supporting it. This article reviews and critiques prevention strategies in four case studies set in high school, college, and student organization settings. A…

This study aimed to investigate middle school social studies teachers' perceptions of professional development and its relation to the teacher's knowledge of the subject, teaching methods, and improving student outcomes. The primary questions addressed in this study focused on middle school social studies teachers perceptions of current…

The current study explores the connection and affordances of talk and gesture in collaborative science problem-solving activities using an emerging analytical approach. A total of 15 three to five-member groups of middle school students participated in a set of clinical collaborative science problem-solving activities. Six groups (three low- and…

Assistant principals are essential to the campus leadership team as instructional leaders. However, many assistant principals spend most of their day participating in noninstructional leadership duties and responsibilities. This can drastically reduce the assistant principal's ability to fulfill instructional leadership duties, thus negatively…

The mental health problems have been increasingly threatening the development of adolescence in China, it is very necessary to explore the protective factors preventing adolescents' negative mental health. Previous studies suggested that growth mindset benefits mental health. However, the internal psychological mechanism underlying this…

The current research aimed to unpack teachers' knowledge of integers by investigating how they used the number line and counter models to represent the two meanings of division (i.e., partitive and measurement). The participants were three middle school mathematics teachers working in different cities in Türkiye. Data consisted of teachers'…

Background: Game-based learning can frame problem-solving as a sense-making experience with domain-specific tasks for school students. However, multiple challenges arise when trying to support learners in such a complex, problem-oriented learning environment. Objectives and Methods: With an architecture-themed mathematics learning game, we…

Using a randomized controlled trial, we investigated changes in both sexual harassment (SH) perpetration and victimization of 2104 middle school students in New York City who received divergent saturation and dosage levels of "Shifting Boundaries," an SH prevention program, which was represented by the length of the program. We assessed…