This action research study aims to identify and address equity gaps within a PK-8 New Jersey school by leading a professional learning community (PLC). The study will use action research methods to conduct an educational equity audit, which will inform the annual school plan and create a leadership action plan to stimulate organizational change.…

This fourth of six briefs analyzing data from the 2020-2021 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), released earlier this year, focuses on the experiences of students with disabilities with disciplinary practices at both charter schools and traditional public schools. Though the COVID-19 pandemic was still in its early stages, concerns about the…

This study draws on the theory of Cumulative Disadvantage and Advantage to explore the online learning experiences of low-income minority students in middle school during the COVD-19 pandemic. We draw on 8 semi-structured interviews with two students, 12 interviews with teacher participants, ongoing open-ended ethnographic interviews with students…

Using a multistage sampling technique, the students completed the self-constructed Identification Battery on Comorbid Conditions (IBCC), which assesses 10 disorders, including dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dysphasia, dyspraxia, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), autism, and tic…

This is a qualitative case study framed by a sociosemiotic theoretical framework to explore science and language instruction with three Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) in sixth grade. The study details the modeling and explanatory processes used by EBs to mediate science learning through evidence-based argumentation. A thematic analysis of students'…

The problem of practice being explored in this work was first identified at a suburban middle school in Massachusetts, where the assessment scores of students with learning disabilities were significantly lower than those of peers not on Individualized Education Plans. The collaboration between general education science teachers and special…

The purpose of this dissertation was to understand how Black middle school students interpret the relationship with their mathematics teachers. This study is situated within research exploring the nuances of the Black-White achievement gap. National assessment data provide that more than 80% of eighth-grade Black students enter high school working…

The vision for the Leadership Richland One MSAP project was that all students will have the opportunity to succeed academically through a high-quality education in an environment characterized by diverse social, economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. To improve student achievement, major project goals and objectives focus on four areas:…

Newsela contracted with LearnPlatform by Instructure (LearnPlatform), a third-party edtech research company, to examine the relationship between Newsela ELA usage and outcomes for students. LearnPlatform designed the study to satisfy Level II requirements (Moderate Evidence) according to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The study included…

Over the course of a two-year curriculum field test study that implemented a curriculum-based professional learning framework, we investigated the factors that influenced teachers' willingness and ability to implement NGSS-aligned, phenomenon-based storylines for teaching the nature of science, evolution, and climate change. Through qualitative…

In this paper, to handle the problem of the quick evolution of cyber-security attacks, we developed the iMonsters board game and proposed the attack and defense knowledge self-evolving algorithm. Three versions of the iMonsters were launched in 2013, 2017, and 2019, respectively. Accordingly, the cyber-security ontology can be refined by the…

In this paper, I propose a model of plurimethodological approach in ELT textbook design, in which one unit is based on the communicative PPP unit model, where the unit ends with a final communicative task, and the following unit is based on the action-oriented unit model, where the unit is a mini-project unit as a whole. Such a textbook model is…

Supporting Indigenous students' social-emotional learning (SEL) is important given the systemic impact of colonialism that has contributed to their higher mental health and academic disparities compared to White students. One way to promote SEL is through professional development for educators, yet there has been little research on the development…

Background: Mindfulness practices enhance executive function skills and academic achievement, spurring interest in integrating mindfulness interventions into education. Embedding mindfulness practice into a digital math game may provide a low-cost, scalable way to induce mindfulness and boost game-based learning, yet this approach remains…

Scalable and accessible professional development programs have the potential to address the opportunity gap many teachers experience. Yet many asynchronous online programs lack interaction with and timely feedback to teachers. We addressed this problem by developing a virtual, interactive program that uses intelligent tutoring systems to provide…