Stress is a major health problem in urban neighborhoods, but integrating the arts into education can help children deal with stress. Stress reduces or eliminates a child's ability to learn by increasing the production of cortisol in the brain, while working in the arts has been shown to produce endorphin, which counteracts the effects of cortisol.…

This article is a response to Stephen Rowland's article, "Kindness," which appeared in "London Review of Education," November 2009. Much to my amazement, Stephen Rowland's article was the only one I found when I did a global database search on "kindness in education". I had thought that I would find reams of information in the databases on the…

This paper is birthed from my lifelong experiences as student, teacher, administrator, and researcher in urban science classrooms. This includes my years as a minority student in biology, chemistry, and physics classrooms, 10 tears as science teacher and high school science department chair, 5-years conducting research on youth experiences in…

This article contributes new research to the literature on the relationship between institutional-level factors and financial generosity. In the framework of the existing research on how school-level attributes correspond to donor behavior, no study has examined the relationship between the institutional neighborhood context and private giving.…

This study aimed to expand upon previous research related to parental opinion concerning school sexuality education by sampling a culturally diverse, low-income population that has been traditionally under-represented in the literature. A total of 191 parents attending an urban community college completed a written questionnaire about what topics…

As knowledge of and familiarity with science becomes an increasingly important aspect of contemporary life and citizenship, efforts have been made to make the science curriculum a “lived” curriculum (Hurd, 2000), one that reaches out to the lives, communities, and experiences of students. In this research around a high school urban ecology…

The purpose of this case study was to discover the critical attributes of a student achievement program, known as "Think Gold," implemented at one urban comprehensive high school as part of the improvement process. Student achievement on state assessments improved during the period under study. The study draws upon perspectives on…

Deficient urban schooling remains one of America's most pressing--and stubborn--public policy problems. This important new book details and evaluates a radical and promising new approach to K-12 education reform. "Strife and Progress" explains for a broad audience the "portfolio strategy" for providing urban education--its…

In the digital age, numerous technological tools are available to enhance educational practices. When used effectively, student engagement and mobile learning are significantly increased. "Social Media in Education: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice" contains a compendium of the latest academic material on the usage, strategies, and…

The present case study investigated the impact of a short-term summer literacy approach on writing performance and self-perception of writing for young adolescents of low-income families residing in urban housing projects. The approach offered intensive literacy engagement to offset summer achievement loss; assisted ethnic-minority, low…

The lack of achievement of students from high-risk and high-poverty environments necessitates changes in today's middle school environments to create a caring, supportive environment where all middle school students can succeed. This study investigated the classroom learning environments of resilient, average, and nonresilient minority students in…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of student/teacher demographic differences, teacher quality indicators (TQIs), teacher preparation and school/community support on urban music teacher attitudes toward and the expectations of their students. The study aimed to verify the psychometric appropriateness of the researcher-created…

This article presents research from a school in a multicultural suburb on the outskirts of a large Swedish conurbation that used a particular pedagogy with strong classification and framing to address an identified problem of academic failure amongst its pupils. The analysis shows that the pedagogy was chosen based on an assumption that pupils…

Urban Literacies showcases cutting-edge perspectives on urban education and language and literacy by respected junior and senior scholars, researchers, and teacher educators. The authors explore--through various theoretical orientations and diverse methodologies--meanings of urban education in the lives of students and their families across three…

Descriptions of the urban contemporary format remain strongly grounded on the assumption that it is based on musical styles associated with African Americans, such as R&B, soul, hip hop, rap, and reggae. Even for the most progressive educators, to speak of urban music is to refer to a narrow set of musical genres associated with the umbrella term…