The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive case study was to explore how principals, teachers, and instructional specialists (in small rural communities) perceive the influence of principal leadership style on teacher capacity, motivation, and setting, and the subsequent influence on student achievement in northern Arizona. The study sample was…

Designing, developing, and implementing a multi-year randomized control trial targeting what works in gifted education mathematics study is challenging, at best. In response to the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences request for proposal, we carefully constructed a mixed-methods study by assembling a diverse…

Background: Children living in urban areas often have limited opportunities to experience informal science environments. As a result, some do not have a deep understanding of the environment, natural resources, ecosystems, and the ways human activities affect nature. Purpose: This article examines how experiential science education supported urban…

The educational shift to the common core requires educators to increase the amount of informational text that is used within their classroom. The struggle for whole group use of informational text related to units of study proved to be challenging for teachers at the study site. Guided by constructivist theory that states learners must have the…

This study investigated elementary school teachers' conceptions of their beliefs and expectations of African American students, their pedagogical practices, and the rationale for choosing the pedagogical practices for grades 3 through at Star Maker Elementary. The researcher employed a mixed methodology. The Math Teacher of African American…

In an attempt to confront monolithic perceptions of achievement and an educational narrative that defines communities of Color by their supposed deficits, the current study presents asset mapping as an example of culturally relevant pedagogy in action. Asset mapping is a pedagogical tool for students to visually represent personalized stories of…

When studying informal science programs, researchers often overlook the opportunities enabled and constrained in each program and the practices reinforced for participants. In this case study, I examined the normative scientific practices reinforced in one-week-long "Herpetology" (the study of reptiles and amphibians) program for…

The public school system in the United States is facing severe criticism. There exists today, a constant stream of negative messages through media coverage, news articles and charter school marketing campaigns claiming the failing of the public school system specifically in the content area of mathematics. Current research exposes alarming…

The present study explores the outcomes of teaching empathy and critical thinking to solve environmental problems. This investigation was done throughout the duration of an environmental education course within a primary school located in central Chile. A community-based research methodology was used to understand the formation of empathy and…

Theorists of multiliteracies, social semiotics, and the New Literacy Studies have drawn attention to the potential changing nature of writing and literacy in the context of networked communications. This article reports findings from a design-based research project in Year 4 classrooms (students aged 8.5-10 years) in a low socioeconomic status…

This paper reports the impacts of spontaneous student grouping to develop young students' orthographic awareness in the process of learning Chinese characters. A mobile-assisted Chinese character forming game is used to assign each student a Chinese character component on their smartphones through a wireless network. Fifteen Singaporean students,…

There is a recognized need for theoretical frameworks that can guide designers and educators in the development of engagement-rich learning experiences that incorporate emerging technologies in pedagogically sound ways. This study investigated one such promising framework, adventure learning (AL). Data were gathered via surveys, interviews, direct…

The current literature indicates a need for quality studies on how best to close the achievement gap between elementary English language learners (ELLs) and their English speaking peers. The purpose of this sequential explanatory mixed methods research study was to determine the relationship between standards-based differentiated instructional…

Why has large-scale standardised testing attracted such a bad press? Why has pedagogic benefit to be derived from test results been downplayed? The paper investigates this question by first surveying the pros and cons of testing in the literature, and goes on to examine educators' responses to standardised, large-scale tests in a sample of low…

This study sought to identify components of an asynchronous online teacher professional development program, "Prime Online," that potentially affected participants' mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT). Twenty-three third- through fifth-grade general education and special education teachers completed a yearlong online teacher…