This study examines the feasibility of adding a proximal outcome survey to a book distribution program. We also examine access to books at home for Grade 3 to 5 students experiencing poverty and relations with reading motivation and reading amount. Finally, we describe students' book preferences by analyzing the difficulty and genres of texts they…

"Talent" identification based on multiple criteria is a common way of considering students for gifted education services. As part of a nationwide talent identification program led by UNK (New Generation Centre, Hungary of Talents Program, 2016-2020), we developed an online rating tool with which teachers could indicate the talent areas…

There is growing recognition of the prevalence of "within school churn", a phenomenon in which teachers remain within a school but are assigned a new grade level or course. In this study we examine the consequences of within-school churn for the pedagogical content knowledge of elementary teacher participants in an NSF-funded science PD…

The Project Fit America (PFA) curriculum was initiated in 1990 with a mission to create and provide quality opportunities for American school children to be active, healthy, and fit. This study assessed the effect of the PFA curriculum and outdoor fitness equipment on fitness testing scores of elementary school students. Participants were 4th- and…

This paper addresses an important consideration for promoting equitable engineering instruction: understanding how teachers contextualize curricular materials to draw upon student and community resources. We present a descriptive case study of two 5th grade teachers who co-designed a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned curricular unit…

More and more jobs involve STEM, yet women are still underrepresented in many STEM fields, particularly engineering and computer science (National Science Foundation, 2019). Rural students in particular have historically faced numerous obstacles to entering STEM fields, including low educational aspirations, lack of STEM role models, and lack of…

Higher education institutions are in a great position to create authentic programming to support local underfunded or underperforming public school districts. This article gives an overview of an education outreach collaborative between a 4-year public university, local schools, and a community institution and highlights lessons learned from the…

Transitions are an unavoidable part of life, often conceptualised as 'make it or break it periods'. They are important for personal growth and learning but can also be damaging in terms of our psychological wellbeing. Primary-secondary school transition is no exception and can heavily draw on children's ability to cope. However, support for…

The purpose of this article is to introduce a collaborative online international exchange unit for physical education called CULTURE (Cultural Unit of Learning To Understand, Respect, and Empathize). The cultural unit occurred in the Fall of 2019 between an elementary school in New Jersey, U.S., and two elementary schools near Tokyo, Japan.

This article integrates an ecological approach and design-based research in computer science education research by following the simultaneous development of a computer programming environment and curriculum for elementary school age children over 2-1/2 years. We studied the alignment of the affordances provided by the programming environment and…

Teachers are faced with the demand to teach their students to be competent individuals in the 21st century so that they are prepared for any challenges they may face in their lives. To meet this need, many educators have identified creativity as a necessary competence of the 21st century. To this end, integrating SMART (Self-directed, Motivated,…

Studying nature from the atomic and molecular perspective gives students access to modern scientific paradigms and could improve achievement and motivation towards science learning. A visual and tactile approach to chemistry can form the foundation for a child-friendly but high-level chemistry curriculum and could be a powerful tool to invigorate…

The present paper examines if developmental pathways for students at risk for academic failure can be improved through social and emotional learning (SEL). Specifically, we test this hypothesis by accounting for shifts in student engagement, a highly studied and malleable construct often inclusive of SEL interventions, as the pathway by which to…

Background and purpose: The purpose of this research was to understand the experiences of pre-service teachers in a service-learning program. The research questions that guided this research were: (1) How does an after-school service-learning program that utilizes pre-service teachers develop students' pedagogy? (2) What are the experiences of…

This rich, arts- and spatial-thinking-integrated project examined the effects of making three-dimensional dioramas of traditional African cultures on Black fifth graders at an urban school on students' racial identities, knowledge of cultural universals, and spatial thinking skills. Pretest and posttest attitudes measured with the Multidimensional…