Teachers have long struggled with the tension between ensuring a rigorous education for all their students and the reality that students arrive at the start of a school year with vastly different skills and conceptual understandings. The tension can be even more acute in math, which relies heavily on students mastering foundational concepts in…

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study among 50 secondary school students from 10 schools in the Netherlands, aiming to understand how they experience 'presence' -- being fully (with one's entire being) engaged in the here-and-now -- in class. Although presence was a non-regular experience, students experienced it as personally…

The Rhythmic Arts Project (TRAP) curriculum integrates visual, tactile, auditory and speech experiences through rhythmic drumming actions to address life skills. We evaluated life skills before and after participation in TRAP in a school-based setting in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Participants were 23 children in grades 6-12 in…

Research studies that deal with student ability to investigate and carry out inquiry oriented investigations often call for educational practitioners to pay particular attention to incorporating the skills of scientific inquiry in the process of teaching and learning. This has the aim of helping learners acquire the skills needed to become problem…

A sandtray group experience is a creative intervention that counselors may want to incorporate into their work with adolescents. This qualitative inquiry explored the experiences of adolescent females who participated in a sandtray group while attending an alternative school. The researchers identified five themes that emerged from the data: (a)…

This study gathered from former students during grades 6th through 12th who had actively participated in the Business Professionals of America (BPA) program, sought to build on existing research on the benefits of participating in extra-curricular activities. The purpose of the research was to examine the extent to which participation in the BPA…

Background: Many studies have looked at students' mathematics achievement in the middle and high school years and the kinds of factors that are associated with their achievement. Within this domain, however, most research utilized cross-sectional data. Cross-sectional designs have both statistical and conceptual limitations. Few studies used…

Career development is integral to students' academic and social-personal development, and addressing students' needs in this area is recognized as an important responsibility of the professional school counselor. However, efforts to address students' career development tend to be lacking or services are provided in a disconnected manner. This…

An expanding body of research suggests an important role for parent or family competency training in children's social-emotional learning and related school success. This article summarizes a test of a longitudinal model examining partnership-based family competency training effects on academic success in a general population. Specifically, it…