The Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) project includes training elementary and secondary teachers. This training component, Ecology Explorers (EE), prepares teachers in grades 4 through 12 to teach about ecological principles and processes. The EE pedagogy employs scientific inquiry and data collection protocols.…

In the United States in the last few years, a considerable amount of attention has been given to literacy programs as a way to close the academic gap between English-only (EO) students and English language learners (ELL). Teacher education programs around the country have been dealing with issues of academic inequity for some time. There are no…

The authors used the 5E learning cycle (engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate) and a pulmonary carbon dioxide mystery to introduce eighth grade students to the study of chemistry. The activity engages students in measurement, data collection, data analysis, media and internet research, research design, and report writing as they search…

In this paper, a data perturbation method for minimizing the possibility of disclosure of participants' identities on a survey is described in the context of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The method distinguishes itself from most approaches because of the presence of cognitive tasks. Hence, a data edit should have minimal…

The purpose of this technical report is to summarize the research methodology of the Novice Teacher Study (NTS) strand of the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) research. The Ohio TQP embarked on a series of research studies to learn more about the characteristics of effective teachers and to identify the patterns of teacher performance in both…

Building and racing mousetrap cars is a common activity in many eighth- and ninth-grade physical science classrooms. However, once students have raced their cars, most mousetrap assignments come to an end. In this article, the authors developed a project to help teachers get more mileage out of mousetrap cars. The Mousetrap Car Project addresses…

The study investigated the relationships between substance use, body image, and peer influence among Finnish adolescents. The participants (N = 488, 240 boys and 248 girls), were eighth-grade high school students. The data were gathered using a questionnaire. In addition to background information, the study covered risk behaviors frequency, body…

There are multiple approaches to measuring physical activity. Among these are direct observation, electronic monitoring, direct and indirect calorimetry, and self-report instruments. Self-report instruments are the most practical and cost effective option for use with a large group. In a study by Motl, Dishman, Dowda, and Pate (2004), two groups…

The National Governors' Association is urging states to develop a standardized cohort graduation rate definition and to develop data systems with quality data that can in turn be used to produce a reliable indicator. This paper is an examination of one state's graduation rate using the cohort method. The statistics generated are compared to a…

This report presents the results of a study of eighth-grade science teaching, conducted as part of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 Video Study. The Video Study is a supplement to the TIMSS 1999 student assessment, a successor to the TIMSS 1995 student assessment. The TIMSS 1999 Video Study had the broad purpose…

A nationally representative sample of eighth-graders were first surveyed in the spring of 1988. A sample of these respondents were then resurveyed through four follow-ups in 1990, 1992, 1994, and 2000. On the questionnaire, students reported on a range of topics including: school, work, and home experiences; educational resources and support; the…

This study investigates differences in eighth-grade mathematics students' engagement in standards-based curriculum and instruction practices between block and traditional-schedule schools. Survey data were gathered from 156 middle level mathematics teachers to access the use of standards-based curriculum and instruction practices in their…

The 12th iteration of the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2019) is organized under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society in Montreal, Canada. The theme of this year's conference is EDM in Open-Ended Domains. As EDM has matured it has increasingly been applied to open-ended and ill-defined tasks…

Every day, we learn what works so students can make greater progress. Six years after No Child Left Behind's passage--and midway to the nation's goal of having students on grade level or better in reading and math by 2014--we have collected more data than ever before about the academic performance of our students and schools. This information…

When marking GCSE data handling coursework, the author was repeatedly reminded just how poor the level of statistical understanding is among students. In response to a feeling that the teaching of handling data topics was limited, the author and her colleague designed a project with Y8 students to try to teach statistics for a deeper…