This paper is part of the special issue on Teacher Learning and Practice within Organizational Contexts. Shifting instructional practices in elementary schools to include more equitable, reform-based pedagogies is imperative for supporting students' development as science learners. Teachers need high quality professional development (PD) to learn…

Believe-Empathy-Wellness-Empower-Listen-Learn (BE WELL) program offers a promising replacement for traditional punitive suspensions in California schools. Amidst the over 6 million suspensions reported in 2022, this on-campus program fosters self-reflection, academic growth, and life skills within a compassionate and accepting learning…

Studies show that students are less successful in their freshman year of high school than in elementary and middle school. The causes of this decline in success range from new schedules, changing of relationships, increased rigor, and less involvement from educators. This applied study will explore the effectiveness of soft skill interventions in…

School discipline policies are broadly intended to foster a high-quality learning environment by maintaining safety in the classroom; however, far too often, schools adopt measures that harm a student's social, emotional, academic, and in some cases, physical health and well-being. To create physically safe and emotionally supportive environments…

Career-connected learning is an educational strategy that combines high-quality academic instruction, skill-based learning, and real-world experiences to prepare students with the knowledge and skills that they need to pursue their career goals. Career-connected learning is especially important for an often-overlooked group of students including…

The Advancing Inclusive Mentoring (AIM) Program was created to share best practices in inclusive and positive mentoring with faculty members who work with undergraduate or graduate students on independent research, scholarly, or creative works across disciplines. This hybrid program contains 35 online episodes within six modules and is…

Social justice-oriented teacher education programs infuse critical pedagogies in their coursework to build teachers' capacity to design and enact teaching that seeks to disrupt systemic oppression and injustice. Graduates of these programs often seek teaching positions in schools that serve working class communities of color with the goal of…

Children's school readiness as they enter kindergarten is an important predictor of their academic success and ultimately their long-term health and economic outcomes. Research shows that participation in high-quality early childhood education helps preschoolers gain the foundational language and literacy skills as well as the social-emotional…

While the importance of social-emotional learning for student success is well established, educators and researchers have less knowledge and agreement about which social-emotional skills are most important for students and how these skills distribute across student subgroups. Using a rich longitudinal dataset of 221,840 fourth through seventh…

This study showcases stories of minority students participating in the Geopaths research program at California State University, Bakersfield. The study examined faculty mentorship and research activity variables to understand their influence on STEM recruitment and retention. Using a narrative analysis approach, the researcher documented the…

The use of artificial intelligence is growing, but it's unclear how much it is expanding human knowledge. Peter W. Cookson Jr. discusses the potential of AI use for learning. He suggests that humans learn by making connections in ways that AI cannot replicate. The kinds of experiences that promote these connections require students to experiment…

Doors to other educational opportunities and future professions are closed when students have a low motivational profile in mathematics starting in elementary school and continue with an unchanged profile into high school (Lazarides et al., 2020). Students must learn how to increase their mathematical self-efficacy in order to increase their…

Teacher empathy is an essential feature in supporting social, emotional, and academic growth in students; however, there have been few studies of teacher empathy and job burnout. Teachers need to show empathy toward students without experiencing symptoms of job burnout to ensure students' academic, social, and emotional success. A mixed-methods…

For much of the last two decades, the narrowed focus on raising test scores under No Child Left Behind left important aspects of education untended. Since 2016, when the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) enabled a more comprehensive look at accountability, state leaders have heard growing demands for a whole-child approach that emphasizes…

With the quick rise of social media's popularity among the young, colleges and universities have found ways to use social media to recruit prospective students, engage current students, and connect with former ones. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of social media use for varied purposes among a student population often…