Topics in death and dying education classes can be troubling for students, some of whom may have enrolled in such classes in order to seek help. This paper contains recommendations regarding happiness-related exercises that could be employed when teaching death and dying classes from a communications perspective in general education programs. At…

Book banning and censorship is appearing again in states and school districts. The history of book banning goes back as far as recorded time. Columnist Jonathan E. Collins discusses the U.S. court system's history support of the First Amendment and against censorship. He outlines the implications of the most recent book banning incidents and the…

Over the past 2 decades, scholars in various educational contexts have examined Bandura's theorizing about how self-efficacy develops. Bandura proposed 4 primary informational sources of self-efficacy--enactive experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasions, and physiological and affective states--each of which can be supported in…

Questions that challenge the curriculum can put educators on the defensive. Lauren Porosoff discusses helpful ways that educators can be proactive about creating productive and meaningful conversations with parents and community members about curriculum choices and the reasons behind them.

Background: Given that K-12 schools necessitate leaders who can advance equity and justice, preparation programs in higher education institutions have prioritized the development of equity-oriented school leaders. However, there has been relatively limited exploration of pedagogical approaches that equip educational leaders to navigate adverse…

Incorporating gratitude into the school day has the potential to help students achieve more satisfaction with relationships, life, and school. Grateful students are more willing to give back, exhibit optimism, have greater exercise ambition, and sleep better. While there has been much work done in adding gratitude practices into a classroom…

Families and other caregivers play a major role in children's learning and success in school. Psychologists have learned a great deal about how families can help their children learn and thrive in the classroom. Through conversations with caregivers and extensive research, psychologists have developed ideas about how children learn, what helps…

Many preservice teachers in early 2020 said farewell to their students one day in mid-March 2020 and did not expect that it was goodbye for the rest of the school year. The abrupt ending of the 2020 school year, and the school year that followed in 2021, left plenty of room for teachers and teacher candidates to grieve the loss of what had been in…

Discover how the crisis of a global pandemic allowed educators to improve learning across the pre-K-adult pipeline. While acknowledging the scale of loss and difficulty the COVID pandemic engendered within the field of education, this book focuses on how sudden and forced changes to teaching and learning created "Pandemic Positives,"…

Devastating school shootings have spawned a cottage industry of untested responses to school violence. Some involve target hardening, or making schools less vulnerable to violent attacks. School administrators and community members can be quick to gravitate towards target hardening measures for preventing school violence. However, crime prevention…

Despite growing discussions of antiracist practices and policies in PK-20 schools, education tends to critique racist structures without providing solutions that bring into the conversation the lived experiences of Black students, families, and communities. While these critiques may be helpful, we suggest these critiques omit practices and…

This review aims to explore the effects of placing children with special needs in inclusive educational settings, compared with segregated placement on measures of academic achievement and psychosocial adjustment. A secondary aim is to explore how different child or setting characteristics (gender, age, type and severity of special need, part- or…

Preparing students with robust life skills, including social-emotional skills, is of paramount importance in today's world, particularly for children growing up in adversity. Dream a Dream was founded by 11 young people who wanted to engage with children who were terminally ill, abandoned, or HIV infected. The idea was to organize activities and…

Teachers navigated a vast set of challenges during the 2019-20 school year when a pandemic shut down school and changed the face of classrooms. The challenges that emerged during this time were heaped upon the already full plates of the novice teachers featured in this study who were just gaining confidence in the classroom. This article…

This protocol guides the review of research that informs the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) intervention reports in the Supportive Learning Environment topic area. The protocol is used in conjunction with the "WWC Procedures and Standards Handbooks (Version 4.0)." This review focuses on interventions designed to promote supportive…