Problem-solving has been playing an important role in predicting students' academic achievement, cognitive skills, and future careers. It plays an even more important role in English learners (ELs), especially those who are at-risk for math learning difficulties, because they face more severe challenges in language. As more English learners…

Our children come to school every day to learn, participate, and prepare for what the future will bring. Others come to school to find refuge and help from those who dedicate their lives to ensure they are well and safe. They come with their minds filled with hopes and dreams, while others walk around the hallways with their hearts filled with…

SWLD are often underperforming in STEM courses compared to their peers without learning difficulties. Furthermore, how students perform in 9th grade is found to be a strong predictor of high school success, graduation, enrolling, and persisting in college (Easton et al., 2017). The study aimed to investigate whether the use of PBA, a…

The purpose of the present study is to examine the effectiveness of the Conceptual Model-based Problem-Solving intervention program (COMPS) along with instructional scaffolds to enhance the performance of English learners (ELs) with learning difficulties in mathematics (LDM) to solve word problems. The participants were three third-grade ELs with…

Geometry education is an important aspect of STEM education and career development, but it is often overlooked in K-12 education in the United States. Although there is some research on teaching geometry to students with learning difficulties at the elementary level, there is a lack of research on teaching advanced geometry skills at high school…

This qualitative case study examined the complicated process that School Building Learning Communities (SBLCs) navigated in regard to the pre-referral process due to the pandemic. Rooted in the theories of John Dewey (2018) and Howard Gardner (1996), this research was conducted by way of interviews and a reflective journal of 12 educational…

Statistical learning (SL), the ability to detect and extract regularities from inputs, has been considered as an early-maturing and domain-general mechanism that is critical for typical language development. However, recent evidence in neurotypical adults and children have found that individuals can vary in their SL abilities across linguistic and…

The past thirty years have shown a rise in models of language acquisition in which the state of the learner is characterized as a probability distribution over a set of non-stochastic grammars. In recent years, increasingly powerful models have been constructed as earlier models have failed to generalize well to increasingly complex and realistic…

This case study involves one public school in a suburb of a major metropolitan area, focusing on one classroom of first grade students selected from a pool of volunteer classrooms. The first grade class of students, during their regular mathematics instruction, were given three tasks by their teachers designed to elicit a productive struggle…

Historically, the least restrictive environment (LRE) is the environment that allows students who receive special education services to be with typically achieving peers to the greatest degree that is appropriate. Recently, there has been an emphasis on supporting all students during the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Students have gone through…

The COVID pandemic and ongoing risks to school safety drastically increased interest in full-time virtual school enrollment at the start of the decade. However, virtual schools have historically struggled to achieve mathematics outcomes comparable to their face-to-face counterparts and are at risk if they do not find ways to improve student…

Many students in the United States are not proficient in mathematics. Mathematics vocabulary is one area that may impact students' understanding of and engagement with mathematics. This dissertation investigated the implementation, effectiveness, and teacher's perceptions of a program for teaching mathematics vocabulary necessary for fourth grade…

Higher education and K-12 institutions have seen an increase in dual-credit participation for students with learning challenges. Given the rapid growth in the dual-credit programs and increasing numbers of students entering higher education institutions with learning challenges, more research was needed to support students in dual-credit programs…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a vocabulary tutoring intervention with defining key vocabulary terms and algebraic problem-solving skills of students who struggle with mathematics. Literature shows that there is a need to further explore how students with mathematical learning difficulties learn mathematics vocabulary at…

Struggle is a behavior that is often perceived in a negative light in education. Students respond to struggle by avoiding them. Likewise, educators respond by removing obstacles (e.g., heavily scaffolded instruction) or providing assistance prematurely. The ability and opportunity to engage in struggle, specifically productive struggle, is…