Students encounter difficulties in solving areas of triangles and quadrilaterals due to a lack of conceptual understanding of the topic. The researchers have developed the following activities and the hypothetical learning trajectory (HLT) through the design research approach focusing on developing activities for students to learn the concepts…

Argumentation skills are emphasized by the common core state standards (CCSS) and are viewed as essential for success in college, career, and life. Our project aims to develop formative assessment tasks measuring students' argumentative reading and writing skills. We used the framework of the "Discuss and Debate Ideas" key practice…

The evolution of U.S. secondary school mathematics requirements throughout the 20th century included a significant shift towards more rigorous standards by the end of the century. Initially, many states required minimal or no mathematics for high school graduation. However, reforms led most states to adopt a 3-year mathematics requirement, with…

This study is a case study within a three-year-long design research study. The purposes of this study are twofold. The first purpose includes investigating whether there is a significant difference in seventh-grade students' proportional reasoning skills before and after a teaching experiment conducted in line with the perspectives of Hypothetical…

The field of STEM education calls for a nuanced understanding of participation as participation measured by attendance provides limited information about student learning. This multiple case study contributes to a nuanced understanding of youth's participation trajectories in a multimodal composition project. In the project, fifth to eighth grade…

The focus of this special edition is students' literacy development over the school years. Drawing on data that includes classroom interactions, analyses of texts, and interviews with students, this edition builds on the seminal treatment of the question of literacy transitions provided in Christie and Derewianka (2008). This paper aims to…

Learning progressions (LPs) are novel models for the development of assessments in science education, that often use a scale to categorize students' levels of reasoning. Pictorial representations are important in chemistry teaching and learning, and also in LPs, but the differences between pictorial and verbal items in chemistry LPs is unclear. In…

Background/Context: Increasing evidence suggests a connection between racial differences in rates of exclusionary discipline (suspensions/expulsions) and academic achievement by (Losen & Martinez, 2020; Reardon et al., 2018). Black students receive out-of-school suspensions and expulsions at disproportionately higher rates, which is associated…

This study presents a framework that uses academic trajectories in the middle grades for identifying students in need of intervention and providing targeted support. We apply a set of academic college readiness benchmarks to rich longitudinal data for more than 360,000 students in 5900 schools across 49 states and the District of Columbia. In both…