According to researchers, ethnographic tools can be used to reflect the details of life in any social arena. Through the experiences of a school teacher and her students, the use of ethnographic tools in the process of conflict management and learning is discussed.

Thomas Kuhn's ideas of paradigm are discussed and their role in the development of science and their application to the issue of disagreements in the field of reading is examined. Disagreements in the field of reading occur and new theories keep on developing, but they should not be abandoned.

Getting students to read is a common problem in many secondary English language arts classrooms. Many teachers continue to assign only classic literature with novels that have been traditionally used in English language arts classrooms because of the belief in timelessness. There is evidence that the use of young adult literature in the secondary…

In "Dialogic Origin," Mikhail Bakhtin -- as teacher-researcher and theorist -- presents readers with a remarkable essay on teaching grammar and style to 7th-year students (roughly equivalent to 10th graders in the U.S. educational system). In doing so, Bakhtin employs some of his most notable concepts (among them dialogism and "hero") as informing…

A number of arguments appeared in the late-nineteenth-century United States about "correctness" in language, arguments for and against enforcing a standard of correctness and arguments about what should count as correct in language. Insofar as knowledge about and facility with "correct" linguistic usage could affect one's standing in the social…

This study investigated the demographic profiles of middle school students receiving either singular school-based mental health services or bundled school-based mental health services in conjunction with school counseling services. Demographic variables collected for this study characterize students attending six intermediate or middle-schools,…

[Slides] presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2009. This study investigated the presence of a general rise in high school grades without a corresponding rise in SAT scores, as well as different grading criteria between schools, as shown by differential relationships between AP course grades and exam scores. These…

This paper presents results of English Language Arts Criterion-Referenced Test (CRT) of third grade students for the year 2008-2009. In 2005, 77% of third-grade students who took the 3rd grade Language Arts CRT were proficient; in 2009, 80% of third-grade students were proficient. Third grade proficiency on the Language Arts Test has gradually…

This article describes a group counseling intervention promoting academic achievement and ethnic identity development for twenty fifth grade African American elementary students. The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) scores of students participating in the treatment group improved significantly over those in the control group. Implications…

Does poetry have a place in elementary education? Can reading and writing poetry offer elementary learners a way to imagine (and to image) the world through personal insight, to organize and interpret their experience, and to discover meaningful connections to other areas of knowledge? If so, how should these modes of interaction and…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction for English Learners in the Elementary Grades" addresses the challenge of providing effective literacy instruction for English learners in the elementary grades. The Guide offers five specific recommendations for district…

This article describes how the story of Alice in Wonderland helps students understand the operation of multiplying by a rational number less than 1 and related aspects of ratio and proportion. Included with this article is a "How Tall Is Alice?" Worksheet. (Contains 1 table and 6 figures.)

High school teacher John Golden provides a variety of literature, film scenes, and classroom activities to introduce literary, cinematic, and theatrical elements. He shows students how to move beyond basic comparisons as students learn to analyze the techniques and changes film directors choose when translating literature to the screen. (Contains…

The authors draw on Cognitive Flexibility Theory (Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, & Anderson, 2004) as a lens to examine one seventh-grade English language arts teacher's pedagogical approach to using multiple text types to develop students' conceptual understandings about the 1957 integration of Little Rock's Central High School. Multiple text types…

Under Title III of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2001b) every state needs to show linkage between state content standards and state English language development standards as input to the development of state English proficiency tests. This article argues that Title III presents a unique opportunity to explore how different…