In this article, the authors present a rejoinder to Drs. Boscardin, Mainzer, and Kealy's response to their article "Preparing Special Education Administrators for Inclusion in Diverse, Standards-Based Contexts: Beyond the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium" (ISLLC; Voltz & Collins, 2010).…

In this conceptual article, I use five questions that were posed in 1936 about immigration and the education of immigrant children as a lens to examine contemporary perspectives on immigration and the education of immigrant children. Dispelling myths about immigrant students and English learners has been a consistent concern in our country. These…

When young readers encounter texts that contain too many unfamiliar words, their comprehension suffers. Reading becomes slow, laborious, and frustrating, impeding their learning. That's why vocabulary knowledge is a key element in reading comprehension. To comprehend fully and learn well, all students need regular vocabulary exploration.…

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which sustained teacher professional development in science education affects the classroom instruction of elementary school teachers in third through sixth grade over a 3-year period. The teachers in the study were all elementary endorsed and prepared to be generalists in the content areas.…

This paper was written to clarify misconceptions that East Asian students are somehow less autonomous than learners from other cultural backgrounds. Specifically, based on motivational levels, it examines Japanese university students' perceptions of their responsibility and ability of autonomous English learning and what they can do inside and…

The roles of conceptual change and model building in science education are very important and have a profound and wide effect on teaching science. This study examines the change in children's position concepts after instruction, based on different conceptual change theories. Three classes were chosen and divided into three groups, including a…

To address the issue of pre-service teachers being under-prepared for work in multicultural and impoverished environments in America's urban schools, teacher education programs have taken steps to improve diversity-oriented curricula and provide relevant fieldwork experience. However, research indicates that a large proportion of teacher…

This study examines students' understanding of the normative connections between key concepts of cell division, including both mitosis and meiosis, and underlying biological principles that are critical for an in-depth understanding of genetic inheritance. Using a structural equation modeling method, we examine middle school students'…

In this article, the author talks about the significance of the collaboration between alumni relations and student affairs offices in overcoming misinformation and silos. Each has something the other wants. For the alumni office, student affairs offers a treasure trove of resources. They have databases with contact information, affinity-based…

In this paper we report the results from a study that assessed confidence together with scales measuring self-belief--i.e., self-efficacy, different kinds of self-concepts, and anxiety--among the 15-year old students from Singapore. A distinct confidence factor was identified in the domains of mathematics (N = 1940) and English (N = 1786). Our…

The purpose of this article is to help physical educators and coaches better understand the issues raised in recent news stories about transgender and intersex athletes and to encourage them to engage students and athletes in dialogues about these topics. In conversations with students, it is important for teachers and coaches to separate facts…

Students go to school to learn. How much, however, do students understand about the biological basis of this everyday process? Blackwell et al. (1) demonstrated a correlation between education about learning and academic achievement. Yet there are few studies investigating high school students' conceptions of learning. In this mixed-methods…

Density has been reported as one of the most difficult concepts for secondary school students (e.g. Smith et al. 1997). Discussion about the difficulties of learning this concept has been largely focused on the complexity of the concept itself or student misconceptions. Few, if any, have investigated how the concept of density was constituted in…

Education reform advocates who base policy decisions on empirical research often face the argument that because background variables explain so much of student outcomes, it follows that policy interventions cannot be effective. This policy brief explains the logical fallacy in the argument, illustrating with two examples, one taken from the…

Teachers' classroom management practices are rooted in assumptions based on their experiences and perceptions. At times, these assumptions are only partially informed, and serve to limit action and perceived responsibility. In this article, five common "half-truths" that guide classroom management are discussed. For each, the basic premise is…