Adolescents in the United States and their teachers face an enormous academic challenge with respect to reading comprehension. College and career readiness standards outlined in the Common Core (2012) place increased emphasis on preparing students to read increasingly complex text across a range of disciplinary content areas. At issue is how to…

The Common Core Standards and the wide-spread state adoption have implications for music teachers. Alignment with English language arts Common Core Standards is discussed, with examples provided for elementary general music experiences. The author notes the challenge of retaining focus on the music domain while meeting the expectations of the…

A meta-analysis of 187 studies containing 247 independent studies (N = 68,429) on gender differences in academic self-efficacy identified an overall effect size of 0.08, with a small difference favoring males. Moderator analysis demonstrated that content domain was a significant moderator in explaining effect size variation. Females displayed…

In this article, the authors contend that high school English classes are a critical place for teaching democratic ways with words, and they call on and extend the tools of intercultural inquiry for the purposes of teaching democratic deliberation. The authors describe their collaborative engagement with an inventive data-driven genre--the…

The 2021 edition of the Annual Condition of Education Report (COE) marks the 32nd edition of the report. For over 30 years, the Department has published the COE in order to provide education stakeholders critical data about the status of Iowa's education system. The 2021 COE covers a wide variety of content including information about Iowa's…

This study examined the influence of placement in a co-taught inclusive classroom on the academic achievement of general education students in grades 6-8 in a suburban New York school district on the 2014 New York State ELA and Mathematics Assessments. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was utilized for sample selection in order to simulate a more…

This article reports on a middle school literacy intervention implemented during a yearlong teacher-researcher collaboration. The purpose of this collaboration was to combine and adjust commonly recommended pedagogical approaches to address the literacy needs of a heterogeneous group of seventh graders attending an urban school. University…

Classrooms of teachers who participated in Proyecto Bilingüe, a cohort-based master's degree program, used the historical novel, "Sylvia and Aki". The research question was: What spaces for authoring were created when using "Sylvia and Aki" in the figured worlds of bilingual elementary classrooms? The first theme in relation to…

The transgressive use of language by out-group speakers, or crossing is used in a variety of ways to achieve both affiliative and disaffiliative ends among youths. However, crossing can also be used as an affiliative resource in asymmetrical power relations between teachers and students. Reporting on the findings of a 1.5 year ethnography of an…

Gifted students have been provided the opportunity to study three core subjects through an academically selective virtual high school in western NSW, Australia. At the same time they continue to attend their local public high school for their other subjects. This article presents the mechanisms that have provided this opportunity, and describes…

This study was designed and conducted in an educational climate in which school and teacher accountability for student learning is increasingly connected to students' performances on standardized tests. The participants in this study, 5 middle school English language arts teachers, each rejected their district-sponsored data-driven instruction…

Teaching Again exposes the very human core of the teaching experience. This book is not just about teaching English/language arts; it is about the heart and soul of the vocation that is teaching. It is also not just about Tom Poetter, the English teacher; it is about every individual who has ever tried to educate, whether that act has taken place…

Orphan stories in children's literature are rich and complex, and they have historically permeated the pages of children's books. The purpose of this study was to explore the use of orphans as protagonists in children's award-winning literature through content analysis. This study utilizes all the Newbery Award winning books…

The author had presented a session on poetry at a children's literature conference sponsored by The Ohio State University, and afterward two teachers invited her to come to their school and read poetry. The children emailed their responses to her shortly after she spent the entire day conducting poetry reading sessions at an elementary school in…

This paper argues for the importance of ethnography in the conduct of educational research and the ways in which it can threaten, in a good sense, the certainties and dominance of performativity. The paper uses the poetry of Emily Dickinson to signal the importance of indirection in the conduct of ethnographic work and, more specifically, the ways…