School climate profoundly influences students' social, emotional, and academic functioning, representing an important indicator of student and school success. The federal Every Student Succeeds Act recognizes the importance of prioritizing positive learning conditions for all students and requires states to both include an indicator of…

Research shows that a socially-emotionally supportive setting is the solution to increasing student achievement. "The SEL Solution" helps students and adults master critical social-emotional skills, encourages student leadership, provides effective and compassionate behavior management strategies, and increases student success. Based on…

Education activist William Ayers invites new and prospective teachers to consider the deepest dimensions of a life in teaching. Should I become a teacher? How can I get to know my students? What commitments come with me into the classroom? How do I develop my unique teaching signature? In his new book, "About Becoming A Teacher", Ayers…

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the important role that gender plays in organizing and affecting the quality of the classroom climate. We review research showing how students' peer relationships tend to be segregated by gender and discuss the consequences of children spending much of their time almost exclusively with same-gender peers,…

With the tragedies of school violence igniting calls for increased safety and security, one popular proposal is to use metal detectors in schools. To address questions about what impact such devices may have on day-to-day safety and on what happens during school violence events, this research brief summarizes what is known about metal detectors in…

Principals transitioning to a new school often struggle to build or sustain a positive school climate in the first 100 days, which can impede school progress and achievement. (Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2008; MacNeil, Prater, & Busch, 2009). School systems and principals must prioritize successful transitions if they wish to prevent…

Though Montessori teachers and teacher educators are very familiar with the command to "follow the child," few may know where in her writing Montessori says to do this. This article looks at where the concept is referred to indirectly at times. This article also answers the question "what does this really mean in postmodern…

The authors explore how 3D visualizations of historical sites can be used as pedagogical tools to support historical empathy. They provide three visualizations created by a team at Virginia Tech as examples. They discuss virtual environments and how the digital restoration process is applied. They also define historical empathy, explain why it is…

In this article we consider the material dimensions of schooling as constitutive of the possibilities inherent in "fixing" education. We begin by mapping out the problem of "fixing education," pointing to the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education--a desire to kill what otherwise might be life-giving. In this sense,…

Are there neurobiological reasons why we are willing to trust other people and why "trust" and moral values such as "care" play a quite pivotal role in our social lives and the judgements we make, including our social interactions and judgements made in the context of schooling? In pursuing this question, this paper largely…

The purpose of this article was to examine the effects of distributed leadership on instructional change and school climate by integrating the functional and relational perspectives of leadership. The functional perspective focuses on the degree to which leadership functions are equally distributed among leaders, and the relational perspective…

In light of recent highly publicized and tragic incidents, such as the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, school communities are increasingly concerned about student and teacher safety. School leaders, politicians, and community members are frantically seeking solutions to the problem of school…

The following work is intended to be a closer look and commentary on the issue of gun violence and mass shootings in the United States of America. An overarching pragmatic lens will be utilized to argue that the time is now to make a change in our current trajectory of normalized gun violence in our schools, and society in general. We currently…

This article describes three key principles learned while visiting schools in Finland in May 2017. Specifically, the article explores how trust, collaboration, and well-being contribute to the foundation of student-centered school cultures. The use of trust-based responsibility over test-based accountability allows for greater teacher autonomy and…

In vocational education, students learn in different school-based and workplace-based learning environments and engage with different types of knowledge in these environments. Students are expected to integrate these experiences and make meaning of them in relation to their own professional knowledge base. This study focuses both on…