Literature on social inequalities in schooling reveals that the school curriculum, streaming, and teacher expectations are school-related factors that limit student success. This study asks: How do the school curriculum, streaming and teacher expectations limit students who have been designated "at risk" from finding success in school?…

Students are non-randomly assigned, or sorted, into classrooms in various ways across and within schools. In this study, we use longitudinal data sets from three districts to investigate a metric for the characterization of sorting at the school level. We analyze whether non-random student assignment is associated with value-added estimates for…

This dissertation investigates the implications of student-teacher racial/ethnic matching on two educational outcomes. The fourth chapter investigates whether assignment to same-race teachers affects students' math and reading achievement growth in early elementary grades and whether the overall racial/ethnic composition of the teaching workforce…

This research study investigates effects of character education activities on the self-esteem of intellectually able and less able students in the lower elementary level in Kuwait. The participants were 39 students in grade three with an average age of eight years old. Students were first divided into two ability subgroups (intellectually able vs.…

Background: This investigation was sparked by research findings on secondary education showing school segregation to be closely associated with homogeneous grouping practices, such as tracking and between-class ability grouping. Research Design: We conduct secondary analyses of national data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten…

The adoption of setting in the primary school (pupils ability grouped across classes for particular subjects) emerged during the 1990s as a means to raise standards. Recent research based on 8875 children in the Millennium Cohort Study showed that 25.8% of children in Year 2 were set for literacy and mathematics and a further 11.2% of children…

This Grounded Theory study explored the identity development of four current and two former Reading Recovery students. The study focused on the interactions between self-efficacy, self-regulation and identity as students participated in the Reading Recovery intervention to capture change over time in the identity development of students who…

School leaders face increased pressure to identify instructional and administrative practices that increase student achievement. However, achievement gaps persist between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged student groups. This study highlighted relationships between ability grouping and academic achievement in a suburban school district.…

The Wyoming Department of Education (WDE) has invested time and money developing standardized achievement test score reports designed to give teachers data about each of their students' levels of mastery of particular concepts in order to differentiate their instruction. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which eighth-grade…

Ability grouping--defined as a practice that places students into classrooms or small groups based on an initial assessment of their readiness or ability--has received considerable attention in educational research for years in many countries (Ireson & Hallam, 1999, 2001; Slavin, 1987). In Korea, ability grouping has been implemented in…

Over the past decade, several state and federal policies have directed schools to mainstream English Language Learner (ELL) students into English-only instruction classrooms. While there is mixed evidence on the effects of these immersion policies on the ELL students, research examining potential peer effects on their non-ELL classmates is…

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is today a well-known academic assistance program that provides help for students in "difficult" courses. SI has repeatedly been shown to decrease the percentage of failures in the course as well as increasing course grades for students who attended SI sessions. Although SI is open for all students, its main objective…

This article offers a critique of the quality of theorising underlying proposals on curriculum and pedagogy in the Cambridge Primary Review. Despite its strengths, the review is seen as omitting consideration of three major areas in primary education: gifted pupils, teacher effectiveness research and the private sector. Questions are raised about…

This study investigated the identification and distribution of perfectionist types with a sample of 111 academically gifted Chinese students aged 17 to 20 in Hong Kong. Three approaches to classification were employed. Apart from the direct questioning approach, the rational approach and the clustering approach classified students using their…

Research on cognitive load theory (CLT) has not yet provided facet-specific measures of cognitive load. The lack of valid methods to measure intrinsic, extraneous and germane cognitive load makes it difficult to empirically test theoretical explanations of effects caused by manipulations of instructional designs. This situation also imposes…