Project OCCAMS (Online Consortium for Accelerating Middle School) developed and piloted an accelerated curriculum through a design-based research approach combining the Integrated Curriculum Model, principles of culturally responsive instructional design, and extensive compacting. The program created a pathway for diverse middle school students to…

Students need strong literacy skills to succeed in core academic subjects--English, mathematics, science, and social studies--and to be prepared for college and careers. "Reading Apprenticeship"® is a professional development program that aims to help teachers improve their students' literacy skills. The program also aims to improve…

This study examined the effect of mandated school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic on student learning loss and the effects of a rapid shift in instructional modality. The research study focused on comparing the academic year results of 2021-2022 to the year of 2018-2019 in English language arts and mathematics assessments, specifically using…

Technological advancements continue to present a variety of learning opportunities for students. The purpose of this interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study is to seek an understanding about students' experiences with a virtual reality (VR) activity in an Advanced Placement English course. Analyzing the observations and interactions…

The purpose of the study was to explore the use of visuals as it applied to English Language Arts instruction for teachers in suburban and urban middle and high schools in a metropolitan area in the state of Georgia. This study was implemented to address the reading needs of students in response to the changing context of literacy in an age of…

Teachers' mental health has been recognized as relevant to teacher effectiveness, with past work identifying impacts of teachers' mental health on teacher, classroom, and student outcomes. However, much still needs to be understood about the extent to which teachers' mental health is associated with students' learning experiences, including in…

Purpose: This paper aims to argue for the curricular inclusion of youth-generated young adult literature (YAL) alongside canonical literature and adult-generated YAL. The authors support this argument with the results of a qualitative analysis of youth memoir published in "The Best Teen Writing." They strive to inform the debate between…

This short story illustrates an occasion of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogical practices in relation to the canonical texts which are often used in urban classrooms. In it, a lesson on Jane Eyre's childhood point of view and mode of introspectiveness delves into a tale of dancing and Otherness. The story shows that in spaces where…

Argumentative writing has long been considered an essential skill for disciplinary learning. For researchers and curriculum developers to develop ecologically valid instructional approaches to argumentative writing, a pivotal prerequisite is the understanding of how teachers use various instructional methods in tandem to teach different…

Overestimation and underestimation of students' own competence result from social comparison in the classroom. There is some evidence that secondary school students compare their results with those of one or two same-sex others who perform slightly better than themselves. The first objective of this study was to replicate these findings among…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have described discipline-specific literacy skills needed to successfully engage with science concepts, and science assessments ask students to use language in many and varied forms to mediate their science thought and actions and prove mastery of content. Yet…

The ambitious goals of standards-based reform call for both technical and adaptive leadership to address problems of practice involving the technical and adaptive alignment of teachers' instruction to the standards. Thus, standards-aligned curriculum implementation necessitates both types of strategies; otherwise, adaptive challenges will persist.…

Dance can be found anywhere from commercial entertainment to online, digital platforms. Yet, dance (as creative expression, performance, choreography, learning strategy, representation of knowledge) still maintains a marginalized profile in schools. Dance as artistic representation has immense power and potential for communicating and responding…

Digital editions of Shakespeare plays are promising tools to support student engagement in sophisticated reading, evidence-based analysis, and meaningful creative productions. One such complex digital text is the e-book series "WordPlay" Shakespeare. In this study, American secondary English Language Arts teachers used these e-books to…

As an increasing number of teens are engaging in digital environments, they are becoming open to online misinformation often designed to further a variety of agendas. Online misinformation, or "fake news" as it is often referred to in popular culture, permeates all Web 2.0 technologies. Since English Language Arts curriculums often focus…