Hip-hop music has been embraced worldwide by youth, pummeled in the media for supposedly increasing social misery and hailed as a significant musical breakthrough. Hip-hop culture has transcended musical boundaries and now impacts speech, clothing, mannerisms, movies, websites, television programming, magazines, and energy drinks (Dyson, 2007;…

Educational data mining (EDM) is an emerging discipline that focuses on applying data mining tools and techniques to educationally related data. The discipline focuses on analyzing educational data to develop models for improving learning experiences and improving institutional effectiveness. A literature review on educational data mining topics…

Adolescence is the time during which people develop and form their crucial values, personality traits, and beliefs. Hence, as deviant behaviors occur during adolescence, it is important to guide adolescents away from such behaviors and back to normal behaviors. Moreover, although there are various kinds of deviant behavior, most of them would…

The benefits of student engagement in undergraduate research are well-recognized by many higher education institutions. Increased emphasis on undergraduate research in these institutions has taken many forms resulting in considerable differences across institutions ranging from "light touch" to "heavy duty" involvement of…

Research cannot be conducted without conscious or unconscious use of underlying theoretical principles (Broido & Manning, 2002). As such, even studies that seem void of theoretical underpinnings subscribe to some semblance of theoretical principles. Broido and Manning (2002) argue that postmodernism, feminist theory, and critical theory, among…

In this commentary, we examine Braverman's insights into the trade-offs between feasibility and rigor in evaluation measures and reject his assessment of the trade-off as a zero-sum game. We, argue that feasibility and policy salience are, like reliability and validity, intrinsic to the definition of a good measure. To reduce the tension between…

There is extensive research on the benefits of making data-informed decisions, but research also contains evidence many educators incorrectly interpret student data. Meanwhile, the types of detailed labeling on over-the-counter medication have been shown to improve use of non-medication products, as well. However, data systems most educators use…

The focus on measuring student growth based on teacher effectiveness has presented new challenges for an urban school in Massachusetts. The purpose of this general interpretive qualitative study was to examine the instructional practices of a group of middle school teachers, the practices they perceived to be effective for ensuring student…

When validating assessment models built with data mining, generalization is typically tested at the student-level, where models are tested on new students. This approach, though, may fail to find cases where model performance suffers if other aspects of those cases relevant to prediction are not well represented. We explore this here by testing if…

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has long advocated that any meaningful understanding of "effective" teaching must be rooted in results for kids. Whatever else they accomplish in the classroom, effective teachers improve student achievement. It seems like common sense. Yet, until recently, it has been an exceptional way of…

In the information age, one of the most influential institutions is education. The recent emergence of MOOCS [Massively Open Online Courses] is a sample of the new expectations that are offered to university students. Basing decisions on data and evidence seems obvious, and indeed, research indicates that data-driven decision-making improves…

Background: Across Europe and the Nordic countries, unemployment among 18-30 year-olds is a major challenge, which in some countries is being tackled by focusing on education. In Denmark, young unemployed people or people on the margins of the education system are assessed regarding what is known as an "education requirement". Hence,…

Developing curriculum to enhance student learning is the primer purpose of all curricular activities. Availability of recent tools supporting to teach various skills including reading, listening, speaking and writing has opened a new avenue for curricular activities in technology-enhanced learning environments. Understanding the perceptions of…

Parental engagement in positive activities with the child may show significant variation across time, assuming a crucial influence on child development. In dual-earner families, work-family conflict can interfere with parental engagement, with negative consequences for children's behavior. The current study examined the change trajectories of…

The rapidly changing landscape of 21st-century education has sparked intense conversations around the need for a more racially and ethnically diverse PK-12 teacher population. Drawing from critical race theory and racial formation, I describe findings from a qualitative case study that examined how a group of black millennial preservice teachers…