The intent of this study was to examine three high impact instructional strategies and determine their impact on self-efficacy in writing in fourth-grade and fifth-grade classrooms. Goal setting, goal tracking, and celebration of success are instructional strategies that are widely used with various capacities in the classroom. These strategies…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study is to examine how 3rd-8th grade teachers describe their use of educational technology for experiential learning in mathematics in the Southwestern United States. David Kolb et al. (2001) experiential learning theory guided the two research questions on the level of use and how teachers described…

Children possess different beliefs regarding their ability to succeed in math and science, as well as different levels of enjoyment and interest in these topics. These motivational processes are important because they often shape learning-related behaviours which in turn predict academic outcomes, over and above previous performance. But, what are…

Goal setting is utilized by adults regularly to foster success. It has also been shown to benefit academic achievement. This 8-week study sought to determine the effects of goal setting on motivation, self-efficacy, and math achievement in elementary students. The quasi-experimental study included 70 students in 3rd and 4th grade math classes.…

We assessed the influence of genre-specific discourse knowledge and writing goals on the persuasive writing of 4th and 6th grade students with and without learning disabilities (LD). Students were first interviewed about their knowledge of persuasion and persuasive writing. They then wrote a persuasive essay about a controversial topic after…

This study investigated how two aspects of the classroom environment (teachers' emphasis on mastery goals and descriptive norms (i.e., the average student disruptive, prosocial, and achievement-related behavior in a classroom), moderated the relationship between student behaviors and coolness. The sample included 976 students nested in 54 fifth-…

More than ever before, public schools are under immense pressure to raise the academic achievement of students. Administrators, teachers, and parents alike are searching for ways to equip students with the necessary knowledge to be successful in the 21st Century. Research proves that goal setting provides students with a tool to plan, monitor, and…

This study's purpose was to determine the effect of instruction in self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies on low-achieving fourth-grade students' perseverance in solving mathematics problems. This study was conducted with fourth-grade students who had been ability-grouped based on prior low achievement and testing data in math. Students were…

In this paper, we explore the intersection of critical literacy pedagogy, queer pedagogy, and transgender topics by turning our attention to the learning that supported the writing of an acrostic poem about Title IX and transgender students. We examine how this writing, in turn, created additional content and context that spurred others' learning.…

A Grade 4 English language teacher in a township school in Cape Town, South Africa, in her quest to equip learners with new target language resources, is not held back by the perceived boundaries dividing named languages. Instead she employs language in creative and goal-directed ways that we believe have not received enough focused linguistic…

Across the nation, educators continue to face challenges as they work to individualize instruction to meet the specific needs of their students. However, theory suggests that teachers who possess a clear vision for teaching creatively weave their personal convictions for teaching with instructional practices. Drawing upon a teacher's (first…

This study assessed the effectiveness of prevent-teach-reinforce (P-T-R), a functional behavioral assessment-based intervention for students with behavior problems, using an A-B-A-B design with follow-up. Participants included three students in kindergarten, fourth grade, and fifth grade in a rural Midwestern school district. P-T-R interventions…

This study explores the way in which the European Language Portfolio (ELP) is used for teaching English as a foreign language to young learners with the aim of enhancing their involvement in the language learning process. The data for the study were collected through observations in a fourth-grade and a fifth-grade classroom (students' ages varied…

The relationships of teachers' epistemological beliefs, motivation, and goal orientation to their instructional practices that foster student creativity were examined. Teachers' perceived instructional practices that facilitate the development of multiple perspectives in problem solving, transfer, task commitment, creative skill use, and…

The author works as a biliteracy teacher in a bilingual school that serves students from K-5th grade. She and her coteacher provide instruction in both English and Spanish to 4th and 5th graders. They have two language arts blocks so that students receive literacy instruction in both their native and second languages, and they teach math, social…