There is a continuing trend of unrepresented female students in STEM classrooms, particularly in technology courses. There is a focus on the K-12 learning environment to increase the number of female STEM students, which will encourage a growth in participation for females in the STEM field (Sassler, Glass, Levitte, & Michelmore, 2017). The…

In this qualitative research we employed the case study method to identify the factors that affect Turkish fifth to eight graders' selection of books to read and the reasons that cause them to stop reading the books they have selected. To identify those factors and reasons, data were collected from a total of 32 participating students who were…

There is evidence that student-selected reading of compelling, relevant young adult literature helps address the problem of low reading engagement among adolescents, but schools rarely take up this option as a curricular priority. A major source of apprehension for adults is fear that students might be placed at risk by exposure to realistic…

Among the many factors contributing to the historical lack of reading gains of our Black male students is the absence of texts accurately and authentically representing African American characters in today's schools. In addition, well-meaning educators are not adept in identifying and selecting these types of texts in order to provide African…

This Statistics in Brief provides information about the occupational expectations of high school freshmen in 2009 and how their expectations changed (or did not) by the spring of 2012. The focus is on expectations for a career in a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) field, defined in this report as science, technology,…

Our social studies classrooms are filled with students from many different backgrounds. This article aims to help middle grades (grades 6-8) social studies teachers consider how trade books that feature the global South can be paired with primary historical texts in order to help students develop perspective consciousness. Social studies educators…

Missing from educational studies on English learners (ELs) is an investigation of those students who succeed beyond minimum standards, defying the achievement gap. The research study presented in this article contributes to this area by examining the experiences and understandings of five middle school ELs who have demonstrated linguistic and…

The link between recreational book reading and improved literacy performance is consistently supported by educational research. Increasing engagement in recreational book reading remains imperative for English teachers, though how to best facilitate this in a secondary context is an object of contention, with limited research in this field. The…

The context of this study is a voluntary modification in teaching focus by four eighth-grade teachers who shifted their instructional focus toward student engagement. They abandoned assigned readings in favor of student-selected, self-paced reading within a collection of high interest materials--primarily young adult fiction that students found…

Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) is a period of time given to students to read self-selected materials during their school day. This study examines the effect of participation in a SSR program on reading attitudes and reading achievement of students as measured by the Adolescent Motivation to Read Profile (AMRP) and the Northwest Evaluation…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that influence adolescent males to enroll in school choir as an elective class and to assess their attitudes about singing in general, self-concept of their own voices, and perception of others' view of adolescent males' participation in choir. Data were obtained from 101 adolescent males…

This article describes a pilot study conducted with 10 identified avid adolescent readers who completed the Adolescent Motivation to Read Profile (AMRP) (Pitcher, Albright, DeLaney, Walker, Seunarienesingh, & Moggie, 2007) that includes both a survey to determine students' self-concept and value of reading and an interview that sheds light on what…

The 12th iteration of the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2019) is organized under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society in Montreal, Canada. The theme of this year's conference is EDM in Open-Ended Domains. As EDM has matured it has increasingly been applied to open-ended and ill-defined tasks…

In the spring of 2005, the author created a short, online questionnaire to capture data about middle schoolers and book covers, and after several pilot studies she posted it to SurveyMonkey.com. The study includes the fiction books for middle school from the 2005 Quick Picks list. Over the course of a week, participants reported to the school…

The problem is that with each passing year it becomes increasingly harder to maintain student motivation to read and improve reading comprehension. The purpose of this project was to increase reading motivation in elementary and middle school students through the use of multiple intelligences. This project was conducted by four teacher researchers…