One of our favorite face-to-face teaching frameworks is "Launch, Explore, Summarize" (LES). However, transitioning LES activities to online settings challenged us to reimagine how learning and its interactions could be supported in this new environment. We explore our experience transitioning an LES lesson on the quadrilateral hierarchy…

This study examined the learning trajectory of five US humanities teachers when navigating learning to teach the difficult history of school desegregation within a context of a six-month inquiry-based professional development. The research questions were: What do teachers frame as problems when teaching difficult histories? How do they…

Student engagement has been shown to function as a pathway leading to valued educational outcomes. This study used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to reveal how various configurations of sex, grade level, teaching presence, social presence, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and parental support lead to high online…

This study examined "backward transfer," which we define as how students' ways of reasoning about previously encountered concepts are modified when learning about new concepts. We examined the backward transfer produced when students learned about quadratic functions. We were specifically interested in how backward transfer may vary for…

Background: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) content in mathematics education has gained increasing attention in various countries. However, despite the critical role that textbooks play in mathematics teaching and learning, existing research on mathematics textbooks has largely overlooked examining STEM content and their…

Accurately identifying the factors that influence the online learning of middle-school students is crucial for improving its effectiveness. However, existing studies rarely focus on the factors influencing the learning outcomes of middle-school students, and traditional methods often struggle to identify the nonlinear relationships among those…

Tangible teaching aids can provide a valuable supplement to traditional textbook-based learning of fundamental STEM concepts. 3D-printed templates detailing the construction of simple parallel and series circuits were incorporated into the lesson plans for 6th-grade introductory physics. Aiming to introduce the concepts of junction and loop rules…

This study looked at the effectiveness of differentiated learning in enhancing students' mathematical outcomes by incorporating varied content, processes, and products. Employing a mixed-methods experimental design, the research hypothesized that differentiated instruction significantly influences students' performance in mathematics exams. The…

Though scholarship has long championed the positive impacts of classroom considerations of controversial or difficult issues, teachers have often hesitated to broach divisive topics for numerous reasons, including legislation purporting to limit controversy in classrooms and, often, that they had limited or no preparation to teach controversies,…

Pupils' subject choices at the level of secondary education critically determine the tertiary fields of study that they can pursue. This study used multinomial logistic regression models to investigate the extent to which the final report card grades of ninth-grade students predicted their choices of subject combinations at the senior general…

Despite its importance for students' learning, engaging students in dialogic discussions, especially about controversial, justice-oriented topics, can be difficult for U.S. teachers to enact due to current political constraints. In this study, we explore how three middle school teachers engaged their students in curriculum-embedded discussions on…

Background: Amidst the increasing application of online education in the post-COVID era, new challenges in student engagement have emerged. However, most studies on online engagement have adopted macro-level approaches and relied on self-report measures of retrospective engagement. Few have examined micro-level engagement in terms of real-time and…

In "Equitable Instruction for English Learners in the Content Areas," ESL expert Valentina Gonzalez shows you how to meet the needs of English learners in K-8 classrooms. With an emphasis on comprehensible input, the clear and accessible guidance in this book allows teachers to maintain a high level of instruction and hold all students…

Many simple chemical reactions produce an audible fizz due to the formation of gases, such as oxygen, hydrogen, or carbon dioxide. A hands-on activity based on perceiving these audible chemical changes is presented. The relative quality of fizz due to the formation of gases in a chemical reaction was determined by visually impaired middle and high…

The importance of constructing mathematical arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others has been emphasized as a key component for deep mathematical understanding. As a result, acknowledging proof as an essential tool to comprehend mathematics at all grade levels has been suggested by many researchers as well as reform initiatives. To do so,…