This study examines the relationship between middle school students' undesirable behaviours and digital game addiction. Undesirable behaviours disrupt teaching, harm peers, compromise safety, and lower teacher motivation. These behaviours, often influenced by family and environmental factors, disrupt classroom order. Digital games, particularly…

Classroom management practices are critical to the success of teachers and students, and a growing number of programs have been developed to improve these practices. However, there has been less investigation into observational tools to assess classroom management and exploration of whether it can be measured consistently by observers across…

Purpose: The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to determine the degree to which cyberbullying prevention and intervention efforts were provided at different school levels (i.e., elementary, middle, and high). In the first journal article, the extent to which the frequencies of cyberbullying teacher trainings differ by school level was…

Research suggests that the mentee's individual characteristics may impact mentoring relationships; however, less is known about the mentoring experiences of adolescent girls presenting with behavioral challenges. We examined the experiences of middle school girls identified as behaviorally high-risk. Participants (N = 72) were referred to a…

Classroom management practices are critical to the success of teachers and students, and a growing number of programs have been developed to improve these practices. However, there has been less investigation into observational tools to assess classroom management and explore whether it can be measured consistently by observers across elementary,…

In the face of everyday classroom challenges, students display resilience by responding with increased agentic engagement. We hypothesized that this tendency toward greater initiative and lesser passivity was both an outcome of autonomy need satisfaction and autonomy-supportive teaching and a predictor of students' future capacity to experience…

Peer victimization is a widespread and heterogeneous phenomenon, especially during the transition to middle school, and is associated with numerous negative consequences. However, previous research is limited by variable-centric analyses and data manipulations that either fail to capture or mask the complexity of peer victimization many students…

Background: Youth obesity in the United States is a major health concern. Obesity can be reduced by increasing health-promoting behaviors. Purpose: The goals of the present study were to (1) identify the strongest motivators of and barriers to health-promoting behaviors among a culturally diverse group of middle and high school students and (2)…

English learners (ELs) in K-12 schools must acquire English while simultaneously mastering content knowledge. Educational technology may support students' learning through the affordance of individualized language practice. The current randomized controlled trial intervention study examined the effects of Rosetta Stone Foundations software on…

School-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) frameworks have been suggested as a promising approach to reducing disproportionality in school discipline practices; however, few studies have tested this potential, and findings have been mixed. In our sample of 27 urban schools and approximately 15,000 students, risk difference…

This paper describes high quality teaching practices in two schools that produce exceptional growth for all kinds of students. These practices focus on making the most of instructional time and exposing students to high quality content in a variety of contexts. They prove teachers don't need to choose between differentiating to meet students'…

Integrating social and emotional learning (SEL) programming throughout curricula to support the development of healthy behaviors and prevent violence is critical for a comprehensive approach to school health. This study used a post-test comparison design to evaluate a healthy relationships program for eighth grade students that applies a SEL…

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between school climate and student outcome variables. The secondary purpose was to examine the relationship between the use of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and the same student outcome variables. Variables depicting student perceptions of school climate,…

Young adolescents should be able to write organized multi-paragraph compositions that develop a central idea and unfold in logical and sequential order, unified through the use of transitional words and phrases. In other words, the compositions should not just consist of a string of related sentences, but represent a dynamic text that has…

This program evaluation investigated differences in reading achievement for students receiving Reading Recovery or Developmental First Grade. The researcher examined DRA reading scores during the first and second grade and STAR reading scores from second grade through middle school for students in a rural public school district in Northeastern…