Although democratic education has long been considered a cornerstone of the developmentally responsive middle school model, current neoliberal priorities in education pose a particular threat to the democratic purpose of education. Due to their emphasis on student voice and civic engagement, youth social action projects present one opportunity to…

For many educators, the inspiration to teach comes from a desire to make a positive difference in students' lives. As they seek to guide students toward their big goals through trying times, teachers need resources that strengthen social and emotional skills. Facing this very challenge, Allison Silverman, a teacher at Port Chester Middle School in…

The development of transversal competences is essential for the success of engineers, who need to have the ability to adapt to the new and changing demands posed by modern society and scientific advances. It is a challenge for professors to teach and evaluate transversal competences, since such competences are related to attitudes and values. We…

This study highlights how principal leadership of goal-directed practices impacts outcomes. Over 2 years, three academics partnered with three principals and a small "project team" comprising one or more teachers, and one or more middle or senior leaders. In this report, the authors reflect on some of the key changes that occurred from…

This article describes an after-school program at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf (HMS), the oldest public day school for deaf students in the United States, where almost half of the student body imagined and created bridge and robotic machines. The Deaf Robotics Engineering and Math Team, or the DREAM Team club, included HMS students in…

A rural middle level school had stalled in its third year of a district-wide differentiation initiative. This article describes the way teachers and the leadership team engaged in collaborative practices to put a spotlight on formative assessment. Teachers learned to systematically gather formative assessment data from their students and to use…

This study describes and analyzes the actions taken by the principal and a middle school leadership team, which resulted in a change from a seven- to a six-period bell schedule. Change was facilitated through the interaction of three forces: (a) transformational leadership of the principal; (b) the development of a strong leadership team, and (c)…