School counselors need to be intentional about implementing a comprehensive school counseling program, which will often include planning and teaching classroom lessons on topics connected to academic skills, career planning, and social/emotional learning. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a scientifically valid framework for providing access…

Over the past few years, several states have begun to explore or pilot different through-year assessments to serve as replacements to the traditional end-of-year summative assessments that are currently the predominant source of information used by states to meet federal accountability requirements. While there are several different assessment…

The "Belle Époque" quest for a modern beauty (an 'art nouveau') extended into France's system of free primary schooling, established in the 1880s by the Third Republic to educate the popular masses. Design reformers' belief in the underlying unity of the fine and applied arts, and their growing emphasis on the importance of individual…

In this article, the authors unveil the Trade Book Inquiry Design Model (IDM) blueprint. Anchored in a compelling question inspired by a trade book, the new blueprint is broken into two instructional blocks: "Reading and Comprehension" and "Living Social Studies." The inquiry template is designed to be instructionally efficient…

The Happiness Curriculum is made up of compulsory 45-minute daily lessons with the aim of developing mindfulness, critical thinking, reflection, and social-emotional skills among students in more than 1,000 government-run schools in Delhi, India. Three units--Exploring Happiness through Learning and Awareness; Experiencing Happiness in…

Navigating the current STEM agendas and debates is complex and challenging. Perspectives on the nature of STEM education and how it should be implemented without losing discipline integrity, approaches to incorporating the arts (STEAM) and how equity in access to STEM education can be increased are just a few of the many issues faced by…

Education researchers working in sub-Saharan Africa have recently and rapidly expanded the availability of evidence related to the impact of educational interventions on learning outcomes, particularly in preprimary and lower primary education (Ganimian & Murnane, 2016; McEwan, 2015; Popova, Evans, & Arancibia, 2016). Awareness that…

There are inevitable challenges standing in the way of the success of any approach to Instructional Design. Some are being faced up to. Some are not. Not least among them is the absence of empirically established principles undergirding Instructional Design prescriptions. The challenge it poses is to their reliability and validity. Nothing that…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe SPARK, an innovative elementary school that highlights the possibilities for elementary education as COVID-19 continues to unfold. Design/methodology/approach: The authors' analysis is based on a research synthesis of the main features of the SPARK model, as it was operating when schools in Arizona…

The challenge of overcoming educational inequality in the United States can sometimes appear overwhelming, and great controversy exists as to whether or not elementary schools are up to the task, whether they can ameliorate existing social inequalities and initiate opportunities for economic and civic flourishing for all children. This book shows…

Computer science has been a discipline for some years, and its position in the school curriculum has been contested differently in several countries. This paper looks at its role in three countries to illustrate these differences. A reconsideration of computer science as a separate subject both in primary and secondary education is suggested. At…

This study portrays recent research-practice connections found in 18 design research reports focusing on the creation of instructional solutions. Solutions in different stages of development varied greatly in duration, ranging from one lesson to a whole year curriculum, spanned all levels of education, many subjects (science, math, language,…

To its credit, the new National Curriculum Statement (NCS) for GET (General Education and Training) recently revised into a new Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) in RSA has put a premium on the inclusion of environmental learning as an integrated component of all subject areas in the primary school phase of learning. This is in…

In this paper the authors extend recent work on mediation in a multilevel setting and on causal inference under interference among units to develop a template for the mediation analysis of group randomized educational interventions. The present work will contribute to the literature on interference, in particular on interference in the context of…

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many schools in rural areas, do not operate classroom music programs due to a shortage of qualified staff and with access to tertiary music education rapidly diminishing in regional Victoria, there is little indication that the situation will improve. This paper reports on a mixed methods research project that…