This article investigates the interaction between the Common Core State Standards and curricular tracking by examining instructional decision making across tracks in a large metropolitan district. This study draws on institutional logics as a framework to analyze 106 instructional decisions from 24 participants involved in middle school literacy…

This investigation considered the short-term benefits of early childhood education participation at age 3 for 1,213 children from low-income families living in a large and linguistically diverse county. Although no benefits emerged for executive functioning, children who participated in formal early childhood programs at the age of 3 entered…

How much of a difference does it make whether a student of a given academic ability enters a more or a less selective four-year college? Some studies claim that attending a more academically selective college markedly improves one's graduation prospects. Others report the reverse: an advantage from attending an institution where one's own skills…

The link between noncognitive skills and achievement is well established. There is much less evidence on how these skills are developed and transmitted to students, especially as it relates to girls that attend nonelite schools in non-Western settings. Drawing on insights from girl students attending an urban school in Ghana, this paper…

Persistent inequalities in educational expectations across societies are a growing concern. Recent research has explored the extent to which inequalities in education are due to primary effects (i.e., achievement differentials) versus secondary effects (i.e., choice behaviors net of achievement). We explore educational expectations in order to…

(This study examines the directionality of the associations among cognitive assets (IQ, academic achievement), motivational beliefs (academic self-concept, task values), and educational and occupational aspirations over time from late adolescence (Grade 10) into early adulthood (5 years post high school). Participants were from a nationally…

Faculty mentorship is thought to be a linchpin of graduate education in STEM disciplines. This mixed-method study investigates agreement between student mentees' and their faculty mentors' perceptions of the students' developing research knowledge and skills in STEM. We also compare both assessments against independent ratings of the students'…

The big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) was evaluated with 4,461 seventh to ninth graders in Singapore where a national policy of ability streaming is implemented. Consistent with the BFLPE, when prior achievement was controlled, students in the high-ability stream had lower English and mathematics self-concepts (ESCs and MSCs) and those in the…

Little is known about the skills children need to successfully collaborate with classmates on academic assignments. The purposes of this study were to identify grade-schoolers' collaborative skills, evaluate the importance of identified skills for collaborative work, and determine whether differences in skill use were related to children's social…

Research evidence for the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) has demonstrated that attending high-ability schools has a negative effect on academic self-concept. Utilizing multilevel modeling with the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment database, the present investigation evaluated the generalizability and robustness of the BFLPE…

Student opposition in school is traditionally cast in terms of individual dispositions, whereby particular students or groups of students are said to "resist" or "oppose" school structures and identities aligned with the dominant cultural group. The author examined instead how the teacher and students in a low-track mathematics…

Although a rich tradition of mainly U.S. and U.K. research focuses on the nature and effects of tracking students within schools, little research has investigated the importance of tracking students in the same or in separate schools. The authors used data from a unique, representative survey in Flanders (Belgium) to examine how students' study…

This study addressed two questions: (a) Do different forms of campus racial diversity contribute uniquely to students' learning and educational experiences when they are simultaneously tested utilizing multilevel modeling? (b) Does a campus where students take greater advantage of those diversity opportunities have independent positive effects on…

Teacher effectiveness was defined by students' mathematics score on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills while achievement was measured by the Cognitive Abilities Test. Relatively effective teachers generally produced achievement gains from all aptitude levels. Similarly, relatively ineffective teachers did not disproportionately depress achievement for…

Planning and debugging strategies and group processes predicting learning of computer programming were studied in 30 students aged 11 to 14. Students showed little advance planning. Factors associated with learning included high-level planning of program chunks, debugging of single statements, explaining, and verbalizing aloud while typing.…