Students should be provided with more meaningful learning experiences to attract more students to STEM careers, Out-of-School learning environments can offer students exciting and motivating learning opportunities that formal environments cannot provide. Therefore, national education reforms in many countries that are working on popularizing STEM…

Recent science education reform initiatives suggest that learning in science should be organized on the basis of scientists' actual practices including the development and use of models. In line with this, the current study adapted three types of modeling practices to teach two Korean 6th grade science classes the causes of the Earth's seasons.…

This dissertation explored the roles schools can play in the successful outcomes of large carnivore or keystone reintroduction projects. Schools are more than centers for knowledge acquisition--they connect their community and disseminate information quickly to a wide audience. This study took place in California's Eastern Sierra Nevada, a…

There is increasing concern in the United States about the academic challenges that middle grade students face. Middle schools are not meeting accountability standards, and as a result students are not being adequately prepared for high school. In response to these concerns, a state in the southeastern United States adopted a comprehensive school…

This study investigated the relationship among critical motivational variables and mathematics achievement as middle grades students engaged in a reform-oriented curriculum, "Mathematics in Context." We tested 327 students in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade before and after two years of implementation. We performed a path analysis with…

This dissertation presents an ethnographic account of the launch of "The Downtown School for Design, Media, and Technology," one of the most prominent American school reform projects in recent years. Drawing on popular accounts about children and young people's pervasive affinity for digital media, and especially video games, the…

Previous research has linked inquiry-based science instruction (i.e., science instruction that engages students in doing science rather than just learning about science) with greater gains in student learning than text-book based methods (Vanosdall, Klentschy, Hedges & Weisbaum, 2007; Banilower, 2007; Ferguson 2009; Bredderman, 1983;…

With deliberate system-level reform now being acted upon around the world, both successful and unsuccessful cases provide a rich source of knowledge from which we can learn to improve large-scale reform. Research surrounding the effectiveness of a theory-based system-wide numeracy reform operating in primary schools across Australia is examined to…

Preparing teachers to implement a new curriculum presents a significant but important challenge. While formal professional development programs can assist in this preparation, finding prescribed experiences that meet the needs of all teachers can be formidable and indeed may not always be the best option for promoting change in practice. Decisions…

Too many students in high-poverty, urban communities drop out of high school, and too few graduate prepared for college and careers. Three national organizations--Talent Development Secondary, City Year, and Communities In Schools--have formed "Diplomas Now" in an effort to transform urban secondary schools so fewer students drop out and…

Educational reform initiatives of the last decade have focused on the three R's: reading, writing, and arithmetic, with writing receiving the least attention in the research literature (National Commission on Writing, 2003). Studies of writing performance in United States schoolchildren indicate that many are writing only at basic levels. The…

Which comprehensive school reform programs have evidence of positive effects on middle and high school achievement? To find out, this review summarizes evidence on comprehensive school reform (CSR) models in grades 6-12. Comprehensive school reform models are programs used schoolwide to improve student achievement. They typically include the…

Planning is an important phase of teaching, during which teachers make decisions about various aspects of instruction that ultimately shape students' opportunities to learn. Prior research on teacher planning, however, fails to adequately describe experienced teachers' planning decisions, and is unclear about the extent to which teachers use…

Recognizing the need to implement standards-based instructional materials with school-wide coherence led some Philadelphia schools to adopt whole-school reform (WSR) models during the late 1990s. The authors report on the relation between mathematics achievement growth for middle-grade students on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments and…

Which comprehensive school reform programs have evidence of positive effects on elementary school achievement? To find out, this review summarizes evidence on comprehensive school reform (CSR) models in elementary schools, grades K-6. Comprehensive school reform models are programs used schoolwide to improve student achievement. They typically…