Background: Young people are more likely to develop into effective learners, productive adults, and engaged citizens when their learning environments afford them certain kinds of experiences. For example, students are more likely to succeed when they experience a sense of belonging in school or experience schoolwork as personally relevant.…

There is substantive research that examines the punitive and harsh disciplinary practices in K-12 schools and the disproportionate effects on students of Color. While race has been central to this critical discourse; gender has remained secondary. Although both Black girls and boys face unique challenges in their K-12 academic environments, there…

Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP; e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1995) is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to serve culturally and linguistically diverse student learners. Although a large body of work describes its tenets and permutations, and its implications for students, less work has been done to outline the myriad barriers that teachers face…

Societal expectations are rising for higher education to help learners develop into engaged, responsible and resilient citizens of the world. Against this backdrop, the 2024 EUA Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group 'Learning and teaching to empower students' explored a crucial prerequisite for cultivating these qualities in graduates: an…

Academic self-efficacy is critical to academic success. Hence those working in higher education need to make deliberate and substantial attempts to foster academic competence, confidence, persistence and resilience in the students they teach, given they are essential components of academic self-efficacy. Addressing an identified gap in the…

U.S. colleges and universities have been demonstrably ineffective at facilitating scholarship among their students. To become effective, psychological science suggests institutions must tap students' intrinsic motivations and address their core values from Day 1 through graduation. This article describes a science-based, integrated set of…

The unprecedented switch to distance learning due to COVID-19 highlighted some social, economic, and learning inequities and presented opportunities for educators to reframe our approaches to learning environments. Through our lenses as a high school teacher, middle level teacher, and high school social worker, we document successful structures…

Schools are implementing Restorative Justice in Education (RJE) initiatives across the United States, often to reduce the use of out-of-school suspension, which is known to increase the risk for dropout and arrest. Many RJE initiatives also aim to strengthen social and emotional competencies, reduce gender and racial disparities in discipline, and…

Conceptualizing doctoral training programs as research training environments (RTEs) allows for the exploration of theory to help counselor educators facilitate doctoral students' development from practitioners toward counseling researchers. Researchers have proposed self-concept theory as a way to understand identity development. In this article,…

Launched to "advance a new vision for what constitutes success for our schools and our students," the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development (NCSEAD) began their work by listening to students who shared their thoughts on how they learn best. The young people were clear and unequivocal: They want positive…

The author, chairman of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming, examines how the proportion of students who participate in schooling as a real--as opposed to a virtual--undertaking has shrunk through the growth of online courses. This situation could be a tragedy or it could be acceptable. At the moment,…

From an ecological perspective, learning and development in childhood and throughout the lifespan occur in the context of interactions within complex social networks. Collectively, the articles in this special issue illuminate three important themes related to teacher-student interactions within instructional contexts: relationships, competence,…

Although three articles in this special issue address three very different social groupings--gender, ethnicity, and academic needs--they all highlight why inclusion is important for students' healthy development. The authors make specific suggestions for how schools might promote a more inclusive and welcoming climate for their students.…

For much of the last two decades, the narrowed focus on raising test scores under No Child Left Behind left important aspects of education untended. Since 2016, when the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) enabled a more comprehensive look at accountability, state leaders have heard growing demands for a whole-child approach that emphasizes…

This article describes issues in measuring school contexts with an eye toward understanding students' experiences and outcomes. I begin with an overview of the conceptual underpinnings related to measuring contexts, briefly describe the initiatives at the National Center for Education Statistics to measure school contexts, and identify possible…