Despite proficient math skills, students may struggle to make sense of and solve story problems. While educators are encouraged to promote the use of comprehension strategies, students must first understand vocabulary at all levels as they work to make sense of and solve math story problems. Language skills are a prerequisite for schema…

Labeling of gifted pupils can negatively affect the life path of gifted individuals. The study explores whether and how a teacher can label gifted pupils when applying educational strategies based on internal differentiation. We focused on formally identified intellectually gifted pupils (age 7-12) educated in (mainstream) elementary schools in…

The United States has relinquished its mathematical prowess enjoyed in the 20th century with trending declines in performance on international and national measures and must make a concerted effort to regain this standing in the 21st century. Success in mathematics education also is important for individual citizens because it gives them college…

Despite the fact that research shows that collaboration between families and schools contribute to academic achievement, social-emotional development and sense of well-being of students, many schools struggle to establish family-school partnerships. The current study explores keys to success and challenges in engaging families to the design and…

Over the past 2 decades, scholars in various educational contexts have examined Bandura's theorizing about how self-efficacy develops. Bandura proposed 4 primary informational sources of self-efficacy--enactive experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasions, and physiological and affective states--each of which can be supported in…

As Texas schools become increasingly diverse, educators are presented with opportunities to build on students' linguistic strengths and engage in transformative literacy teaching. Culturally sustaining early literacy instruction provides an avenue for teachers to support multilingual learners by leveraging their linguistic and cultural experiences…

This descriptive case study examined how teaching practices were evidenced in Grade 1 classrooms in two different cultural and educational contexts, Finland and Japan. Teachers' teaching practices were video-recorded in 53 classrooms in Finland and six classrooms in Japan and rated with the Early Childhood Classroom Observation Measure by trained…

In this article, Jessica Phillips returns to a theme explored in the Historical Association's publication "Exploring and Teaching Medieval History in Schools"--the challenge of teaching about the medieval past in ways that acknowledge its vibrant complexity and create a genuine sense of resonance rather than condescension or blank…

Positive student-teacher relationships at the elementary level have been linked to academic achievement, healthy social and emotional development, and improved behavioral outcomes. Cultivating positive relationships with students is a challenge for educators working in a field that is dominated by standards, testing, and behavioral issues.…

In today's diverse and global world, the importance of disciplinary literacy is rapidly increasing. Thus, elementary educators must consider ways to incorporate disciplinary literacy into their instruction. Elementary educators often implement the transactional theory of reading to enhance comprehension and evoke aesthetic responses to fiction…

Research shows that that children learn science and engineering subjects best by engaging from an early age in the kinds of practices used by real scientists and engineers. By doing science and engineering, children not only develop and refine their understanding of the core ideas and crosscutting concepts of these disciplines, but can also be…

What do the teachers' stories of embodied teaching in the elementary classroom reveal about how and why they practice embodied teaching? Utilizing Deweyan Pragmatism as the theoretical framework and narrative inquiry as the research methodology, this research seeks to answer the main question above. This study was conducted with elementary teacher…

Writing can be challenging to implement in upper elementary classrooms because teachers report needing additional support and students may struggle to meet the academic and developmental demands of emerging adolescence. This was true of one diverse, high-need, under-resourced school that had ambitious writing instruction goals. To meet these…

Over the past decade, less than 20% of 12th-grade high school students in Georgia had proficient science knowledge. The lack of content knowledge makes it difficult for high school students to compete for high-paying jobs in a global economy driven by innovations in science and technology. Such innovations are essential components of science,…

Motivational hands-on workshops for grade-school level future scientists are needed to inspire young and receptive minds. Described here is an educational event, titled "Inspiring Future Rocket Chemists", with hands-on laboratory exercises demonstrating the fundamentals of rocket flight and live chemistry demonstrations illustrating the…