The purpose of this study was to examine semester-long referral data from a ninth-grade cohort in a public school in a southeastern state. The research question for this study was the following: What will the examination of semester-long referral data from the entire ninth-grade cohort of a public school in a southeastern state reveal? The problem…

Attention to programming education from K-12 to higher education has been growing with the aim of fostering students' programming ability. This ability involves employing appropriate algorithms and computer codes to solve problems and can be enhanced through practical learning. However, in a formal educational setting, it is challenging to provide…

Studies that distinguish parental monitoring (parent-driven behaviors) from parental knowledge often fail to find protective effects of monitoring on adolescent behavior problems. To answer whether parental monitoring is more strongly associated with adolescent behavior problems among adolescents who may need it most, this study applied…

High school graduation rates gradually increased to 80% until 1968, at which point there was a steady decline until 2002 when the passage of No Child Left Behind required states to measure and increase graduation rates for all students (Kamenetz, 2015). With this greater accountability in place, educators readily identified ninth grade as a…

This study proposed a cognitive-based game mechanism based on the revised Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive processing dimensions. Moreover, a mobile Chinese history educational game, Void Broken: The Qing Dynasty, was developed based on the cognitive-based game mechanism to promote learners' cognitive thinking in history learning. This empirical…

The challenges facing adolescents today are greater than ever. It is imperative that students have the social and emotional skills to help them succeed. Mindfulness helps support social, emotional, and academic learning as it assists children in becoming more self-aware and builds self-regulation. Mindfulness is about being present within yourself…

Office disciplinary referrals (ODRs) during students' first year of high school have been understudied despite research indicating they undermine graduation rates. Based on two cohorts of 9th grade students from one high school in one American Midwestern state, trends in ODRs were analysed in relation to students' and teachers' ratings of…

Boys struggle academically and behaviorally more than girls and are more likely to have difficulty with social skills. It seems likely that boys and girls do not perceive social skills in the same light. Past research has not investigated this or its relationship to academic and behavioral performance. Using data from a cohort of 9th-grade…

We test the effect of performance-based incentives on educational achievement in a low-performing school district using a randomized field experiment. High school freshmen were provided monthly financial incentives for meeting an achievement standard based on multiple measures of performance including attendance, behavior, grades and standardized…

This study focuses on at-risk students entering 9th grade in Cambridge, MA and ways to increase their connectedness and science learner identity. At-risk students were invited to participate in a research-based, summer intervention program called Rise Up for four weeks prior to entering 9th grade in the fall. Students were grouped into three…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study is to determine the impact a freshman mentoring program will have on student achievement, student discipline and student attendance within a large suburban high school. There does not seem to be much previous research on this topic in particular, therefore much of the research focused on the transition…

This study examined the development of noncognitive skills in a sample of 4,769 Hispanic/Latino students as they went through middle school and the first year of high school using ACT Engage 6-9, an assessment designed to predict student outcomes by measuring students' behaviors and psychosocial attributes. The scales of Academic Discipline,…

Background: Intrapersonal and external factors, including social pressures and the desire for acceptance from peers, influence sexual activity among adolescents. This study examined how personal characteristics, risky behaviors, normative beliefs, household factors, and engagement in extracurricular activities were related to high school freshman…

Students must leave high school with a diploma in order to compete in the global economy. However, many students enter high school lacking the academic skills needed to be successful and are not engaged in the educational process. Ninth grade represents one of the last opportunities that educators have to address these problems. The purpose of…

Across the country, high schools have found that their ninth-grade students have the highest rates of truancy, discipline referrals, failures, and retentions. A school's worst data points are usually found among freshmen. For this reason, proactive schools seek strategies for transitioning freshmen into high school. An effective freshman…