Music educators typically use a variety of strategies to teach their subject matter, one core practice of which is modeling. Vocal modeling is a type of aural demonstration, with uses ranging from pitch matching and song instruction to vocal tone building and musicianship development. In early studies, researchers primarily studied the effects of…

Female student engagement in the STEM fields does not currently match the level at which male students are engaged. Whether it is in high school course enrollment, college, or careers, males outnumber females in terms of enrollment and study of advanced physics and engineering. The purpose of this mixed-methods, phenomenological action research…

The importance of establishing positive relationships is a common theme in educational philosophies and recommended practice. Educators inherently believe this to be true. It is assumed relationships are the key to academic and behavioral success, as well as students' social emotional well-being. Furthermore, relationships may even be the key to…

Purpose: This study investigates how the practice of dividing students and coursework into leveled categories persists in science education despite decades of efforts aimed at reducing inequities. This study makes underlying logics visible through an empirical analysis of how science educators attempt to reconcile an egalitarian vision of science…

The purpose of this auto-ethnographic research was to self-reflect on my teaching practices over the past five years, in order to determine if my teaching practices satisfied the requirements to demonstrate: 1) my ability to construct an academically resilient German program in an academic institution; 2) my ability to lead a resilient German and…

School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in substantial learning gaps in students' mathematical abilities. The problem was self-enrollment against teacher recommendation among Honors Algebra 2 students in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students at a local high school. The purpose of the quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to…

The purpose of this explanatory mixed methods study was to understand how 9th grade honors and general education language arts students made course enrollment decisions through the lens of the Expectancy-Value (E-V) theory. A survey was administered to 9th grade students (N = 118) attending a public high school with the overall mean score…

This quasi-experimental, quantitative study was completed to determine if a Modern Classroom approach to teaching had a significant relationship with student self-reported efficacy measures and end-of-course test data when compared to classrooms taught with traditional instructional methods as well as if there was a difference in results for…

The present study investigated the correlation between achievement and motivation in high school advanced placement students. This study looked into the gap of how much motivation an AP student needs to reach achievement because of increased student involvement in an AP classroom. This study analyzes this correlation with a qualitative interview…

Purpose: In distinguishing the education of adults from the education of children, a gray area lies on where to classify gifted and honors students. The purpose of this study was to determine if the attitudes of students at an honors STEM summer camp paralleled the educational needs of adults, namely self-directed learning.…

The following mixed methods research describes the impact of nineteen students who were given the opportunity to take honors mathematics courses during high school after previously being tracked into grade level courses in middle school. Quantitative results showed significant increases in students' standardized state test scores when moved to the…

Background: For the last century, the dominant practice in U.S. high schools has involved sorting students by perceived ability level, yet 40 years of research has yielded consistent evidence that these practices harm the learning of students placed in lower-level classes; evidence is inconsistent about benefits for students in classes designated…

"Honors Work: Seeing Gaps, Combining Gifts, Focusing on Wider Human Needs" describes the authors' collaborative work with high school girls to bring Canadian activist Leigh Boyle and "The Lipstick Project" story to Maine in April, 2017. "The Lipstick Project," which Boyle founded and directs, is a women-run volunteer…

Despite the prevalence of school tracking, evidence on whether it improves student success is mixed. This paper studies how tracking within high school impacts high-achieving students' short- and longer-term academic outcomes. Our setting is a large and selective Chinese high school, where first-year students are separated into high-achieving and…

High schools sought to meet the demands of physical distancing and movement restrictions due to COVID-19. Given this unexpected situation, the researcher designed a quasi-experimental ex-post facto study to compare student outcomes from the Pennsylvania Keystone Examinations for Biology and Literature delivered in face-to-face (F2F) and virtual…