Conceptions of the "good citizen" have implications for defining the goals of civic education and formulating civic education programs. In Mainland China, the concept of "good citizen" is clearly defined by the authorities in the official curriculum guidelines. Teachers' perceptions of a "good citizen", however, may…

This qualitative study examined the complexities of mutually engaging across differing positionalities (students and students, students and teacher) while intentionally working in spaces of distress (e.g. push and pull between oppression and liberation). The findings demonstrated the ways in which building a beloved community while situated within…

This study makes a comparison between what literature on Japanese Lesson Study suggests are key elements of a good mathematics lesson and what junior high school mathematics teachers in Japan value in planning their lessons. The teachers' strong consensus in their endorsements of these key elements explains why Japanese teachers strongly support…

There is little extant theory framing the role of isolation in predicting various outcomes relating to the quality of work life of school principals. Building on previous work, this paper examines the relationships between isolation, self-efficacy, job satisfaction, burnout, and intention to leave the job using structural equation modeling on a…

Japanese lesson study has attracted many international educators who have been impressed by its capacity to foster student learning and sustained professional growth of teachers. This paper reports a study on its cultural orientations that may explain why lesson study works seamlessly in Japan. Hofstede's dimensions of national culture are…

This study explored the application of hierarchical model calibration as a means of reducing, if not eliminating, the need for pretesting of automatically generated items from a common item model prior to operational use. Ultimately the successful development of automatic item generation (AIG) systems capable of producing items with highly similar…

This study examined anxiety as a mediator on the relation between exposure to violence and victimization mediated by gender. The sample consisted of 1,311 seventh graders attending 8 middle schools in a small southern city. Gender was found to be a significant moderator for the relation of exposure to violence and victimization; therefore,…

This paper explains the meaning and use of three important factor analytic statistics: factor scores, factor structure coefficients, and communality coefficients. For the discussion, 301 observations of junior high school students 11 measured variables from a previous study are analyzed. While factors provide the researcher with general…

This study explored the extent to which current adequate yearly progress (AYP) indices reflect real change or a statistical artifact. The objective, in more specific terms, was to investigate regression artifacts in evaluating schools' academic progress and explore methods to overcome their effects in developing AYP measures. Schools in Kentucky…

The knowledge construction and scientific reasoning of two classes of seventh grade students (22 to 24 students in each class) were examined during a 3-week inquiry unit in genetics, in which anomalies were used as a catalyst for conceptual change. During the unit, students used genetics simulation software to mate fruit flies that varied on a…

The use of programming language was studied in an eighth grade science classroom. The goal of the EMERGE curriculum is to enable students to understand the global patterns that they observe. EMERGE was used in an eighth-grade classroom of 12 students, with a range of abilities (3 had learning disabilities), in 21 sessions over 3 months. For the…

Uses data from a multisite evaluation with a sample of 5,935 eighth graders to explore the extent to which gang girls are similar to gang boys. Findings indicate that girls in gangs are involved in a full array of illegal activities as frequently as are boys. Girls report greater isolation from family and friends than do boys. (SLD)

This study was conducted to evaluate the self-esteem of adolescent girls participating in a new, optional pilot course entitled "Enabling Visions." The study examined whether involvement in the mentoring self-esteem course had a positive impact on the participants' self-esteem, increased their awareness of women's issues, and resulted in…

Mathematics and science achievements have been assessed in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and its repetition (TIMSS-R). The released TIMSS and TIMSS-R reports are largely divided into subject domains. To merge the research outcomes, this study focused on an examination of the relationship between mathematics and…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS) and writing achievement in junior high students (aged 11-15 years) with and without written expression disabilities. Ninety-six students with (n=48) and without (n=48) written expression disabilities were administered the Das-Naglieri:…