"The Successful Middle School" builds upon many decades of commitment to the middle school concept. The fifth edition of AMLE's landmark position paper amplifies the importance of responding both to young adolescents' developmental needs and to their social identities. The edition's release amidst a global pandemic and increasing…

Cosmopolitanism refers to becoming a world citizen who can live harmoniously with different cultures. Today, our classes in the United States have become diverse daily. While we teach students who can speak more than one language, our teachers are primarily monolingual and monocultural. Hence, teachers who can speak multiple languages are…

In 2016, the Middle Level Education Research Special Interest Group (MLER SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) published "The MLER SIG Research Agenda," a white paper identifying critical issues and concerns facing the field of middle level education. Since its release, much has changed. This manuscript is a…

Background or Context: There is increasing research focusing on dual language (DL) education program policies and practices regarding who has access to bilingualism and whose bilingualism is valued and represented. However, limited research is situated in the context of Chinese-English DL education and its service of emergent bilingual learners…

During the spring of 2020, a South Georgia school implemented distance learning due to COVID-19, with little administrative support for the teachers for online instruction. This quick transition may have impacted teachers' self-efficacy beliefs about teaching online. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore middle school…

Background: The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and similar international assessments, have consistently shown South African intermediate phase learners' performance to be among the lowest worldwide. Of particular concern is the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) for Home Language in the Intermediate Phase…

We examined students' understanding of the causes of a scientific phenomenon from a multiple-document-inquiry unit. Students read several documents that each described causal factors that could be integrated to address the given writing task of explaining the causes of change in average global temperature. We manipulated whether the document set…

In this report, the authors examine the extent to which states' current (or planned) accountability systems for elementary and middle schools attend to the needs of high-achieving students, and how these systems might be redesigned under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to better serve all students. In their view, states can and should take…

For many years, the Catholic school system within the United States was considered the preeminent educational institution, particularly for poor and marginalized students that live in low income, inner city areas. Now, given the large number of school closures, the Catholic school system's long-standing goal of educating economically disadvantaged…

The objective of this study was to determine how different is the competence of between Junior High School Economic-Social Studies teachers in Indonesia, especially Java and outside of Java. The subjects of this study were teachers who participated in Curriculum 2013 dissemination activities carried out by the Directorate of Elementary and…

As more and more states make a commitment to specialized middle level teacher preparation, teacher education programs across the country must make the necessary adjustments to ensure middle level teachers are prepared to be successful. Unfortunately, individual state and institutional requirements often make this challenging and can result in…

In an attempt to give a general but critical review of school-based curriculum development (SBCD) in China's new curriculum reform (NCR), this article discusses at length some issues remaining in SBCD, including misconceptions in Chinese discussions about SBCD, most significantly, the Chinese literal expression of the policy statement on…

This Executive Position Paper is a one-to-one laptop implementation plan for Pittsgrove Township Schools that can be used as a template for other districts with similar interests. Each of the three chapters fulfills a major purpose. In Chapter One the paper is designed to substantiate the need for the Pittsgrove Township School District to…

This article focuses on how Dutch newspapers represented the debate in the Netherlands in the 1970s on comprehensive education and thus influenced the Dutch Middle School experiment. Wiborg's identification of key factors of success in Scandinavia was used as a point of reference. The article shows that these key factors did not exist in the…

In this position paper, we examine the science teaching orientation component of the S. Magnusson, J. Krajcik, and H. Borko (1999) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) model for science teaching. We trace the origin of the construct in the literature, identifying multiple definitions that have lead to ambiguity. After examining published studies…