For more than 100 years, education communities have debated how best to educate the young adolescent. Proponents of both the junior high school model and the current middle school model have advocated for a specialized approach to educating adolescents that emphasizes the developmental needs of students. To accomplish this, various organizational…

As students' reading proficiency gaps persist across the United States, educational leaders have turned to alternative methods to foster effective instructional literacy practices. One approach to combat this dilemma is the implementation of scripted reading programs. The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of scripted reading…

Teacher questioning in mathematics is an important diagnostic tool for teaching as well as measuring the academic progression and comprehension of the learner. While teacher questioning enhances student learning and self-assessment of the teacher's lesson delivery effectiveness, if not presented properly can have negative impacts on the student…

Students' inability to meet grade level standards in reading on state and national assessments continues to be a problem across the nation. This causal comparative cohort model sought to examine the effect of the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model (GRRM) on 4th grade reading achievement, gender, and socio-economic status, and to examine…

The researchers conducted a qualitative study involving two rural public school districts in Tennessee. The purpose of this study was to discover classroom strategies and behaviors that enable regular classroom teachers to facilitate continued scholastic growth of fourth and fifth grade students who had experienced notable academic gains in their…

This article explores civic development and its roles in the lives of emerging adults, and the ways in which college contexts--particularly Christian colleges and universities--may foster adaptive civic development. First, the article presents an argument for the importance of fostering civic development as rooted in historic truths of the…

Background: Inclusive STEM (traditionally known to stand for "Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math") high schools are emerging across the country as a mechanism for improving STEM education and getting more and diverse students into STEM majors and careers. However, there is no consensus on what these schools are or should be,…

The May 2012 State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) report, "The Broadband Imperative: Recommendations to Address K-12 Education Infrastructure Needs," pushed educators and policy makers nationwide to increase high-speed broadband access in schools, with specific recommendations regarding access, funding, and policies…

Journal clubs have been used to advance students' scientific skills beyond basic knowledge and comprehension, but students often view the traditional format of analyzing reported data and experimental design as laborious and intimidating. As such, the traditional approach can diminish student engagement and enthusiasm for the value of scientific…

In this paper, the authors explore the use of learning analytics as a method for easing the cognitive demands on teachers implementing the HALF instructional model. Learning analytics has been defined as "the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts for the purposes of understanding and…

The purpose of this study was to explore whether Modeling Instruction, compared to traditional lecturing, is an effective instructional method to promote academic achievement in selected high school physics classes at a rural middle Tennessee high school. This study used an "ex post facto," quasi-experimental research methodology. The…

Few studies have examined the types of educational delivery methods preferred by farmers (Eckert & Bell, 2005; Eckert & Bell, 2006). The research project reported here explored the preferred learning methods of farmers in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia. Data on learning methods collected directly from farmers were compared with…

New Leaders for New Schools, a nonprofit organization committed to training school principals, heads the Effective Practices Incentive Community (EPIC), an initiative that offers financial awards to effective educators. New Leaders and its partner organizations have received from the U.S. Department of Education tens of millions of dollars in…

Studies show that the mathematics test-score gap is evident at every level of schooling and can be linked to students' earlier performance. For example, a mathematics performance gap was found in children as young as three years of age (Case & Griffin, 1990; Jordan, Huttenlocher, & Levine, 1992). Addressing the mathematics performance gap…

The authors present the National Science Foundation project, Teachers Investigating Adult Numeracy (TIAN), a collaborative project of the Center for Literacy Studies at the University of Tennessee and the Technical Education Research Centers, Inc. (TERC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The project has developed and tested a model for inservice…