Use of animals in middle school science classrooms is a curriculum component worthy of consideration, providing proper investigation and planning are addressed. A responsible approach to this action, including safety, must be adopted for success. In this month's column, the author provides some suggestions on incorporating animals into the…

In this article we report Maltese primary and secondary students' perspectives about their school experiences and their mental health. Questionnaires were completed by 281 students. Relationships emerged between students' reports about their involvement in bullying, mental health status, and a range of typical features of school environments. A…

In this article, educators' experiences of working in diverse classrooms designed to provide English language education as part of Intensive English Language Programs (IELPs) in South Australia are considered. To this end, responses to qualitative interviews with 14 educators working in three schools are examined using Braun and Clarke's method of…

Teachers conceptualise and interpret violent behaviour of secondary students in different ways. They also differ in their estimates of the relevance of student and contextual school variables when explaining the severity of violence experienced by students. Research can assist here by explicating the role of different types of contextual school…

The School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS) is a national survey periodically conducted to assess school health policies and practices at the state, district, school, and classroom levels. SHPPS 2014 assessed the characteristics of selected components of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model: (1) health education; (2)…

Reduce your school's dropout rate, help improve teaching and learning, and develop stronger relationships with parents and the community. This book showcases the collected efforts of dedicated educators from across the country, selected and presented by one of today's leading experts in dropout prevention, Franklin Schargel. Easily indexed…

This study surveyed New Mexico high school principals on their current state of preparedness for serious school violence. The researcher surveyed 119 public high schools, receiving a 65% return rate from a 25-question survey. Specifically, this study analyzed the relationships of three predictor variables: prevention, response, and building of…

In the best of times, emergency managers of athletic event venues struggle with the responsibilities of venue security. The possibility of terrorist threats exacerbates the situation, especially when security threats can involve a critical mass of spectators at an event. Emergency managers at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)…

Special educators frequently teach students with a variety of diagnostic labels, including autism and oppositional defiant disorder. Some of these diagnoses point to the presence of challenging behaviors that might be viewed as threatening and disruptive. Teachers working with these students must make daily choices in how they approach such…

The riots in English cities in August 2011 have brought debates on behaviour of young people into sharper focus. Criticism of softly-softly approaches and the lack of power for head teachers to discipline is a reoccurring theme within the debate on behaviour in schools. Regaining adult authority is also reflected in the tenor of the government's…

In public high schools across the country young people deal with issues of discrimination and bullying that are often the result of intolerance and misunderstandings across social identities. Progressive educators who advocate for critical multicultural and critical pedagogical approaches have proposed that young people need to have educational…

This article provides a succinct primer on some of the basic constructs that adults need to know to help keep students with gifts and talents from completing suicide. It focuses on the school as the primary context to look out for potentially suicidal gifted students. This makes sense, as students spend a considerable amount of time in school,…

In a study conducted among more than 980 American four-year and two-year colleges and universities, including institutions such as the University of Michigan, MIT, UCLA and Columbia, security staff and other administrators identified the five leading goals for their security systems: (1) Preventing unauthorized people from entering their…

Background: This study examined the impact of the reading-related affective factors "home environment" and school "environment" on predicting the likelihood of students being either high-proficiency or low-proficiency readers. Data from 3,875 Hong Kong SAR Grade 4 students participating in an international comparative…

The UK government seized the opportunity of the Trojan Horse affair to launch a damaging Islamophobic attack, eagerly relayed by a racist press, on the Muslim community in Birmingham and beyond, abusing Ofsted and the Prevent strategy as blatant instruments of ideologically-driven policy. The various reports found no evidence of radicalisation or…