This article looks at the American Dream as a merit narrative to understand how it supports barriers to educational success for educators working to improve the lives of students in urban schools. Hard work/perseverance and individualism are interrogated as components of merit narratives used to sustain the American Dream. We analyze data from six…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the concurrent relationships between selected teacher-rated executive function (EF) and a comprehensive array of emergent literacy skills in preschool children after adjusting for targeted covariates including at-risk status. The sample comprised 114 three-year-olds who were attending Head Start…

Teachers working in under-resourced contexts struggle to provide psychosocial support to learners. In this article, we focus on 10 teacher participants' reflections of how a transformative action research process enhanced their collective capacity for initiating sustainable learner support. A linked participatory action learning and action…

Research Findings: The amount of time and type of program that children experience in early childhood settings may be associated with children's kindergarten-entry skills, or kindergarten readiness. Taking a person-centered perspective, in the present study, we examined the extent to which reliable and unique profiles of early childhood…

Too many young people cycle in and out of prison, jails, and detention centers and face probation and parole conditions that keep them locked out of opportunity. These interactions with the criminal justice system demand the need for both equitable practices and programs that support second chances and large-scale investments in decarceration.…

The Honors Living-Learning Community (HLLC) at Rutgers University--Newark is an initiative that is expanding traditional notions of honors and transforming the Rutgers--Newark community. The HLLC promotes academic excellence, community engagement, and social equity. It seeks to eradicate structural barriers while critiquing deficit-based…

This study examined the narratives of six third-generation Mexican American teachers. The teachers' range of experience ranged from preservice to 10 years of teaching experience. Central to this research study are the differences that exist among Mexican American teachers in terms of their cultural awareness and teaching practices. The purpose of…

While performance assessment (PA) is well aligned to project-based learning (PjBL), teachers find it challenging to design and implement PA that is faithful to the authentic context of their projects and viewed externally as rigorous. In contrast to standardizing PA tasks--thereby diminishing authenticity--we formed a research-practice partnership…

There is a need to understand antecedents to US teens' use of information and communication technology (ICT). Research on the "digital divide" for access to ICT reports conflicting findings based on gender and demographic factors of parent income and education. This study expanded the "tool-will-skill" framework to examine how…

Traineeships have been shown to be successful in generating improved labour market outcomes and are often recommended as a policy option for disadvantaged youth. Regretfully data indicate that one such target group, Indigenous Australians, continues to have lower traineeship completion rates than the non-Indigenous. To address this issue, a…

Research on the role of institutions in influencing students' readiness for college has so far focused primarily on the school level and the state policy context, with only little attention to the district. This case study, based on interview data and documents collected over the course of a year, analyzes an urban district's attempt to create a…

Objective: Low socioeconomic status young people in low- and middle-income countries use tobacco at higher rates than their wealthier peers. School-based tobacco use prevention interventions that employ a life skills approach are effective at preventing tobacco use. In India, the Salaam Bombay Foundation (SBF) has implemented a multiyear,…

The present study explores how officials in Swedish secondary schools define and categorize situations in which students have been exposed to violence in the school. The study is designed as a case study of two secondary schools, situated in two demographically different urban neighbourhoods. The results indicate that different socio-economic…

Visual arts can be a powerful discipline to support success throughout a student's education, both within and outside of school settings. We experience visual arts each day, whether through our own creativity or everyday objects, such as the design of a cereal box or logo of a favorite sports team. For students, engaging with visual arts might…

Most previous research on grammar schools has focused narrowly on eligibility for Free School Meals as a measure of disadvantage. But with 45% of pupils at grammar schools coming from families with below median incomes, a broader consideration of the impact of grammar schools on social mobility is necessary. The evidence suggests that grammar…