We use unique data to examine how college students from low income families form expectations about academic ability and to examine the role that learning about ability and a variety of other factors play in the college drop-out decision. From the standpoint of satisfying a central implication from the theory of drop-out, we find that…

The problem is clear: an unacceptable number of America's students are not graduating from high school, and many who do are still not adequately prepared for success in college and career. Past efforts to address this problem have only been able to achieve incremental results. Now, there is increasing recognition that in order to meaningfully…

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that he plans to demand radical steps--such as firing most of a school's staff or converting it to a charter school--as the price of admission in directing $3.5 billion in new school improvement aid to the nation's 5,000 worst-performing schools. In sharp contrast to the current free-flowing nature of…

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the status of the teaching profession has begun to erode in the Caucasus and Central Asia as evidenced in such indicators as a teacher shortage, the feminization of the profession, an over-aged teaching force, a low transition rate from teacher education graduation to professional service, and a…

Students' academic achievement across content areas is often dependent on their ability to express knowledge through written expression. Many adolescent students lack the skills to write efficiently and effectively. These low-achieving writers can benefit from instruction in self-regulating the writing process. One approach, Self-Regulated…

This study examines a commonly held view that teachers tend to focus less on developing understanding and more on mechanistic answer-finding when teaching in classes of lower-achieving students. The study investigates this by analyzing actual practices of teaching mathematics and of classroom interactions in classes having different levels taught…

Advocates have difficulty convincing colleagues Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a worthwhile use of time and resources. This article highlights problems impeding SoTL. First, scholarship of teaching gets used as a synonym for other activities. Second, Boyer's definition was conceptually confused. Third, SoTL is difficult to…

This study is an evaluation of "Exploring Motion and Forces: Speed, Acceleration, and Friction" ("M&F") developed by ARIES of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (2001). Although "M&F" has been used in many schools and field-tested, it has never been evaluated in rigorous experimental or…

In an effort to improve student achievement, a group of middle-school teachers at an underperforming school developed a schoolwide literacy plan. As part of the plan, they agreed to model their thinking while reading aloud. Eight teachers were selected for coaching related to think alouds in which they exposed students to comprehension strategies…

Assessment as integral to good teaching and learning has come to be accepted as a core principle underlying curricula in many educational systems around the world. Indeed, the evidence that high quality assessment can make a big difference to pupil achievement, especially the low achievers, is mounting up and provides a strong justification for…

These proceedings contain the papers and poster of the 6th International Conference on Educational Technologies 2019 (ICEduTech 2019), which has been organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society and co-organised by the Lingnan University, in Hong Kong, February 8-10, 2019. ICEduTech is the scientific…

A recent study by the Council of the Great City Schools reports that "the nation's young African-American males are in a state of crisis" and describes the situation as "a national catastrophe" (Lewis, Simon, Uzzell, Horwitz, & Casserly, 2010; Herbert, 2010). The report indicates that African-American males still lag…

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) targeted substantial School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to the nation's "persistently lowest achieving" public schools (i.e., up to $2 million per school annually over 3 years) but required schools accepting these awards to implement a federally prescribed school-reform model.…

Youth who are involved with the juvenile justice and child welfare systems face many challenges and barriers to academic and vocational success. Regardless of the reasons for their involvement, youth in these systems are "disproportionately children and youth of color who currently have, or have experienced, a host of risk factors that are…

Redistributing highly effective teachers from low- to high-need schools is an education policy tool that is at the center of several major current policy initiatives. The underlying assumption is that teacher productivity is portable across different schools settings. Using elementary and secondary school data from North Carolina and Florida, this…