The author's 40 years as an educator have led him to an important insight: stress is crippling the schools. On top of other extreme conditions in schools and on students, there is the pressure to achieve and succeed in a fast-paced, chaotic world. This pervasive stress compromises the physical health, and in turn the cognitive and psychological…

The recently published National Research Council (NRC) report "A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas" (NRC 2011) offers a thoughtful research-based agenda that helps guide teachers in making the shift to a doing-led agenda in K-12 science education. In the December 2011 editions of the NSTA…

Deciding which instructional strategies to employ is a complex issue faced daily by middle school teachers. Although a wealth of literature on developmentally appropriate and responsive middle school instructional practices is available, the extent to which these strategies are employed is often unknown. Thus, the purpose of this study was to…

A hundred years ago, if people had asked a group of competent and talented educators whether any child--regardless of race, class, or gender--could one day learn to read Shakespeare, write scientific papers, or do algebraic math, all but the most visionary would have answered, "No." Only a small segment of the population was deemed capable of…

A decade ago I wrote an article entitled "Technology as play" in which I called for early childhood educators to rethink the way in which they regard play. This involved not only incorporating the notion of playing with new technologies but also critiqued the essence of what constituted play and the link with learning that was viewed…

Evidence-based assessment tools provide a scientifically driven way of understanding the quality of communication and connection between a parent or caregiver and child. In this article, the authors describe how these tools can play an important role in the developmentally appropriate evaluation of parent-child attachment in the child welfare…

Ambiguous figures have fascinated researchers for almost 200 years. The physical properties of these figures remain constant, yet two distinct interpretations are possible; these reverse (switch) from one percept to the other. The consensus is that reversal requires complex interaction of perceptual bottom-up and cognitive top-down elements. The…

Using data from a 40-year longitudinal study, the authors examined 3 related hypotheses about the effects of grade skipping on future educational and occupational outcomes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). From a combined sample of 3,467 mathematically precocious students (top 1%), a combination of exact and propensity…

Psychologists have long debated the role of early experience in social and cognitive development. However, traditional approaches to studying this issue are not well positioned to address this debate. The authors present simulations that indicate that the associations between early experiences and later outcomes should approach different…

FirstSchool is a groundbreaking framework for teaching minority and low-income children. This work discusses the research and practice to date that defines FirstSchool as a critical approach to closing the achievement and opportunity gaps. Changing the conversation from improving test scores to improving school experiences, it features lessons…

Science content integration, or the simultaneous teaching of science with other subjects during learning activities, has been explored by multiple studies. However, due to a lack of consensus on its definition, it was difficult for educators in a local school district to discuss and evaluate the effectiveness of this instructional technique. This…

Economics can be taught much earlier than we usually imagine, as a life skill, with direct experience, from kindergarten on. An experiential, early-grades economics of budgets, buying, and giving-up-to-get may be better than the politically inspired insistence that students get an allegedly healthy dose of free-market ideology just before they are…

How did elementary language arts teachers of yore respond to policy issues in their own day? A review of the first two volumes of Language Arts, then called The Elementary English Review (1924-1925), suggests the journal served as a dynamic and productive space for language arts teachers and scholars to share their work and debate its merit. Much…

This 3-year case study examined middle grades principal leadership in a takeover charter school. The researcher analyzed principal and teacher interviews, field notes, and documents in relationship to a middle grades model of principal leadership. Results suggest the principals' limited experience, organizational factors unique to takeover charter…

This call to action is based on a simple but important premise: The nation cannot allow college placement policies, processes, and instruments to undermine promising efforts to increase student success in mathematics and increase attainment of STEM credentials. Efforts to redesign math pathways hold great promise for improving the teaching and…