When school is engaging, relevant, and meaningful, students returning from correctional facilities and those at-risk of dropping out are more likely to achieve educational success. This brief is intended to assist district leaders and school administrators--both at the district and school level- who are seeking to implement strategies designed to…

Student motivation is a critical element of engagement, learning, and achievement. With this in mind, teachers are particularly interested in motivating their students to read. However, getting students to do so can be a difficult task, especially if they lack confidence in choosing personally interesting books. We advocate for carefully nurturing…

Language learning has become one of the needs of humans to maintain communication in the globalized world. However, it is not an isolated process and confined to linguistic skills. It gets affected by a lot of affective factors and learners' beliefs. One of these elements is undoubtedly academic motivation, which makes language learning a more…

This study shares the story of a mentor teacher and student teacher during a yearlong student teaching experience. It looks at how working with an educative mentor (prepared and supported to enact this role) can make a difference in the instructional practices and beliefs of a novice teacher, specifically by providing the student teacher with the…

This qualitative research study investigates dialogic discourse (i.e., give-and-take communication where students actively construct meaning) aimed at supporting mathematical meaning making in linguistically diverse elementary classrooms. For this study, linguistically diverse classrooms refer to classrooms where Spanish is the home language of…

The purpose of this study was to examine how an early childhood education (ECE) curriculum responds to children's voices in reference to transition from kindergarten to first grade. Drawing from the findings of a previous study which examined the empowering and limiting aspects of transition as voiced by first graders, I consider the points where…

The transition to adulthood is a complex process, and college is pivotal to this experience. "The Science of College" aids entering college students--and the people who support them--in navigating college successfully, with up-to-date recommendations based upon real student situations, sound social science research, and the collective…

In this article Kara Alexander discusses why, as a literacy studies instructor, she believes requiring her students to upload their literacy narratives to the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN) is beneficial. She provides three reasons for this requirement: (1) making their work public has the potential to enhance student agency,…

This article explores pedagogical issues of meaning-making in Western art education, particularly for students in higher education, by analyzing Xu Bing's exhibition, Writing Between Sky and Earth, through the competing theoretical lenses of Jacques Derrida and Karen Barad. The article discusses both theoretical and pedagogical implications…

This paper focuses on school situations students experienced as meaningful and how these experiences can guide educational improvement. Participants included 15 students in grade 3 from a Swedish school. In this qualitative study, the data consisted of drawings, multimodal productions, interviews, and field notes. The analysis resulted in four…

In this essay, the author reflects on her early teaching and how she learned about the importance of student agency and voice. Then, the essay describes how the author works with both sitting principals and emerging leaders by giving them opportunities to deepen their trust of one another and to learn the importance of talking about race and…

Providing effective leadership and mentorship to students often requires an understanding of power systems and a focus on amplifying marginalized voices. The author, who identifies as a queer white woman, in her years as a graduate student, has found that attention to voice is essential, but also messy. As Donna M. Lanclos reminds,…

International health science students face many challenges at the beginning of their courses, including a lack of awareness of cultural differences, adjusting to academic expectations, communication difficulties, clinical placement challenges, financial pressures, maintaining cultural and religious practices, discrimination, and emotions such as…

This qualitative study applied dialogue journal writing to explore its effectiveness on language learning and critical literacy skills of 45 EFL students with the age range of 10-13 in an Iranian EFL context. Data analysis of 500 entries showed students' emancipation from banking education constraints, their empowerment to voice, enhancement of…

Youth preparedness is all about teaching and training children and youth those skills that help them to be actively engaged in school safety every day and to be ready to jump in during and after emergencies. This Ready.gov article highlights several instances of how teens involved in Youth Preparedness Councils across the country stepped up to…