Solutions to the countless crises middle schools face are typically proposed by policy makers with little actual classroom experience. Meanwhile, essential insights from students on the issues they experience firsthand every day are largely ignored. Youth participatory action research (YPAR) can help, as social researchers collaborate with youth,…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) devolves many decisions to states about how to design their accountability system and the measures to use in these systems in order to meet new goals of college and career readiness. Because few states presently have adequate measures for the new goals, they will need to develop the measures along with…

Decades of research evidence indicate that high-quality early education can positively affect the learning trajectories of disadvantaged young children. However, despite significant investments to improve what happens in the classroom, publicly funded pre-kindergarten programs continue to display instructional quality that is too weak to prepare…

This descriptive case study examined the meanings public elementary school teachers (N = 13) made of learning to enact citizen science projects in their schoolyards in partnership with a local Arboretum. Utilizing Engestrom's (2001) framework of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), the Arboretum's outreach program for area Title 1 schools…

This dissertation investigates how low-resource high schools support (or not) high achieving, low-income students depending on how they enact college readiness agendas. My study was motivated by the lack of empirical research in two areas--how college readiness policies are being actualized for high achieving, low-income students and how these…

Inclusive education has become a global movement through the policies of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (e.g., Salamanca Statement). These policies led many developing nations to adopt these policies in their national policy agendas. Turkey has developed inclusive education policies that deal with the…

Four decades of university-based teacher education reform has failed to yield favorable outcomes in teacher effectiveness in P-12 schools. A rising tide of reform and criticism from governmental agencies and neo-liberal reformers has resulted in one-dimensional, structural approaches to impacting teacher effectiveness, based on the assumption that…

This report summarizes the final results for the Green Jobs and Health Care (GJ-HC) Impact Evaluation, a study of selected grantees funded by two job training initiatives administered by the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). In response to the 2008 recession and as part of the American Recovery and…

With only 34% of 8th grade students earning a rating of proficient or higher in science education (from the 2011 National Assessment of Education Progress data), much work is needed in our classrooms to achieve the new more rigorous performance expectations found in the "Next Generation Science Standards." For decades, researchers have…

This study investigated the nature and degree of difference in students' behaviors, participation, and power structures in classroom based online book discussions versus face-to-face discussions using pseudonyms, to determine whether online discussion is a useful adjunct to face-to-face literature circles in involving all students as participants.…

School districts across the country are struggling to attract and keep good teachers, a situation that seems to be particularly acute in states such as California and Oklahoma. This is not a good time for schools to be facing a teacher shortage. States have raised K-12 standards to new heights with the expectation that all students will graduate…

The purpose of this article is to share the findings from a 2-year ethnography that examined female practitioners' experiences in the field. The article describes the intentions, discourses, actions, and repercussions of female administrators and teachers working to accomplish social justice for racial/ethnic minority girls from challenging…

The No Child Left Behind Act mandates that all elementary and secondary students achieve 100% proficiency in reading by 2014. Guided by constructivist theories of Dewey and Vygotsky, which hold that individuals learn through experiences and through social interactions with others, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the…

In December 2009, "U.S. News & World Report" published its list of the nation's top 100 high schools. The magazine awarded an additional 1,687 high schools it judged to be deserving of special recognition with silver medals, bronze medals, and honorable mentions. High schools receiving awards demonstrated an ability to provide all…

This paper describes the design and methodology used to assess the impact of free primary education (FPE) policy in Nairobi, Kenya. The key outcome of the study was to assess the impact of FPE on schooling outcomes among the urban poor. The study assesses the impact of FPE by examining how two non-comparable groups responded to the introduction of…