We examined the practices, beliefs, and attitudes of secondary teachers in order to identify factors that led to success for non-dominant-group students. We found a unique paradigm among educators whose students of color and/or poverty showed no achievement gap. Rather than coming from a deficit perspective or one expecting assimilation, those…

The degree to which students think, feel, and act engaged in school plays a vital role in their chances for academic and life success, yet levels of student engagement remain low. In this article, we focus specifically on how engagement works in the classroom, namely as a function of the interactions between students, teachers, and the class…

This article provides teachers and administrators with a description of foundational principles and curricular approaches to create meaningful educational experiences for secondary students with intellectual disabilities in inclusive general education classes. The four principles provide: (a) the least dangerous assumption, (b) partial…

This study provides a picture of the instructional practices of a selected sample of first year secondary teachers in two rural school districts with large at-risk student populations. The instructional practices of the beginning teachers were compared to the curriculum of the research-based teacher preparation program by which all were trained.…

Research suggests that secondary teachers across the United States are regularly turning to popular film as a way to engage students and deliver content. However, research on the use of film in secondary education has yet to focus on how students of varying abilities are able to understand and synthesize academic content when it is presented…

Based on NAEP data, many adolescents may not be adequately prepared for postsecondary education. This is a Year Five report from a seven-year longitudinal study of a student cohort starting in sixth grade year (n = 50). It uses a quasi-experimental design, and collects data from surveys, interviews, and reflective statements to evaluate mentoring…

Ensuring that English language learning (ELL) students have equal access to content-area curriculum continues to be a challenge for many secondary educators. Although efforts to develop students' English skills are well intentioned, they frequently fall short of addressing each of the four interrelated dimensions of the culturally and…

As literature with postmodern characteristics becomes increasingly common, teachers of adolescents need to consider whether they should use these decidedly different novels and how they might do so effectively. This article identifies the characteristics of post modern novels and offers reasons for adding them to the curriculum. It also provides…

This article reviews the current research literature on how secondary schools sort students for instructional purposes. Current sorting practices are based on early American philosophies of schooling where the goal of school was to provide students with different curricula based on preparation for future occupations. The article reviews the…

This study examines engagement, meaning, and hedonism as three orientations to happiness and their relationship to the educational variables of motivation, extracurricular involvement, community involvement, and clarity of career plans. Engagement significantly contributed to the variance of extracurricular activities and community involvement.…

Audiobooks may be used with adolescent readers to improve fluency, expand vocabulary, activate prior knowledge, develop comprehension, and increase motivation to interact with books. Removing the restraints of word recognition and decoding allows a very positive focus on the meaning behind an author's words. This provides an opportunity for many…

Studying the Holocaust provides an opportunity to explore a fascinating historical topic whose impact on the contemporary world cannot be overstated. As such, the topic is now an accepted part of the American secondary school curriculum. For such curricula to be of maximum benefit to students, clearly defined perspectives that direct the students'…

The actual and preferred classroom experiences of 11 teachers and their 254 secondary students were surveyed. Our survey focused on nine dimensions of effective teaching. In contrast to existing research, in which dimensions of teaching practice are experimenter-defined, our survey reflected the educator standards of a particular state (Texas).…

The purpose of this paper is to identify strategies for preventing and managing classroom discipline problems that any teacher, even a student teacher, can use successfully. Sixty-eight student science teachers, during their first weeks of student teaching, each reported, in an account of a well-remembered event about classroom management,…

Learning about students' literacy practices at a school for pregnant and parenting teens is a tool for educators and scholars in rethinking the identity of the pregnant and parenting student. Though this population of students has been historically marginalized in U.S. school settings, programs such as the one described here have the potential to…