The overlap of cognitive principles and inherently motivational strategies used to increase memory retention can be seen in reading, writing, and math. These are just of the few principles and corresponding strategies described in this report that can be used to increase academic motivation as well as increased cognition -- strategies that are…

The University of Wisconsin System and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction have been involved in a multi-year program starting in 1998, one goal of the program has been aligning curricula within the K-16 system of education in Wisconsin. The purpose of the Curriculum Articulation Project has been to work with educators in the state of…

The purpose of this study was to determine the characteristics and perceived effectiveness of staff development practices in selected high schools in South Dakota. The review of literature and research related to staff development examined the following questions: What types of staff development practices are being employed to encourage and…

A meta-analysis of the comparative distance education (DE) literature between 1985 and 2002 was conducted. In total, 232 studies containing 688 independent achievement, attitude, and retention outcomes were analyzed. Overall results indicated effect sizes of essentially zero on all three measures and wide variability. This suggests that many…

This review critically examines 33 studies on students' epistemological beliefs about mathematics. Five categories were identified: beliefs about mathematics, development of beliefs, effects of beliefs on behavior, domain differences, and changing beliefs. Studies examining beliefs about mathematics revealed consistent patterns of nonavailing…

The concept and practice of teacher leadership have gained momentum in the past two decades. Teachers are assuming more leadership functions at both instructional and organizational levels of practice. Empirical literature reveals numerous small-scale, qualitative studies that describe dimensions of teacher leadership practice, teacher leader…

This ethnographic study documents how accountability measures skewed the implementation of gender equity reform at one California public middle school serving low-income students of color. In creating single-sex classes throughout the school, the Single Sex Academy (SSA) became the largest public experiment with single-sex schooling in the…

In the wake of both the end of court-ordered school desegregation and the growing popularity of accountability as a mechanism to maximize student achievement, the authors explore the association between racial segregation and the percentage of students passing high-stakes tests in Florida's schools. Results suggest that segregation matters in…

This article explores the possibility that state educational policies, involving accountability and instructional reform, and local district and school conditions interact with teachers' personal and professional backgrounds to shape two tracks of new teachers that reinforce existing educational inequities. The present 2-year study incorporated…

This design study tracks the development of student thinking about natural variation as late elementary grade students learned about distribution in the context of modeling plant growth at the population level. The data-modeling approach assisted children in coordinating their understanding of particular cases with an evolving notion of data as an…

This article identifies the Edcouch-Elsa High School Walkout of 1968 as a pivotal event in the educational history of Mexican American students in south Texas. It presents elements of the Civil Rights Movement, including the Brown decision, the rise of Mexican American political organizations, and the actions of community youth. The authors use…

When students and teachers discuss subject matter, at least two processes generally occur: Students and teachers become socially identified as recognizable types of people, and students learn subject matter. This article contributes to recent work on how social identification and learning systematically interrelate by describing one complex way in…

Increased attention to large-scale assessments, the growing number of English language learners in schools, and recent inclusionary policies have collectively made assessment accommodations a hotly debated issue, especially regarding the validity of test results for English language learners. Decisions about which accommodations to use, for whom,…

Since the early 1970s, many educators have touted writing as a means of enhancing learning. Several reasons have been suggested for this purported enhancement: that writing is a form of learning, that writing approximates human speech, that writing supports learning strategies. Alternatively, some researchers have cautioned that the educative…

This review considers evidence cited in support of and in opposition to Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and Writing in the Disciplines (WID). After defining WAC and WID terms and concepts and reviewing the literature on key developments of the WAC/WID movement, the authors recommend that key terms be defined more precisely and that multimodal…