Historically, students who fail to graduate from secondary school are considered as a single category of school dropouts. However, emerging literature indicates that there may be multiple subgroups of high school dropouts, termed a "dropout typology". The authors' purpose was to assess the extent to which a typology of dropouts was present in a…

Field trips are effective because they situate learning and facilitate knowledge transfer, thereby influencing students learning attitudes, interests, and motivation. Variations in field trip configurations and the subsequent affective and cognitive influences provided the motivation for this study of Outside Day--an environmental education field…

The authors aim to describe student attendance-mobility within a large urban district in ways that are meaningful and useful to schools and the community. First, the prevalence of mobility and nonattendance in Grades 1-12 across all students and by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic subgroups is presented. Second, the impact on student…

Empirical research has provided evidence supporting the validation and prediction of 4 major sources of self-efficacy: enactive performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and emotional states. Other research studies have also attested to the importance and potency of self-efficacy in academic learning and achievement.…

Middle school mathematics teacher quality is questionable because the number of certified mathematics teachers considered highly qualified is low (Birman et al., 2009). The author examined Grade 8 data from the 2005 National Association of Educational Progress mathematics assessment. The purposes of the study were to (a) determine the impact of…

The authors conducted a third-party study of the student achievement effects of Struggling Schools, a user-generated approach to Comprehensive School Reform (CSR). The design was a quasiexperimental, pre-post matched sample (N = 180) with school as unit of analysis, drawing on 3 years of achievement data from standardized external assessments.…

The authors focused on 1 middle-grades mathematics teacher's identity and her efforts to implement standards-based instructional practices. As professionals, teachers participate in multiple professional communities and must negotiate and manage conflicting agendas. The authors analyze how the contexts of these communities influence the teacher's…

The author examines 1 experienced teacher's image of teaching and how it was purposely changed--through external intervention and against the individual's will--from the view of teacher as curriculum maker to the view of teacher as curriculum implementer. Laura's account of the "butterfly under a pin" image, a version of the…

The author sought to investigate the effects of inquiry-based science instruction on science achievement and interest in science of 5,120 adolescents from 85 schools in Qatar. Results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed the substantial positive effects of science teaching and learning with a focus on model or applications and…

There are many conflicting findings regarding the relationship between parent involvement and student performance. Some findings support a positive relationship between involvement and achievement, whereas others support a negative relationship. The most common explanation for the negative findings, in which parent involvement is associated with…

The authors examined relations among components of metacognition from varying theoretical perspectives, explored the psychometric characteristics of known measures of metacognition, and examined the predictive strength of measures of metacognition for both science and overall academic achievement in 97 seventh-grade students. Findings indicated…

The authors investigated how different dimensions of parental involvement similarly or differentially linked to various constructs of school motivation (academic self-efficacy in mathematics and English, intrinsic motivation toward mathematics and English, and engagement) across ethnic groups of Caucasian, African American, Asian American, and…

Stereotype threat (ST) has been linked to under performance and academic disidentification among girls in mathematics and science as well as African Americans in academics. However, it is still unclear whether ST and its negative effects extend to non-Western cultures. The authors explored the effects of ST on Ugandan females in coed and…

This study addresses the issue of educational inadequacy and inequity for disadvantaged minority students. It estimates desired national standards and examines interrelated gaps in key school-teacher resources and mathematics achievement by linking national education data sets (National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP], Common Core of…

The authors analyzed the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) national data set to investigate gender differences in ability group placement in American kindergartens. They found that in kindergarten, within-class ability grouping was widely used for reading instruction, with boys being underrepresented in high-achieving…