Curriculum integration is defined as students choosing topics to study based on their questions. Several middle schools throughout the United States offer students the opportunity to develop the curriculum during the year based on their questions about themselves and about the world. The author provides the rationale, the developmental reasons…

Although curriculum integration has a long history of myriad models, rarely have those stakeholders most connected to the practice--the students--been consulted about the efficacy of the approach. This study applied a longitudinal, intrinsic case study approach (Stake, 2000) to examine middle school students' perceptions of learning and engagement…

The author reports on the formation of a performing arts-focused curriculum integration project, in which key components of curriculum integration were employed within a project-focus involving the performing arts of music, theater, and dance. The project occurred within a curricular community partnership between a public school and nearby…

These authors relate the ways in which curriculum integration is explored in 2 university middle grades programs. In these settings, curriculum integration is encountered both in the design and pedagogy of courses and as a discrete content area for preservice and inservice teachers. Background information about the courses, the application of…

This article presents findings from an action research study that investigates the impact of an inquiry project designed to help better prepare pre-service middle level teacher interns for their work with English language learners (ELLs). The inquiry project combined a "rounds" approach with ethnographic observation to help pre-service interns see…

This article describes how scholarship from the New Literacy Studies can shed "more light" (Florio-Ruane, 2002) on middle school education and youth literacies, allowing users to examine claims about students, schools, policy, and research. Hypothesizing that shortcomings in early adolescent literacy education have less to do with lack of…

This study described and compared the reading of sixth and eighth grade students both in and out of school using a unique data set collected with the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). On average, students read forty minutes a day out of class and seventeen minutes a day in class indicating that reading is a common leisure practice for…

This study explored the perceptions of Oregon middle school teachers and their teaching practices in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The method utilized quantitative and qualitative procedures to analyze data from a 45-item questionnaire completed by 162 core subject teachers in 13 middle schools. Results highlight categorical…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of a two-way immersion elementary school program on academic achievement at the end of the elementary school and the end of the first year of junior high school. Longitudinal high stakes test data in reading, writing, and mathematics were collected on native English speakers and native Spanish…

We need a model that can guide middle school educators to implement multiple literacies (multiliteracies) so prevalent in today's global economy, but how can this be successfully accomplished in today's schools? As a result of content analyses, regular classroom observations, and interviews, the researchers document a framework for…