One middle school's implementation of corrective reading was evaluated for student reading outcomes and treatment fidelity. Findings indicated that sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students made progress in decoding and oral reading fluency over the school year; however, students did not demonstrate greater gains during the semester enrolled in…

This study was designed and conducted in an educational climate in which school and teacher accountability for student learning is increasingly connected to students' performances on standardized tests. The participants in this study, 5 middle school English language arts teachers, each rejected their district-sponsored data-driven instruction…

This article examines what can happen when teachers and students work to create a critical dialogic space, taking up issues of race, culture, and privilege in classroom discussions. The study focuses on middle school students of culturally and economically diverse backgrounds as well as their 2 White teachers. In English and social studies…

This article reports on a study that investigated the reasons why one group of secondary education students chose to major in middle school education. Data were collected via interviews and meeting and observational notes with prospective middle school majors at a mid-Atlantic public university during the 2010/2011 academic year. Findings indicate…

The Middle Level Program at California State University San Marcos is the only middle level teacher credential program in the state of California. The program is based on a set of goals and philosophy of middle grades education, recognizing the developmental needs of young adolescents in Grades 5 through 9, and the socially equitable experience of…

This study examined similarities and differences in how U.S. and Japanese middle-school science teachers teach science through inquiry. Classroom practices were examined through observations in the United States (N = 9) and Japan (N = 14). The observational data were coded and quantified based on the rubric that incorporated 2 dimensions: student…

More than 2,300 teachers in 241 schools across 25 states participating in a professional development approach to character education classroom management known as Development Designs 1 and Developmental Designs 2 (DD1 & DD2) were studied throughout the 2008-2009 academic school year. Data from this longitudinal program evaluation indicate that…

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…

In this qualitative study, the author examined the ways middle school literacy teachers responded to their boys' dialogue journals. The participants were 3 middle school literacy teachers and 19 middle school boys. The findings of this study indicated that the teachers took 4 roles (teacher as reader, teacher as responder, teacher as facilitator,…

The research reported here addresses 2 aspects of integrated mathematics and science instruction. First we provide insights into how middle grades teachers' characterize integrated mathematics and science instruction. Then we discuss how middle grades teachers see an integrated curriculum fitting into their teaching contexts and how these contexts…

Fourteen elementary and 6 middle level student teachers were observed and interviewed throughout their initial field placement teaching experience. The Classroom Observation and Performance Assessment for Teachers-Revised (COPAT-R) observation instrument and semistructured interviews were used to compare general and content-specific pedagogical…

Although there are increasing numbers of professional development (PD) materials intended to foster teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching within the topics of number and algebra, little attention has been given to geometry. In this article we describe the Learning and Teaching Geometry project's approach to the development of PD materials…

This study emerged out of a year-long narrative ethnography that investigated the first year of ESL teachers. It describes key personal, contextual, and structural factors that influenced the teachers' professional beliefs and practices. The focus of this study centers on the conversations of three middle school ESL teachers during new teacher…

This paper reports on Year 1 of a two-year study of implementing new literacies strategies into social studies and English/language arts content areas in two low-performing middle schools (grades 6-8). Situated within a New Literacies Studies framework, the study addressed three overarching questions: (1) What are teachers' and students'…

The purpose of this study is to examine whether teachers' perceptions of educational value discontinuity are predictive of the psychological antecedents of academic performance (e.g., academic engagement and academic self-efficacy) during middle school. Educational value discontinuity is defined as the difference between teachers' actual…