According to A. Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theory, individuals form their self-efficacy beliefs by interpreting information from four sources: mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasions, and physiological or affective states. The purpose of this study was to examine the heuristics students use as they form their…

An extensive theoretical and qualitative literature stresses the promise of instructional practices and content aligned with minority students' experiences. Ethnic studies courses provide an example of such "culturally relevant pedagogy" (CRP). Despite theoretical support, quantitative evidence on the effectiveness of these courses is…

This article examines an understudied aspect of teachers' sensemaking of student learning data: the way in which teachers explain the causes of the outcomes observed in data. Drawing on sensemaking and attribution theory and data collected in six middle schools, we find that while teachers most often attributed outcomes to their own instruction,…

Theories often assume that schools in communities with high violence also have high rates of school violence, yet there are schools with very low violence in high violence communities. Organizational variables within these schools may buffer community influences. Nine "atypical" schools are selected from a national database in Israel.…