It is particularly important to identify and address issues of fairness and equity in educational contexts as academic performance can have large impacts on the types of opportunities that are made available to students. While it is always the hope that educators approach student assessment with these issues in mind, there are a number of factors…

Many middle school students perform below grade-level standards in reading (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019), and recent observation studies demonstrate middle school teachers' limited use of reading comprehension practices within content area instruction (e.g., science and social studies; Greenleaf & Valencia, 2017). In this…

This preliminary study examined whether distinct student profiles (N = 760) emerged based on their behavioral patterns in an online algebraic learning game. We applied k-means clustering analysis to clickstream data collected in the game and then examined how students' behavioral patterns varied across the clusters using data visualization. The…

General academic words are those which are typically learned through exposure to school texts and occur across disciplines. We examined academic vocabulary assessment data from a group of English-speaking middle school students (N = 1,747). We tested how word frequency, complexity, proximity, polysemy, and diversity related to students' knowledge…

Background: The Theory of Triadic Influence (TTI) provides a comprehensive framework for understanding adolescent substance use. Objectives: We examined mechanisms by which a TTI-guided social-emotional and character development program, "Positive Action" (PA), influences adolescent substance use. Study data come from the PA-Chicago,…

Positive perceptions of school climate are associated with improved academic and behavioral outcomes, such as lower bullying victimization experience and higher student engagement. The present study evaluated the consistency of these relations across racial/ethnic student groups using the Authoritative School Climate (ASC) model which defines…

Background: Academic challenges such as losing/not turning in assignments, misplacing materials, and inefficient studying are common in middle-school students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without intellectual disability. Deficits in organization, planning, prioritizing, memory/materials management, and studying skills [i.e. academic…

Despite decades of concern about disparities in educational outcomes for low SES students and students of color, there has been limited rigorous study of programmatic approaches for reducing these disparities in elementary or middle schools. We conducted integrative data analysis (IDA) of the combined data from eight Institute of Education…

Increased expectations for writing performance have created a need for formative writing assessments that will help middle school teachers better understand adolescents' grade appropriate writing skills and monitor the progress of students with or at risk for writing disabilities. In this practice piece, we first explain research-based…

Prior research has shown negative relations between math anxiety and math performance. We posit that one potential pathway through which math anxiety influences performance of math equivalencies is through help seeking behavior during learning. Here, we examine whether middle school students' behavior, specifically the frequency of hint requests,…

This study explores students' perspectives on the satisfaction of basic psychological needs in the classroom and the potential effects on their learning growth in a summer reading program. The summer reading program was free for students in grades 1-8 and was designed to prevent reading-level losses during the summer for students from lower-income…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among summer reading camp participants' initial prosocial efficacy, reading motivation, and their reading skill changes. Despite the theoretical explanation of social and emotional learning (SEL), there is a lack of empirical studies demonstrating the complex relationships and processes…

This study investigated the effects of (1) proximal grouping of numbers; (2) problem-solving goals to make 100; and (3) prior knowledge on students' initial solution strategies in an interactive online mathematics game. In this game, students transformed an initial expression into a perceptually different but mathematically equivalent goal state.…

Given the well-established health disparities between lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and gender-expansive (LGBTQ+) and cisgender, straight youth, scholars predicted the COVID-19 pandemic would disproportionately impact LGBTQ+ students. Yet, few studies have described changes in LGBTQ+ students' school experiences and well-being during…

In spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic thrust nearly 56 million students in the United States into remote education. By fall 2020, states' and school districts' differing public health measures resulted in the adoption of varying COVID-adapted learning modalities (i.e., in-person, remote, and hybrid). Using daily diary data with a nationally…