This study explores how schools communicated and engaged with families in online/blended learning environments to support students' social-emotional well-being. In the form of reflective learning journals and asynchronous peer discussions, documents were collected during Spring 2020, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021 from a graduate course for…

During the 2020-2021 academic year, teachers worked to adapt to newly virtual environments as the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and moved both classrooms and professional development activity online. Even before the shift to online learning brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, online professional development (PD) had become increasingly…

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated teachers and students to adopt and adapt to online learning (OL) in a matter of days. The unfortunate school closure situation placed researchers in a remarkable position. This survey-based descriptive study investigated the experiences of teachers in the United States, including an analysis that factors in…

This convergent mixed method study investigates learner engagement during a blended, transmedia curriculum called CryptoComics, which is designed to teach 3rd-5th graders about cryptology and cybersecurity. Curriculum design is presented through the lens of four engagement facilitators: (1) anchoring the curriculum with a comic book, (2) blending…

With the development of web-based science inquiry learning, behavioral engagement in such learning contexts received more and more attention. Combined with specific science inquiry stages: comparative experiment design, implementation with computer simulation, and reflection on results, the current study explored a series of features from log data…

COVID-19 has presented new challenges for all teachers, especially teachers of students with special needs. Students have struggled with online learning environments with limited opportunities for social interaction and resources for these disruptive times. The study examined the effect of a professional development (PD) intervention, guided by…

A growing interest has been directed toward including a fourth dimension in the engagement construct: the social dimension. The aim of this study is twofold: first, to explore how teachers talk about the social dimension of student engagement in online learning, and second, to explore the possibilities of using computational methods for interview…

This case study is about understanding disruptive students who are motivated by a psychological need to invoke change in a learning space. Marczewski's User Types Test, a typology for classifying both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational tendencies, and based on Self-Determination Theory, was administered to 14 participants, aged 9 through 15, to…

Employing phenomenology as a methodological framework, this study sought to capture and understand, from a first-person point of view, what parents, teachers, and administrators in U.S. high-needs K-12 schools experienced related to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual interviews were conducted on a video conferencing platform…

Initiatives to integrate technology into teaching and learning often lack a long-term follow up to gauge if those same initiatives set the stage for teachers to easily adopt the next stage of learning technologies. Using the ten-year anniversary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Classroom for the Future grant, where $200 million were allocated…

Considerable published research explores drivers of parent choice for in-person schools, but few studies have addressed reasons for attending full-time cyber schools, and how student characteristics affect those reasons; hence, this study's unique contribution. Here we use a large national dataset (n= 95,259) to test whether students with…

Nearly half of new teachers leave the profession within five years of employment, and most would not recommend teaching as a profession. A shortage of highly effective teachers continues in public schools across the nation; hence, meaningful professional development needs to be implemented to adequately prepare and retain teachers for the…

The use of online, distance, and remote teaching is a growing phenomenon in the K-12 context. The aim of this pilot study was to explore K-12 students' experiences of the synchronous (real-time) remote teaching and learning environment. The following research questions were posed: (1) What possibilities and challenges can be identified from the…

In this study, the authors examined middle school mathematics teachers' perceptions of their instructional practices with students with disabilities (SWDs) during face-to-face instruction before the COVID-19 pandemic and eLearning during the pandemic. A survey explored teachers' use of research-supported practices and the challenges and supports…

Among the many factors that impact student performance in traditional K-12 settings, parent involvement (PI) is consistently identified as critical for student success. However, less is known about parent involvement for full-time virtual schools, where most learning takes place asynchronously in a Learning Management System (LMS). The present…