Middle grades teachers and middle grades teacher educators are practicing in a complex sociocultural and sociopolitical moment. As part of the recent critical turn in middle grades education, antiracist teaching and equity pedagogies have gained momentum in the middle grades education literature. Calls to engage in these practices, however, have…

School-based outdoor learning is an experiential learning approach that involves the integration of the natural environment with the learning process. This study focused on investigating the effect of a school-based outdoor learning experience on mood among 83 sixth grade students. The researcher found a positive correlation between time spent…

In Queensland, Australia, there has been a major reform shifting Year 7 from Primary to Secondary Schools and implementing the Junior Secondary initiative for Years 7-9 in government schools. Six Guiding Principles, including establishing a Distinct Identity, provide the framework. This study examined 317 students transitioning from Year 6 to 7,…

Embedding environmental concepts in the minds of young students within a traditional classroom setting poses challenges due to the abstract nature of these concepts and the temporal dilemma associated with environmental change, as students are unable to observe the immediate consequences of their actions directly. To address this, innovative…

A gender gap persists in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Although females constitute half the total workforce in the United States, they make up just greater than a quarter of employees in STEM fields. In recent years, one approach to addressing the gender gap in STEM has involved middle grades science…

The authors examined middle level teachers' perceptions and experiences of leadership support during the sudden transition to emergency remote teaching (ERT) during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this qualitative case study, the research questions were: How did middle school teachers perceive their leaders' support for teaching online? What were…

The authors explore the influence of instructional technologies on teachers' subject-matter knowledge as well as how this knowledge is mediated by context, experience, and beliefs about teaching, mathematics, and technology. This study examined how four pre-service middle grades mathematics teachers' (PSTs) beliefs about teaching, mathematics, and…

The integration of social and emotional learning into school curricula has been linked to a number of positive student outcomes, including increased academic achievement, the development of healthy relationships, and improved emotional self-regulation. Rarely, however, has research considered students' perspectives on which social and emotional…

Adolescents are in a dynamic period of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development. School-based interventions that focus on social-emotional learning, including the development of self-regulation skills, have been shown to have positive impacts on students' mental health and academic achievement. In this qualitative study, we examine health…

This study investigated the mediation role of school absenteeism in the relationships between different types of amotivation and academic performance. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the hypotheses of study. Participants were 311 eighth-grade middle school students who were absent from school for at least three days during…

While it is well established that positive peer relationships lead to positive outcomes, little is known about the mediating role of school motivation on the association between perceived peer support and school achievement among middle grades students. Even less is known about the effect of gender on this mediation. The current study examined…

Disruptive student behavior is a significant challenge in schools and a predictor of student failure. Effective classroom management is a crucial skill that middle level teachers must acquire to foster student engagement and learning. This qualitative study explored the experiences and perceptions of 35 middle level teachers in both general…

This study examines in-service mathematics teachers' problems on linear relationships that they posed in a semi-structured problem posing situation with a group and their ideas about the factors affecting the quality of the posed problems. Eight groups of 24 teachers participated in the study. Teachers' problems, written group work, and class…

English-language learning in rural Taiwan has been targeted by government policy for two decades, yet little research has investigated students' motivation and support in these rural communities. This study investigated the effects of students' gender, grade, parental support (PS), and teacher support (TS) on their English learning motivation…

Over the past decade, personalized learning has emerged as a major aim in the contemporary education systems of many countries. This qualitative case study examined middle school educators' perceptions of how their school's collective experimentation with Genius Hour supported the broader implementation of personalized learning. Teachers in the…