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Full-Text Articles in Education

The Effectiveness Of A Social And Emotional Learning Intervention Program With Middle School Students In Central Georgia, Daymond Ray Oct 2023

The Effectiveness Of A Social And Emotional Learning Intervention Program With Middle School Students In Central Georgia, Daymond Ray

Curriculum and Instruction (Ed.D.) Dissertations

Addressing students' social and emotional learning can lead to increased social and emotional functioning, improved classroom and school behavior, and increased academic performance. This study investigated the effectiveness of a social and emotional learning (SEL) intervention program in a middle school in central Georgia. The study utilized a mixed methodology and examined the effects of a semester long SEL intervention program called Second Step. The participants in the study consisted of 60 7th-grade students between 11 and 13 years of age who were enrolled in a health education course for the second semester at ABC Middle School. Descriptive statistics and …


A Study Of Computational Thinking Skills And Attitudes Towards Computer Science With Middle School Students, Lorien W. Cafarella Jul 2023

A Study Of Computational Thinking Skills And Attitudes Towards Computer Science With Middle School Students, Lorien W. Cafarella

Theses and Dissertations

Many middle school students come to Computer Science (CS) classes without any previous CS instruction or any Computational Thinking (CT) skills that are needed to be successful. To overcome this, many curriculums and programming environments have been used to engage students and to instill a love of CS. Which curriculum should be used to develop CT skills that will also increase positive attitudes towards CS so students will continue in this field of study in higher grades? The purpose of this mixed method action research study was to evaluate how Code.org’s block-based programming curriculum affects middle school CS students’ CT …


A Field Trip That’S Not About The Destination But The Journey, Vanessa Scanfeld, Eric James, Vincent Dotoli Jun 2023

A Field Trip That’S Not About The Destination But The Journey, Vanessa Scanfeld, Eric James, Vincent Dotoli

Middle Grades Review

This Practitioner Perspective presents a middle school unit focused on designing a day-long field trip as an effective project-based initiative for advancing social and emotional learning (SEL). It considers the social and emotional competencies students develop as they navigate the complexities of this project: researching options, planning an itinerary that meets various parameters, and ultimately taking the trip. It also offers practical guidance to schools for successfully adopting this program.


Detecting A Possible Correlation Between Hands-On Experimentation And Scientific Data Analysis In 8th Grade Students, Breana Dobesh, Phu Vu Jun 2023

Detecting A Possible Correlation Between Hands-On Experimentation And Scientific Data Analysis In 8th Grade Students, Breana Dobesh, Phu Vu

Middle Grades Review

This Practitioner Perspective reports on action research that examined the impact of integrating hands-on experimentation on eighth- grade students skills of scientific data analysis and interpretation in a science middle school class. The intervention given to the treatment group was tasking students with completing scientific experiments during their daily lessons, along with collecting and analyzing data from those experiments. Collected data through both control and treatment groups indicated that there was no significant difference in mean test scores between the two groups. Discussions and suggestions for future studies were included.


The Condensed Stem Survey As A Tool For Extension Educators, Jafeth E. Sanchez May 2023

The Condensed Stem Survey As A Tool For Extension Educators, Jafeth E. Sanchez

The Journal of Extension

One Extension Specialist implemented a STEM pilot robotics program across three middle school settings. A program evaluation to provide guidance and recommendations for future development, implementation, and continued evaluation was conducted as part of a larger study. This process led to the development of a condensed STEM survey that can be used by Extension professionals on STEM dispositions among middle school youth.


Literacy Instruction And Student Writing In Middle School Social Studies, Nicole Hedman May 2023

Literacy Instruction And Student Writing In Middle School Social Studies, Nicole Hedman

Masters of Arts in Education Action Research Papers

The purpose of this action research was to determine whether using daily literacy strategies focusing on writing would make an impact on the scores of a high-level question (HLQ) among middle school social studies students. The research took place over seven weeks in a public suburban midwestern middle school. The population of students in the study included 104 sixth-grade students. The intervention included using various literacy strategies focusing on writing and incorporating reading, speaking, and listening. Data was collected from writing samples, HLQ scores, observations, and a student survey. Some positive effects of the study were an increase in the …


Evolving Scientific Vocabulary And Language In Middle School Classrooms: Babbling And Gargling On The Way To Scientific Understanding, Merryn Cole, Thomas Ryan, Jennifer Wilhelm Apr 2023

Evolving Scientific Vocabulary And Language In Middle School Classrooms: Babbling And Gargling On The Way To Scientific Understanding, Merryn Cole, Thomas Ryan, Jennifer Wilhelm

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

While scientific vocabulary is important, it can often become problematic for students. Sometimes, those words can become a barrier to participation or act as a gatekeeper to success in the science classroom. Under the Next Generation Science Standards, middle school students are expected to model Earth-Moon-Sun motions to explain Moon phases, eclipses, and seasons (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Using a phenomenography lens, we investigated the ways in which students seeing the Moon in nature and related classroom experiences translate into a mental model of lunar phases and how vocabulary is used to communicate these models. Eighth-grade students from three urban …


Implementing Meaningful Problem-Based Learning In A Middle School Science Classroom, Celestine Banks Pough Apr 2023

Implementing Meaningful Problem-Based Learning In A Middle School Science Classroom, Celestine Banks Pough

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research study was to explore the impact of problem-based learning on science instruction in my eighth-grade college preparatory classroom. Constructivism was the framework for this study. Problem-based learning is based on constructivist principles, and it served as the instructional model for this study. PBL can foster the use of problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills, and communication skills, which are needed in the 21st century. This research study was centered around three research questions. The first question asked about the impact PBL has on students’ science achievement. The second question asked how does PBL impact students’ …


Impacting African American Student Achievement In The Middle School Stem Classroom By Teaching Mathematics Through Arts Integration And Design Thinking, Robert Lippert, Tjuannia R. Seals Feb 2023

Impacting African American Student Achievement In The Middle School Stem Classroom By Teaching Mathematics Through Arts Integration And Design Thinking, Robert Lippert, Tjuannia R. Seals

Dissertations

Middle school is a transitional period in which many students experience content-specific teachers, travel between classrooms, and explore extracurricular activity options for the first time. Historically, African American middle school students have not fared well in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) on standardized assessments, performing significantly below their Caucasian counterparts in mathematics and science. From the beginning of their academic careers, a lack of access to quality teachers, excessive use of direct instruction strategies, and a lack of resources in their school communities, contribute to their overall apathy towards the subject matter and factor into their underperformance. As a …


Tennessee Rural Middle School Teachers' Perceptions Of Academic Goal Setting For Students, Amy Woolum Feb 2023

Tennessee Rural Middle School Teachers' Perceptions Of Academic Goal Setting For Students, Amy Woolum

Ed.D. Dissertations

Since the 1960s, business leaders and educators used the idea of goal setting theory as a guide to success. Teachers who implemented goal setting strategies contributed to student success and achievement. During my study, I found little existing literature focused on academic goal setting implementation for students in Tennessee rural middle schools containing grades six through eight. The purpose of this qualitative interpretive study was to investigate Tennessee rural middle school teachers’ perceptions about implementing academic goal setting for students. I sent an online Google Forms questionnaire to 117 certified and licensed teachers in varying Tennessee rural middle schools. After …


Sources Of Mathematics Learning Disabilities For Middle School Classes From The Point Of View Of Supervisors And Teachers And Their Suggestions For Addressing Them, Eidah M. Alruwaili Phd Feb 2023

Sources Of Mathematics Learning Disabilities For Middle School Classes From The Point Of View Of Supervisors And Teachers And Their Suggestions For Addressing Them, Eidah M. Alruwaili Phd

International Journal for Research in Education

The study aimed to identify the sources of mathematics learning Disabilities for middle school classes from the point of view of supervisors and teachers and their suggestions to address them. The study sample consisted of 38 male and female supervisors and 151 teachers for the mathematics course who were chosen by the available random method during the first semester of the academic year 2021 / 2022. To achieve the objectives of the study, a tool was prepared that consisted of four subscales (36 items), namely the student, the teacher, the textbook, and the classroom environment. The results showed that the …


A Restorative Justice Book Club For Secondary Classrooms, Mary M. Mcconnaha Jan 2023

A Restorative Justice Book Club For Secondary Classrooms, Mary M. Mcconnaha

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Schools face several challenges in creating meaningful community relationships, and the breakdown of these relationships causes harm to students, teachers, and administrators. Many schools have turned to restorative justice practices as a way to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, reduce discipline referrals, increase graduation rate, and strengthen the school community (Evans & Lester, 2013; Winn et al., 2019; Weaver and Swank, 2020). However, Winn (2013, 2018) and others have proposed that the principles of restorative justice can be embedded into the English Language Arts curriculum. In this paper, I describe a restorative justice book club unit for early adolescents that is …


The Not-So-Silent Period: Testimonios Of Recently Arrived Latinx Students, Teri M. Hutchinson Jan 2023

The Not-So-Silent Period: Testimonios Of Recently Arrived Latinx Students, Teri M. Hutchinson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore and amplify the experiences of recently arrived Latinx1 students as interpreted through their testimonios in educational borderlands. Through increasingly xenophobic discourses around immigrants and their children (Pérez Huber, 2015), U.S. public schools have become entrenched borderland spaces wherein the humanity of recently arrived students is voided through silencing them with labels of linguistic deficiency and cramming them into one-size-fits-all educational programming (Fine et al., 2007; Flores & Rosa, 2015). There is demand for research that explores the experiences of these children, especially in light of their continued marginalization through neoliberal programming …