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In the United States (US) kindergarten through twelfth-grade public school system, the classroom library has come to be a critical part of literacy instruction within the language arts classroom. This fact is especially true in the middle school grade levels (grades five through eight), where reading volume begins to rapidly increase. Additionally, a developmental norm for students within this age range includes a growing sense of independence and choice, as well as a desire to share and voice opinions. Classroom libraries have come to be tools that are used regularly and are heavily influential on the way that students grow to perceive themselves, the world around them, and the way they fit into that world. However, classroom libraries have remained stagnant and underrepresent the diverse populations of the students in those classrooms. This article aims to connect deep reflective thinking with anti-oppressive and transformative learning theories, exploring how these frameworks can be used to problematize current practices in classroom libraries. Through a content analysis of what is seen as deep and critical thinking practices and reflective thinking practices, anti-oppressive and transformative learning theories can be linked to foster a social justice classroom culture within US public middle school language arts classrooms. © 2025 Common Ground Research Networks. All rights reserved.

A product of ASD socio-communicative-deficits and insufficient police training related to autism, ASD-police interactions have the potential to become problematic, with negative outcomes for ASD individuals and police alike. Thus, the combination of police acclimation, simulatory experience for drivers with ASD and the introduction of Connecticut’s recent Blue Envelope could improve overall experiences for drivers. A simulated routine traffic stop practice event, utilising pre- and post- measures was conducted in an effort to quantify drivers’ feelings about current and future interactions with police. Our prediction that participants would experience a statistically significant improvement in anxiety, comfort and self-perceived knowledge levels about future ASD-police interactions immediately following the intervention was confirmed. Our prediction that initially significant disparities between participants with and without police experience – those with previous police encounters versus those that don’t - would become not significant immediately following the intervention was disconfirmed. While the longitudinal data suggested that improved post-intervention ASD psychological measures remained statistically significant in the long-term, the sample responses to our long-term questionnaire were too few in number to make any definitive conclusions. It is suggested that practice traffic stops such as these could benefit both drivers with ASD and law enforcement nationwide. It is further suggested that police officer curriculums should include additional training regarding special populations. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.

In the United States, many actors are pushing for the use of grade point average (GPA) as the main placement tool for gatekeeper math and English courses for community college students (Quarles, 2022; Scott-Clayton, 2018; Turk, 2017). One community college system (pseudonymously, SXCC) in a New England state has begun placing students in initial math and English classes based on self-reported GPA. There have been studies on the effects of placement changes of this type (Belfield & Crosta, 2012; Hodara & Cox, 2016; Ngo & Kwon, 2014; Scott-Clayton, 2012). However, studies have not included the effects of these changes on multilingual learners (MLLs).Using a census of every MLL placed in SXCC in the summer and fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021 (N = 12,603), a MANOVA found that MLL students in the SXCC system who were placed using previous placement methods had a higher overall GPA than students placed using self-reported GPA (M = 3.32, SD = 0.740; M = 2.01, SD = 1.27, respectively) and had higher satisfactory academic progress (SAP) (M = 102.98, SD = 51.52; M = 57.66, SD = 55.53, respectively), and took longer to enroll in English 101 (M = 5.11, SD = 3.55; M = 2.36, SD = 1.76, respectively).

A young boy remembers fond childhood memories at his grandmother's house, where he learned the small things in life that truly mattered.

"This book is designed to assist pre-service and in-service classroom teachers in weaving music, visual arts, drama, and movement into the elementary school curriculum--thereby stimulating the learning process, enriching other subject areas, and providing opportunities for creative expression and self-fulfillment. Featuring content informed by the National Standards for the Arts, the book provides the basic tools and activities that teachers need to gain confidence in using the arts in their elementary classrooms. " -- Publisher description.

Our research aimed to investigate the potential learning benefits to young children of implementing digital interactive multimodal technologies that provide both visual and haptic experiences in elementary mathematics classrooms. We studied the ways in which fourth-grade students collaboratively create collective strategies for solving mathematical problems utilizing dynamic geometry software with multi-touch interfaces, a combination we call a multi-touch Dynamic Geometry Environment. We examine in-depth two case studies each illustrating how mathematical strategies, collaboration, and socially mediated metacognition emerge in the small groups of children while working on an activity using the Geometer’s Sketchpad® on the iPad to make sense of an intuitive idea of covariation. We found that children’s interactions with their peers, the interviewer, and the mDGE favored the emergence of varied collaborative behaviors and socially mediated metacognitive processes that fostered the co-construction and development of mathematical strategies over a short period of time. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Variance and invariance are two powerful mathematical ideas to support geometrical and spatial thinking, yet there is limited research about teachers’ knowledge of variance and invariance. In this paper, we examined how high school teachers deal with the task of looking for invariant properties in a dynamic geometry environment (DGE) setting. Specifically, we investigated if they even attend to invariant properties; what invariant properties they discern and discuss; and how DGE can support such discernment. Our analysis found that teachers tend to discern and discuss invariant properties mainly when they were probed to consider invariance. We also found four categories of invariant properties that seem to be important for a robust and rich understanding of geometric objects in the context of invariance and DGE. The use of DGE allowed teachers to see and interact with invariant properties, thus suggesting that accessing geometry dynamically may have structural affordances especially when exploring invariance. Teachers were able to enact different DGE movements to discern and discuss invariant properties, as well as to reason with and about them. We also saw that teachers’ backgrounds and past experiences can play an important role in their descriptions of invariant properties. Possible future research directions and implications to teacher education are discussed. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Through a multi-country study, Comparative Perspectives on International School Leadership examines the current global spread of educational leadership, occurring rapidly and widely. Exploring five international case studies of leadership policy, preparation, and practice under the framework of policy borrowing and adaptation, Magno attempts to understand and account for commonalities and differences across country contexts. Rather than assuming a particular model or theory to leadership is best, Comparative Perspectives on International School Leadership takes a policy-oriented perspective and considers how and why certain approaches are being formulated and accepted, including an examination of motivations, influencers, actors, institutions, and implementation processes. Magno ultimately argues that efforts toward formalizing educational leadership reflect current global political objectives to improve schools by increasing accountability, transparency, and professionalism. This engaging book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of educational leadership and comparative education. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

A successful Software maintenance process depends on three factors: the maintenance goals, the technical properties of the system and the people performing the software maintenance. Most of the current work to investigate software maintenance only considers the first two factors, ignoring the third factor, which limits the scope and accuracy of these approaches. In this paper, we use change theory to introduce a deeper understanding of the software maintenance process. We utilize three change theories: Lewin's, Prochaska and DiClemente's, and Lippit's theories to introduce three different software maintenance models. These models consider the three success factors and incorporate contextual information to help maintainers better understand the software maintenance task to bring about an effective change.